DeepSeek Lessons for Brand Marketers
Three key takeaways from the brouhaha surrounding the new AI challenger
By now, you’ve probably read a thing or two about DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that has stunned Silicon Valley and rattled Wall Street with its latest reasoning models — developed at a fraction of what U.S. AI firms are spending, despite export bans on cutting-edge chips to China. While the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have collectively spent billions of dollars training their models, DeepSeek claims it spent less than $6 million on using the equipment to train R1’s predecessor, DeepSeek-V3.
DeepSeek says R1’s performance matches OpenAI’s initial “reasoning” model, o1, while requiring far fewer resources to develop and costing significantly less to use. That adds up to an advanced AI model that’s free to the public and a bargain to developers who want to build apps on top of it. Axios’ Dan Primack went as far as describing the rise of DeepSeek as potentially “an extinction-level event” for venture capital firms that invested heavily in companies making foundational AI models.
The past weekend marked a big breakout for DeepSeek, as news of its surprisingly cost-efficient models spread among regular consumers and retail investors. By Sunday, a week after the release of its R1 mode, DeepSeek hit №1 on Apple’s App Store. According to the latest tracking data from Appfigures, the DeepSeek app has had over 1.9 million downloads on Apple’s App Store and 1.2 million on Google Play since mid-January 2025.
Yet, the situation is still incredibly fluid. On Wednesday, OpenAI alleged that it had found evidence suggesting DeepSeek used “distillation” to train its open-source competitor by leveraging outputs from OpenAI’s proprietary models. As a result, Microsoft and OpenAI are investigating whether a DeepSeek-linked group obtained a large amount of data from OpenAI’s API in an unauthorized manner. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5-Max, a latest reasoning model, outperforms” GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Llama-3.1 “almost across the board,” according to Alibaba’s cloud unit.
Putting aside the geopolitical and technical implications that DeepSeek entails for a moment, the sudden rise of the previously little-known Chinese AI company and its deep impact on the AI landscape provides an interesting case study in how information speeds and modulates through different groups of people.
As Casey Newton pointed out in his Platformer newsletter on Monday, for AI researchers and industry insiders, it has been widely expected that something like DeepSeek — that a rapid decline in AI training and inference costs enables the reverse-engineering of proprietary models by open-source companies — could happen sooner or later. But, the issue is that this expectation did not reach most AI investors, which are only now over-reacting with falling stock prices. An ironic counterpoint in this regard is that Google just released its own super-cheap reasoning model last week, which is built on similar techniques, and it barely got any press, because it’s not open-sourced nor coming from China, and thus carries no significant changes to the existing AI narrative.
Therein lies the first big lesson that brand marketers should take away from this ongoing DeepSeek saga — if you’re not the incumbent, then you better be a challenger to the existing narrative with your brand storytelling. Simply offering a competitive product with marginal improvement isn’t enough. To capture attention, you need to frame your brand as a disruptor that challenges industry expectations or reshapes the dominant storyline. DeepSeek’s sudden rise wasn’t just about its technical achievements — it was about how its emergence fit into broader concerns around the AI war, rising AI cost, and open-source accessibility.
For marketers, this underscores the importance of context and positioning. A new product or innovation will struggle to gain traction unless it is framed within a larger, compelling narrative that makes it feel urgent and consequential. DeepSeek’s success in generating buzz shows that people don’t just react to advancements in technology; they react to shifts in power, accessibility, and competition.
This brings us to a second key takeaway: the speed at which information spreads varies dramatically between different stakeholder groups. AI researchers and insiders saw DeepSeek’s rise as inevitable, while investors were caught off guard, causing a delayed but dramatic market reaction. In brand strategy, understanding how different audiences process and react to information is crucial. Companies that can anticipate these gaps and strategically time their messaging stand to benefit the most.
We see this a lot in the marketing of entertainment products such as movies and music. Usually, the hip in-groups would discover an indie genre hit (like The Substance or Brat by Charli XCX) long before the wider mainstream audiences would catch on. But the real hurdle lies in building on that niche, indie appeal to achieve that mainstream crossover success.
For brands, fostering early momentum within an engaged, knowledgeable in-group is crucial, but long-term success depends on bridging the gap between insiders and the mainstream. Just as DeepSeek’s impact on the AI world initially resonated with researchers before shaking up investors and the broader market, successful brand narratives evolve by strategically expanding their reach — without losing the edge that made them compelling in the first place.
A24, one of the buzziest indie studios of the past decade, is a good example in this regard. Starting as a studio mainly recognized for its so-called “elevated horror” films, A24 has since broadened its appeal by carefully curating its brand identity and leveraging a mix of arthouse credibility, awards prestige, viral marketing, and more VC funding that helps them expand their film slate to include more wide releases geared at mainstream adult audiences, such as Civil War and We Live in Time.
Lastly, DeepSeek’s rapid rise serves as a case study in how constraints can sometimes spark creativity and drive innovation. The Chinese startup developed its cutting-edge reasoning models despite facing a major disadvantage: U.S. export bans on the most advanced AI chips. Rather than seeing this as an insurmountable obstacle, DeepSeek find creative workarounds, optimizing its training process to achieve high performance using less powerful hardware.
As the proverb goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Some of the most groundbreaking innovations come not from unlimited resources but from working within limitations. This lesson extends far beyond AI, and it’s just as relevant in marketing. The key is not to see them as obstacles but as opportunities to think differently.
For example, not every brand can afford a high-profile campaign or celebrity endorsement, but creative engagement can yield similar results. Instead of spending millions on a Super Bowl commercial, some brands successfully generate buzz by launching parody ads, (like the one Amazon Prime did for The Boys last year,) and engaging in real-time conversations on social platforms to capitalize on major events.
DeepSeek’s meteoric rise is a reminder that in tech innovation, as in brand marketing, the best disruptors don’t just introduce new products — they rewrite the script entirely. Success isn’t just about technological prowess or deep pockets; it’s about narrative positioning, leveling up your audience reach, and learn to work creatively within constraints.
If you can’t outspend the incumbents, outmaneuver them. If you can’t afford to buy attention, earn it. And if you’re not the default choice, become the undeniable alternative. After all, DeepSeek didn’t just build a cheaper AI model — it made Silicon Valley feel like it had been outplayed. Now that is a power move.
