Do Ya Know?
Aerial advertising (banners, skywriting, drones, etc) has a recall rate of...
Trending Stories
✨ Resolution Forecast: According to our poll, 41% of The Daily Carnage users are resolving to upskill and stay current this year. You’re in the right place.
SOCIAL
📧 Getting weird emails from Instagram? IG says there wasn’t a data breach.
🧠 Instagram expands Your Algo to all English speakers globally.
🔗 LinkedIn articles are getting more citations in AI responses.
📊 You can now quickly analyze Meta Ads results by attribution settings.
🛒 Walmart expands AI-powered shopping with Google Gemini.
✂️ Google doesn’t want you to create bite-sized chunks of your content.
🤝 Google and Apple’s Gemini deal raises questions about AI market control.
CREATIVITY
📖 When everyone has the tools, the best story still wins.
🎨 Apple Creator Studio suite is launching to take on Adobe.
🌈 Pinterest shares its color predictions for 2026.
BRANDS
🦉 Duolingo hopped on an obscure trend without giving enough context. Here’s what happened.
🌱 Beyond Meat weighs in on ICE tensions… with plausible deniability.
What We Learned
Monday: Google’s Web Guide, which was quietly launched in beta in July 2025, reframes search as guided research. It breaks a query into meaningful subtopics and clusters relevant pages under each one, helping users explore topics. Web Guide rewards clarity, focus, and depth. And crucially, it still sends users out to websites. Here’s why that matters.
Tuesday: Strategic ambiguity may feel polite or efficient in the moment, but it’s really just a tax on teams, paid later through rework, missed deadlines, and frustration. Basically, avoiding short-term discomfort guarantees long-term confusion. Enter: extreme clarity. It means facing disagreements head-on, ranking priorities until it hurts, and accepting that saying no is part of leadership. Here are 5 ways to drive extreme clarity.
Wednesday: New research shows that if your social content includes a mix of positives and negatives, something interesting happens: you appear more competent. Balanced takes boost credibility for people actively seeking information, comparisons, or advice. If someone comes to you for laughs, inspo, or escapism, relentless positivity works. If they come to you for answers or recommendations, balance is better.
Thursday: Buffer’s data‑backed frequency guide offers clear, platform‑specific benchmarks to help guide your posting strategy this year. Posting too little can limit reach and growth, and posting too much can exhaust you and your audience. The goldilocks sweet spot is whatever is most sustainable for everyone. Here’s a quick snapshot of Buffer’s recos.
The Conversation
🔥 Trending in The Daily Carnage Facebook group this week:
“Should I go back to using my name instead of a DBA? I’ve been doing business as a freelance copywriter under a DBA for a few years now. However, I’ve had a few clients pass me by or almost pass me by recently because they think I’m an agency. I had initially changed my name to appear more professional, although I’m a solopreneur freelancing my services. Should I get rid of the fancy name and go back to just using my own name for my business?”
💬 Our community of experts says…
- “I would be more concerned with the things beyond the name (website, messaging, etc), communicating what you want potential clients to know about you, how you work, your expertise, etc.”
- “If I was working with an individual instead of an agency, I’d prefer to know them by their actual name. I think it stands out to the right type of clients who want to avoid hiring agencies or big companies.”
- “Many solopreneurs are working as DBA other than their name.
Revisit your messaging, offer, lead magnets, and sales process. If two people approach me for copywriting gig, I’d most probably hire the solopreneur as they look and feel more professional.”
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Ads from The Past
Cinemax, 1983
Did Ya Know?
Answer: 88%.
Survey data shows that a great majority of people recall aerial advertising a full 30 minutes after seeing it. To put that into perspective, Super Bowl ad recall averages out at 80%.
