Perplexity, a generative synthetic intelligence startup with a $1 billion valuation and a big-swing mentality, launched its first paid advertising marketing campaign throughout tonight’s high-profile Nationwide Basketball Affiliation Finals.
The seven-figure media purchase—throughout a tentpole broadcast that attracts sizable audiences and blue-chip manufacturers—goals to plant Perplexity’s flag with mainstream America within the burgeoning tech area.
Whereas the position is noteworthy for a nascent firm, so is the artistic itself.
The model, which is creating a search engine that goals to rival Google, has taken an unconventional path to introducing itself, dropping a movie-style trailer for an motion thriller that doesn’t exist. (However as a preview: It would sooner or later, as talks have began for potential TV collection or full-length options based mostly on the idea.)
Perplexity chief enterprise officer Dmitry Shevelenko known as the advertising transfer “an asymmetrical wager.”
“If we take a bunch of simple photographs and never the threes, we’re not going to win this sport,” Shevelenko, leaning into an apt basketball analogy, advised ADWEEK. “We’re swimming in a sea of giants—trillion greenback corporations—so we will’t simply tow in. We’ve to be prepared to be daring.”
The spot, known as “The Know-It Alls,” comes from Los Angeles-based indie company Sandwich. It borrows a system that’s well-known within the advert business, with tweaks and an AI help, nodding to basic branded content material like BMW Movies and Mercedes-Benz’s “Fortunate Star.”
On-screen branding is deliberately mild in “The Know-It Alls,” but Perplexity drives the narrative within the high-energy state of affairs. The video’s 30-second cutdown aired on ABC through the first quarter of sport one of many NBA Finals, whereas the total two-minute video will probably be distributed on Disney-owned streaming channels.
Tweaking a system
The kernel of the concept got here from the model and one among its unofficial slogans, “Know It All,” in accordance with Adam Lisagor, founding father of Sandwich.
“They stated, ‘We don’t wish to make an advert for Perplexity, we wish to make a trailer for a film that doesn’t exist—one thing about discovery, the place the characters subtly use our platform, however the model is barely current,’” Lisagor advised ADWEEK. “To which I stated, ‘The place have you ever been all my life?’”
