SOCIAL MEDIA

🥒 Grillo’s Pickles has turned social media into a brand playground.

📱 Samsung fires back at Apple’s iPhone Duo with a reactive social campaign.

🤖 Meta is rolling out Meta One with new paid AI and business features.

CREATIVITY

🎨 People are using AI flyers to advertise drawing classes.

🧠 Marketers need to know when to switch between creativity and optimisation.

🎵 Coach is taking its fall campaign on the road with Spotify.

🍺 BrewDog ads have been banned for being socially irresponsible.

AI

💻 Dell’s new XPS 13 is making some questionable compromises.

📣 OpenAI is racing to build its advertising business.

BRANDS

🗳️ IKEA is the place where Swedes abroad go to vote.

✈️ You should probably book your holiday flights right now.

🧸Carter’s is betting on nostalgia for its biggest rebrand in 26 years.

📖 Merriam-Webster just added a new batch of words.

What happens to video game marketing when physical media disappears?

In this episode of The Daily Carnage Show, Shannon sits down with Dwayne Waite Jr., Associate Director of Marketing at Schell Games, to talk about how the video game industry is changing and what marketers in every industry can learn from it.

Following Sony’s announcement that it will discontinue physical production for new PlayStation games after January 2028, we dig into what the shift toward digital ownership means for game marketing, community building, creators, VR, and the customer journey.

Dwayne shares how Schell Games approaches creator marketing, Reddit and community engagement, experiential marketing, VR marketing, and measuring creator campaigns—plus why he believes the gaming industry may be ahead of the broader marketing world when it comes to treating creators as business partners.

We also talk about why people watch other people play video games, how creators have become part of the customer journey, why discoverability is getting harder, and what marketers outside the gaming industry can steal from gaming marketers.

🎙️ Don’t miss “The Creator Economy Rules Gaming” now streaming on:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Amazon Music
• Apple Music

Monday: WordStream shares 21 Google Ads experiment ideas based on different campaign goals and challenges, from increasing volume and improving conversions to refreshing stale performance and understanding competitors. The key is to test one meaningful variable at a time, rather than changing everything at once, and use the results to guide where to invest next. Head to WordStream for 21 ideas to add to your testing list.

Tuesday: A brand doesn’t always need a full rebrand to feel fresh again. Sometimes the biggest opportunity is figuring out what’s become outdated, what customers actually recognize, and what’s still worth keeping. From messaging and visual identity to accessibility and brand consistency, small, intentional changes can make a brand feel much more relevant without throwing away the equity it has already built. Get the full scoop at Carney Journal.

Wednesday: Good SEO content shouldn’t just repeat what’s already ranking. The idea behind Information Gain is to look at what existing search results are missing and add something genuinely useful, whether that’s original research, first-hand expertise, proprietary data, unique analysis, or helpful visuals. Instead of asking how to make your content look more like the top results, ask what you can bring to the conversation that readers can’t get from the other pages. Give it a look.

Thursday: AI might feel universal, but its responses can reflect cultural assumptions from the data and context behind them. That means the same prompt can produce different answers across languages and regions, making cultural context an important part of designing AI experiences. Get the full rundown on UX Collective.

🎙️ The Daily Carnage Show is growing!

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Book a Pre-Roll Ad at the top the episode with your preferred script, on-screen text, and link in description.

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• 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.

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

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• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
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😎 See ya there.

Can you solve this puzzle? 🎮

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.

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Frito Lay, 1997

Answer: Crazy Taxi

Crazy Taxi became famous for weaving real-world brands directly into its gameplay. Players could race their passengers to recognizable businesses like KFC, Pizza Hut, and Tower Records, turning branded locations into part of the game world rather than simply displaying traditional ads. It’s an early example of how games can make brands part of the experience itself — a topic that’s only getting more interesting as gaming becomes an even bigger marketing channel. Want to hear where video game marketing is headed next? Catch our new episode of The Daily Carnage Show, where we chat with Dwayne Waite Jr. about the future of video game marketing.