Be in The Know
🛍️ Meta updates its livestream shopping tools.
🤖 Google AI Overviews cite self-serving listicles, but recommend competitors 69% of the time.
📸 Polaroid takes a shot at data centers.
👜 Coach turns its attention to Gen Z.
📞 The Y2K-inspired Commodore Callback 8020 is a smart-dumb flipphone.
🍕 Papa Johns can predict when your fridge is empty.
When Not to Use AI
Don’t use AI for emotional communication.
New research finds that people react significantly more negatively when they learn an emotional message was written by AI rather than a human.
Across six experiments involving more 2,200+ participants, AI-authored emotional messages consistently triggered feelings of inauthenticity and even moral disgust. The result?
That means less trust, less advocacy, and fewer positive brand interactions.
Check it out:
- People were 24.6% less likely to recommend a brand after receiving an AI-written emotional message.
- AI-authored messages generated 58.4% more moral disgust in certain customer communication scenarios.
- Sympathy messages written by AI led to 23.6% less word-of-mouth sharing.
- When a message was written by AI but signed by a person, participants reported 140.9% more moral disgust than when both the writing and signature came from a human.
- Emotional messages were penalized far more heavily than factual ones.
So… write that apology, tribute, or heartfelt customer note yourself.
Q for You
Are you a Google Workspace user?
Reframe
RetroMac’s new tool is an open-source desktop browser that lets you relive the vibe of late-90s and early-2000s browsers.
It’s got modern Chromium under the hood, so today’s web works as it should, but the built-in Wayback Mode lets you view websites as they appeared 30 years ago.
Surf with pixel-perfect versions of Internet Explorer 5.0, Netscape Communicator 4.8, Firefox 1.0, and Safari 1.0.
Now Streaming
Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, “Silent Spring: Is Rainbow Capitalism Dead?” Shannon breaks down the 2010s era of rainbow capitalism and pinkwashing, which both harmed and benefitted the community. Is it officially over?
Plus, which brands are still showing up for Pride Month when it’s politically complicated to do so?
🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:
- The Future of Google Search (9:56)
- GLP-1s are Disrupting Every Sector (9:56)
- Spirit Airlines 2.0: Will it Fly? (11:08)
- Major Platform Updates (8:17)
- Nike Runs into Controversy (12:19)
- Transgressive OOH (18:45)
- Your Brain on AI (12:33)
- Meta, McDonald’s Mukbang, and The OpenAI Mess (14:41)
- Ethics in the AI Era (18:33)
🎙️ Now streaming on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.
r/TheDailyCarnage
👽 Weigh in on The Daily Carnage Subreddit:
The Daily Carnage Show Ep 2.10 Discussion: “After DEI rollbacks across the U.S. (and the 2023 Target incident), many brands have scaled back their financial and public support for LGBTQ+ initiatives inside and outside of their organizations.
Has your organization or brand pulled back support this year? Or are they holding steady when it’s politically complicated?
What kinds of conversations are you having with leadership and peers about marketing Pride Month in the 2020s? We’d love to know.”
Pre-Roll Sponsorships Now Available ⭐
🎙️ The Daily Carnage Show is growing!
So, we’re excited to share a new sponsorship opportunity.
Book a Pre-Roll Ad at the top the episode with your preferred script, on-screen text, and link in description.
🎧 Podcast advertising is one of the highest-performing brand channels:
- 60%+ of listeners say they’ve searched for a product after hearing it on a podcast.
- Podcast ads consistently outperform display ads on engagement and recall.
- Pre-roll ads are among the most-heard placements, with the strongest completion rates.
🗣️ This is your opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience of marketers, creatives, and strategists when they’ve got their listening ears on.
Interested in sponsoring an upcoming episode? Reach out and let’s build something together.
Classifieds
Buyers don’t search like they used to. dofollow.com helps B2B SaaS teams stay visible across Google and AI search with authoritative mentions that convert demand into pipeline. Learn more.
IKEA Like it’s 1996
Let’s keep the nostalgia flowing today.
IKEA is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its 1996 catalog with a Time Capsule experience.
Give us all the pine furniture, patterned textiles, and minimalist Scandi design!
They’ve opened up a digital window into late-’90s home design, and man does it feel good. Worth a scroll.
Ads from The Past
Colt 45, 1969
