Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• Entertainment infiltrates the marketing org chart: A job title that didn’t exist five years ago is showing up inside some of the biggest marketing orgs in the world. The brands paying attention to this trend are starting to look a lot less like advertisers and a lot more like media companies. But what’s driving this shift?

• Adidas drops the best World Cup commercial: At a time when Nike is facing mounting pressure, Adidas locks in its positioning right before the biggest sports moment of the decade. And with one five-minute short film, they may have already won the marketing game before a single World Cup match was played.

• Creating long-form content (the right way): Short-form content gets all the attention, but long-form has been playing a different game for a while now. From AI search citations to brand affinity, its role in a content strategy has never been more consequential. And we break down exactly how to do it well.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

📸 Entertainment Infiltrates The Marketing Org Chart

Why brands like Ramp and Gap are hiring “storytellers”

The percentage of LinkedIn job postings that include the term “storyteller” doubled in a single year. Executives said “storytelling” on earnings calls 469 times in 2025, up from 147 times in 2015. Notion merged its communications, social, and influencer functions into a single team, calling it “storytelling”.

These shifts in the marketing org chart are indicative of where the biggest brands believe attention is going and what it will take to hold it.

Two weeks ago, Ramp posted a job listing for a Head of Content. The mandate was written directly into the listing: “Ramp is building a media brand, not a content calendar.”

This is not the first time Ramp has signaled where it’s headed. Six months ago, we wrote about Ramp putting Kevin from The Office in a glass box for seven hours to process expenses by hand while their software handled 600,000 in the background. Function-forward fintech marketing was getting replaced by something built around characters, narrative, and a live event that generated its own UGC flywheel.

What they’re building toward is becoming the publication that finance leaders actually seek out, the authoritative voice at the intersection of technology and finance that trade media is no longer positioned to be.

Gap hired a former Paramount executive to build a world around the brand rooted in music and cultural partnership. Ramp is hiring a media builder to turn proprietary spend data into content that no trade publication can produce.

The formats are different, but the underlying question still stands: what does it actually take to earn attention from the people you’re trying to reach, and are you willing to build the organization around that answer?

Let us know your thoughts

⚽️ Adidas Drops The Best World Cup Commercial

How Adidas’ brand strategy shines through in their latest ad

Adidas just released the best World Cup Commercial so far.

Adidas dropped “Backyard Legends,” a five-minute short film featuring Timothée Chalamet, Messi, and Bad Bunny.

In this “true story” reenactment, Chalamet is determined to end the streak of a legendary street soccer crew that hasn’t been beaten for 30 years.

But instead of selling performance, Adidas places the spotlight on the feeling of playing the sport.

Compare that to their rival, Nike, whose strategy has always been product-first and performance-focused.

At a time when Nike is facing backlash over a design flaw in its World Cup jerseys and declining sales, Adidas solidifies its positioning during one of the biggest sports moments of the decade.

Adidas has always owned the journey-over-destination lane, and this campaign locks that in right before the World Cup kicks off.

By closing with “You Got This,” the brand positions everyday players as the legends, shifting the spotlight from performance to the joy of the game.

That kind of emotional brand messaging is what builds loyalty amongst viewers beyond the game.

Which brand do you think is winning the World Cup marketing wars?

Leave a comment

🎥 Creating Long-Form Content (The Right Way)

The methodology for long-form content creation with AI search in mind

Does long-form content actually matter? Short answer? Yes. A lot. While short-form content has its value and can help you maximize your reach, long-form content is how you maximize your value (both inside and outside of YouTube).

1. Search Engine Dominance

Long-form content is favored by Google’s algorithm because it is more comprehensive and helps answer questions thoroughly. Google is undisputedly the largest search engine in the world, and YouTube is the second-largest. Together, they work in tandem (giving you double the exposure). But the value of long-form YouTube content extends beyond traditional search.

2. The Shift to AI Search

One of the top sources of answers for AI chatbots is YouTube long-form content! This means there is a massive untapped opportunity for the creators and brands who prioritize long-form content to gain additional authority. This kind of exposure is something you simply cannot replicate through traditional social media algorithms. Instead of just providing an answer, your video and brand become the answer.

3. The Numbers Don’t Lie

According to Marketing LTB, long-form content attracts 77% more backlinks than short posts, resulting in greater authority and more organic traffic over time. SQ Magazine reports that YouTube users worldwide watch over 1 billion hours of content every day. Long-form has one ingredient that short-form has a genuinely hard time replicating: a real connection with the viewer. Think of short-form like fast food. Most of the time, it’s forgotten the second after you’re done. It’s a lot more difficult to form a relationship with.

Learn the basics of YouTube SEO

📢 Events To Keep On Your Radar 📢

AI Search: Off the Record — #NYTechWeek

Join us on June 3rd in SoHo for an exclusive evening on what’s actually working in AI Search right now.

We’re bringing together founders, search marketing leads, and growth operators for an honest conversation about everything from agentic commerce to social as an AI citation source.

Food and drinks courtesy of Carbone and Levain Bakery. Come talk shop with some of the most recognizable brands in tech, retail, and media.

June 3rd, from 6 PM to 8 PM.

Register here

2-Day AEO Masterclass Course

On June 10–11, NoGood’s CEO is running a 2-day live masterclass built for teams ready to move from awareness to execution.

What you’ll walk away with:

→ A full AEO framework built from real brand audits and millions of data points

→ How social and earned media directly shape what LLMs say about your brand

→ The exact tools and metrics that track AI visibility across every major surface

→ Live Q&A with Mostafa. Bring your hardest questions.

This is the playbook. Built by the team that created the first AEO course on Maven.

Are you ready to make the shift?

Sign up here

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: With AI citations in the picture, how should brands approach “evergreen” content versus trending content?

