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In experimentation, following conventional best practices will lead to conventional results (or worse). To achieve truly exceptional growth, marketers need to follow a different playbook.
Mischief Marketing is emerging as a strategic response to ad fatigue. By intentionally breaking rules and expectations, marketers are creating campaigns that feel more exciting and fun. Burger King Brazil hijacked Google Maps by uploading coupons to competitors' photo galleries, reaching customers mid-search. Liquid Death leaned into taboos with “Kegs for Pregs,” showing Kylie Kelce drinking from water kegs while visibly pregnant. IKEA Canada texted customers “U up?” between 10 pm and 5 am to promote sleep products, blending flirtation with commerce.
BFCM revenue patterns in 2024 show that the real spike in consumer activity begins only 10 days before Black Friday. While brands often plan for an extended ramp-up, data reveals minimal customer movement in September and October. Instead, there is a sharp and fast climb in browsing beginning mid-November. Product views increase during this short window, but purchases lag behind until Black Friday hits, when orders then surge and browsing drops. Cyber Week is the core revenue period, and after this two-week stretch, both promotional activity and customer engagement taper off quickly.
This playbook outlines how Recall.ai defines a clear problem, builds a targeted lead list, collects proof points, and enriches data manually. Accounts are mapped to key personas, concise email copy is sent, leads are sequenced and qualified, and lists are refined based on responses. A simple data model, weekly cadence, and 14-day sprint plan keep outreach efficient.
Kellanova, the marketer of Pringles, Cheez-It, and Pop-Tarts, built a predictive scoring system that ties creative elements directly to campaign performance. After analyzing over 443 assets across Meta platforms and billions of impressions, the company identified 19 high-impact variables from more than 20,000 creative decisions. Top performing ads featured branding in the first few seconds, positive emotion, product consumption cues, characters, and overlays that reinforced key messages. The system had 83% accuracy in predicting view-through rates and an 11% lift in ROI.
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ChatGPT introduced a new “GPT-5 Thinking” option that lets users control how much reasoning the AI applies. Plus, Business/Teams, and Pro accounts now see a dropdown to choose between Standard, which balances speed and reasoning, and Extended, which is slower but deeper. Pro users also get Light for faster output with less reasoning and Heavy for the deepest reasoning at a slower pace.
Gmail's updates shift visibility from timing to engagement. Brands need to separate transactional and promotional streams and remove upsells from service messages to keep them in the right tab. They should also make use of the expanded Manage Subscriptions by offering preference centers, throttling low-engagers, and treating unsubscribes as useful feedback. In the Promotions tab, visibility improves with specific subject lines, clear CTAs, and consistent sender identity. Tracking engagement speed, breadth, and persistence will now matter more than just counting opens.
Fyxer scaled rapidly by blending consumer and enterprise strategies. The product, built to simplify email for non-tech users, requires no setup and rewards users for team invites. Growth started with direct outreach to micro-influencers, followed by performance marketing treated like a DTC brand with viral-style creative and a focus on work email signups. Once enterprise potential was clear, pricing aligned with professional use cases at $30-$50 per user, with seat-based billing under review instead of usage-based models. As the AI improved, Fyxer doubled down on reactivation, targeting early users with founder-style emails and trial restarts to convince skeptics to try again.
Fashion brands often use vague scientific and eco-friendly terms to market products, but many of these claims lack substance and amount to greenwashing. Luxury companies like Gucci and Prada have promoted carbon-neutral or sustainable messaging, yet investigations revealed that these promises often do not match their actual environmental impact, leading Gucci to remove its carbon-neutral claim. The EU Green Claims Directive will require verification before brands can use terms like carbon neutral, eco-friendly, or net zero in campaigns. Despite these regulations, mass production and fast fashion remain unchanged, with companies relying on appealing but empty scientific language to maintain prestige and consumer trust.
Incrementality tests provide stronger starting points for marketing mix models (MMMs), making them more accurate when historic data is limited or missing.
A visual showing that hook, payoff, and action drive a winning brand.
Brands are shifting from casual iPhone-style posts to cinematic short-form films that stand out with higher effort and storytelling.