The Paradox of Celebrating 'Problems' / Anthropic "Keep Thinking"

The problem

Anthropic was founded by researchers who left OpenAI over differences in safety philosophy. In two years, its business customers grew from under 1,000 to more than 300,000, but awareness among everyday consumers is still low. The backlash against Apple's "Crush" ad, which angered creators, was surely on their minds too.

The insight

The target was people who use AI as a thinking partner, not a shortcut: people who can't look away from a problem, people who stay up all night obsessing over an idea, people who won't settle for "good enough." Not people who want AI to think for them, but people who want it to amplify their own thinking.

The idea

The 90-second film shifts abruptly from scenes of confusion and pessimism into scenes of strategy and teamwork. Set to MF Doom's "All Caps," it moves through a montage of makers wrestling with code. The copy reads: "There has never been a better time to have a problem." It's not preachy—if anything, it's provocative. The out-of-home ads featured not just Anthropic's own researchers but also creators with no coding experience who used Claude to build viral products, keeping the campaign grounded in reality rather than hype.

What happened

The rollout spanned Netflix, sports broadcasts, print ads in the NYT and WSJ, and out-of-home placements in 12 cities—a multimillion-dollar effort. It was created by Mother, with media handled by Initiative. It generated enough buzz that OpenAI's Sam Altman reportedly responded to it.

Afterthought

In a year thick with anxiety about AI "taking over," it takes guts to come right out and say "we amplify human thinking." There's also a rebellious spirit in calling a world full of problems an opportunity instead. It went beyond the usual B2B feature-listing and actually carried a philosophy.

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