A Masterclass in Social Media Marketing
Lessons from OpenAI's Codex Launch
In corporate America, one thing you hear a lot about is “use social media for marketing”. Yet so many companies do this poorly (including many of my efforts over the years!). Just being on social media doesn't make your content fun or engaging or drive customer action!
However, I was truly impressed with OpenAI’s launch a few days ago (Friday, March 16) of their latest product called Codex.
Codex is a deeply technical product, meant only for software developers. That, however, makes the lessons learned only more poignant! It’s easy to dismiss large tentpole events, like Apple’s annual iPhone launch events, as being out of reach for the typical mid-sized company.
Everything OpenAI did last week, however, is doable by nearly any company, of any size.
It started with a teaser video on X on Thursday.
https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1923212267677499469
Clear audience identification and call to action.
Then the livestream itself. If you are technical and have time, it’s worth watching!
This livestream video itself was well done, but not fancy. All of the equipment needed for that level of production value can be purchased for less than a thousand dollars.
The livestream itself is also well done. It’s not fancy—the first two minutes are a simple and accessible explanation of the new product, and by the 1:59 mark, they have already jumped into the demo. Very efficient use of time and the rest of the 23-minute livestream is similarly well done. Simple, clear language, compelling demos, explanations of how things work, and ending with a roadmap of what’s to come.
Thus far, this is pretty straightforward—many companies will host a webinar or similar for launching new products.
What made the OpenAI Codex announcement a masterclass in my opinion is what came next: a tight and well-coordinated series of social media posts:
Notes from many of the senior executives at OpenAI: e.g. https://x.com/sama/status/1923398457747787817
Commentary and real-world “I like this” posts from customers and other early adopters: https://x.com/skirano/status/1923397651225071831
Eye-catching videos that were essentially advertisements for the new product. I particularly liked this one: “Fix paper cuts”.
What the heck? How can an AI fix paper cuts? I watched the video just out of sheer curiosity and found myself learning an entirely new use case for how OpenAI codex could solve some of my own coding problems. Even though I watched the live stream and had an initial knowledge of how Codex worked, I had not considered the use cases in the video.
Then last but not least, there was an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit. https://t.co/crIah67MWL. This AMA went into a lot of depth that enthusiasts like me were really curious about.
Importantly, every piece of content they put out for the launch was framed in terms of customers (what problems it solved for you), and just as important—it was authentic. Codex is a product for software developers—the examples they gave were real things developers would like to do, and the talks were given by developers.
Not surprisingly, this content spread like wildfire. Here is the Google trends data for ‘Codex’:
Notice the huge spike at 9 am, just after their livestream.
This is all "free"--no paid advertisements. Just a great product with a really strong content-driven message.
Not to over-trivialize the effort that went into their launch, but any company can do this!
Separately from the marketing excellence of the Codex launch, the product itself is outstanding. I am only touching the surface of what it can do.
Every other AI-driven software development tool thus far has simply increased my productivity. Tools like cursor.com have enabled me to write code faster.
Ultimately though, while I was writing code faster, I was still limited by how much I could do, and how much time I could spend coding versus being in meetings or other work activities—see my last post!
This weekend, however, that changed. With Codex, I set up 12 different AI “agents” to do various coding tasks for me. They all ran in parallel, while I was biking riding! (a training ride for the 200+ mile Seattle to Portland bike ride—ping me offline if you are going!) It was a truly amazing experience.
I know I am only touching the surface of where this is going. I can easily foresee a day soon when I have AI agents coding for me 24x7.
Buckle up! The pace of change is about to accelerate even more!