A: If you’re creating content purely to share information on an evergreen topic,  AI already does that better than you. But here’s what AI doesn’t have: a perspective. Our little caveats, biases, and strange takes are what create entertainment, something AI genuinely can’t replicate. The shift isn’t toward more information. Instead, it’s toward more nuance. Whether that’s humor, a take so unexpected that even the most advanced AI has a stroke trying to comprehend it, or just a voice that feels undeniably real. If you’re going to create evergreen content in 2026, you need the sprinkle on top that makes it yours. More difficult? Yes. More competitive? Absolutely. But people still crave the human element, and honestly, they’re going to crave it even more as AI floods the internet. Evergreen content isn’t dead; all it needs is a pulse.

Q: If short-form gets you in front of people and long-form gets you in front of AI, where does each format fit in a brand’s strategy?

A: Short-form is great for reach, but long-form is where a brand gets remembered. Think of short form as your handshake and long form as your business card. The mistake most brands make is treating them as separate strategies instead of letting them work together. Short-form creates curiosity, but long-form answers it. And with AI citations now pulling from long-form content, there’s a brand-new audience to tap into: the non-doomscroller. The person who isn’t mindlessly scrolling a feed but actively asking questions and looking for real answers.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• We’re All Maxxing Now by

• The Analog Revival Did Not Take Place by

• Brand Strategy ≠ Design Strategy ≠ Marketing Strategy by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Analyzing the Scientology speedrun trend

• GTA 6 is bigger than you think

• Why are TikTok AI overviews taking over?

• The return of XBOX

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

Let's talk

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• What Claude Design means for designers: Anthropic's latest release sent Figma's stock down 7% and sparked a familiar debate: will AI replace graphic designers? Those who've spent years sharpening their craft aren't becoming less relevant. Their taste, creativity, and instinct are about to become their most valuable assets.

• Pinterest leverages the analog trend: Pinterest's new campaign tells users to put their phones down. For a tech brand, that contradiction is exactly the point. Their latest film and Coachella activation were both built around one idea, but can a tech platform pull off the analog trend without it feeling like a stunt?

• Using Claude for design (the right way): Developers were first to lean into Claude, but designers are catching up fast. Most are using it wrong, and the gap between those who get it and those who don't is already starting to show. We break down exactly how to use it.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🎨 What Claude Design Means For Designers

Claude Design may be Anthropic's most controversial drop yet

Will Claude Design replace graphic designers?

Anthropic just launched Claude Design, a new tool that lets users turn a text prompt into a polished design prototype.

Figma's stock dropped 7% the same day it launched, and Adobe wasn't far behind.

Many believe this will put graphic designers out of their jobs.

But let's take a beat and look at what Claude Design is really built for.

Claude Design is not made for designers.

It's made to give founders, marketers, and non-designers a way to turn an idea into something tangible without needing a design background.

And when you think about what AI-generated designs look like, it tends to blend in rather than stand out

Without creative direction, you're going to get the same typography, layout patterns, and visual language recycled back at you.

And that's where human creativity becomes non-negotiable.

A designer using this tool as a lever will bring the taste and architectural thinking that make the output truly unique.

Claude’s philosophy has always pushed users to lead with their thinking and then use the technology to execute on that thinking — not the other way around.

Claude Design may get you to the starting line faster, but the rest of the work still takes creative instinct.

Do you think Claude Design will replace designers?

Leave a comment

❌📱Pinterest Leverages The Analog Trend

How Pinterest used the analog trend to repostion themselves

Why would Pinterest, a tech brand, tell their users to put their phone down?

Their new campaign, "How Did They Do It?", is a 60-second film made from home movies and photos submitted by Pinterest employees, capturing what life looked like before social media.

The message is simple: Pinterest is a tool to get inspired by, and then get off of.

They brought this to life at their Coachella brand activation, where visitors had to lock their phones in a pouch to experience it.

Going analog has been a trend for a while now, with people going so far as to purchase dumb phones and delete social media apps.

Brands have been leveraging this shift to show they're culturally relevant and in tune with what their users actually need.

But when a retail or lifestyle brand taps into the analog trend, it fits so naturally that it barely registers as a statement.

When a tech platform does it, the contradiction becomes the campaign, and that tension is what makes it land twice as hard.

Pinterest wants users to see it as a place to visit, take what they need, and then leave to go do the thing.

It's a similar philosophy to Claude's approach to AI.

Claude pushes users to keep thinking and use the technology as a lever for their own ideas rather than a replacement for them.

The goal shifts from dependency to momentum.

Tech companies tapping into the analog trend use it to reinforce why their product exists in the first place.

And Pinterest is reminding users that the app was always meant to be a means to an end, not the end itself.

What are your thoughts on Pinterest's latest campaign?

Leave a comment

🖌️ Using Claude For Design (The Right Way)

The methodology for using Claude as a tool, not a replacement

Since its 2023 release, Claude has built a reputation among LLMs for reasoning through complex problems, processing large volumes of context, and generating structured outputs. Developers leaned in early and with the release of Claude Design, designers are starting to catch up.

What gets overlooked is Claude’s capacity to accelerate design workflows, particularly in branded data visualizations and repetitive production tasks. The challenge now is knowing how to use it correctly. The strongest designers will treat it as a lever for their own ideas, not a replacement for them.

Training Claude on your data visualization references, such as bar charts, line charts, pie charts, and other assets, can speed up workflows immensely for both the design and marketing teams when creating assets like pitch decks and blog imagery. We recommend using a three-part process to leverage Claude.

Create with Claude using our 3-step plan

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: Do you think Claude will replace graphic designers?

A: Claude Design, just like any other design program, is a tool for us to convey our ideas. As designers, our goal is to convey ideas and brand messages visually through static and motion assets, and AI platforms like Claude Design are another design tool we can leverage. AI will always be improving, and as designers, it’s our job to keep up to date with these new and evolving platforms to speed up and adapt our workflows. So I don't believe designers are going anywhere in the near future, but I do think how we design and our workflows will continue to change, especially with the influx of new AI tools.

