The Day the Magic Died: What AI Can Learn from Tommy Cooper
In 1984, the British comedian and magician Tommy Cooper collapsed on stage during a live broadcast. He was famous for a specific brand of bumbling magic—a performance where the trick almost always seemed to go wrong, only to be saved by a sudden, unexpected success. When he fell, the audience didn't rush to help. They roared with laughter. They believed the collapse was part of the act.
Cooper had done something extraordinary. He had nurtured a relationship of belief so resilient that even his death was interpreted as a punchline.
Storytelling
Today, the tech industry is attempting a magic trick of its own with Artificial Intelligence. But unlike Cooper, many businesses are failing to nurture the belief required to sustain the performance. Instead of a story that invites us in, many are selling AI as another technology feature. Fierce competition and wild share prices have demanded companies show progress in growth. Resulting in aggressive marketing with dubious stories. For the targeted audience these stories land somewhere between desperate and scary.
Super Bowl Ads
The recent Super Bowl showed us that different paths will produce varying results. While some brands focused on the accelerationist vision of a cyborg civilisation, others remembered that belief is built through empathy and human stories.
The consensus among trackers of sentiment at the Super Bowl was that AI ads sparked curiosity but often failed to build an emotional connection.
According to Meltwater Advertising, nearly 50% of social media comments regarding AI-driven Super Bowl ads were "sharply negative."
Analytics from Dig found that 92.4% of production-related posts favoured traditionally produced ads with real actors. Viewers frequently described AI visuals as "unsettling," "soulless," or "weird."
Sprout Social data showed that the term "AI" was mentioned over 6,900 times in Super Bowl discussions, with many viewers debating whether AI represented a "decline in creative effort."
The most successful moments weren't about the power of the AI, but the simplicity of the solution. Take the story of Gemini helping a person navigating the complexities of making a new house feel like a home, a story about human needs. Anthropic, despite trying to tell a story of bad AI and Ads, ironically became a bad AI Ad. Undermining the very belief they require from their customers.
Where the Belief Ends
Businesses often assume products end because of competition or technical failure. But for a belief-driven experience, like AI, the ending is more subtle. It ends when the consumer starts to doubt the promise. For current consumers, who are offered many free versions of AI to try in different contexts– image creation, video creation, general support function, or specific task experts, it can feel dizzying. The shopping experience can be about trying many and committing to none. Lowering the value of the experience and opportunity for belief.
By flooding the media landscape with crude visions of AI potential, although exciting, it fails to understand the delicate nature of building belief.
Tommy Cooper built his brand of comedy over decades. The delicate balance of failure, delight, and wit. Full of nuance and meaning. To the point where when people would have normally showed concern in any other scenario, they laughed and thought it was part of the Tommy Cooper brand story they had learnt over decades. Only broken by the most unlikely ending.
AI businesses won't die because the chips ran out, or lack of server farms, many will die because the audience simply got fed up with lack of delicate nuance. True belief will be built through meaningful little things.
