Claude campaign imagines a dystopian ad-filled future

Anthropic is making its Super Bowl debut with a campaign that doesn’t shout about AI’s power, but gently pokes at the advertising industry.

The campaign takes a jab at rival OpenAI’s recent decision to start showing ads within ChatGPT.

The ‘A Time and a Place’ work for Claude, created by Mother and directed by Jeff Low, imagines a near-future where AI answers are sponsored.

The result is intentionally uncomfortable. A 60-second pre-game spot, ‘How do I communicate with my mom?’, runs shortly before kick-off, followed by more spots in the witty series.

Each of the four films is named after real questions people ask AI about health, relationships, or work.

In every case, a very human moment is interrupted by an ad-supported chatbot response.

It’s funny in a dark way, but also instantly wrong, which is exactly the point.

Shot with real actors in Los Angeles and set to the unmistakable beat of What’s the Difference by Dr Dre, the campaign extends Anthropic’s ‘Keep Thinking’ platform.

Claude is positioned as an AI designed to support thought, not compete for attention.

As Sasha De Marigny, chief communications officer at Anthropic, puts it, keeping Claude ad-free means it’s optimising for better thinking, not clicks. Mother CCO Felix Richter sums it up neatly: advertising works best in context. The Super Bowl just happens to be the perfect place to ask where that context should end.

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