Duck Tales: Our first major Duck.ai ad, and how we develop creative at DuckDuckGo (Ep.38)

In this episode, Cristina (CMO) and Zack (Senior Director, Marketing) discuss our new Duck.ai ad, how we develop, test, and measure creative and campaigns, and why we do a lot of the work in-house.

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Cristina: Hi, and welcome to Duck Tales, where we go behind the scenes at DuckDuckGo and discuss the stories, technology, and people that help build privacy tools for everyone. In each episode, you’ll hear from employees about our vision, product updates, engineering, or approach to AI. Hi, I’m Cristina. I’m on the marketing team, and I’m here today with Zack. Do you want to introduce yourself?

Zack: Yeah, my name is Zack Einhorn. I’m on the marketing team as well at DuckDuckGo and been here for nine years now. and I live in LA. Happy to be here.

Cristina: Happy to have you, thanks for joining. So today we’re gonna talk about our new ad campaign. On June 29th, we launched Prying Eyes, the name of our first national brand campaign for Duck.ai. And for those of you who don’t know what Duck.ai is, it is a way to chat privately with ChatGPT and other AIs, all in one place for free, no login. So today we’re gonna go behind the scenes, how it came together. Our unique development and production process, our views on AI, and more. Before we jump in, I just want to say to everyone listening: love it, hate it, have ideas for a new episode, please write us at podcast@duckduckgo.com. That’s podcast@duckduckgo.com. We will read all of them and would appreciate any feedback. So, first question: Zack, why why a brand campaign for Duck.ai and why now?

Zack: Yeah, well, you know, for years we had been focused on you know performance marketing for as an alternative to Google and Chrome and focusing on search and browse. And we’re introducing a new product market that has virtually zero awareness. And we’re really confident about the product market fit. We know that there’s a lot of built-up anxiety around AI and a desire for private alternatives. And so we know it’s time to let people know that one exists and from a company that you trust and have been trusting.

Cristina: So I find that when I chat with people about what I do, they think the the making the ad portion of my work is the most interesting, right? And they’ll ask, like what is it like to be on set and all these kind of things? So I think a lot of people find that industry but interesting. But even for industry veterans, it’s maybe interesting to hear about how we at DuckDuckGo make an ad, because it’s a different bit different than how most companies do it. Can you dive into that?

Zack: Yeah, absolutely. so you know, most companies, and in my in my experience, the prior companies, you know, they kind of hand everything over to one agency. You know, everything is sort of with one big house strategy, research, testing. and the way that we do it is a little bit different. Like you said, we’re we tend to we like to be really hands on. and I think, you know, one thing that makes us pretty different too is that, you know, we’re we you know we’re some of like the foremost researchers on this space at the company. And so we you know, whereas it might be really useful if you’re in like a you know a a a category, like you know, consumer package goods, to have like the expertise of an agency that may have many, many clients in that space and can and can, you know, give you strategy and insight into areas that you may not have. but because we really you know, we have a lot of that research and talent in house, the strategy really you know comes from us. and you know, we tend to lean on agencies more for like additional initial ideation. and then from there we really take things into our own hands. We have we have freelancers that we’ve gone back to a handful of times to help us develop ideas. We’ve got internal talent that helps us develop ideas. and then we have production companies that we work directly with. And that I think is a real for us. You know, we we save a lot of, I think, you know, we save a lot of time in the game of telephone that you usually play with your with your agency by being able to, you know, handpick the director, be you know deeply involved in the post-production, like attending edit sessions, coloring. and I think that that gives us a advantage because you know not only do we get to accelerate by making those being hands-on in those choices, but we also continuously build those skill sets. And so you know we’ve been doing it now, we’ve been doing it this way and kind of building on that process for five years now. And we’ve just we’ve built up a a a ton of expertise internally and done a lot of hot like you know, a lot of good hiring to fill the the areas of expertise that we didn’t have, expanded our network of partners. yeah, we’ve really kind of built up this this in-house team.

Cristina: Yeah, thanks for walking us through that. So internally, the team has been calling this ad Prying Eyes. Like, what does that mean? Where did the idea come from?

Zack: Yeah, absolutely. So it came from one of our one of our agency partners. You know, we we’d we went through a process where you know we realized one of the things that we weren’t super strong at internally was coming up with the initial idea. and so we ran through a process where we worked with a series of agencies and freelancers to to come up with ideas. One of them came up with this idea that was really sticking with us where we had you know giant photorealistic eyeballs following you know c following people and and you know in you know invading their space when they’re doing asking AI sensitive questions. And we had a few directions we were looking at, and we had done a bunch of research. And the thing that we kept coming back to was this thing we called exposure anxiety. And the crux of it was that we realized that when we got a level down into the specific things that people were worried about being spied on. you know, giving away when they’re when they’re using AI, that it became like a bit polarizing. Like, you know, they once you used a specific example, people are like, well that’s not quite really me. But we found the thing that really stuck for everyone, and that was the most visceral thing, which I think is the most important because I think that’s what sticks with you it emotionally in an ad and will make you think of it later and motivate you, was just the actual sensation of of being watched. That was the through line that whether you were worried about, you know, asking AI about something related to, you know, health, or whether you were asking about an issue going on at work, or you know, whether you’re asking AI you know for symptoms of, you know, something that your that your kids dealing with, that that no matter what it was, everyone shared this this this feeling of exposure anxiety and you know what what can make you you know what is more exposing than feeling like there are giant eyes behind you watching everything that you that you type.

