🙊 not my circus, definitely my monkeys

🥧 Happy Tuesday after Thanksgiving, marketing babes!

I hope you’re all snuggled up in your cozy holiday pjs no matter where in the world you’re reading this from. Can you believe there are only 5 more weeks in the year?!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I always start to drag when December rolls around. I don’t know if it’s the cold weather, endless holiday events, or hallmark movies calling my name - but work isn’t exactly top priority atm. But that’s ok! It’s called ✨balance✨ right?!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year it’s that work is something I do, not who I am. But considering we spend over 1/3 of our life at our desks, we might as well choose something we love to do right? Or at the very least, choose to live in the way we want to. No more racing from meeting to meeting like chickens.

So as we go into the holidays, reflect on that. Because work-life balance isn’t achieved through huge periods of rest [though, yes, that is also important]. Instead it’s about building the right habits into your life and routine. Remember that you have the power to build the life you want, even with the smallest of tweaks.

TL;DR: the CEO of Open AI, Sam Altman, was fired on a Friday and then rehired on Wednesday just in time for Thanksgiving. Honestly, no one understands why, but I have one theory & it’s called marketing 🙃

Speaking of loving what you do, I spent the last few weeks absolutely GLUED to my screen with all the Open AI drama 🫠 and if for some reason, you’ve been living under a rock, here’s the tea ⤵️

On Friday Nov 17, we heard that Sam Altman [you know, the CEO of that AI giant changing the internet as we know it] was ousted by the board citing he ‘was not consistently candid in his communications.’

Which left the internet asking - uh, wtf? Maybe he should’ve listened to my podcast episode on how to show your impact and improve your stakeholder relationships? Just saying…

But context is important: OpenAI [the daddy of ChatGPT] is owned by a non-profit and up until last Friday, the board consisted of 3 of the OG’s…

• Sam Altman - CEO

• Greg Brockman - President

• Ilya Sutskever - Chief Scientist

• & 3 other independent members including Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora.

✌️ This is where it gets weird[er]. When board fired Sam, Greg also said he’s outie 5000, with many others following suit.

Then, whoever is directing this reality shit show kicked it into high gear:

We found out that investors [including Microsoft, who invested $13B into the company] were told just minutes before the company announced the news publicly. Mira Mirati was placed as interim CEO, removed just as quickly [f**k!!!] and replaced by Emmett Shear [who has a…less than kosher Twitter history.]

🖕Shortly after they heard that Emmett was interim CEO, OpenAI employees thought “hell no”, and filled inboxes with the middle finger emoji. And in a surprising move, 743 of the ~770 OpenAI employees signed a letter to the board demanding Sam be reinstated and every single one of them resign or else they’re walking.

Clearly, employees were pissed. Perhaps it was that little GINORMOUS tender offer where Thrive Capital and others had offered to purchase employee shares at a $86 billion valuation?? That’s a ton of cash that all but disappeared overnight - so OpenAI employees had a bunch to lose.

After what seemed like an endless weekend of negotiations, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, put an end to the shenanigans a few hours before Monday's market open announcing that he hired Sam & Greg to run an AI research group at Microsoft [even though they’ll have to pay billions in existing obligations to OpenAI].

And just as we thought it was all starting to settle, Satya stated in an interview that it, jk we’re not totally sure where Sam will land. And just in time for Thanksgiving, we heard that Sam is officially back on the OpenAI CEO throne with a brand new board: Bret Taylor [Chair], Larry Summers [71st United States Secretary of the Treasury], and Adam D'Angelo [daddy Quora].

Good god.

🔥 Now, as a marketer, you know I have to add my hot takes. And the only thing swirling in my head is: did OpenAI just run a kick-ass marketing campaign??

Not only did it make me want to log-in and finally pay for a ChatGPT subscription instead of stealing my husband’s, BUT it held all of us in a chokehold for over a week. If Sam Altman isn’t working with a personal branding team I would be SHOCKED.

1. When have you ever seen employees rally together and stage a coup against the board? All in the name of their famed leader? While it definitely gives cult-y vibes, you can’t deny it’s great press.

2. Sam’s twitter feed is one big love fest. Not once has he lashed out or shown any sort of aggression. Instead, he handled this insane circus with dignity and grace. [side note: his all lowercase tweets are a mega-flex.]

3. The entire OpenAI team focused the narrative around the people. And we know psychology tells us that nothing rallies a group together like working towards a common goal. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on the internal talking points.

If you have one takeaway from this saga: you catch so many more flies with honey 🍯

• 👛 Gucci Art Space has teamed up for a second time with Christie’s 3.0, launching their newest generative ai art collection, ‘Parallel Universes: From Future Frequencies to Gucci Cosmos’ - and you KNOW I’ve just booked tix to go see it in person next week when I’m in London.

• 🎙️ This week on the podcast: how to highlight your impact and improve your relationships at work.

• 🤖 Meta just announced a new set of generative AI tools to help facilitate video and image creation from text prompts. Initial feedback incoming…

• 🫠 Advertisers continue to pull out of Twitter X and Musk wants revenge.

• 💋 E.L.F. embraces another digital community building platform: Roblox. “E.l.f UP.” [as the platform is known], centers on a tycoon-style open world, allowing users to play entrepreneurs by operating a shop and earning Robux. Their KPIs are focused on building relationships and creating postive audience sentiment for the time being, but I cannot wait to see how it evolves.

✨ my brand crush: She-Fi, always.
🧀 best meal: raclette at home with extra crispy potatoes
🎵 fav song: just one?! okok fine - Lovin on Me, Jack Harlow 
🎁 on my wishlist: Oura Ring

And that’s a wrap!

See you soon!

xx, Regan