Q: What should designers do to protect their creative voice as more AI tools drop? (best practices/advice)

A: It’s always important to remember that the message and intent behind your design will always be one of the most important things about your design. While AI tools may improve at creating assets that are visually pleasing to look at, it’s important for designers to maintain good QA standards about whether the design presented by AI follows the brand and whether it’s conveying the primary message of the design. For designers, always remember that your voice is important, you're shaping the brand's visual identity, and your intention behind the design is always primary to the assets.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Stop Thinking In Archetypes, Start Thinking In Generes by

• Behind-The-Scenes Is The Real MVP For Brands by

• Stop Calling It Community. You're Running a Group Chat With Merch by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Breaking down the rise of anti-AI marketing

• Dr. Seuss refreshes their content strategy

• What happened to Abercrombie & Fitch?

• Will Apple’s smart glasses fail?

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

Let's talk

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• Breaking down YouTube’s Coachella strategy: This year, YouTube makes Coachella even more accessible, turning it into a multi-screen experience. From toggleable screens to shoppable merch, YouTube is betting on becoming the platform audiences go to during the biggest cultural moments.

• EGC content dominates Coachella: While influencers posted GRWM videos, marketing teams were busy posting their own content. The teams behind your favorite brand activations pulled the curtain back on what it really takes to prepare for Coachella, turning BTS content into an EGC moment.

• The importance of cultural currency: Cultural currency is the permission your audience gives you to exist in their world. For brands, it comes down to whether you can prove fluency in the codes, references, and values of the communities you want to reach. Your job isn’t to manufacture cultural moments, but to recognize which ones you can step into without disrupting the very thing that made them matter.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🎡 Breaking Down YouTube’s Coachella Strategy

YouTube places bets on one of the biggest events of the year

Is Coachella the next Super Bowl?

This year, YouTube is streaming Coachella in 4K as a full multi-screen experience.

All seven stages will be streamed simultaneously, with four stages viewable at once, paired with toggleable audio feeds.

There’s even a shoppable store built directly into the stream, via QR codes, so viewers can shop limited-edition festival merch.

This is more than just your typical livestream.

YouTube is building a platform strategy designed for long-term engagement and monetization beyond content creation.

By integrating on-demand content, interactive features, and commerce, they’re creating a continuous cycle of content consumption during moments like Coachella.

YouTube is already the most-watched streaming platform on television, surpassing Netflix and Hulu.

It dominates the living room for content and now they’re coming for the bigger picture.

Coachella has cultural weight like the Super Bowl, but YouTube is removing its high barrier to entry.

With a 24/7 Coachella TV channel and shoppable merch baked into the stream, YouTube is engineering the ritual around the event, not just airing it.

And now, they’re betting on becoming the default platform for national moments that don’t belong to any one network.

What are your thoughts on YouTube’s Coachella strategy?

Leave a comment

📸 EGC Content Dominates Coachella

Why marketing teams should post more BTS content at Coachella

Coachella? ❌ Corpchella? ✅

This year, the most interesting Coachella content came from the marketing teams behind the brand activations.

Except this kind of content came from their personal accounts, not brand ones.

Every Coachella weekend, the comments say the same thing: “The marketing team deserves a raise.”

And that’s exactly why EGC works best when it comes from moments like these.

Audiences watching Coachella from their couch aren’t just experiencing FOMO anymore.

They want to understand the logistics behind the aesthetic and how these moments are brought to life.

Take Emma Jean, who works on the marketing team at Kopari Beauty.

She posted full day-in-the-life videos leading up to Coachella weekend, breaking down the prep and the work that goes into coordinating directly with influencers.

Beyond typical GRWM content, this pulls back the curtain for fans who want to see what goes on behind the scenes.

For the side of TikTok that lives for Coachella marketing breakdowns, Corpchella is the antidote.

EGC content reaches a completely different viewer; one who wants to understand the work behind the aesthetic, not just consume it.

And unlike influencer content, EGC builds brand trust, which impressions alone can never guarantee.

Your marketing team has a story worth telling.

Give them a platform to tell it, because the content cutting through can sometimes come from the person who built the room they’re standing in.

Should more marketing teams post BTS content at Coachella?

Leave a comment

📈 The Importance Of Cultural Currency

Learn how to earn cultural currency on socials

Building cultural currency on organic social requires knowing which moments are yours to participate in, and which ones you should let pass. Not every trending sound, meme, or cultural reference is worth jumping on, lest you want to risk eroding cultural trust just for the sake of timeliness.

The appropriation of attention is so relentless that consumers have developed sophisticated filters for what feels authentic versus what feels extractive. Strategic selectivity matters more than speed, and restraint often signals a higher degree of cultural intelligence.

To help understand when it makes sense for your brand to participate in culture, we can take a look at the trend lifecycle and how culture moves through different subgroups. Trends generally move through predictable phases of rise and decline:

• They start in subcultures or niche communities where early adopters create something genuinely novel.

• The trend gains momentum as more people discover it and recognize its cultural value.

• Then brands notice. The first brand to participate often gets celebrated for being culturally aware and timely. The second brand might still land well.

• By the fifth or tenth brand jumping in, the trend has lost whatever made it culturally interesting in the first place.

This is why being late to a trend is usually worse than not participating at all. When you show up after the cultural moment has peaked, you’re basically outing yourself as participating based on a delayed reaction rather than genuine cultural fluency. It comes off as scrambling to stay visible rather than having something meaningful to contribute.

Read more about cultural currency

🔍 Want To Build Your AI Search Strategy?

NoGood’s CEO, Mostafa ElBermawy, is running a 2-day live AEO Masterclass to give you the playbook to change that.

📅 April 29–30

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

→ A clear framework for assessing how AI search is impacting your brand visibility today

→ Proprietary assessment sheets to measure impact across your digital assets

→ A proven strategy that works across the leading LLMs right now

→ Real brand examples, hands-on exercises, and live Q&A with Mostafa

→ Detailed AEO guides for self-study and ongoing execution

This is for marketers, founders, and growth strategists who want a first-mover advantage before the rest of the field catches up.

Sign up here

Can’t attend? Watch our SXSW panel conversation on The Measurement Gap!

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: How has the creator economy changed what brands need to deliver at Coachella?

