📣 Charli XCX thinks anti-marketing is the future, and some brands are already embracing the approach.

🤖 Instagram will demote AI influencers that don’t clearly disclose they’re AI-generated.

📺 Streaming overtakes linear TV in upfront ad dollars for the first time.

🤖 AI distrust is putting humanity back in advertising.

🚗 A solar storm sent GPS readings 33 feet off, raising concerns for self-driving cars.

🧠 Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 gets cheaper and less restrictive.

📱 BlackBerry is pivoting far beyond smartphones.

Keeping an eye on competitors makes sense. But if you only study the brands in your category, you might be missing the best ideas.

Buffer’s latest roundup of competitor analysis tools makes a good point: on social media, everyone is competing for the same limited supply of attention. And sometimes the most interesting ideas are coming from industries completely unrelated to yours.

So how should you approach competitor research?

• Look beyond your category: A skincare brand doesn’t have to get all its inspiration from other skincare brands.
• Track patterns, not just posts: Look for recurring formats, topics, creative approaches, and audience behaviors.
• Compare across channels: The useful insight might be hiding in a competitor’s SEO, email, paid media, or social strategy.
• Watch AI search, too: As people use AI to discover brands and products, competitor visibility there is becoming another piece of the puzzle.
• Know what you’re actually trying to learn: Don’t pay for a massive competitive intelligence platform if all you need is social engagement benchmarking.

The goal isn’t to copy your competitors. It’s to figure out what they’re doing, what everyone else is doing, and where there’s an opportunity to do something different.

Head to Buffer for the tools.

You have an idea. Now test it.

Optimizely is an experimentation and digital experience platform designed to help teams create, test, and optimize digital experiences. You can experiment with different versions of content and experiences, learn what performs best, and use those insights to improve the customer journey.

It’s built for marketers and teams that would rather test an assumption than spend six months arguing about it.

Because sometimes the best way to find out what works is to actually try it.

🎙️ 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.

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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.
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🗣️ This is your opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience of marketers, creatives, and strategists when they’ve got their listening ears on.

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

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😎 See ya there.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show to explore AI’s impact on entry-level marketing jobs—and the potential talent pipeline crisis that could follow.

Companies are already hiring fewer junior employees as AI takes over foundational tasks. But those “boring” tasks are also where marketers develop judgment, critical thinking, strategic instincts, and creative voice.

So what does an entry-level marketing job look like when AI can handle much of the routine work? And how do we make sure we aren’t optimizing ourselves into a future shortage of experienced marketers?

Shannon breaks down the entry-level talent crisis, the rise of AI-native marketers, the importance of mentorship and apprenticeship, and what young marketers can do to build real expertise in an AI-first world.

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• Microdramas Are Taking Over Marketing (10:43)
• Meta Muse Will Change How We Use the Internet (11:53)
• 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)
• Instagram’s Controversial New Logo (10:34)
• 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.

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 do you get when AI meets a 63-year-old piece of football history? A goal nobody had ever seen… until now.

Vodafone and Borussia Dortmund have used AI to reconstruct the first-ever Bundesliga goal, scored by BVB’s Timo Konietzka in 1963. No video or photos of the moment existed, so the team pieced it together using eyewitness memories, archival reports, historical match data, weather models, and even a reenactment by BVB’s U-19 team.

The result is “The Unseen Goal,” a documentary that brings one of German football’s most iconic moments to life — complete with the stadium atmosphere and details of the original match.

Because apparently, AI can now give football fans something even history books couldn’t: a replay.

Northwest Airlines, 1950