OpenAI spent years building the most advanced AI on the planet. Then, when it came time to advertise it, they chose something radically old-school: 30-second emotional films shot on 35mm, broadcast during NFL Primetime.

No futuristic CGI. No robot hands typing on keyboards. No ominous voiceover about "changing humanity forever."

Just a guy doing pull-ups in a park at sunset. A brother and sister on a road trip. Someone cooking dinner for a date.

The campaign, developed with creative agency Isle of Any and directed by Miles Jay, launched in September 2025 across the US, UK, and Ireland. It marks ChatGPT's first major brand push since a widely-criticized Super Bowl spot earlier that year.

And the strategic pivot reveals something every marketing team should pay attention to.

Three films anchor the campaign: "Pull-Up," "Road Trip," and "Dish."

Each follows the same structure. A character appears in the middle of an everyday moment. The camera slowly reveals context. Music swells. Text scrolls up the screen like movie credits, showing the ChatGPT prompt and response that made the moment possible.

In "Pull-Up," a man grips a bar in a park. We see he's achieved something he couldn't do before. The credits reveal his prompt: a request for a training plan to do his first pull-up by autumn.

In "Dish," someone cooks while a potential romantic interest waits. The credits show a recipe request with a cheeky addition: something that says "I like you, but want to play it cool."

The technique is clever. By showing the AI conversation as film credits, OpenAI positions ChatGPT as the invisible production crew behind your life's best scenes. You're the star. The AI is just lighting and catering.

Here's the strategic insight your team can steal.

OpenAI has 700 million weekly users. The product basically sells itself through word-of-mouth and direct trial. So why spend millions on TV advertising?

Because awareness isn't enough anymore.

OpenAI's head of international marketing Elke Karskens told The Drum that the real target is "deeper emotional connection with the brand." Preference matters for long-term retention. Users who feel connected to ChatGPT stick around. Users who see it as just another tool will leave for Claude or Gemini the moment something shinier appears.

This is the same playbook Apple perfected decades ago. The product is a commodity. The feeling is the moat.

Marketing columnist Mark Ritson, writing in The Drum, noted the irony: an AI company discovering what CPG marketers learned ages ago. Building a brand is harder than building a product. It requires "discipline, consistency, and the humility to accept that consumers don't give a toss about your technology."

The spots succeed through uncommonly tight craft. Here's what your team should study:

Single-take cinematography. Each film appears to be one continuous shot. This creates intimacy. You're watching a moment unfold, not watching an edit.

35mm film stock. Director of photography Arseni Khachaturan used custom lenses and analog film to create warmth. Digital would have felt too clean, too "tech company." Film grain says "this is about humans."

Music licensing. Tracks from Perfume Genius, Neil Diamond, and others provide instant emotional weight. The songs are recognizable but not obvious. They feel discovered, not focus-grouped.

Credits as storytelling. The prompt-and-response text appearing as film credits solves a core advertising problem: how do you show an AI conversation without it looking like a product demo? By making the UI disappear into cinematic language.

Micro-performances. As OpenAI's global creative director Michael Tabtabai explained, you only have seconds to make audiences care about a character. Every actor delivers precisely calibrated emotion. Nothing is wasted.

Some observers have called the ads "curiously generic." Ritson argues they won't differentiate ChatGPT from competitors.

He's partially right. These spots won't explain why ChatGPT is better than Claude. They won't highlight new features. They won't demonstrate technical superiority.

But that's precisely the point.

OpenAI isn't trying to win on features. They're trying to win on familiarity. The goal is making ChatGPT feel like a trusted companion rather than a piece of software. Features can be copied. Feelings can't.

This is the same reason Coca-Cola doesn't run ads explaining their sugar content versus Pepsi. Brand advertising operates on a different layer of consumer psychology than direct response.

You probably don't have NFL Primetime budgets. But the strategic principles scale down:

Lead with human moments, not product capabilities. Show what your product enables, not what it does. Your customer is the hero. Your product is the sidekick.

Earn emotional credibility through craft. Cheap production can work for some brands. But if you're asking people to trust you with important moments in their lives, your advertising needs to feel considered. Every detail communicates.

Let your UI disappear. The most elegant advertising doesn't show people using your product. It shows the result of using your product. OpenAI never shows the ChatGPT interface. They show the pull-up, the road trip, the dinner.

Match your medium to your message. Film stock for warmth. TV for reach. Outdoor for repetition. OpenAI chose the most traditional brand-building channels because they're trying to build a traditional brand. Your channel strategy should serve your strategic goal.

Accept that some audiences won't get it. Brand campaigns always attract criticism from people who want to see features and benefits. That's fine. Those people were going to research your product anyway. The brand campaign is for everyone who won't.

The AI advertising wars are just beginning.

Anthropic launched their first Claude campaign the same week. Perplexity is losing $7 million monthly while trying to figure out differentiation. The entire consumer AI market was worth $12 billion last year. Netflix makes that in a quarter.

Despite the hype, most AI companies haven't figured out how to make users care about them specifically. OpenAI is betting that emotional storytelling, the oldest trick in advertising, still works in the newest category.

Early signs suggest they might be right.

by CH
for the AdAI Ed. Team