A: The creator economy has completely raised the bar for what brands have to show up with today. Creators aren’t just attending the festival anymore,  they are producing, and their audiences expect something unique that is worth watching. That pressure has made everything more experiential and more gamified. It’s no longer enough to set up an ordinary pop-up in the desert, I saw first hand how brands are bringing Coachella-exclusive drops, wild collabs, and over-the-top activations that would stop you mid-scroll and in person. The brands that stood out, like Rhode’s invite-only desert event or SKYLRK’s 9,000-square-foot oasis on the festival grounds weren’t just marketing - they were the content. The competition is to be so unmissable that it doesn’t matter if someone was in the desert or just watching from their couch, they still felt like they missed out.

Q: Do you think Coachella has earned the cultural weight of the Super Bowl, or is that comparison still a stretch?

A: Honestly, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all, I think it’s the new normal. The Super Bowl sells you a 30-second spot on TV while Coachella sells you an entire cultural moment that plays out across two weekends, across every platform, and in real time.  And what sets it apart isn’t the reach, it’s the want. Watching Rhode’s desert activation or walking past the 818 Outpost, you don’t just see a brand, you feel like you need to be part of it. That’s something a TV ad simply can’t manufacture.  From 818 to Rhode to Barbie’s first-ever festival activation, these brands aren’t buying ad space, they’re building desire.  When a tequila brand and a skincare line can share the same cultural moment and both feel completely at home, that tells you everything about where culture is right now.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• The case for why corporate content doesn’t have to be boring by

• Why personal brands are NOT the future of branding by

• How to build a brand Gen Z obsesses over by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• LEGO’s World Cup commercial receives backlash for using AI

• Breaking down the Starbucks Coachella house controversy

• Hailey Bieber starts a new Rhode trend

• The Harry Potter remake changes everything

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

Let's talk

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• Aerie doubles down on its anti-AI stance: Aerie goes anti-AI in its latest campaign with Pamela Anderson, but this isn’t the first time. Back in October, Aerie made a pledge to be “100% real” and not to retouch their models using AI. This time around, they’re taking that pledge to the next level, turning a stance into a standard.

• The extractability principle: There’s a reason why some content gets cited by AI and some content doesn’t. The truth is, AI models don’t read content the same way we do. As more people turn to AI to search for and discover new products, creating content for both humans and AI models becomes a non-negotiable.

• The truth behind OpenAI ads: ChatGPT ads are now live, but there’s an underlying threat brands haven’t caught up to yet. Competitors can buy the ad slot underneath organic mentions of your brand. Brands that haven’t already established their organic presence on LLMs will fall behind at an accelerated pace.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

📸 Aerie Doubles Down On Its Anti-AI Atance

Aerie taps Pamela Anderson for their “100% Real” campaign

Aerie was anti-AI before anti-AI was a marketing strategy.

Last week, Aerie dropped a campaign starring Pamela Anderson as the second installment of their "100% Aerie Real" pledge.

The ad opens with Anderson prompting a fake AI system to build models, a direct dig at brands that actually generate AI models for campaigns like H&M’s digital twins.

The models then transform into real versions of themselves, Anderson steps onto a real set with them, and she closes the ad with one line: "You can't prompt this."

Pamela Anderson was one of the most heavily scrutinized figures of the '90s.

Her move to go makeup-free and step away from manufactured beauty standards made her a natural fit here, but it's Aerie's broader stance that stands out.

Aerie didn't just commit to keeping AI out of their own content.

They're requiring every creator they work with to make the same promise.

As platforms push generative content deeper into every feed, Aerie draws the line with its creator partners.

They have openly admitted to using AI for backend business operations.

But when it comes to how people are represented, Aerie keeps it real.

Luxury brands like Hermès have been positioning human craft as the ultimate premium.

Aerie is just the first major consumer brand to take that same idea and make it mainstream.

While most anti-AI campaigns stop at the ad, Aerie is making it a standard.

What are your thoughts on Aerie's Anti-AI campaign?

Leave a comment

🔍 The Extractability Principle

Learn how AI models cite content

Extractability can be seen as a spectrum with seven contributing factors, each of which we’ve identified through analyzing citation patterns across millions of data points in our Goodie AI research.

1. Text density: Text density is the volume of extractable text per content unit. More text means more material for models to match against queries, and more potential chunks to retrieve.

2. URL stability: Ensure that your content resolves to a persistent, accessible address. Stable URLs allow content to be discovered and indexed in the first place and enable models to cite it with a reference that users can actually visit.

3. Structural clarity: How well your content is organized into discrete, parseable units that create meaningful chunk boundaries. A well-structured article with headers, distinct paragraphs, and a logical flow helps retrieval systems segment content into units that can be evaluated independently.

4. Entity precision: Entity precision requires using clear, consistent, unambiguous names for the things you’re discussing. When you refer to your product by five different names, you fragment the entity signal.

5. Semantic clarity: Semantic clarity is how unambiguous your statements are when standing alone.

6. Information architecture: This requires being intentional about where the most important information lives within your content.

7. Metadata richness: The extractable information outside your main content body, such as titles, descriptions, tags, alt-text, captions, chapter markers, and schema markup.

Learn how to do an extractability audit

🤖 The Truth Behind OpenAI Ads

More on OpenAI’s effect on organic strategy

It’s important to understand the difference between ChatGPT and Google Ads (spoiler: you can’t buy your way to the top anymore).

While Google Ads follows your traditional “pay to play, but the more you pay, the better you play” system, OpenAI ads appear below the conversational answer, meaning that if your brand isn’t already organically part of the answer served, your ad has no relevant context to attach to.

This creates a higher bar for content quality across the board. Because a competitor’s ad can appear immediately after the AI mentions your brand (or worse, immediately after a “cons” section about your product), then your organic presence needs to be strong enough to shape the narrative before the ad slot even enters the picture.

As AI becomes the first stop for high-intent questions, the brands that excel organically won’t be the ones who optimized for pure search rankings, but those whose content is structured to think like an advisor.

That means two things practically:

• First, your technical foundation matters more than ever. ChatGPT favors sources with high topical authority, recent citations, and clean structured data. This includes schema markup that makes it easy for AI to parse and cite. If the model can’t cleanly extract your expertise, it will look elsewhere.

