611. Which of these AI notetakers would you pick? 🥒

The one with the strongest brand, of course! Drumroll please ...

Hellooo 👋 So happy to have you here. I’m Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now I’ve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, we’d love for you to join us.

---

AI notetakers: Brand breakdown

How a competitive, commoditized market uses ✨ brand ✨ to effectively differentiate

Which AI notetaker do you use?

And why?

I am partial to Fellow, which is one of the OG note takers from back before note takers were everywhere. (Does that make me an AI hipster?) But when I polled the LinkedIn crowd, I got back so many different responses. The category is crowded.

Crowded categories are nothing new to us marketers. That’s kind of why marketers exist, especially on the brand side, to help cut through the noise and help a product differentiate itself from the rest. Particularly in the AI space, I am always curious to see how these products are standing apart from one another since there are so many of them, they all have similar features, and the demand is so huge.

So I thought I’d put my brand hat on 🎩 and talk through how I see the AI note taking market from a brand lens.

Who stands out?

What is each product’s unique point of view? (If they have one…)

Who are these for? And who are they not for?

If you work at one of these brands or if you have a take that’s different than what you read below, let me know! I’d love your perspective.

The brands we’re looking at

Fathom

Fellow

Fireflies

Grain

Granola

Otter

Tactiq

tl;dv

First, a note on logical vs. emotional decision-making

Someone once told me that an RFP process (“Request For Proposal,” a formal document—basically a features checklist—that enterprise companies send to vendors before they pick one) is a logical exercise to justify an emotional decision you’ve already made.

What matters most to you when you’re choosing an AI note taker?

For me, I will tell you I care about these things:

• I don’t want to have to download anything to my computer

• I don’t want to have your bot join my Zoom meetings

• I prob won’t pay more than 5 bucks a month

• Ideally there’s some compelling feature besides note-taking because I can get that for free with my Zoom subscription

But honestly, these things just make me sound reasonable (I hope!). The real criteria that gets you on my radar and has me even remotely interested in the first place is this:

• Do I identify with your brand?

• Does your story, your voice, your brand expression resonate with me?

• Can I trust you to be who you are and do what you say?

If you pass this test, then you immediately jump to the front of the line, and we can start talking product features and pricing. (Note: This is why brand marketing and product marketing need to work well together.) If you fail this test, then none of the logical stuff will even matter.

Sure, you can make a decision based on the top note-taking apps on G2—technically “meeting assistants”—or the ones that stack up best when it comes to pricing. But more often than not, the product that “wins” the category is the one that builds defensibility with a strong brand (emotional) then the product stuff (logical).

Brand breakdowns

Fathom

Website // LinkedIn

Fathom is one of the biggest players in the AI meeting assistant category and has a lot of momentum behind it after a 2024 Series A raise of $17 million. Like many others, this app does all the usual note-taking stuff and brags in particular about its speed of delivering meeting notes post-Zoom call (30 seconds or less — the Domino’s Pizza guarantee, sort of!).

Who they’re for: Everyone

What makes them unique: They’re “the #1 rated app”

How they’ve positioned the brand: Heavy on productivity, heavy on free

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ “Never take notes again” is catchy copywriting (a more accurate version, in my case, might be “Never feel bad about not taking notes again”). 2️⃣ Statements like “Fathom records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes your meetings” are good for checking the boxes on features, but like you’ll see with many other AI note takers, once you check all the same boxes that everyone else checks, what sets you apart?

At Bonfire, when we’re helping companies like AI tech startups come up with differentiated brands, we often begin with an exercise to determine their brand purpose. Our preferred exercise is the Big IdeaL, which was created by the Ogilvy agency and has been behind some pretty neat tech brands like Buffer and Wistia. With the Big IdeaL, you are tasked with identifying a relevant cultural tension and a version of your brand’s best self; the intersection of these two becomes your brand purpose.

