OpenAI won the war of attention (again).

If there’s one thing that OpenAI won last December, it is the war of attention.

Every single day for 12 days straight, a new service was presented, creating debate online pretty much every time. The move was very smart because it broke the traditional tech mess where you have a keynote for hours that presents multiple products, releases, etc. Instead, one product, one day. From a marketing and attention perspective, this was brilliant. By breaking announcements into digestible, daily chunks, they maximized engagement, ensuring that each product got its moment in the spotlight. This drip-feed strategy not only kept people talking but also created anticipation for what was coming next—a feat that’s hard to pull off in a crowded tech space.

Even though it created controversy in terms of business offerings at the beginning—one of them was the $200 per month fee to access the newest model, which was considered overpriced—the rollout still captivated attention. It turns out we had to wait for the next day, when Sora (the video generation tool) was introduced, to understand that a substantial number of videos can be generated as part of the $200 package, along with other iterative improvements that were added. The controversies surrounding pricing and access (like the $200/month fee and the Sora tool’s availability discrepancies) may have sparked frustration at first but ultimately added to the buzz.

Moreover, for people who had, for instance, the ChatGPT team (I don’t know about enterprises), such subscriptions must be done separately, adding extra costs to those you’ve already paid. For Sora, the situation was even more confusing at first; Sora was available for personal accounts but not for teams, creating, at least for me, a sense of unfairness. Yet these hiccups, rather than detracting from the overall impact, seemed to make the rollout even more memorable as people sought clarity.

From a business perspective, all of these were clearly bold moves. Usually, you want to impress your prospective clients by giving a long list of mind-blowing features right away so that they are persuaded immediately. Here, OpenAI preferred to distill one feature at a time in cozy-style videos, usually 15 minutes each. In short, they took the time to articulate better what was happening instead of overwhelming people. The iterative nature of the rollout kept people invested, eager to see how it all fit together by the end of the 12 days.

That was smart, really smart. And somehow, that’s clearly a new tempo in terms of announcements that OpenAI seems to follow. I remember, two years ago, when a new generation of APIs was released, the president of OpenAI made a straightforward demo that was very rich and yet mind-blowing. This December strategy builds on that history of impactful presentations while introducing a psychological element of continuous engagement.

It seems like this could be a new trend since, again, despite competitors such as Google releasing similar capabilities during those two "shipmass" release weeks, the fact that there was this continuous stream of news for two weeks was a clever marketing move. The controversies and initial lack of clarity in offerings only amplified the buzz, keeping the conversation alive.

I wonder if ChatGPT gave them the idea...? :) OpenAI’s use of its own technology to shape strategy would certainly fit their narrative of dogfooding and leveraging AI to optimize creative and business decisions. If so, it’s another testament to how AI isn’t just reshaping industries but also the way those industries communicate and market themselves.