😂 These are all the brands dunking on Instagram’s new logo.

🗺️ You can now buy ads in Apple Maps.

🏆 72% of women’s sports fans consume sports content daily.

✈️ The creator brand trip is experiencing a midlife crisis.

🐊 Meet Niles, Crocs’ new mascot.

Reddit is one of those places where users can spot a corporate account instantly.

But Sonos is a pretty interesting blueprint for getting Reddit right.

They put a real person at the center: Keith Nieves, better known on Reddit as “Keith from Sonos.” Their human-first strategy was built around being actually useful.

And when a Sonos app update triggered a wave of criticism,  Keith continued his recurring office-hours sessions, created a public tracker showing what the company was fixing, and stayed engaged with the community throughout the crisis.

So, a few lessons from Sonos:

• Put a person behind the brand. Human voices are more credible than corporate announcements.
• Treat moderators as partners. Brands are guests in communities, not owners of them.
• Show up when things go wrong. Transparency matters most during a crisis.
• Create a two-way feedback loop. Bring community insights back to product and marketing teams.
• Earn the right to participate. Understand the culture and rules before trying to promote anything.

Head to Standing on Giants for the full story.

Here’s an open-source SEO platform that brings keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink checking, rank tracking and site audits into one workspace.

It also adds AI-search visibility tools, letting you see brand mentions and citations across AI search experiences.

OpenSEO starts at $10 per month, with usage credits included.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, here’s what we’re covering:

🔒 Apple’s secret blocklist: How Safari’s restrictions work and which ad tech companies have been affected.

📉 The impact on advertisers and publishers: Why disruptions to ad delivery and audience signals could affect campaign performance, publisher revenue, and programmatic advertising.

📊 The measurement problem: Why winning an ad auction doesn’t always mean an ad actually appeared on a user’s screen.

⚖️ Privacy vs. platform power: What happens when the company controlling the browser also operates an advertising business?

🛠️ What marketers should do next: Audit your ad tech dependencies, verify campaign delivery, strengthen your first-party data strategy, and ask vendors about their contingency plans.

Apple’s approach raises a bigger question for the open web: How do we protect user privacy while maintaining the infrastructure that supports digital advertising?

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• AI Is Killing Entry-Level Marketing Jobs (12:55)
• Microdramas Are Taking Over Marketing (10:43)
• AI CEOs Want to Slow Down. The AI Race Won’t. (11:39)
• Reddit Is Changing SEO & AI Search (10:55)
• The Creator Economy Rules Gaming (43:53)
• Dark Patterns Are Becoming a Legal Problem for Meta (12:06)
• Dissecting the Brand Apology (11:35)
• Google Image Search is… Pinterest? (9:26)
• Sony & The Death of Physical Media (8:57)

🎙️ Now streaming on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

Let’s take this party outside of the inbox, Carnies!

Connect and network with over 20,000 marketers to get (and give) advice, feedback, support, and LOLs.

• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
• 👍 Join The Daily Carnage Facebook Group

😎 See ya there.

🎙️ 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.

What’s 10 feet wide, weighs around 150 pounds and is rolling around NYC? K18’s latest marketing stunt with Uncommon Creative Studio.

The haircare brand unleashed a massive ball of real and synthetic hair (they’re calling it “Tumblehair”) to promote its FutureIQ longevity serum.

The bizarre installation is meant to visualize the 161 billion strands of hair that New Yorkers could collectively retain each year by using the product.

Suddenly an abstract product benefit is something people can literally see… and, in these days, debate whether it’s real or AI.

Converse Rubber Company, 1952