The Super Bowl proved AI still doesn't know its audience

Key takeaways

• Audience alienation: Current AI marketing targets tech insiders, ignoring the concerns of the global workforce.
• Negative narratives: For most people, AI is associated with job loss and ethical costs rather than innovation.
• The adoption gap: Technology is evolving faster than cultural adoption, creating a divide in how tools are perceived.
• Trust as a moat: Future success in AI will be defined by transparency and real-world utility rather than model size.

Most AI advertising is built for an audience that already believes. It speaks to technologists, founders, and early adopters. It assumes excitement, familiarity, and an audience that can tell Claude from ChatGPT from Gemini. It often carries an air of elitism that alienates the very people it should be reaching. The vast majority of the global workforce doesn't operate in tech. For most people, AI isn't an exciting revolution. For most people, AI is associated with significant concerns:

• Mass layoffs and job displacement
• Stolen creative work and intellectual property issues
• Environmental costs of training large models

Those aren't fringe concerns. They're the dominant narrative, and almost nothing in mainstream messaging has tried to rewrite it.

"We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences. Moreover, throughout my time here, I've repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions. I've seen this within myself, within the organization, where we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most, and through broader society too." Mrinank Sharma, former head of Anthropic's Safeguards Research Team, resignation letter

Where are the loud promotions about AI accelerating breakthroughs in medicine, climate science, or accessibility? Outside of developer tools and a handful of marketing automations, few companies have shown everyday consumers a reason to care. Most people treat AI as a marginally different search engine. At Greater, we've seen an explosion of interest in AEO related services, but the ceiling is so much higher, and the communication hasn't risen to meet it. This is partly cultural. In the sprint to scale, AI companies absorbed the ethos of growth at all costs. That leaves no room for patience, empathy, or meeting people where they are. Technology evolves at a compounding pace. Cultural adoption does not. Treating them as if they move together only widens the divide. It's a generational shift in how people relate to technology as a utility in their daily lives.

"I once believed I could help the people building AI get ahead of the problems it would create. This week confirmed my slow realization that OpenAI seems to have stopped asking the question I'd joined to help answer. (…) I have deep reservations about OpenAI strategy." Zoë Hitzig, former researcher at OpenAI

The future of AI branding

The companies that endure will be the ones that recognize it. At Greater, we've always maintained that the most valuable skill is agility and adaptability in the pursuit of a company's longevity. The winners will design products that enhance people's lives, not displace them. They'll understand what people genuinely want before spending a dollar telling them what they should want. Product-market fit, not product-market hype. Trust will be the deepest moat. Not model size, not benchmark scores, not a sixty-second Super Bowl spot. Trust, earned through candor, openness, and real relationships with the people who depend on the product. AI companies have spent the last few years in conversation with themselves. The ones that learn to speak to everyone else will be the ones that last.