Ryan Reynolds Uses ChatGPT for Mint Mobile Ad
ChatGPT is penetrating popular culture
The actor Ryan Reynolds purchased a reported 20-25% ownership stake in Mint Mobile in 2019. Since then, he has become the face of the company as its pitchman in ads. The company created a new 1-minute ad that employed ChatGPT to create the copy. The rest of the creative direction was clearly led by humans.
In the spot, Reynolds breaks the fourth wall as he does in other ads for the wireless carrier and talks about the process of making the ad. His prompt for ChatGPT was:
Write a commercial for Mint Mobile in the voice of Ryan Reynolds. Use a joke, a curse word, and let people know that Mint’s holiday promo is still going even after the big wireless carriers have ended there.
I will let you watch the video and see the result. It will come as no surprise that it is pretty good, and Reynold’s deadpan performance fits perfectly.
What is the Significance?
It would be easy to skip past this as the spot is hardly the first to use an AI to write an ad. However, there is something else here worth noting. The title of the spot is “ChatGPT Writes a Mint Ad.” This has two implications. First, the term ChatGPT has clearly become recognizable enough for a segment of the population that Mint Mobile is counting on it to capture interest and gain more viewers. Certainly, it is a good tactic if your primary goal is to get journalists to notice it and then write stories that tell the world about your sales promotion in the guise of news.
Second, more people are going to be exposed to ChatGPT and develop an awareness of it based on this ad and others. We are seeing ChatGPT creep into popular culture after about a month since its launch.
I have seen this before with the web and again with smart speakers. The technology captured the public’s interest and had enough baseline awareness that popular culture outlets began referencing it. Next up, expect to see ChatGPT appearing in Saturday Night Live skits, a South Park episode, jokes by stand-up comedians, and in both television sitcoms and dramas. That will be followed by feature films where a ChatGPT-like technology plays a prominent role in the plot.
Something important is definitely happening here. It is even more remarkable given ChatGPT may be accessible for consumers, but it is really for business users.
