Welcome back to Brand Baby.
This week’s issue covers:
This Week in Brand / A deep-dive on the OpenAI brand trip.
In Conversation with Danny Giacopelli, Founder of For Starters / We discuss the biggest shifts happening in the small business community, branded editorial content, and the future of For Starters.
Resources / Rodeo is looking for campus ambassadors & more.
Thanks for being here. Have feedback, ideas, opportunities, or just want to say hi? Get in touch at caroline@readbrandbaby.com
Today’s issue of Brand Baby is in partnership with Tracksuit, the brand tracker that gives marketers and strategists continuous visibility into how their brand is performing on the metrics that predict long-term revenue growth.
OpenAI hosted their first brand trip in the Hudson Valley for a group of influencers, and people aren’t happy about it.
I recorded a deep-dive video explaining my thoughts below, or you can read on for the TL;DR…
This past week, I spent way too much time thinking about the OpenAI brand trip – what happened and why it went so wrong. For those who aren’t familiar, here’s the TLDR: OpenAI hosted their very first brand trip for a group of creators at an Auberge property in New York’s Hudson Valley. The creators posted about the trip, sharing snapshots of the gorgeous landscape, fun activities, and a beautiful OpenAI-branded dinner in the woods.
It didn’t take long for the criticism to commence. Over the past several days, audiences have expressed significant criticism towards the creators who attended. Many comment on the irony of the creator enjoying the natural environment while OpenAI builds massive data centers that destroy similar environments. Other commenters drag the creators for “selling out” by attending the brand trip, claiming that they lack values.
The backlash that ensued as a result of this trip got me thinking about why all of this is going down now. What factors brought us here? It also had me thinking about other content I’ve seen lately that promotes AI products or partners with AI companies. Why does some pro-AI content face criticism, while other content doesn’t?
OpenAI probably viewed this brand trip as an opportunity to shift negative perceptions of their brand and product towards a more positive and beneficial outlook. By hosting this brand trip, they could align with authentic creators, ultimately shifting perceptions and boosting adoption of ChatGPT among those creators’ audiences.
Which brings me to a brief (but important) aside. People don’t like brand trips – let alone brand trips from AI companies. Maybe you’ve heard some of the criticism around the Tarte Cosmetics or Revolve brand trips, which consist of all-inclusive creator getaways to tropical locations. Audiences view these trips as extravagant and out-of-touch. So when OpenAI brings creators on a brand trip to an Auberge hotel? Not well-received. Additionally, most of the content that I viewed from the brand trip focused on curated aesthetics. I actually think that the trip would have felt less out-of-touch if the content had actually focused on learnings and insights directly related to AI and technology.
But why did OpenAI specifically receive this backlash? We’ve seen other AI companies like Anthropic, Microsoft, or Google partner with countless creators and face limited criticism. But OpenAI is a unique case. In recent years, Anthropic has increasingly positioned themselves as the “good guys” in the AI race. They’ve successfully marketed Claude as almost a “better-for-you” AI tool – smarter, more creative, produces less slop. More of a partner to support your workflow. Anthropic’s latest ad campaign paints an excellent picture of what they’re trying to do: by directly addressing all of the public’s fears around AI, they’re trying to tell us that they get us, they understand.
These ads further perpetuate the “us vs. them” narrative. Anthropic = good, OpenAI = bad.
Anthropic has hosted a variety of creator events, including a dinner series last spring and an ongoing Founder House activation this summer, neither of which have seen a fraction of the criticism of OpenAI’s brand trip. At the same time, AI companies like Microsoft and Google partner with creators all the time, but audiences don’t really seem to care, perhaps because those companies’ products are already so deeply embedded in our daily lives that we almost forget that they’re AI companies.
Perhaps OpenAI has been caught at the crosshairs of the anti-AI war because they were one of the first players in the game, and Sam Altman became a symbol of AI in a way that no one else really has. He’s a prominent figure that we can all point a finger at. If OpenAI is evil, then Sam Altman is the villain behind it all.
But OpenAI isn’t the only bad guy in the game. There’s also Meta. And now, the backlash seems to be increasingly targeted at content promoting the Meta Ray-Bans. Lately, I’ve started seeing some of my favorite creators (many of whom are women) partner with Meta to promote the glasses, including Emily Sundberg of Feed Me and Nadya Okamoto. It’s clear that Meta is attempting to shift perceptions of their brand and smart glasses by partnering with buzzy female creators, but – similar to OpenAI – these creators are facing backlash for the partnerships.
There’s also a gender component to all of this. The majority of content that receives such hate has been posted by female creators. I think this may have something to do with the high-trust relationship between female creators and their audiences: when women are better at cultivating trust, they also experience greater criticism when that trust feels broken. Audiences distrust and dislike AI, so when female creators partner with AI companies, audiences wield greater criticism over those creators.
Let me know what you think: Are there other factors at play? What do you think brand marketing from AI companies will look like in the future?
Every brand moment has a public-facing story and a behind-the-scenes data story. They're not always the same. Shorts is Tracksuit's fortnightly newsletter covering the biggest brand stories, powered by their always-on tracking insights showing what's actually shifting in brand health beneath the surface.