For Fathom, if I were to hazard a guess based on what I know about the brand and what I would love to see from the brand, their purpose could look like this:

I almost went with “saving time” here, but “saving time” is one of the trickiest brand promises to sell because so many apps can claim the same thing that it almost becomes table stakes in the eyes of a consumer and the “pain” just isn’t the same. People aren’t willing to pay for time savings.

Fellow

Website // LinkedIn

I mentioned up above that Fellow is my typical go-to choice for recommending AI note takers, and a good part of that is the brand goodwill that they’ve created over the years as a thought leader in the people management space. (I was on their Supermanagers podcast.) Fellow’s product positioning used to be as a future-of-work, no-more-unnecessary-meetings app. Now they’re positioned much more in the AI space.

Who they’re for: Teams and organizations

What makes them unique: They’re “the #1 meeting assistant”

How they’ve positioned the brand: Heavy on privacy and security — you can centralize sensitive recordings (e.g. Legal and HR calls) and external meetings like Sales and CS calls

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ Uh oh, we now have two “#1” products, since Fathom claimed to be the #1 note taker. Is there a material difference between “note taker” and “meeting assistant” in the eyes of the average consumer? I’d guess not. 2️⃣ Some of the sharpest and prettiest design within the category 3️⃣ The content takes a back seat compared to where it was in the past, possibly because the ICP and positioning changed

How I’d think about Fellow’s brand purpose:

Taglines: “Work better, together”; “Everyone deserves better meetings”

Fireflies

Website // LinkedIn

Fireflies first piqued my interest when I found out that it could record my Zoom calls without me needing to download software or let a Fireflies bot join the call. Stuff like this might feel like a sensible product decision, but it has brand implications, too: if you’re touting ease-of-use, privacy, low-impact as a brand, then your product experience should back that up. They’ve since gone on to position themselves as notetaker-slash-personal search engine for your meetings.

Who they’re for: Business people

What makes them unique: AI-powered search through meeting transcriptions

(Although the headline is another (!!!) note taker that claims to be the #1 note taking app)

How they’ve positioned the brand: More than a notetaker

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ Their “never miss a moment” tagline works well—it captures both the transcription and search capabilities. Yay for copywriting doing some heavy lifting. 2️⃣ The emphasis on AI search feels modern and useful, especially for teams juggling multiple meetings daily … and it requires some explanatory visuals, which Firefles handles with lots of product UI shots and videos. Could use some illustrative elements. 3️⃣ Overall, reads the most tech-y and impersonal among the note takers

How I’d think about Fireflies’ brand purpose:

If Google was about organizing all the world’s information, Fireflies would be about organizing all of YOUR information.

Grain

Website // LinkedIn

Grain takes a storytelling approach to meeting notes, making it easy to capture and share video highlights from calls. The positioning gets a little messy between Grain as a tool for customer-facing teams (sales, CS, product) versus a tool for any team at all, but the overall emphasis on visual recaps as opposed to all text is unique. Possibly because Grain is a fully remote company, they know the power of a good, succinct, personal recap!

Who they’re for: Sales teams and customer-facing teams

What makes them unique: Video recaps, not just text

How they’ve positioned the brand: Focused on storytelling and visual collaboration

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ “Show, don’t tell” seems to be an unspoken motto—they lean into visuals over text. This seems to be the ethos, but it’s not always evident in the copy/layout, which can be a bit more boilerplate AI notetaker. 2️⃣ This works great for teams tired of sifting through endless notes—sometimes a 30-second video clip says it all. But since text recaps are so ubiquitous, Grain has its work cut out to convince the market that video replays are as/more valuable

How I’d think about Grain’s brand purpose:

Granola

Website // LinkedIn

My best Granola brand tidbit is that I spotted their logo on someone’s screenshare once, and it caught my eye because I had recognized it from some random web surfing I had been doing. But I couldn’t remember the name! So I took a screenshot, then Google image searched it, and voila. This is the power of brand awareness, even if you’ve yet to nail brand recall.

