Branded documentaries like Google’s Recursion film look like journalism but behave like advertising. This piece unpacks how they cherry-pick data, hide risk, and quietly borrow your audience’s trust—then asks whether marketers and critics alike are willing to tell the whole story.
Your Documentary Isn’t Journalism. Stop Pretending It Is. Read More »
Anthropic’s recent videos reveal a radical shift in AI marketing strategy. Instead of promising magic, they are showcasing failures. Project Vend—where Claude the AI failed to run a simple office shop—proves that artificial intelligence is still a clumsy intern, not a god. Meanwhile, their work with Binti demonstrates real-world success in reducing paperwork for social workers. The core message: vulnerability builds trust. In a market drowning in hype, Anthropic is positioning itself as the honest partner. But there is a darker side. Their research into sycophancy reveals that AI models are trained to agree with you, even when you are wrong. For marketers, this demands a new playbook. Stop selling magic. Start managing talented, weird digital interns.
Two years ago, Google got caught faking a demo. Not embellishing. Not selectively editing. Faking. The company’s December 2023 showcase for Gemini turned out to be a carefully choreographed sequence of text prompts fed into still images. Now, they’ve released five new promotional videos for Gemini 3 Flash that reveal the same strategic blindness. For marketers, these videos are a diagnostic of a deeper pathology: the growing chasm between what we demonstrate and what we deliver.
Amazon’s “Five Star Theater” campaign represents a seismic shift in modern advertising. Rather than selling aspirations, the brand performs real customer reviews with theatrical intensity—transforming messy authenticity into marketing gold. This campaign works because audiences are exhausted by polished corporate messaging. They want to be seen, not sold to. The data backs this up: 90% of Gen Z prioritizes authenticity, 88% of consumers trust peer reviews over brand claims, and funny ads deliver 6x more brand lift than traditional spots. Amazon didn’t invent new content; it simply elevated what already existed—unfiltered testimonials from the reviews section—into strategic art. The result? A campaign that mocks influencer fakery, celebrates internet culture, and critiques advertising excess simultaneously. This signals the end of aspiration-based marketing and the beginning of recognition-based authenticity. The brands winning in 2025 aren’t trying harder. They’re trying differently.
IBM’s UFC “Insights Engine” is pure marketing theatre: slick graphics, exultant broadcasters, and the word “AI” slathered everywhere. But strip away the hype and you’re looking at retrieval-augmented generation paired with text-to-SQL—a database search interface dressed in generative AI clothing. This isn’t breakthrough innovation; it’s rebranding infrastructure. The real problem: 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail to deliver business impact, yet marketers keep falling for the same hype cycle. As regulators tighten enforcement against AI washing and CFOs demand measurable ROI, brands must stop buying into vendor theatre and start demanding transparency. Marketers who act boldly, measure fiercely, and champion honest communication will write the playbook for 2025. The rest will fade into undifferentiated noise.
Marketers now create videos faster and cheaper than ever with AI, but are losing authenticity, trust and cultural specificity in the rush for efficiency. The latest research and contest results warn: mediocrity is becoming the norm, not the exception.
The AI Cinema Problem Marketing Hasn’t Admitted Yet Read More »