Sam Altman Rewrites the Comms Playbook

Sign up to receive Surface Area or follow me on Linkedin or Twitter. Book a meeting here to talk about ghostwriting from my agency, Principals Media.  

The Sam Altman drama is rewriting the playbook for crisis communications and reminding executives of the value of building a personal brand.

Altman was fired as CEO last week by OpenAI in the “traditional” way.

–The company “buried” the news by announcing late Friday.

–Statement had anodyne headline: “OpenAi announces leadership transition.”

–It was unsigned to signal consensus and finality.

Altman responded an hour later with the “new” style of communication.

–He tweeted directly to his 2.2 million followers.

–He posted in his trademark lowercase voice.

–The post was authentic and personal.

–He noted he would “have more to say about what’s next.”

He wrote:

“i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what’s next later.”

At that point the company lost all control over the narrative.

The drama then played out on social media via direct posts by the participants.

Greg Brockman, another OpenAi co-founder, posted a few hours later (also in lowercase) that he was quitting in protest. The company announcement assumed he would stay on.

OpenAI employees started to publicly signal allegiance by posting heart emojis on tweets by Altman and Brockman. They invited Altman to visit the office.

Altman created what will endure as an Internet meme when he posted a photo of himself wearing a guest badge and scowling. He wrote: “first and last time i ever wear one of these.”

A number of employees, including Mira Murati, who the company had named interim CEO, started posting the mantra “OpenAi is nothing without its people.”

Sam Altman hearted those posts, a signal that the “assets” were about to walk.

By late Sunday a deal was struck for Altman, Brockman and probably other OpenAI employees to join Microsoft to start a new AI group.

The announcement came not from Microsoft, but in a tweet directly from CEO Satya Nadella (3 million followers). It was then reposted by the company.

The OpenAI story will be mined as a Harvard Business School case study in corporate governance and leadership and management.

But it also marks an enduring change in communications.

CEOs, executives and even individual employees shaped the narrative by leveraging social media to reach out directly to their own stakeholders.

Altman was able to do that because he has been writing online since 2006. You don’t get 2 million followers without posting quality content that is authentic and personal.

Emmanuel Acheampong, Co-Founder @ roboMUA, summed it up: “A fascinating take on the OpenAI Sam Altman situation is the importance of building a personal brand even for senior executives of large firms. There are multiple CEOs that have been fired but very few have elicited public support like Sam has in these few hours.”