Who they’re for: Modern knowledge workers

What makes them unique: Hyper-focused on taking great notes for you

How they’ve positioned the brand: Minimalist AI for meetings—focused on what matters, no bloated features

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ One of the best brand names so far: The name “Granola” suggests something clean and simple, which aligns with their stripped-down, no-nonsense approach to meeting notes. 2️⃣ Also some of the most original copywriting: “The AI-powered notepad for people in back-to-back meetings.” I am always in back-to-back meetings!! 3️⃣ The brand story about focus, simplicity, and minimalism carries through to their copy, their design, and their content. It’s refreshing! albeit a little under-informational at times.

How I’d think about Granola’s brand purpose:

Taglines: “Only the AI you need, nothing you don’t;” “Everyone deserves their own stenographer”

Otter

Website // LinkedIn

Otter might just be the original note taking app, even before AI note taking was a thing. Founded way back in 2016, the company has gained brand ubiquity in the space either because of its longevity or because of the proliferation of “Alex’s Otterbot has joined the call” in Zoom rooms worldwide. I and my fellow humans have literally been outnumbered by Otterbots on Zoom calls before.

Who they’re for: Everyone

What makes them unique: The world’s leading AI assistant, all-in-one features

(Kind of the same as claiming to be the #1 meeting assistant, I think.)

How they’ve positioned the brand: All the features everyone could want or expect in an AI note-taking app

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ This happens a lot with category-leading brands when they begin expanding their featureset to appeal to more and more people. Otter is for sales teams, for enterprise, for individuals, for everyone. Nothing wrong with that, but it sure makes a brand marketer’s job harder! 2️⃣ It’s positioned to feel like the most “hands-off” option, with tons of language around automation and set-it-and-forget-it.

How I’d think about Otter’s brand purpose:

Tactiq

Website // LinkedIn

Kudos to the Tactiq team for being noisy in my LinkedIn comments and shouting out their own company. I did not know about them before asking for AI note-taking recs. We can debate the merits of social media self-promotion, but it is a fast route to awareness (see beehiiv for a prime example of this).

Who they’re for: Everyone

What makes them unique: Meeting notes through a browser extension

How they’ve positioned the brand: Simple, affordable, easy AI transcription

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ The easy, breezy brand promise comes through in their website with a pretty stripped down design and homepage. It gives everything you need to know and nothing more. “Get your notes, skip the fluff” could sum up their approach to brand as well as product! 2️⃣ “Get live transcriptions without an AI bot joining the meeting.” As I expressed earlier, this is one of my top requirements in an AI notetaker, so I like that they mention this up top. They are speaking to me. :) 3️⃣ One of the only AI brands to lean heavily into illustrations.

How I’d think about Tactiq’s brand purpose

tl;dv

Website // LinkedIn

I first came across tl;dv (which stands for “too long; didn’t view”) when it was in the super early stages, before any of the AI messaging really hit. They positioned it more as a tool for all those Zoom calls you miss and that people record for you—all those Zoom recordings that you (me!) never ever watch. As many early stage products do, tl;dv has evolved, but I hold a strong recollection of them for making recordings actually useful for people.

Who they’re for: Sales teams

What makes them unique: Your very own GPT (or two) for all your calls

How they’ve positioned the brand: Catchy, direct, witty. The biggest personality of all the AI note takers.

Miscellaneous brand notes: 1️⃣ The name itself is a vibe—relatable, memorable, and a little IYKYK (people who have never heard of tl;dr might be really confused by the brand name, but that’s okay!). 2️⃣ The vibe carries through to their content and website: witty talking heads on their product videos, people crashing into their social media logo, etc. 3️⃣ If you navigate away from the page, a popup appears asking which other AI note takers you’re considering and then offering a comparison article. 4️⃣ Doing unique get-to-know-us content across all sorts of social profiles: LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.

How I’d think about tl;dv’s brand purpose

Over to you

What is your opinion on all these AI note taker brands? How do you separate them? Which one do you prefer (and why)? It’d be great to hear from you if you want to hit reply.

---

About this newsletter …

Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.

Come say hi!

Each week on this substack, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:

Thank you for being here! 🙇‍♂️

I’m lucky to count folks from great brands like these (and many more) as part of this newsletter community.