FRAMING EARLY AI ADOPTION THROUGH TRUST, HUMOR, AND INTERACTION 

(Senior Strategy Lead (Havas)  · communications strategy · campaign lead · creative direction and design)

CONTEXT

AI adoption treated as a behavioral design problem —  before conversational AI became culture.

THE PROBLEM

In September 2022, industrial AI had a problem capability could not solve: people.

Organizations not born digital understood the competitive pressure, but did not trust the systems they were being asked to absorb. Leaders saw cost and opacity. Workers saw displacement. The industry kept answering with more proof of performance. Capability was not the missing argument.

THE MOVE

Treat adoption as an encounter that could be designed.

People would not accept AI because they had been told it was useful. Acceptance would form through tone, repetition, curiosity, friction and positive interaction.

ELIZA supplied the precedent; two concepts took it in opposite directions.

THE WORKFLOW MADE THE CLAIM

AIcadium was one early expression of a wider creative shift across Havas’ West Coast high tech division, spanning new business and active client campaigns. From summer 2022, generative-AI imagery became part of live production — and its use was made explicit to clients.

The division was not merely advising technology companies on AI adoption. It was showing them AI already at work.

TRUST IS AN INTERACTION

The AI Trust Advisor used ELIZA’s conversational logic to welcome questions, hesitation and ethical concern into the interface itself.

Trust was not a claim attached to the technology. It was the pattern of the exchange.

PLAY BEFORE UTILITY

JokeStar took its cue from psychoanalyze-pinhead — the GNU Emacs collision between an ELIZA-style therapist and Zippy the Pinhead.

Recast as a workplace dad-joke agent, humor became an adoption tool: social familiarity before trust.

Manufacturing remained serious, but the encounter did’t have to.

THE RECORD

SEPTEMBER 2022
Strategy before the public chatbot boom

TWO ADOPTION CONCEPTS
AI Trust Advisor · JokeStar

EARLY WORKFLOW
Generative-AI imagery in live pitch production from summer 2022

GLOBAL PROGRAM
AIcadium framed adoption before the chatbot boom as a cultural and behavioral problem — and made the strategy visible in its own production.

The broader comms program increased earned media by 30% globally.