In Conversation with Danny Giacopelli, Founder of For Starters
Danny and I used to work together at Mailchimp, so when I heard that he was going all-in on For Starters, his media brand and community for the next generation of business owners, I was excited to hear more. Below, we discuss the biggest shifts he’s observing in the small business community, the state of brand editorial content, and his plans to keep growing For Starters.
You coined the term “starters” for a specific kind of founder who is typically bootstrapped, hands-on, and not chasing endless growth. What patterns are you seeing across that group right now?
It’s a wild environment in which to start a business right now. So many macro shifts are impacting business ownership, both positively and negatively.
Mass tech layoffs are pushing lots of people into entrepreneurship. For some, it’s obviously against their will. Others are relishing the opportunity to finally start something of their own. Engineers are turning into furniture makers, HR pros are selling their crafts on Etsy, in-house marketers are becoming consultants, etc.
Add to that the impact of AI, which is helping people learn biz skills they’d otherwise have to learn via textbooks or paid workshops or MBA programs. It’s allowing them to create content faster and it’s helping them analyse their books or solve problem spots. For creatives, it’s giving them unheard of superpowers while also simultaneously eating their lunch. Like, is AI going to destroy designers or make them invincible? The jury’s out. We’re in a weird place right now.
For starters – the admittedly somewhat broad category of business owners who aren’t VC-backed or trying to build the next tech unicorn – there is an enormous opportunity right now to build a business that can change their life. This is the age of the starter. It’s not easy – entrepreneurship will always be hard and you still need a killer idea, stamina, and product-market fit – but there are more tools, resources and communities out there right now to help you build a biz than ever before. It’s still up to you to wrangle it all and make it happen. That won’t change.
I loved your partnership with Whatnot on some recent issues. How do you decide which brand partners are the right fit for FS?
Thanks. I’ve only just started dipping my toes into brand partnerships. I’ve done some recent month-long partnerships with Shopify and Whatnot that have been fun, and I’ve got a new month-long partnership with another great company kicking off this Friday.
My approach to brand partnerships is built on trust. I’m building a grassroots community of new business owners who are looking for inspiration and ideas, but also products and tools worth their time and money. They’ve got limited capital to throw around, so they need to trust me to curate brands, products and tools that are legitimately good, and I’ve gotta deliver. I won’t work with a brand I don’t have a relationship with, or respect, or trust. If you lose that trust, you’re dead.
Thankfully, there are no end of amazing brands out there that support new business owners: ecommerce platforms, coworking companies, banks, design agencies, you name it. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve for unconventional brand categories that would be fascinating partners for For Starters. Give me some time and let’s see how it all unfolds…
A lot of marketers are trying to create high-quality editorial branded content right now. Based on your experience at Monocle, Courier, Mailchimp, and now FS, what’s your advice for marketers aiming to create really good, trusted content inside of brands?
The age of “look at our blog articles!” is long over. Big companies are some of the last places you’ll find stale blog posts that no one reads. Marketers need to think outside the box. Look at what Stripe is doing: they’ve gone and built an entire publishing house with printed books on esoteric subjects, along with a newsletter and mag featuring arcane science-related content, etc. Just wild. Editorial teams have gotta flex their muscles a bit and take risks like that. Bring in talent from unconventional places. Do weird stuff that people talk about. But keep the quality really high.
If you were to start something completely outside of For Starters right now, what space would you explore?
I’d probably start a business that makes beautiful printed maps and other curated objects for travellers. I might actually do this one day.
You grew to 10K subscribers in about 13 months post-launch. What’s the plan for the next few months and what are your priorities?
I grew to 10K and then killed a few thousand off the list in a big/terrifying annual clean of unengaged subs, but now I’m back up to like ~9,000, with a much more highly engaged list: an open rate of nearly ~50% and click-through rate of ~13% or so. For Starters subscribers love to click things. I’m happy with the growth trends, but organic growth is a constant slog and I need to build a more sustainable/predictable growth flywheel in the coming months.
For Starters is becoming a business and you’ll soon see some pretty big changes, beyond the brand partnerships. Without scooping my own announcements and rollouts, the FS community, which has until now basically been me talking to subscribers in a 1:1 environment, will finally become a real community, with all that goes with it. Keep an eye out. I’m extremely excited.
Resources
Opportunity ➡️ Rodeo is looking for campus ambassadors! They’re looking to bring Rodeo to campuses around the country, and help shape the product through feedback.
I’ll leave you with this reminder (that I needed this week):
there is not an influencer in the world who could make me want to buy meta glasses
Caroline, the piece of OpenAI's brand trip is really thoughtful commentary. Thank you for the insights frfr.
It's interesting to see how AI companies respond to sentiment for their consumer audiences. Something I thought of that's also interesting is how it translates to their enterprise audiences. The majority of revenue for all major AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, etc.) comes from contracts they have with enterprise customers. I wonder if the public sentiment for these companies are mirrored in these markets - if not, will they ever be in light of how much B2B purchasing decisions are changing - and if they will be, if there's anything companies like OpenAI can do to get ahead of the curve and solidify themselves as "good guys".