OpenAI ChatGPT Campaign: What Led to its Drubbing in Market

In September 2025, OpenAI rolled out its first global campaign for ChatGPT. The market was expecting something tantalizing and out of the box from a leading AI giant—and honestly, that faith wasn’t unreasonable. 

Instead, the campaign served relatable human moments under the banner of ‘everyday possibilities’ with ChatGPT. Within a month, it face-planted. Multiple articles and industry breakdowns pointed to the campaign’s disappointing impact on sales. But why did it crash so spectacularly when everyone supposedly loves ChatGPT? 

Meanwhile, the campaign has already secured media buys—traditional channels, influencers, and OOH placements—all booked through the end of 2025. So yes, there’s plenty of room to dissect the context, the insights, and the missteps. 

Let’s dive into this case and pull out the pieces that actually matter 

OpenAI ChatGPT Campaign pushed AI into a corner

Every campaign needs a hero, and given OpenAI’s iron grip on the AI landscape, you’d expect ChatGPT to take that spotlight. Naturally, but let’s stroll through the ads from the ‘Everyday Possibilities’ campaign.

Humans were the stars of the show. Every ad opened with a human face, a human problem, a human moment. You practically had to wait for the AI to peek in. 

Take one of the main ads: a young guy invites a woman over for a pasta lunch. He wants the ‘perfect pasta,’ so he turns to ChatGPT for help. The ad ends with a plate of decent-looking pasta and a recipe courtesy of AI. 

Is this supposed to work? The core problem was painfully obvious: AI never got the spotlight. It was the driver, not the protagonist. A glorified sous-chef. A background assistant doing chores—hardly the flex you’d expect from the world’s most hyped AI. 

And the audience instantly asked the obvious question:

‘Couldn’t I just Google that? Haven’t I been Googling recipes for, oh, I don’t know, twenty years?’ 

Why is a multibillion-dollar AI company selling us pasta recipes? Are we rebooting Google? 

The disappointment was loud. People wanted innovation, not a pull-up tutorial. The call-to-action was basically non-existent. No sales happen when your big pitch is ‘AI helps you cook pasta.’ 

And that’s just one layer. There’s a bigger issue lurking in the background: the very information AI dishes out to you, me, and everyone else. 

Misinformation and AI go hand-in-hand

AI summaries from Google AI, ChatGPT responses, stats, and even Grammarly’s proofreading—biases, prejudices, and flat-out misinformation heavily influence all of it. 

A pasta recipe might be a harmless little output from ChatGPT, but can anyone guarantee it’s going to be flawless? I still maintain that ChatGPT or any AI chatbot shouldn’t be dishing out diet or exercise consultations. 

Another ad in the ‘Everyday Possibilities’ series showed a brother planning an entire trip for his sister using ChatGPT.  

You cannot rely on AI answers for itinerary planning if you genuinely want to reach the destination. 

I’m not here to keep bashing the campaign for its lack of logic or rationality. I’m highlighting the bigger point: the OpenAI campaign wasn’t extraordinary at all. In fact, it looked painfully similar to the Meta AI campaign built for India. 

Meta AI did humanize AI bots in ads before OpenAI

A couple of months before OpenAI’s global campaign, Meta AI ran its ‘Aaj Kya Krogey’ (What Will You Do Today) campaign in India, created by DDB Mudra. 

The premise was the same, the tone was the same, and the end result was the same. The only difference: each Meta AI ad at least asked a question that nudged users toward trying the tool. 

Even then, I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Meta AI campaign either. The ‘solutions’ these AI bots and their companies keep pushing simply don’t matter to ordinary consumers. The internet already solves most of these problems with a basic search. And now even search has AI baked into it. 

Google has an AI. AI is becoming Google. Meanwhile, users are hunting for Reddit comments, not AI summaries. It’s a paradox. 

So, here’s the point: did OpenAI look at the Meta AI campaign and decide it needed to compete? I honestly don’t know. 

OpenAI has been playing a double-handed marketing game—one hand stroking humanity’s hair, the other hand quietly sharpening the AI sword. On Monday, they’re saying, “We adore humans! Emotions matter! Creativity! Compassion!” 

OpenAI challenged humans with AI, yet went ahead with humans 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disclosed that AI will outsmart human intelligence by the next decade, saying a day after OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT-5. 

Not just him, but his executives were also running their mouths.

Kevin Weil from OpenAI predicts

Companies like OpenAI want to market human emotions because that’s the safest shield when you’re openly building tech that threatens the very thing you’re supposedly celebrating. The “we care about humans” narrative is a PR firewall.  

It makes the big, scary, job-eating AI sound like a friendly assistant who just wants to help you organize your calendar and write your emails—not the bulldozer executives admit it will become. 

That contradiction isn’t nuanced. It’s branded whiplash. 

Cut to the chase

The OpenAI ChatGPT campaign delivered one message: Humans for marketing. AI for everything else. Yes, and that point is underlined. But there’s more beneath the surface—several factors that dragged the campaign into a flatline.