· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: Have you seen this time spent thinking about it and then banger? Have you seen that graph? [00:00:00] S1: I haven't seen, but I agree with that. Some of these things I didn't spend that much time on, I tweeted them. I didn't even check my phone for a few hours, and I was like, "Oh, wow, that one went really well." And then I kind of remembered something about the internet, which it wasn't super intentional, but I remembered the internet rewards risk, and it rewards surprise and things that people don't expect. And so then I just kind of went off. A lot of my coworkers, I think, were somewhat surprised at something that Nat said for the whole week when I was posting all the memes. He was like, "I thought we would learn..." He said this in a bunch of meetings. He was like, "I thought we were going to learn a lot about Muse users and how people were using Muse, but actually, we're just learning a lot about Alex's mind." It was a lot of fun. I felt like I was drawing on all of my internet knowledge for years and years and years to pull into those moments. And I think it actually, I don't know, we don't have the tracking and it's hard to tell, but I actually think it actually genuinely made an impact on growth, which is kind of hilarious.
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: I haven't seen, but I agree with that. Some of these things I didn't spend that much time on, I tweeted them. I didn't even check my phone for a few hours, and I was like, "Oh, wow, that one went really well." And then I kind of remembered something about the internet, which it wasn't super intentional, but I remembered the internet rewards risk, and it rewards surprise and things that people don't expect. And so then I just kind of went off. A lot of my coworkers, I think, were somewhat surprised at something that Nat said for the whole week when I was posting all the memes. He was like, "I thought we would learn..." He said this in a bunch of meetings. He was like, "I thought we were going to learn a lot about Muse users and how people were using Muse, but actually, we're just learning a lot about Alex's mind." It was a lot of fun. I felt like I was drawing on all of my internet knowledge for years and years and years to pull into those moments. And I think it actually, I don't know, we don't have the tracking and it's hard to tell, but I actually think it actually genuinely made an impact on growth, which is kind of hilarious. [00:00:00] S0: I definitely think it did. I can't stop hearing about it. So, and all the people I'm hearing about it from also downloaded the app and are now using it. Go back to what you were saying, though. It's like, "Hey, we have distribution, but that doesn't mean that we can make something that people are going to come back to and actually sticky." So, how did you do this with Muse?
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: I definitely think it did. I can't stop hearing about it. So, and all the people I'm hearing about it from also downloaded the app and are now using it. Go back to what you were saying, though. It's like, "Hey, we have distribution, but that doesn't mean that we can make something that people are going to come back to and actually sticky." So, how did you do this with Muse? [00:00:00] S1: I think it was like, how do we make this breakthrough as a product? And I think there were a few parts of that. But I think one is, how do you get people to match the experience? Like, how do you get someone to a wow moment with a product as early as possible? And this product, I think, naturally lends itself to that because I think it's AI, it can do a lot. If someone has never used an AI agent, there is a lot that it can do that will surprise you. So that, I think, was a big part of it. I think another part of it was like, how do you harness all of those stories of people having these wow moments and use those to help make the product sing and make the product fly? [00:00:00] S0: How are you using the stories, though? Because you guys aren't running ads for Muse, are you? [00:00:00] S1: We ran a few ads. I mean, honestly, I think at first it was just the fact that I would retweet so many of them. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: Anytime I saw someone do something interesting about Muse, I was like, "Quote tweet."
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Anytime I saw someone do something interesting about Muse, I was like, "Quote tweet." [00:00:00] S0: I couldn't understand why both Anthropic and OpenAI's ads are so bad, because remember, Anthropic was doing this huge outdoor campaign, and it's all about them. And same thing with ChatGPT. It's like they'd have the icon, which I don't even think people recognize that as a logo, and they'd just say Codex, and it'd just be two people sitting at a desk. I'm like, "What the fuck does this mean?" Where it's like, you have all these use cases. All you have to do, your ad is to show the benefit of your product. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: That's it. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: You have millions of them. Run those ads. It's so elementary that it's interesting that people make this mistake over and over again. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think one thing that we came back to a lot in both building Muse as well as just building stuff in general at Meta was just like, why would someone care?
· Alexandr Wang, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah, I think one thing that we came back to a lot in both building Muse as well as just building stuff in general at Meta was just like, why would someone care? [00:00:00] S0: They don't care about you or your company. Everybody's self-interested. There's this very old book. It's called "Scientific Advertising." It was written in the early 1900s. It was so valuable that the guy that made the most money as an advertising agency founder in the 1920s and '30s, it was written by this guy named Claude Hopkins, who was this best copywriter. He's like, "These are all the ideas of how I'm making this money. I'm putting this manuscript in a safe for 20 years." Right? But essentially, it's not about advertising. It's about human nature, which doesn't change. And his whole point was just like, your ads are about you. Your ads are about your product. Your ads are like, "Hey, I have this thing. Buy." People don't care about that. They're self-interested. And all you have to do is just do the trick of what this does for you, and you just lead with that. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And there's people that took those ideas that were written in the early 1900s and went on to build massive companies, advertising agency founders- [00:00:00] S1: Totally [00:00:00] S0: ... in the '50s, '60s, '70s, and even to this day.
· David Senra, Alexandr Wang
[00:00:00] S0: ... in the '50s, '60s, '70s, and even to this day. [00:00:00] S1: Yeah, 100%. I think there were a few insights, let's say. First is, most people in the world, they don't give a shit about OpenAI or the research or these other companies or the research, or even us or our research or whatever. They care about what it can do for them. We had this gift of the mascot, which was the little jolly guy. I remember the tweet where I realized, I was like, "Oh, wow, this has mileage." Because basically I was driving into work, and while I was on the way, I generated a version of the guy holding a briefcase, and I tweeted, "MFW I go to work on Monday." I remember thinking, this is one of my best tweets in a while. And then I kind of realized, you can put him into a lot of situations. One thing I kind of realized as we were going through that process was like, how do you create surprising moments that are very different from any other marketing that you've seen of a product? I don't really remember the last time someone leaned into racy memes to market a product. I don't actually know if it's been done before, but I kind of realized, oh wow, this is a thing that we can do with this little guy. And that's something that is interesting. That's something that drives intrigue to the average person. [00:00:00] S0: Okay, but that might get them, raise awareness, might even get them to download the app. But then how do you get them to stay engaged once the app is on their phone?