The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

Today’s Issue

Your Brain on AI 🍳

This is “AI Brain Fry.”

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Syncly

FEBRUARY 18, 2024

It’s tough to get a comprehensive understanding of your customer experience.

Achieve full visibility with a unified customer interaction dashboard that pulls in conversations across all your channels, like emails, chats, and more. Syncly uses AI analysis to automatically categorize data, generate trending topics, and gauge sentiment to help you identify customer pains and respond.

YouTube’s 4 Bets for 2024

FEBRUARY 18, 2024

Over 3 million channels are part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), which has paid out over $70 billion to creators and media companies, more than any other creator monetization platform. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is sharing his four big bets for the platform in 2024:

AI will empower human creativity.

“AI should empower human creativity, not replace it. And everyone should have access to AI tools that will push the boundaries of creative expression,” writes Mohan.

The platform announced AI experiments like Dream Screen, which generates AI backgrounds for Shorts; in addition to Music AI Incubator and Dream Track, which help artists collaborate with AI in music.

Creators should be recognized as next-generation studios.

“[Creators] are redefining the future of the entertainment industry with top-notch storytelling that can’t be dismissed as simply ‘user-generated content,’” says Mohan.

YouTube will invest in support for creators through funding features—like channel memberships, which increased by over 50% last year—as well as programs like the Creator Collective. The platform will also look to work with global policymakers to expand recognition of creators in economic data.

YouTube’s next frontier is the living room and subscriptions.

“Viewers globally now watch more than 1 billion hours on average of YouTube content on their TVs every day. According to Nielsen’s report on streaming in the U.S., YouTube was the leader in streaming watchtime for the past 11 months,” writes Mohan.

The platform will continue to invest in sports broadcasts and commentary, and Music and Premium subscriptions to deliver a best-in-class YouTube experience in the living room.

Protecting the creator economy is foundational.

“Our business as a streaming service relies not just on engagement, but on giving viewers and advertisers confidence that they can count on us to deliver high quality content,” Mohan continues, explaining that the platform is committed to responsible management of global elections, youth programming, and ethical AI.

Read the full blog over at YouTube.

How to Write Killer CTAs

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

CTAs have 3 elements:

Headline: Get your prospects’ attention and create interest.
Subheading or lead copy: Provide additional detail to turn interest into desire.
Button: Offer a clear and desirable action to take.

Killer CTAs are:

Clear. No one will take your desired action if your offer isn’t explicitly clear.
Specific. Don’t obscure the benefits of your offer or your desired action with abstract or vague language, and don’t be generic, or people will find something better somewhere else. Avoid cliches.
Compelling. Bolster your CTA with appealing design and UX to make a frictionless buying environment. Create a sense of urgency with limited-time deals, and de-risk your offer with social proof and free trials. Loss aversion can be an effective motivator.

Check out Marketing Examined for examples of killer CTAs in… action.

Love to Hate: 2024 Anti-Valentine’s Day Campaigns

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

We’re in a “pandemic of loneliness,” according to the Surgeon General, so our collective patience for St. Valentine might be at an all-time low. Still, consumers are expected to spend 25.8 billion on the holiday this year, and more and more brands are inviting the haters to the party with anti-Valentine’s Day campaigns.

Classic candy-maker Sweethearts pretty much owns V-day, but they made a little treat for the rest of us. The “Situationships” conversation candies feature illegible messages “as blurry as your relationship.” They sold out.
Don’t delete your break-up text just yet. You can turn it in to P.F. Chang’s for a free six-pack of dumplings all the way through National Break Up Day (Feb 21). You were already going to DoorDash those for good money. Nice.
Shove it! Sustainable toilet-paper brand Who Gives A Crap is back again with Flush Your Ex. You can send in your crappy love letters to their production facilities to be recycled into literal TP.
Don’t ghost when everything is falling apart. Just say it with a box of Insomnia Cookies. They’ll send your new ex a dozen classic cookies of your choice, along with a break-up note handwritten on the inside of the box. Or you can order a Goodbye Pie from Pizza Hut using their Excuse Generator.
Feeling wild? A ton of zoos, animal shelters, and charities have really embraced the contrarian spirit. You can name your ex after a rat, a roach, or a vegetable; plaster their name on a litter box for a good cause; christen a mealworm after them; or name a soon-to-be neutered cat after them.

If you’re celebrating alone, take heart—we all kind of have the same X this year, thanks to Elon Musk. Love ya.