• Second, the type of content you create needs to change. Answering complex questions thoroughly, credibly, and in a format that AI can summarize will get you cited. And that’s the new metric that matters.

Understand that intent is king for AEO, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Learn about the effects of OpenAI ads

🔍 Want To Build Your AI Search Strategy?

Join our CEO, Mostafa ElBermawy, on April 16th at 12 PM EST for a FREE lightning course that shows you how to build your AI search strategy from the ground up.

What to expect:

• Learn how AI search is impacting organic growth

• Learn how social is reshaping AI search presence

• Build an AI search strategy & future-proofing content

• Measure & track AI search performance

If you want to increase your brand visibility outside of Google’s 10 blue links, this one’s for you. (Stay tuned for a full 2-day course in the near future)

Sign up for our free course

🏆 Some Exciting NoGood News…

We are finalists at the Shorty Awards!

From scaling mental health support to 100K+ users with Mirror: Journaling & Insights, to making SteelSeries the #1 AI-recommended gaming brand — this is the work we show up to do.

🎖️ Finalist: Social Good Campaign

46,000 Crisis Interventions in 8 Months: Scaling Mental Health Support When America Needs It Most 🗳️ Vote here

🎖️ Finalist: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

GEO from Zero: How SteelSeries Became the #1 Retrieved Gaming Brand in AI Search🗳️ Vote here

Voting is open through April 8th, and we’d love your support! Huge thank you and congrats to the amazing teams behind the work.

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: Is “being cited by AI” more credible than “being cited by Google,” or are both equal?

A: In terms of dollar bills, Google still has the clear-cut advantage here. But in terms of conversion rate, LLMs can actually drive up to 9x higher rates than traditional search. But for credibility specifically - AI has a much more rigorous process in order to cite something than Google does for its rankings. AI accounts for reviews, public sentiment, impact, and other things while Google (historically) has relied on keywords to inform what surfaces in its ranking.

Q: Now that brands can buy ad slots in ChatGPT, does that make its responses more or less reliable?

A: I would say much less, haha. However, due to the fact that ads have been rolled out in such a small capacity and such a precisely targeted manner, the impact on overall credibility is somewhat small, at the moment. However, ads threaten to destroy all credibility for LLMs - so they should be very thoughtful and careful about when and where they are served.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Social Teams Need To Think More Editorial by

• How To Build Your Marketing Strategy in Claude by

• The Science of How AI Picks Its Sources by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Sprite refreshes its brand logo

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 movie popcorn bucket analysis

• Alix Earle enters her founder era with Reale Actives

• Everyone hated AI… until Ted did it

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Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• The rise of anti-AI stunts: Because of AI, the internet can no longer fully trust what it sees, hears, or reads online. As more companies roll out new generative AI models, the average user struggles to keep pace. Now, brands are working twice as hard to make sure their work is protected. Human craftsmanship just became the new premium.

• A guide to search engines in 2026: Are search engines still a thing in 2026? Yes, but it’s not just Google you should be paying attention to. We break down how Google Search works today and what brands need to do to stay visible.

• The impact of analog marketing: Doomscrolling is out, intentionality is in. The internet is obsessed with going analog and being more intentional with how we spend our time. Brands are picking up on this behavioral shift and have found their own ways to participate.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🤖 The Rise of Anti-AI Stunts

Why human craftsmanship is the new premium

Anti-AI marketing is a strategic positioning approach where brands publicly distance themselves from generative AI, emphasizing human creativity, craftsmanship, and authenticity in their work.

5 examples of anti-AI marketing

1. BTS (behind-the-scenes content): One of the most effective anti-AI tactics is to pull back the curtain and show audiences exactly how the magic happens. Behind-the-scenes content has transformed from a nice-to-have bonus into a necessity, serving as proof of human craftsmanship and creative labor.

2. Tagging & crediting: Whether it be in the form of captions, LinkedIn shoutouts, end-of-video credits, artist tags, or anything in between, these credits aren’t nice-to-have extras anymore. In creative work like animation, illustration, or design, audiences now actively demand that credit be given where credit is due.

3. Adding AI disclaimers: The most powerful statements can also be the simplest ones. Brands are dropping cut-to-the-chase disclaimers about not using AI. A simple statement like this immediately confirms that what people consumed was real, not a facade.

4. Taking the direct approach: While some brands are avoiding the AI conversation entirely, others are calling it out loud and proud, using it as the perfect contrast to make their own point even stronger.

5. Using visual storytelling: The best kind of anti-AI approach brands can take is the one where their work speaks for itself. Visual storytelling evokes emotions and feelings that AI just can’t replicate because of their nuance, from camera quality to color grading.

In an environment where nothing feels real anymore, these declarations serve as a seal of authenticity, guaranteeing that a real person did the work. They’ve become the only reliable way for consumers to distinguish between handcrafted content and machine-generated content.

More on the future of anti-AI marketing

🔍 A Guide to Search Engines in 2026

How to adapt your content for search engines beyond Google

As Google continues to evolve, the metrics brands relied on even a year ago are starting to lose signal. Fewer clicks, more zero-click answers, and AI-mediated discovery mean success now shows up after the SERP (not just on it).

If you want a clearer picture of impact in 2026, these are the metrics that actually matter:

1. Conversation rate (CVR): With AI Overviews answering simpler queries upfront, the traffic that does reach your site is often more qualified. These users arrive with complex, comparative, or commercial intent that the AI can’t fully satisfy, making CVR more important than ever.

2. Time on page (engagement): Engagement still matters, but not as a vanity metric. Longer, meaningful time on page tells RankBrain and related systems that your content successfully handled a complex need that an AI Overview alone couldn’t resolve.

3. Brand mentions (linked and unlinked): Brand mentions are becoming a proxy for authority. Even unlinked mentions contribute to how AI systems understand brand credibility and entity trustworthiness (a core component of H-E-E-A-T).

With AI-powered features and generative experiences baked directly into the SERP, Google’s job is no longer just to rank pages, but to deliver the best possible answer as efficiently as it can, even if that answer never requires a click.

