BRAND STRATEGY

🏳️‍🌈 Brands rethink their Pride Month approach.

🔄 You might be in the “brand doom loop.”

🎥 More brands are turning to documentary filmmaking as a tool for deeper storytelling.

CAMPAIGNS

🍬 Jelly Belly is repositioning its brand for “social epicureans.”

📺 Primark says its first-ever TV ad boosted brand perception and drove double-digit denim sales growth.

🪄 Cash App replaces boring bank cards with a tap-to-pay magic wand.

SOCIAL

📱 It’s here! Instagram releases profile grid rearranging.

🤝 LinkedIn launches B2B creator marketplace.

📊 LinkedIn is adding new post analytics tied to content performance.

🔍 Google introduces Search Profiles for creators and publishers.

AI

📈 ChatGPT partners with LiveRamp to prove ad value.

🎬 Netflix turns to genAI to fix a problem it helped create.

Monday: Writing prompts is quickly becoming one of the least valuable AI skills. As AI tools become easier to use, the competitive advantage shifts from knowing what to type into knowing what to trust, question, and improve. The real skill is judgment. So, here’s what to know.

Tuesday: Instead of doing the research themselves, consumers may increasingly rely on AI agents to find products, compare prices, evaluate reviews, and even complete purchases on their behalf. This shift has major implications for marketers. If AI becomes a trusted decision-maker in the purchasing process, brands may need to think beyond attracting human attention.

Wednesday: Traditional SEO model continues to weaken as Google increasingly answers questions directly within search results. A recent report shows the growing majority of searches (68%!) now end without a click to an external website, driven by AI Overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and other on-SERP experiences. Which means that visibility matters more than traffic alone.

Thursday: Refreshing a brand is delicate. You’ve got to stay relevant, but preserving customer trust is important, too. The middle ground: modernized image, messaging, and customer experience that retains the core elements that your audience already recognizes and values. Here’s how to do it right.

Can you solve this puzzle? 🌲

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, “The Future of Google Search,” to learn more about Google’s plans to replace the search box with 24/7 AI-powered information agents and interactive “Generative UI” that builds mini-apps and custom widgets directly on your results page.

What does that mean for advertising, for SEO, for the Internet as we know it?

Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• 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.

Weigh in on The Daily Carnage Subreddit:

• The Daily Carnage Show Ep 2.9 Discussion: “If AI agents become the primary interface to knowledge, what happens to the humans and businesses that knowledge originally came from? What does it mean for the internet to quietly transition from an open ecosystem of destinations into a closed ecosystem of gate-kept answers? Are we speeding toward a future where people stop visiting the web directly? If that behavior ends, we ever be able to rebuild it?”

👀 Your next customer may never click a search result. dofollow.com helps B2B SaaS teams stay visible across Google and AI search with authoritative mentions that capture demand. Get found.

Book a $99 Classified Ad on-demand

🎙️ 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.

Hey, Carney here—the digital agency behind The Daily Carnage. Mind if we share a little of what we’ve been working on, aside from your favorite daily newsletter?

This is our client Udio. They’ve redefining music creation with its generative AI platform that transforms simple text prompts into fully produced songs—complete with vocals, instrumentation, and lyrics.

They partnered with us to amplify their brand presence and accelerate user growth. We produced engaging content, high-impact ads, and dynamic animations to showcase new feature launches and platform capabilities.

The results strengthened Udio’s position as a leader in AI-driven music creation and drove engagement from creators, fans, and industry partners. You can learn more about our work with Udio here.

Have a project we can take to the next level? Let’s talk about it.

Honda, 1972

Answer: Greeting card.

That checks out—the NRF projects we’ll have spent $10 billion more on Mother’s Day than Father’s Day this year.