Claude and I go waaaaay back. Claude gets to the point more quickly and is more succinct than ChatGPT in my experiences. And no one had heard of him/her/it so available bandwidth abounded.
Six months later after a $4,000,000,000 Amazon investment, Claude is to be reckoned with. Open-AI is presently experiencing a Musk-like backlash that has made Tesla a bit less cool. Meanwhile, Claude has made a few power moves as it’s reach expands.
WPP, What Gives?
The latest, reported by Ad Age (May 23, 2024 - WHY WPP PARTNERED WITH OPENAI COMPETITOR ANTHROPIC) - references WPP’s AI brand platform, Open, is already engaged with integrations with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. So why a third redundant competitor?
From Ad Age:
But on Wednesday, the advertising giant welcomed a new system into the fold, developed by a lesser-known but equally tenacious company considered by many to be the closest challenger, amongst upstart research labs, to OpenAI.
My first thought - “You can sign five LeBron’s but you still only have one ball.” My first serious thought was a legal hedge of some sort. That might not be thinking big enough, unless you get your a - - sued for hundred$ of million$ of dollars.
What’s Up Per My WPP Source
via WPP.com
Per my trusted source at WPP (WPP.com) came the following integration details:
The integration of Claude, including Opus, Sonnet and Haiku, brings powerful AI performance, intelligence and speed to enhance the capabilities of WPP’s 114,000-strong marketing talent across its network of agencies, providing each with cutting-edge technology to deliver innovative solutions and better results with clients.
In reality it will be deployed internally across WPP agencies related to “marketing process” among other things. Regarding data security concerns, Stephan Pretorius, chief technology officer at WPP, told Ad Age:
The usefulness of Open’s creative studio, said Pretorius, is in its reassurance that clients’ data is protected. This security is one reason why brands are interested in AI sandboxes, provided by both ad companies and tech giants, for honing skills like AI prompting. Settling with free, public versions of platforms like ChatGPT is a sure-fire way of surrendering any input data to the underlying model.
In the “sandbox” scenario, similar to a child’s sandbox there are no limitations; except at the extremes. It’s fire-walled from the beach on all sides. No outside sand can “pollute” the sandbox; unless deliberately imported. Meanwhile, you’re free to do what you will freely with the safe data (sand).
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The partnership signals how Anthropic is becoming an attractive AI provider for marketers. In March, Accenture struck a deal with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services to bring Claude to its enterprise clients. A week later, Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, further tying its cloud business and customers to the startup’s AI prowess.
In an article here of all places (The Ad Stack, 4/9/24 #14: The Empire Strikes Back!), while brands expressed a case of the AI willies, Mark Read promised an AI buffet bonanza for his WPP agencies.
It appears to be, “Last one in is a rotten egg loses!” as he yells “Cannonball!” into the deep end of the technology money pool.
Per Mr. Read, quoted in an interview with Strategies Magazine, Paris:
Like in any disruption, some jobs will be disrupted, but we need to look at new jobs AI will create. Our best and brightest creatives are already turning to AI. They use it to bring their ideas to life more quickly, to assist them in their brainstorming sessions. I believe artificial intelligence provides solutions to this current conundrum: on one hand, our clients increasingly need content on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Amazon, and on the other hand, production costs are skyrocketing. With AI, we can produce high-quality content. It's a significant production opportunity for us.
CEO Mark Read (WPP) via Strategies Magazine, Paris
Moreover, I believe that new jobs will be created. If you look carefully at the WPP group, you'll find jobs that didn't exist 20 or even 10 years ago, such as search engine managers, programmatic media managers ... I understand the concerns regarding job losses, but you know, we've gone through many waves of innovation in the last 150 years…
One point is debatable. What I’ve experienced has not been ballooning production costs but more chronically shrinking budgets with fragmented deliverables. Whichever statement you’re backing, you do get the same outcome …
Do more with less.
Social and online media is more fragmented than ever, requiring executions going well beyond resizing for a matrixed media buy. You’ve got platform-specific challenges and memes that, in addition to the required creative and production bodies required as makers, you’ve also got the other usual agency overhead (resourcing and plenty of account management) and unaccounted for costs.
And with new technologies, hidden costs will become unmasked and documented through trial and error. So as with every Learning Curve, there will be “WTF” budget moments here and there. So start exercising your digits for all the finger pointing that’ll be going down.
From Ad Age:
Anthropic’s rise to the ranks of Google and OpenAI also sheds light on why more marketers are embracing a multi-model approach. Anthropic’s models are particularly intriguing for WPP because of their strengths in safety, clear value propositions and explainability, said Stephan Pretorius, chief technology officer at WPP.
Safety is a big deal with these larger AI models. There is some really bad shizzle in some models that to-date have been shared across the industry. We covered that (of all places) here too. Read below at your leisure - especially point #2.
Brands can drag their feet all they wish regarding implementation of AI. Whether for creative concepting (and execution), streamlining operations, asset delivery, media buying, general decision making, agencies will be using AI all over the place.
Why. It is one of many decisions made at a personnel level. Should I use a pen or pencil? Photoshop or Lightroom? 3D or AI. You don’t seriously believe creative directors, producers, and technologists will suddenly stop working evenings and weekends at home?
“I’m sure as Hell not expecting to work evenings and weekends.”
A wink. A nod. Work will get done. We’ll look at agency safeguard mandatories soon. I hope you are informed and mildly amused. Apologies for typos. Packing a great deal of action in here.
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…at the top or bottom of the page so others can find this article. Re-stacking is great too.