Read our full search engine guide here

📸 The Impact of Analog Marketing

How brands are reshaping their social strategy for the analog movement

In short, analog marketing comprises all the “traditional” physical marketing assets that were swept up into the digitized world years ago, such as print media, OOH, direct mail, experiential, and broadcast (that’s TV and radio for my Gen Zs out there).

But why is the analog revival happening now?

Our offline interests and hobbies have become fodder for our online presence. It’s not that we think the digital world is real; rather, we’re starting to see the real world as a place that exists in order to fuel our digital identities.

On socials, this manifests itself in one main way: people are starting to view social media as their personal libraries, one that can elevate their cultural fluency in real conversations.

Analog is happening now because we’re seeing the effects of doom scrolling on our mental and physical health, and we’re sick of it. The attention-deficit and loneliness epidemics are just the tip of the iceberg, and analog is our lifeboat.

According to CNN, searches for “analog hobbies” jumped 136% in the last six months, and craft kit sales are set to grow 86%.

Where analog marketing may have started as a trend of making “old” things cool again, it goes a step further, going beyond nostalgia. It’s no longer a trend because it’s not rooted in any single activity. Instead, it’s the general practice of being more intentional with how we spend our time.

Many label Gen Z as phone-obsessed social media addicts, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What we really crave is an existence that has nothing to do with our phones.

More on brands doing analog marketing

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: If every brand starts doing experiential and editorial, does the value of analog marketing collapse under its own weight, or does the bar just keep rising?

A: Both. The value of real-life experiences doesn’t deflate just because more brands are buying into it. That said, when every brand does a pop-up or leans into editorial marketing, viewers quickly glaze over the mediocre. What survives is the stuff that’s genuinely rooted in a brand’s identity and isn’t dependent on the format alone. For example, the Adidas ravioli works because it’s Adidas + marathon culture + food obsession, three things that actually belong together. Whereas a tech brand doing a pop-up just because pop-ups are trending is exactly the “vulture” behavior consumers are quick to call out. Ultimately, the bar rises, and that’s actually good for brands with real cultural credibility and tough luck for the ones just chasing the trend.

Q: Are we moving toward a world where a smaller, more engaged audience is culturally more valuable than a massive one?

A: 100%, and it’s clear in the way we’re reporting on performance. Instead of followers and likes, we’re focusing on shares, saves, and completion rate as health metrics. A brand with 50K followers who save everything and share it with their close friends is seeding culture in a way that 5M passive scrollers never could. The analog revival is partly about this: people curating more intentional feeds means the audiences who do follow you actually chose you. Instead of collecting followers, we’re earning organic advocates, which is a fundamentally different relationship. The more interesting follow-up question is whether this shift changes how brands should think about partnerships (both influencer and brand). The question of micro vs. macro returns!

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Should your brand start a “side quest” account? by

• Opting out by

• It’s time to brand by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Reformation roasts Timothée Chalamet through email

• How Alysa Liu became the internet’s latest obsession

• From dance campaign to music video: Gap x Young Miko

• Apple is the new budget king

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

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Young Miko didn’t star in a Gap campaign. Gap starred in a Young Miko music video.

Gap just dropped their Spring 2026 campaign, “Sweats Like This” with Young Miko. But this isn’t just another one of their signature dance-forward campaigns.

Gap has been blending fashion, music, and dance for years, previously highlighting artists like Troye Sivan, Tyla, and KATSEYE.

Most campaigns to date have been around 90 seconds, built around a song that wasn’t originally by the artist featured.

Young Miko changed that format.

“Sweats Like This” runs for 3 full minutes and uses Miko’s own GRAMMY-nominated hit, “WASSUP.” Instead of inserting an artist into their brand world, Gap built the world with her, turning a one-time campaign into a full creative partnership.

This is also Gap’s first-ever Spanish campaign, a milestone that reflects a broader cultural shift in who shapes global fashion conversations, as we saw at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny.

This signals Gap’s intention to play a bigger role in music, dance, and entertainment moving forward. Recently, Gap hired its first-ever Chief Entertainment Officer, who is responsible for shaping Gap’s entertainment world through music and cultural collaborations.

As the worlds of fashion and music continue to merge, Gap is leading the charge of bringing “fashiontainment” to life. And their campaign with Young Miko is the clearest proof yet of where this is going.

Where do you see the future of “fashiontainment” going?

Leave a comment

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• The Staples Baddie saves Staples: One post from a Staples employee and suddenly, people are adding Staples to their Target runs. Creator @Oblivion's passion for creating content about Staples is a perfect example of EGC. However, we keep seeing one common comment: add her to the social team at Staples. But is that the right move?

• AI marketing trends in 2026: As AI startups are pressured to keep up with the pace of innovation and follow behind leading companies like Claude and ChatGPT, we developed a list of AI trends for 2026 that we’re keeping our eyes on to help you stay ahead of the race.

• How to build a UGC strategy: Despite all the praise the Staples Baddie receives from marketers for her EGC (ourselves included), it’s important to recognize the importance of UGC as well. Both strategies play a role for brands, but in their own respective ways. And we’re providing you with the tools on how to build one.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🔴 The Staples Baddie saves Staples

Why this EGC strategy works for Staples

Staples is currently trending thanks to @Oblivion, the self-proclaimed “Staples Queen” who’s going viral for simply working at Staples.

But instead of posting typical “day in my life” style videos, her TikToks pull back the curtain on what services Staples offers.

Staples built its reputation on being the go-to place for office supplies like printer paper, fax machines, and toner cartridges.

Then the “Staples Queen” came in and revived a brand people had almost forgotten. Her content wasn’t scripted or brand-approved in any way, and that’s what made her content unique.

EGC creators have something UGC creators don’t: insider knowledge. A UGC creator can rave about a brand’s product, but an EGC creator knows every corner of a brand, and that’s a POV that can’t be faked.

Now, the internet wants Staples to officially hire the Staples Queen. But is that the right move?

