Anthropic is spending millions on its “Keep Thinking” marketing campaign. A recent pop-up event in New York City featured a Zero Slop Zone, where people were encouraged to work with pen and paper, screen-free. For business owners, this marketing strategy points to a key way to make A.I. use palatable to employees and customers alike.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- To be granted entry into the Zero Slop Zone, visitors had to show that they had downloaded the Claude app on their phone. Possible meaning of this symbolic action, besides the obvious product acquaintance: have A.I. be a part of your life, but still make time for human thought and creativity.
- The phenomenon of A.I. shame figures significantly into this campaign, which partly incorporates some of the language of A.I. shaming, notably the term “slop”. (“Slop” is something of a catchall term for A.I. content, usually low-effort but sometimes the term is used in reference to noticeably A.I. content.) A major theme here is that A.I. can coexist with human intelligence and humans in an A.I.-integrated world can still find space for centering human intelligence in their goals and pursuits.
- Anthropic has also been running ads as part of this campaign, with the theme being that A.I. is helpful in solving problems that humans are working on. Like the Zero Slop Zone, it centers human intelligence in the ad, which could be seen as an assuagement or reassurance meant to counteract fears of A.I. replacement and displacement of human intelligence.
- As an inspiring example of the fruits of human intelligence at the Zero Slop Zone, there was a printout of “Machines of Loving Grace”, an essay about A.I. (italicized subheader: “How AI Could Transform the World for the Better“) authored by who other than Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
- Business owners should consider including discussions as well as strategizing around centering human intelligence in the use of artificial intelligence by employees. Doing so could lead to a more-successful adoption.
The Significance for Business Owners
The Zero Slop Zone can be an inspiration to business owners looking to get employees serious about using A.I. in a time when the technology still feels relatively new.
Navigating A.I. Confusion and A.I. Anxiety
A.I. has been around for a few years, sure, but plenty of employees may still be confused as to what it can do for them, exactly. Most people are aware of text generation as well as image and video generation, but that may be the extent of it for some people.
As such, there is confusion among some people about just how A.I. may fit inside their workdays. And at the same time, there is anxiety that A.I. may replace or displace them in their companies.
Anthropic’s marketing strategy can point to a path for business owners for navigating A.I. confusion and A.I. anxiety among employees.
What Can A.I. Do for Employees?
Business owners realize that A.I. tools are readily available to individual employees in the form of, say, Anthropic’s Claude.
Though Anthropic seems to be finding a niche in winning over many coders with Claude Code, it nonetheless offers a capable large language model.
Claude can also help with data analysis (users can upload files to Claude) as well as perform research and web searches for users.
It can quickly whip up presentations, data visualizations, and even simulations for demonstrating concepts and trends.
Taking a Page from Anthropic’s Book
The above section gives just a sampling of what one A.I. tool can offer employees, so you can imagine the range of uses that employees could find for A.I..
But the question of course for business owners is how to make the pitch to employees.
Following Anthropic’s lead here can be helpful: focus on employees’ human intelligence and personal goals, and recognize that these indeed have a space within your workplace. Pitch A.I. as a tool that helps them “keep thinking” in their role.
Also worth mentioning is the term “slop”, as Anthropic’s use of the term is interesting. In the larger context of the “Keep Thinking” campaign, the term slop could be seen as signaling a lack of human intelligence in the use of A.I.. The result is low-effort output.
As a business owner, you should let employees know that you do not want to see slop coming from their A.I. efforts, as you distinguish between using A.I. to assist human intelligence and using A.I. for the sake of using A.I..
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
Watching A.I. companies like Anthropic absorb common criticisms of A.I. into a marketing strategy can signal how business owners should approach A.I. implementation in their own companies: acknowledge the criticisms while focusing on the net positives that A.I. use can bring.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
GO Deeper on Substack!
If you want to get a bigger-picture view on where A.I. is and is headed, then check out our Substack to learn about emerging and dominant themes in the A.I. industry that affect all kinds of businesses!
