Let me tell you about two product launches.
Over the last year, I've probably watched well over a hundred AI product launch videos.
Some because we were researching competitors for clients. Some because a company had just announced funding. Others because they kept showing up on LinkedIn, Product Hunt, or in conversations with founders who wanted to know what good launch videos actually looked like.
At first, I wasn't looking for patterns. I was simply trying to understand how different companies were introducing their products to the market.
After a while, though, something became difficult to ignore.
The companies were solving completely different problems. Some were building developer tools, others were replacing entire workflows with AI, and a few were creating products that didn't even belong in the same category. Yet by the time I had watched enough of them, they all started leaving me with almost the same impression.
I remembered that they used AI.
I remembered that they promised to make work faster.
I remembered polished interfaces, smooth animations and a confident voiceover.
What I couldn't always remember was why one product was different from the next.
That felt strange because I knew the products themselves weren't the problem. Most of them had talented teams behind them, real customers and genuinely interesting technology. Somewhere between building something valuable and introducing it to the market, they had started sounding remarkably similar.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised this wasn't just happening to a few companies. It was becoming surprisingly common across AI.
Why AI Launch Videos Are Starting to Blend Together
Whenever this conversation comes up, AI is usually the first thing people blame.
The assumption is that everyone is using the same tools now. AI writes the first draft of the script, generates images, cleans up audio, translates subtitles and gets teams to a finished edit much faster than they could a year or two ago.
There's truth in that.
Wistia's latest State of Video report found that 38% of businesses are already using AI somewhere in their video production process, with most of that happening before editing even begins. That number will almost certainly continue growing as the tools improve.
I just don't think that's what's making launch videos feel similar.
If anything, AI has simply exposed a problem that was already there.
Producing a polished video has become much easier. Deciding what people should understand after watching it hasn't.
Those are two completely different skills, and one has become dramatically easier than the other.
Five years ago, production was often the bottleneck. Smaller companies didn't always have the budget or the team to produce something that felt polished enough for a launch.
Today, that's changed. AI has lowered the barrier to producing good-looking work, which is great news for founders. But it has also shifted where the real challenge sits.
The question isn't whether you can make a beautiful launch video anymore.
It's whether someone can still explain your product to a colleague a week after watching it.
Those aren't the same thing.
Where Things Usually Start Going Wrong
Why So Many AI Products End Up Sounding Similar
I don't think AI has a differentiation problem as much as it has a language problem.
Spend an afternoon looking through AI homepages, launch videos and product announcements, and you'll start seeing the same phrases over and over again.
Everyone is automating workflows.
Everyone is helping teams move faster.
Everyone is removing repetitive work.
Everyone has agents, copilots or intelligent assistants.
None of those things are necessarily untrue.
The challenge is that they're no longer distinctive.
If ten companies describe themselves using almost the same language, it becomes incredibly difficult for a launch video to create a different impression, even if the underlying products are completely different.
That's why production quality isn't enough anymore.
A beautifully animated interface doesn't automatically make the product memorable. A cinematic soundtrack doesn't help if the audience finishes the video with the same understanding they had thirty seconds earlier.
The strongest launch videos don't stand out because they look different.
They stand out because they help you understand something differently.
That's a much harder job.
And I think it's the one creative teams should be spending the most time solving.
What Makes Some Launch Videos Stay With You
One thing I kept asking myself after watching all these launches was why a handful of them stayed with me while the rest slowly disappeared from memory.
It wasn't because they had bigger budgets.
It wasn't because they had celebrity founders.
And it definitely wasn't because their animations were better.
A few weeks later, I could still explain what Cursor did to someone who had never heard of it. I could tell you why Granola felt different from every other AI note-taking app. I remembered why Linear appealed to product teams without having to revisit their website.
None of those products tried to explain everything.
They simply made one important idea incredibly easy to understand.
That's the part I think people often underestimate.
A launch video isn't trying to teach someone the entire product. It's helping them build a mental model. Once that clicks, everything else becomes easier. The website makes more sense. The demo feels shorter. Sales conversations start from a completely different place because the audience already understands the context.
I've started thinking about this as explanation debt.
Every product accumulates it.
If every sales call starts with the same five-minute explanation, that's explanation debt.
If every investor asks the exact same first question, that's explanation debt.
If your founders keep repeating the same introduction every time they meet someone new, that's explanation debt too.
Most companies try to solve it one conversation at a time.
The better ones solve a large part of it before the conversation even begins.
A good launch video doesn't eliminate the need for demos or sales. It simply means those conversations can start much further ahead.
The Best Launch Videos Respect the Buyer's Time
Something else has changed over the last couple of years.
People haven't stopped watching videos.
They're actually watching more than ever.
What's changed is their patience.
Wistia's latest report found that LinkedIn has become the primary channel for B2B video for eight out of ten teams, overtaking YouTube. At the same time, nearly half of businesses say they aren't increasing their video budgets this year, even though demand for video continues to grow.
That combination tells us something interesting.
Teams are expected to produce more video without dramatically increasing the resources behind it.
Every video has to work harder.
That also means viewers have become much quicker at deciding whether something deserves another thirty seconds of their attention.
You can almost feel that decision happening.
The opening either gives them confidence that this product understands a problem they care about, or it doesn't.
The companies that hold attention aren't necessarily the ones with the flashiest edits. They're the ones that remove confusion early.
A lot of AI launch videos spend too long introducing the company and not enough time helping the viewer recognise themselves.
People don't arrive wondering how your product works.
They arrive wondering whether it's relevant to them.
That's an important difference.
Founders Should Spend More Time Sharing Context
One of the biggest changes we've made in the way we approach launch videos has nothing to do with filmmaking.
It's the conversations we have before anyone writes a script.
A few years ago, those conversations usually revolved around features.
Today, features are one of the last things we discuss.
Instead, we spend time asking questions that don't immediately sound like video questions.
Why did you build this now?
What changed in the market that made this the right moment?
What frustrated customers enough that they started looking for another way?
What do people believe before discovering your product, and what should they believe after?
Those conversations almost always tell us more than the feature list ever does.
Features explain what a product can do.
Founders explain why it deserves to exist.
That's the material memorable launch videos are built from.
Products Spread Through Understanding
This is another pattern that's become difficult to ignore.
The products that gain momentum aren't always the technically strongest ones.
They're often the ones people can explain to someone else without thinking too hard.
Think about the last time you recommended a piece of software.
You probably didn't open the pricing page or walk through every feature.
You described one thing.
"It's like having another engineer."
"It organises all our meeting notes automatically."
"It replaces three tools we were already paying for."
That's how products spread.
People pass around understanding, not feature lists.
The launch video is often the first place that understanding gets created.
Which is why it has so much influence over everything that comes afterwards.
What We're Really Trying to Build
People sometimes ask us what makes a good launch video.
The honest answer is that we don't spend much time thinking about launch videos.
We spend our time thinking about product understanding.
Those sound similar, but they lead to completely different decisions.
One approach asks what should be included in the video.
The other asks what someone should understand by the time it's over.
Once you answer the second question properly, everything else becomes easier.
The script becomes clearer.
The visuals become more intentional.
The pacing has a purpose.
Even distribution becomes simpler because everyone is communicating the same idea instead of trying to explain the entire product in one go.
That's the work we enjoy most at Rumours.
We work with AI and technology companies that have already built something valuable but need a clearer way to introduce it to the market. The goal has never been to make videos that simply look impressive. It's to make products easier to understand, easier to remember and easier for people to talk about.
Because that's what good launch videos quietly do.
They don't just announce a product. They reduce explanation debt.
And when that happens, every conversation that follows becomes a little easier.
