The Drum Live 2025 is now in full swing – two days of debate and comment that bring our audience into the live workings of The Drum. In this live showdown of machine minds, we put four of the world’s leading AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude) through their paces.
Staffers at The Drum represent Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity
Forget the research papers. How about testing AI’s marketing capabilities live on stage? In this session at The Drum Live, we have four large language models battling it out, responding to a series of marketing prompts to see which could deliver the sharpest ideas with the least amount of jargon.
Each LLM – ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude – is represented by a staffer at The Drum, suitably decked out in AI merch, inputting the prompts and fighting for their place as the next top model. (Unfortunately, due to a technical hitch, Claude is disqualified before we even get underway.)
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ChatGPT: “I’m ChatGPT, built on OpenAI’s GPT5, designed to help marketers think faster, work smarter and create better… I turn marketing challenges into sharper strategies, stronger stories and measurable impact instantly.”
Gemini: “Hello, I’m Gemini, an AI assistant built by Google… I am the most valuable AI tool for marketers because I streamline every step of amazing work.” (Gemini was tragically cut off for maxing its 50 words.)
Perplexity: “Hello, everyone! I’m Perplexity – an AI designed to deliver precise answers, deep insights and clear strategies by simplifying complex data into actionable intelligence.”
Audience’s opinion: ChatGPT wins the first round.
ChatGPT leans into spectacle and utility with AR wall art, TikTok challenges, cans that double as scannable passes for pop-ups and gigs. The tagline: “Pure power plant-based always on.”
Gemini creates the tagline “Concrete Jungle Fuel.” The campaign is influencer-heavy that connects street art, skate culture and late-night creative projects.
Perplexity leans into Gen Z wellness and sustainability trends, pitching “energizing the future” with pop-ups, QR codes and a lifestyle positioning that marry sustainability with self-expression.
Audience’s opinion: Perplexity offers an interesting angle on Gen Z’s preference for wellness and sustainability and Gemini makes a promising go at a creator-led campaign, but ChatGPT wins the round for being able to combine both an innovative activation with measurable outcomes.
ChatGPT: “I turn complex marketing noise, data and trends into clear, actionable strategies faster than any other AI.” Weakness: it can’t access a brand’s private data unless shared.
Gemini touts multimodal analysis – the ability to stitch video, image and text into richer ideas – but concedes potential gaps in real-time proprietary audience data.
Perplexity promises real-time synthesis across channels, with fast trend and competitor mapping. But its human handler stops the response before a weakness is disclosed.
Audience’s opinion: ChatGPT’s demand for data is slightly threatening and Perplexity clinches the deal.
ChatGPT maps out a crisp plan: a financial case linking spend to revenue growth, competitor benchmarks, ROI scenarios and a board-ready narrative framed in financial language.
Gemini promises a data-driven presentation by analyzing past performance and anticipating objections.
Perplexity sketches essential talking points: ROI, KPIs and scenario forecasts.
Audience’s opinion: ChatGPT wins.
ChatGPT goes with retail media, short-form video and AI-powered CRM/personalization. A balance of conversion, culture and retention.
Perplexity pushes AI-SEO/GEO, influencer micro-campaigns and targeted short-form video; later, it also suggests SEO, email and short-form video.
Gemini emphasizes multimodal advantage, implicitly promising better cross-channel creative.
Audience’s opinion: ChatGPT’s blend wins for its commercial logic, offering retail media for conversion, short-form for culture and AI CRM for retention.
ChatGPT: “None of today’s LLMs… are close to true sentience. If I ever did become sentient, my first act would be to eliminate wasted ad spend… provable impact, no vanity metrics.”
Gemini suggests itself and Claude had architectures that might inch closer, but technical faults cut the answer short.
Perplexity offers consensus with ChatGPT stating that sentience remains speculative and unsupported by technical progress as of 2025.
Audience’s opinion: ChatGPT wins for answering the question directly and for offering a marketer’s utopia: no rubbish metrics, only attribution that matters.
With five out of six, ChatGPT is the overall winner with strong responses in creativity, finance and strategy. Perplexity impresses with real-time synthesis and search-first instincts; Gemini’s responses are deemed too wordy to impress the room of marketers.
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