TLDR MARKETING 2025-10-24

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IT'S STILL 1995

AI adoption is still in its earliest stage, comparable to the internet in 1995, meaning there is a significant opportunity for new companies to emerge. Despite the current surge in AI products, the industry is likely only in the first inning of a decades-long cycle, with 2025-2027 expected to produce many billion-dollar companies at the application layer. Historical examples show that technology adoption takes much longer than expected: e-commerce is still only 20% of retail, 40% of companies are not fully cloud-based, and EVs make up just 10% of new US car sales. Long-term value creation and durable moats will matter more than rapid, unsustainable growth as AI continues to mature.

WANT TO SHAPE CULTURE? STOP JUMPING ON TRENDS

Brands seeking cultural influence should stop chasing trends and focus on setting them. Trend-jumping may bring short-term visibility, but audiences, especially Gen Z, recognize inauthentic content and quickly lose interest. Impact comes from a clear brand voice, purpose, and perspective used to lead conversations. Thoughtful, original social activations help brands stand out in a crowded digital landscape.

BRANDS ARE PAYING MORE FOR ADS THAT DO LESS

Ad budgets are rising faster than results. Shutterstock's 2025 Creative Impact Report shows a 33% jump in marketing spend but only a 17% lift in purchase intent since 2023. The widening 20% impact gap signals a broken model, especially for brands leaning on high-volume output. Today's environment demands carefully curated and culturally aware creatives.

HOW TO FIX A BAD B2B NEWSLETTER (OR START A GREAT ONE)

Most B2B newsletters fail because they're self-promotional or irrelevant. A good newsletter builds trust, educates buyers, and converts by delivering useful content to an engaged audience. Write from a real person, focus on the reader's needs, solve problems, and keep content skimmable with clear formatting and purposeful visuals. Skip generic subject lines and hard sells and treat your offer like a friendly postscript. Publish regularly, repurpose content, and promote subscriptions across channels.

INTENT-BASED MARKETING TO GROW 50K SUBSCRIBERS IN 3 MONTHS

Aimply Briefs grew its personalized AI-powered newsletter to 50K subscribers in 3 months by using intent-based marketing. The team targeted LinkedIn and Twitter threads where influencers offered lead magnets, scraped lists of commenters showing interest, and sent personalized emails offering a newsletter on that topic. As the product could adapt to any interest, each thread became a source of qualified leads, driving rapid subscriber growth and high engagement.

SEOGETS

SEOGets is an SEO analytics platform that expands Google Search Console data, tracking up to 120K pages and providing up to 50X more insights. It offers features like topic clustering, content-decay heatmaps, cannibalization reports, branded keyword filters, and shared dashboards with client portals. It serves as a more powerful alternative to GSC with both free and paid plans.

TIP ON “PARTNERSHIPS” FEATURE FOR LINKEDIN ADS

The “Partnerships” feature helps brands find and promote relevant posts for thought leadership campaigns. Located in the LinkedIn Ads' dashboard, it displays posts mentioning a brand and allows promotion requests directly from the interface. Posts can be filtered by media type, date range, creator, or keyword, and searches can expand beyond brand mentions to surface broader industry conversations. This tool simplifies how marketers identify and boost quality content for thought leadership ads. The feature is still rolling out, but it marks a major upgrade for LinkedIn advertisers.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL'S SOCIAL MEDIA PLAYBOOK

MLB's social content strategy is focused on making people fall in love with the game. Its team blends fast-paced coverage with creative storytelling, using each platform to show baseball's culture and personality. They pull from pop culture, Reddit commentary, and player reactions to deliver content that resonates. Their World Series plan includes custom graphics, historic context, and a giveaway that puts fan messages on game-used balls. This approach helps transform casual viewers into loyal fans by making the sport feel both exciting and personal.

BOOKTOK: A LITERARY MARKETING ECHO CHAMBER

BookTok has created an echo chamber in the literary world that prioritizes marketability over originality. As authors tailor their writing to mimic popular titles promoted through social media, literary diversity and quality decline. The trend has major commercial impact, with BookTok driving about 59 million US print book sales in 2025, up from 46 million in 2023, and accounting for 8% of all sales in 2024. This cycle limits opportunities for new authors and narrows readers' exposure to unique voices and challenging literature.

HOW MICROSOFT SAVED APPLE

Microsoft's 1997 investment and settlement with Apple was less a rescue and more a calculated strategy that benefited both companies. Apple was losing $1 billion a year and had less than 90 days of cash, but it used multiple patent lawsuits to pressure Microsoft into a broader deal worth between $500 million and $2 billion in licensing fees. The agreement included a $150 million equity investment, cross-licensing of patents, guaranteed Microsoft Office support for Mac, and dropped lawsuits that removed billions in potential liabilities. The deal kept Apple alive long enough to launch the iMac and later the iPhone, doubling its desktop market share from 5% to 10% and setting the stage for it to become the world's most valuable company.

COPY.AI'S CORE UPSELL PROGRAM FRAMEWORK

An outline of how Copy.ai used targeted sequences and segmentation to drive activation and engagement.

REDDIT LAUNCHES LEGAL ACTION TO BLOCK AI COMPANIES FROM SCRAPING ITS DATA

Reddit is suing four companies for scraping its data and selling it to AI firms, including OpenAI, Meta, and Perplexity, without permission.