Super Bowl LVIII By The Numbers

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Take a look at the longest Super Bowl in history by the numbers:

Look Who’s Talking: Over 500k accounts made a total of 2.65m posts during the game, or 11k mentions per minute.
The Taylor Effect: Taylor Swift was mentioned over 148k times, accounting for 5.6% of all Super Bowl mentions this year. 24% of Gen Z and 20% of Millennials in the US are more interested in football because of the popstar.
Beautiful Ads: Cosmetic brands like Dove, NYX, and e.l.f. ran ads banking on Swifties tuning in.
Shop Like A Billionaire: The online marketplace brand was the brand winner, generating over 33k mentions with multiple spots. Sentiment wasn’t all positive, though.
Beyonce Broke The Internet: She got Verizon over 32,000 mentions, making the brand the second-most talked about during the game and peaking at over 2,500 mentions in one minute.

Check out Brandwatch for more stats on the game.

Super Bowl 2024 Picks

FEBRUARY 11, 2024

Beyonce, Hey Arnold, SpongeBob, Usher… Millennials were the real winners of the big game. Here are our totally subjective faves and flops:

Faves

Dunkin: “DunKings” feat. Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lopez, and others. A true chaotic monument to Ben’s miraculous relationship with the brand.
CeraVe: “I Am Cera… Ve” feat. Michael Cera. Stupid, good, stupid good.
Paramount+: “Hail Arnold” feat. Tua Tagovailoa, Patrick Stewart, and Drew Barrymore. “Throw the child!”

Flops

Hellmann’s: “Mayo Cat” feat. Kate McKinnon. Cute, but a little late on the Pete Davidson punchline?
Budweiser: “Old School Delivery.” Maybe a hot take, but it felt uninspired.
Pfizer: “Here’s to Science.” … Did they just say “here’s to the next fight?”

Leverage Super Bowl Campaigns on Snapchat

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Snapchat analyzed brand lift data from 30 previous Super Bowl campaigns completed on the app and found that:

Super Bowl campaigns result in 1.2x ad awareness lift.
Super Bowl campaigns that used AR Lenses saw 1.5x ad awareness lift.
Super Bowl campaigns with exposure to multiple ad products result in 2.2x ad awareness lift and 2.9x action intent lift.

If you’re looking to generate buzz with a Super-Bowl adjacent campaign, consider these insights:

Use both text and voiceover to communicate direct calls to action, highlight key benefits, and feature deals.
For food/beverage campaigns, feature prominent shots of the product.
For sports betting, streaming, delivery, or utilities, drive better results with a celebrity or human presence, engaging storylines, and humor.

Check out more at Snapchat for Business.

How to Generate More Leads on LinkedIn

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

According to HubSpot, audiences exposed to brand messages on LinkedIn are 6x more likely to convert. Here’s some expert advice from LinkedIn’s VP of Marketing to generate leads on the platform in 2024:

Make sure your executives have a strong LinkedIn presence. This means completed profiles, professional headshots, descriptive headlines, and detailed job experiences. Ideally, they should be building a personal brand for maximum credibility.
Create a powerful LinkedIn Page for your business. This should serve as a hub thought leadership from your organization.
Post relevant content and engage with your audience. This includes a mix of video, blog posts, infographics, and case studies. You also need to join conversations across communities and actively respond to comments.
Join LinkedIn groups your clients and customers are in. This can help you expand your reach and better understand your target audience’s interests and pain points.
Use LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Content. This ensures that your content reaches your target audience. Try testing sponsored InMail, carousel ads, and lead gen forms to find what works best.
Ensure you have strong sales and marketing alignment. The top reason consumers use LinkedIn is to learn new things. Leverage the knowledge of your sales team to create marketing materials that resonate.
Leverage connections with current customers and clients. Ask your connections for referrals and references to do some warm outreach.
Maintain a consistent presence on the platform. Post more than once a week, stay engaged with lead conversations, and leverage LinkedIn Matched Audiences to retarget website visitors.

Check out the HubSpot Blog to learn more.

Send Better Email Surveys & Review Requests

FEBRUARY 5, 2024

Build better email surveys and review requests with these 10 tips:

Audit your full purchase process. Identify gaps in your fulfillment platforms and improve your purchase journey.
Know why you’re sending a feedback request. Your survey should be optimized for your purpose. For example, if you want to uncover potential influencers, ask respondents how likely they are to recommend your product or service to friends and family.
Get the timing right. Are you sending requests before a customer has a chance to try the product or service? Wait 1 to 2 weeks after an item is shipped before triggering the request.
Select your audiences carefully. You’ll get more reliable feedback if you send requests to a targeted list of active customers or subscribers that haven’t complained recently, cancelled an order, or returned a product.
Explain the value. Tell people what they gain by responding to your survey or providing a review, such as improved processes and new product development.
Incentivize. Consider discounts, freebies, or loyalty points proportional to the time that customers are committing to your ask.
Make it as easy. Use AMP for email so users can respond directly from the inbox.
Use the right tone. Language that skews more toward encouraging positive reviews may actually inhibit you from receiving valuable feedback about problems.
Don’t ask for too much. Start small with checkboxes and scales before moving to open-ended questions.
Test and optimize. Keep an eye on your automations and re-test when you see declines in engagement.