Staples has since sent her a personalized “Staples Queen” PR package and regularly engages with her content. And while the internet is rooting for a full collaboration, how Staples responds could either amplify or dismantle what she built.

@Oblivion’s case is unique because her passion for Staples drove her to post about their services, inspiring others to explore them. The moment she loses that creative autonomy, it no longer feels like genuine employee advocacy.

Audiences will feel that shift, the same way they watch micro-influencers get big and slowly stop caring. The smartest move Staples can make is to lean into what’s already working: her EGC content.

Whether that looks like a collaboration, commission, or even tapping her as an in-house creator, the creative freedom that got her here has to stay intact.

How do you think Staples should respond to the Staples Queen?

Leave a comment

🤖 AI marketing trends in 2026

A list of AI trends we’re keeping an eye on

1. Paid advertising hits LLMs: OpenAI announced plans to test ads in the U.S. for users on its Free and ChatGPT Go tiers. After that. Anthropic ran Super Bowl ads poking fun at the idea of advertising inside AI assistants.

2. AI agents become commonplace: They are already reshaping how commerce, marketing, and everyday tasks work. The clearest proof of how quickly this is happening is OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent that launched on GitHub and can autonomously schedule calendar events, read and send emails, all through the messaging apps people already use.

3. AEO is far from old news: AEO has been around for a few years now, but it’s only going to get more difficult to gain visibility in 2026, because now that people are finally catching on to the fact that it’s a non-negotiable, everyone will be doing it. This requires that both newbies and AEO veterans continue to innovate and find new optimization approaches.

4. Hyper-personalization meets a privacy reckoning: With AI, personalization has evolved into hyper-personalization: real-time, behavior- and intent-driven experiences tailored to individual users across every touchpoint. However, there are new rules around how you deliver that personalization because the regulatory landscape has reached an inflection point.

5. Flight to authenticity: One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is underestimating their audience, thinking, “surely this reader won’t be able to tell this article was written by ChatGPT.” Brands should de-slop their marketing in 2026, or face the wrath of search engines, social platforms, and users alike.

Access the full list here

📸 How to build a UGC strategy

A complete guide to UGC for 2026

1. Set your objectives: When you’re first building a UGC program, it’s best to start small and scale up when you feel confident in your approach. The first step is to set clear objectives on a few platforms. Think about where your audience naturally gathers, and go with your gut!

2. Identify your sources: Select the right creator partners. Important factors to keep in mind include the creator’s natural style, tone of voice, and content type. Remember, we choose UGC to authentically connect with new and core audiences; this can only be done by trusting our creators to take the reins and lead concept development.

3. Curate & leverage content: As you begin briefing creators, ensure you are clear about your expectations, vision, deliverables, and timeline. It’s in your best interest to be very clear on where this content will live on your channels.

4. Stay engaged: Actively monitor your channels and comment sections to observe how your community responds to creators. Pay attention to platform-specific trends, how your content is received, and the cultural context to formulate a comprehensive understanding of your strategy.

5. Evaluate & improve: To accurately track your UGC marketing strategy's performance, measure key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with your goals. Once you’ve outlined overall performance and identified which UGC was at the top and bottom, you can begin to strategize ways to improve content for the next round.

Read our full UGC strategy guide here

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: How can brands motivate employees to create content without compromising on the authenticity that makes EGC work?

A: The brands that have a strong EGC performance or even strategy aren’t running internal content mandates. They build an environment first where employees actually want to publicly celebrate working there, hype up the organization, and develop their expertise. That looks like recognizing creators publicly, giving them creative latitude over format and tone, and treating their personal brand growth as a company asset rather than a liability. The moment EGC becomes a content quota, it reads like branded content wearing a costume, so avoid this at all costs. Even a “suggested” brief carries weight. The moment an employee has a framework in hand, they’re working from someone else’s idea, and audiences can feel it. The conceptual territory must start and end with the employee. The brand’s job is to create the conditions, not the content. For first-time creators especially, the format that seems to be breaking through is quite simple: short, personality-forward video.

Retail and lifestyle brand employees are making quick clips about rare customer perks or comedically fielding FAQs about products. Think the Staples employee turning routine customer service moments into genuinely funny content. On the other end of the spectrum, employees at major tech companies like Google and Amazon are filming long-hour days or unexpectedly cool day-in-the-life vlogs that pull back the curtain on what different career paths actually look like in practice. Not the polished version from a recruiting page, but the real one. Both work for the same reason: the employee owns the angle entirely. The brand just happens to be the backdrop.

Q: Does EGC create the kind of relationship between brand and audience that UGC does?

A: UGC and EGC both borrow credibility from real people rather than the brand itself, but they build different kinds of trust. UGC is peer validation: a customer saying, “I chose this, and here’s why.” EGC is insider access: an employee saying, “I live this, and here’s what it’s really like.” One signals social proof, the other signals transparency. The audience relationship is different because the implied contract is different... a customer’s endorsement is optional, which makes it feel earned. An employee’s voice carries that same authenticity only when it doesn’t feel scripted. Where UGC has a natural edge is community.

When customers create around a brand, they generate a feedback loop that compounds, think Strava or Glossier, where the audience essentially becomes the content ecosystem. EGC doesn’t replicate that network effect in the same way, but it builds something UGC can’t: organizational credibility. The trust that comes from inside an institution hits differently than the trust that comes from a customer review. Which is exactly why the strongest content strategies don’t choose between them. EGC, UGC, and branded content aren’t competing priorities; they should be viewed as complementary signals that reinforce each other. One without the other leaves gaps in the story a brand is trying to tell.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Post Luxury Status Symbol #4: Hyper-Niche Expertise by

• Treat LinkedIn like an ecosystem by

• Has hype surpassed art? by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Dove uses Reddit in an OOH ad

• Fan editor gets hired by HBO

• Punch the Monkey goes viral alongside IKEA

• What happened to Y2K design?

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

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She posted a “Previously On” montage that hit 3.5 million views and landed her a DM from HBO on New Year’s Eve. Now, she’s an Associate Producer making trailers and promo content for the network.