Cristina: Yeah, this was this was a fun concept. you know, we considered a lot of different ideas, and for me, just seeing and thinking about the eyeballs was just so arresting, right? In a really clear visual way to encompass the feelings that we had heard in research, right? We’re a very data-driven company, and so research is really important to us. We’re not just thinking of something that looks cool, it needs to be grounded in an insight that we think relates back to the problem we’re trying to solve.

Zack: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also just there was a lot of connectivity to to like our overall message, too, like, you know, in in terms of of privacy and and and prior campaigns. I think that we, when we went in, I think we really thought we want something that is uniquely AI. but I think what we found is that a lot of the anxiety around AI is kind of an evolution of the of the anxiety that already existed. So just like the way, just the way that AI is the newest way that people are are using the internet and and how it’s you know it’s more personalized and you know tailored than than than search and browse was it’s also that much more viscerally you know uncomfortable you know you’re you’re a lot more you know, likely to have sort of these uncanny experiences where, you know, AI will bring up a prior conversation or mention a tidbit that you thought, you know, wasn’t being logged, you know. and and so I think it really helped draw that draw that through line.

Cristina: Yeah. Yeah, I I personally feel very passionate that if someone is going to use AI, they should use Duck.ai because it’s hard to anticipate just how this data will be used from other companies in the future. But I think we can all anticipate, probably not in a great way, right? In terms of privacy. On the last episode I was on, we talked about how not everybody wants AI, right? And that’s why we feel so strongly about making it optional. So how do you think about making an ad for AI?

Zack: Yeah, I mean I think that’s a very real subset of people. I look at, you know, the way that I look at DuckDuckGo’s mission is, you know, I think we, you know, I look at the goal of DuckDuckGo to provide for people the the best quality possible version of the internet that you are used to using, but private. And so I think, you know, that is the that is the the the mass of people that we saw that that we that we serve. AI adoption is, you know, well over fifty percent and growing. And so I think you know it’s really important that we serve that audience. at the same time, you know, we firmly, while while we believe, you know, in providing the pro in private AI, we also, you know, we also take exception to the way that AI is being sort of jammed down people’s throat by other by other companies. and you know, we take pride and we think it, I think I we think it’s you know goes along with our overall mission of build of raising the standard of trust online. to give people the ability to control AI and use it on their own on their own terms. And so even in our in even in our our advertising of our AI products, we’re very clear you know in in our messaging, like for example, the television ad in our end card and VO to say that you know Duck.ai is is from DuckDuckGo and that our our policy here is that AI is private and optional. And so we you know we want to be clear that that is all you know that is our brand’s stance.

Cristina: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re spending all this money on TV and digital and all these channels. How do we know if it works? Like what what are we trying to achieve here and what are those signals?

Zack: Yeah, I mean it is, you know, raising brand awareness is meaningfully harder to read than than you know performance performance marketing. and it takes time. you know, we we I think the bottom line is we won’t know, we won’t know right away. the what we’ve seen from the initial tests is you know, we we’re able to get a read on awareness on a two to three month kind of timeline to see if we’re moving that. usage usually lags behind that. and so I think, you know, a lot of times when you’re when you’re looking at awareness, I think what you’re looking at is is, you know, you have you have immediate you know you have immediate key performance indicators which for us are all are all centered around awareness you know we’re doing pulse checks for every four weeks we’re we’re revisiting a survey and we’re seeing if we’ve if we’ve raised it. and then in terms of driving actual growth, I think it’s really more of a higher level question of running that strategy for long enough to be able to create the the flywheel and seeing how it impacts growth holistically. And so I think that is something that’s probably on a longer you know, timeline closer to, you know, six months to a year where you can really see the the big impact of focusing on on brand awareness. And that’s that is similar to what we saw you know, several years ago when we were doing big brand awareness push for the core product.

Cristina: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a bit of a patience game, right? Wait waiting to see if these metrics go up and maybe leaning on some early indicators, but it’s not that instant gratification that you get from a direct response camp.

Zack: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are looking at the direct response metrics on but but trying to set expectations that that you know we’re in a we’re in a teach people our name place.

Cristina: Yeah. So so you and the team have been working hard on this for months. Maybe you get to take a little bit of a break now while, you know, the big channels are out there and you’re waiting for some of the data to come in, but I’m sure that’s not all. So do you want to speak to what’s next?

Zack: Yeah, I mean I think you know, not really taking a break. trying to, you know, I think we had real we have really you know, ambitious goals for this campaign. I think, you know, we we’re we are ramping up in all senses of the word. You know, we’re starting out with we’re starting out heavily in a in a in a handful of channels, very, very video centric, you know, CTV, YouTube, and and social, but we’re really looking to build out the 360 of the campaign. We’re looking at a handful of other channels inclusive of out of home and audio and looking to expand overall coverage pr we’ve got we’ve got a bunch of a bunch of stuff deck to to help fill out this campaign and and bring it to life on a larger scale.

Cristina: Yeah, absolutely. I’m very excited that this is finally out there now and working to not only teach people the name, but hopefully get people using it. So again, if you haven’t yet, try Duck.ai. Again, it’s free, no login required. So if you want to do an AI search, but you want to do more privately, give it a go. Zack, it was really great chatting with you today and kind of reliving the work of the last few months. Thank you and the team for all of your hard work. and again, very exciting that the ads are out there now.

Zack: Mm-hmm. Thank you. Appreciate you having me. I’m very excited.

Cristina: Alrighty. Yeah. Okay, well that’s all for now and stay tuned for future episodes of Duck Tales. See you later.

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