🍎 Tim Cook could still out-earn  Apple’s new CEO in 2027.

🤖 Xero apologized for an AI influencer post after backlash.

🛍️ Five Below’s “newness” strategy drove 22.9% Q2 sales growth.

🏃 Hoka is turning Strava data into live OOH ads.

🧠 OpenAI is developing a framework for rogue AI agents.

🎧 Sony is bringing back the XM4 with its new XM4C.

AI search has created a new brand visibility problem: conflicting information.

Your website might say one thing, an old PDF might say another, a partner page might use outdated product language, and an executive bio might still list a title that hasn’t existed for years. Traditional search could show users multiple results and let them figure it out. AI search may pull those conflicting sources together and confidently give them the wrong answer.

So how do you keep AI from learning the wrong version of your brand?

• Audit your sources: Look beyond your website and find outdated PDFs, partner pages, documentation, profiles, and other public content.
• Connect old and new terminology: If a product, role, or service has changed, explicitly explain what replaced it.
• Create bridge content: Don’t just publish the new information. Connect it to the terminology people still use to search for you.
• Treat content governance as SEO: Keeping information consistent across the web is becoming part of search visibility.
• Update the evidence chain: AI can’t use the right information if it can’t retrieve it.

Publishing more content won’t necessarily fix an information problem. Sometimes, the best SEO move is making sure the information you already have tells one consistent story.

Get the full scoop at Search Engine Journal.

Your day isn’t a list. It’s a shape.

Reassign is a 24-hour circular planner that lets you see your entire day on one dial instead of scrolling through a never-ending task list. You can drag directly onto the dial to block time, color-code different areas of your life, and shift plans around when the day inevitably changes.

It also syncs with Google Calendar, Outlook, and Todoist, while its AI features can work with Claude to reorganize your schedule around changing priorities and protected focus time.

Basically, it’s time blocking for people who are tired of pretending their day will go exactly according to plan.

A brand apology is a lot more than just a statement designed to respond to audience reaction, soothe the situation, and calm the backlash.

The best brand apologies acknowledge what went wrong, provide specifics on how the internal process broke down, and detail the corrective actions the brand is currently taking to address it.

In the new episode of The Daily Carnage Show, Shannon  dissects some recent brand apologies to understand what’s working… and what’s backfiring:

• Neutrogena promises to donate to an unidentified charity after the tragic death of their long-time ambassador Hayden Panettiere, who they reportedly dropped after her public acknowledgment of post-partum depression.
• Target pulls a Halloween costume that evokes racist minstrel imagery.
• Good Good Golf and Callaway remove a co-branded campaign depicting a man shoving a female golfer to the ground.

Is there a brand apology you return to as a hall-of-fame template? Drop us a comment and let us know.

🎙️ Don’t miss “Dissecting the Brand Apology” now streaming on:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Amazon Music
• 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.

Got a marketing problem you’re trying to solve? Need a second opinion? Wondering whether a new platform, AI tool, campaign idea, or strategy is worth pursuing?

Every Friday, we’re clocking in for Agency Office Hours sessions: 30-minute sessions for Daily Carnage readers to chat with the Carney team.

Bring your questions. We’ll bring our experience.

Whether you’re trying to improve performance, navigate industry changes, troubleshoot a campaign, or simply sanity-check an idea, we wanna hear what you’ve got going on.

No pitches. No obligations. No sales deck. Seriously.

Just a free 30-minute conversation with the team behind The Daily Carnage.

👉 Reserve your Office Hours session now.

What if your phone could carry a piece of history?

For the 50th anniversary of South Africa’s 1976 Soweto Youth Uprising, MTN changed the carrier name displayed on millions of phones to honor Hector Pieterson and other young heroes of the movement.

The “Carry Them Forward” campaign turned up to 30 million smartphones into moving memorials, inviting South Africans to keep the stories of those who fought for freedom visible — and literally carry them in their pockets.

A tiny change to a phone display. A huge reminder of who came before.

Vans, 1994