Giving Blood, Eating Elk, and Marketing AI

Yesterday while giving blood, I fainted during the third sample — definitely not my proudest moment of 2025… The next morning when I was making elk-based ćevapi (sorry Balkans..) my girlfriend pointed out that today is Ascension day, and that basically makes me the new Messiah.

I took her message seriously and started to think about the complex topics and challenges we are presented with today and ended up reflecting on whether or not an AI-powered product should be marketed as an AI product or not.

Like the original Messiah, I don’t have much concrete evidence for my teachings, but I thought they were worth sharing and hope to generate some discussions and gain insights from others.

Public trust 🙏

My gut feeling tells me most consumers don’t trust AI even if they are fascinated by it. High-profile failed experiments, like Klarna’s controversial AI-driven customer support — only reinforce that distrust.

Further there are valid concerns from the public regarding job security, data privacy and the lack of understanding the potential of AI that can further reduce trust and affect purchasing behaviours.

When digging deeper into the subject, I found a study by Mesut Cicek that discovered reduced purchasing intentions when a product was heavily marketed as an AI feature.

This was mainly driven by the lack of emotional trust for AI-powered solutions from users.

On the flip side, VCs and SaaS companies seem to be going all-in on AI. In YC’s winter batch of 2024, over 50% of companies were focusing on AI in one way or another. Meaning, AI is here to stay, there is no doubt about it.

Test your messaging! 📨

Given my new role as Messiah, I have added an 11th commandment: 
“Thou shall test when marketing with AI”.

I’m no marketing guru, but it seems obvious: just because a feature uses AI doesn’t mean it must be advertised that way — especially if trust is fragile.. Your feature or product might be awesome, but if people are too afraid to try it — will it generate the value it could?

As I get more involved in AI, I hope to write a follow-up after running A/B tests on different messaging strategies. Comparing heavily AI-based marketing with more traditional methods of customer testimonials.

I’d love to hear from others: How are you positioning your AI-powered products? Have you tested it?

PS.
If you find this article in 4025, please don’t take it too seriously…