Episode Details

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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If you have feedback on Duck Tales, or episode ideas, email us at podcast@duckduckgo.com.

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