Parse notes
Sponsored
Every day when your executives aren't posting on LinkedIn is a missed opportunity for your brand. You can't force it, but there are practical ways to make it easier, deliver impact, and motivate executives to keep going.
Last month, over 40% of full-time US employees received AI-generated workslop - content that looks useful but fails to advance tasks. On average, 15.4% of work qualifies as workslop, mostly exchanged between peers, with 18% coming from direct reports to managers. Sending workslop damages perceptions of colleagues, with roughly half seen as less creative, capable, and reliable, 42% as less trustworthy, and 37% as less intelligent.
Over 10% of global professionals and nearly 20% of US workers hold jobs that didn't exist in 2000. About 85% of US professionals could see a quarter of their skills reshaped by AI. 58% of marketing professionals report AI is making them more efficient. There has been a 140% increase in new skills added since 2018 and a 100% growth in AI literacy this past year. Many are pivoting into flexible, high-impact roles or self-employment, where 65% of US self-employed feel in control of their careers.
Set up 3 campaign groups: TOF, MOF, and BOF. TOF builds audiences with thought-leader videos, normal videos, or single-image ads for retargeting. MOF nurtures warm leads with zero-click ads, ungated case studies, or video testimonials to build trust. BOF drives demos, leads, or signups using single-image ads to lead forms, conversation ads, or direct-to-calendar landing pages. Focus each campaign on one objective and a single ideal customer profile to keep targeting simple.
To create strong content, start by identifying unique qualities that make you stand out and drive your top clients to buy, rather than generic table stakes like “great service”. Form a small cross-functional team, gather input from leaders, employees, and loyal customers, and list all potential differentiators. Remove anything common, expected, or boring, then narrow to 3 memorable differentiators. Use these consistently across all content, including blogs, newsletters, webinars, and social media by highlighting why they matter, why generic traits do not, and how they impact clients, applying them throughout the funnel from awareness to conversion.
Sponsored
As buyers expect personalized experiences, marketers face growing pressure to deliver. Webflow's definitive guide [9] breaks down UX principles, optimization strategies, and real-world examples to help teams create websites that convert.
ChatGPT's Instant Checkout lets users buy products directly in chat from US Etsy sellers. Shopify merchants are coming soon. Single-item purchases are currently supported, with multi-item carts planned. ChatGPT acts as an AI agent, securely passing order, payment, and shipping details to merchants, who handle fulfillment and customer support. The system uses the open-sourced Agentic Commerce Protocol, allowing merchants to work across platforms and payment processors without changing their existing systems.
Google will deprecate version 1 of Postmaster Tools today, removing the IP and Domain Reputation charts that gave marketers simple deliverability indicators. The replacement in version 2 is the Compliance Status dashboard, which uses green or red checks to show whether a sending domain meets Gmail's standards. The dashboard covers 6 technical requirements, such as SPF, DKIM, DMARC, TLS, DNS records, and one-click unsubscribe, as well as two behavioral measures: user-reported spam rates below 0.3% and honoring unsubscribes within 48 hours.
Social media algorithms amplify emotional content, especially anger, which spreads faster than joy and fuels division. This incentivizes creators to produce outrage while platforms profit from engagement. China counters this by promoting “positive energy” and knowledge-sharing on Douyin, but similar government control in the West would be biased and untrusted. Removing algorithms could reduce amplification but would hurt platform engagement and revenue.
Advertising has evolved from rational product demos in the 1960s to jingles, celebrity glamour, quirky storytelling, relatable brand characters, and cinematic, emotional campaigns. The 2020s began with covid-era “sadvertising” but shifted back to culturally relevant, emotionally resonant work. Across decades, the constant is that effective ads connect meaningfully with audiences and evoke emotion.
Teenage Engineering built a $25M+ business by positioning itself as an anti-brand brand that values emotion and experience over technical specifications. It targets design-conscious tech enthusiasts, professional musicians, and social media creators. Its marketing relies on distinctive product design, organic social media exposure, and collaborations with brands like IKEA, Nothing, and Panic Inc. It has created a devoted global community and redefined what professional creative tools can look like.
A cheeky ad from Merriam's social team.
Write like you're whispering secrets to your favorite client and gut-check with the “Coffee Table Test.”
OpenAI is building in-house capabilities to support ad buying, attribution, and campaign management directly within ChatGPT.