Does this mean any fan editor has a chance of getting hired for a full-time role?

The line between fan-made content and commercial content has already blurred. As entertainment becomes more social and social becomes more cinematic, the gap between what a fan makes in their dad’s basement and what a studio puts out is getting harder to spot.

Commercial content undergoes rounds of approval and is subject to brand guidelines. By the time it hits your feed, a lot of the raw emotion has been polished out.

Fan editors don’t have any of those guardrails. They work off taste and a deep understanding of what the community actually responds to, rather than marketing to a general audience.

Fan editors also live at the intersection of two worlds most marketing teams struggle to bridge: high-production storytelling and the fast, instinctive pace of social media. Melanie knew which moments the fandom cared about, and exactly how to make someone stop scrolling.

That’s not a skill you can fake. It builds over years of participating in fandom culture and knowing how it works. Fandom has always been a cultural force, and now media companies are starting to treat it like a talent pipeline.

What are your thoughts on HBO’s decision to hire a TikToker?

Leave a comment

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• The cost of virality: Everyone wants to go viral, but only a few brands ask what happens after. The truth is, the attention you earn isn’t yours; it belongs to the platforms that serve their own engagement metrics.

• Build your Reddit marketing strategy: Reddit is the ultimate home base for community-driven, conversational, and almost raw user-generated content. It’s the go-to platform for users seeking answers to any niche question or decision, and now, brands are tapping in. So much so that they may have just found a new home for social content.

• Understanding query fan-out: Query fan-out is the reason some brands rank in AI search results while others go invisible. And your brand’s visibility depends on whether your content surfaces for any of those queries, most of which you’ve never seen and can’t predict.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

📈 The cost of virality

The truth behind what it means to "go viral"

TikTok’s For You Page rewrote the rules of virality entirely. The FYP doesn’t care about your follower count, nor does it prioritize content from accounts you follow. Instead, it serves an endless stream of content selected by algorithm.

Pre-FYP virality was something that happened to content as it moved through social networks.

Post-FYP virality is something the algorithm decides to make happen.

The platform chooses what goes viral based on engagement signals, watch time, and retention metrics that creators and brands can influence, but never fully control. The For You Page model has since been adopted by Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and virtually every social platform trying to compete for attention.

This is the environment brands operate in now. Viral marketing used to require building an audience first, then creating something that audience would amplify. Today’s viral marketing requires creating content that an algorithm deems worthy of amplification to people who’ve never heard of you. The mechanics of spread have been automated, industrialized, and the power has almost entirely shifted from human networks to algorithms.

The false promise of viral attention assumes that you own the viral attention that you garner. The truth is, you’re renting attention from algorithms that owe you nothing and can revoke access without explanation.

Learn more about rented attention

📱 Build your Reddit marketing strategy

Why Reddit matters more than you think it does

With the introduction of AI mode and Google AI Overviews, users increasingly access out-of-the-box answers to their questions, rather than going through the traditional search-and-click-the-blue-links motions we’ve been so used to since the dot-com boom.

To Google’s credit, the tech giant clearly saw this shift coming, seeing as they signed a $60 million deal with Reddit in 2024, allowing the search engine to use Reddit as a training source for its LLMs. OpenAI followed with a similar partnership shortly after, and for an obvious reason: Reddit’s conversational format and authentic user discussions were exactly what AI models needed to sound less robotic and more human.

As of today, Reddit (along with other social sources like YouTube and LinkedIn) is consistently one of the most-cited domains across LLMs, based on an analysis of 5M+ citations across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

Which means the question we as marketers should be asking at this point is no longer “should we optimize for AI search?” It’s “what information are AI models actually parsing through when they research entities?”

News flash: they’re not just scanning your carefully crafted website copy or your owned thought leadership content. They’re also indexing whatever people happened to say about you on Reddit two years ago. And that becomes part of your brand reputation, whether you participated in shaping it or not.

Learn more about Reddit marketing

🔍 Understanding query fan-out

Everything you need to know about who shows up in AI answers and who doesn’t

Query fan-out is an information retrieval technique in which AI search systems expand a single user query into multiple subqueries, executing them in parallel to gather comprehensive information before generating a response.

Think of it this way: traditional search takes a single question and returns a ranked list of pages. Query fan-out takes one question, breaks it into 5-20 related questions, searches for all of them simultaneously, and weaves the best answers together.

How to optimize content for query fan-out

1. Create modular, self-contained sections: Each section should independently answer a specific question. Use clear H2s and H3s that match natural language queries.

2. Use structured formats: AI systems preferentially select certain content types such as tables, bulleted lists, FAQ sections, how-to schemas, and comparison schemas.

3. Address entity-attribute coverage: Fan-out analysis reveals which entities (products, companies, concepts) and attributes (features, specs, prices) matter for your topic. Gaps represent optimization opportunities, so fill them systematically to ensure comprehensive coverage.

4. Maintain freshness: AI systems heavily weight recency for time-sensitive topics. We’ve found that content updated within the last 90 days gets cited 2.3x more often than content older than 12 months for dynamic categories.

Read our complete guide to query fan-out

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: What’s the biggest mistake a brand can make when they first approach Reddit marketing?

A: Treating it like every other social channel. Most brands show up on Reddit with the same playbook they use everywhere else (think: polished marketing copy, promotional posts, link sharing) and then wonder why they get downvoted into oblivion or outright banned. Reddit’s entire culture is built on rejecting this exact approach. The biggest mistake is thinking you can optimize your way around the authenticity prerequisite.

You can’t automate helpfulness, or A/B test your way into trust. The brands that succeed on Reddit are the ones willing to show up as actual humans with actual expertise, answering real questions without immediately steering every conversation back to their product.

Q: Do you think brand participation on Reddit destroys the authenticity that made it valuable?

A: Not if the brand actually has something useful to contribute. The problem is, most brands tend to show up hollow and treat Reddit like a distribution channel instead of a conversation. But when you look at the brands doing it right, they’re adding to the authenticity culture, rather than taking away from it.

Contrary to popular belief, Reddit doesn’t hate brands, but it does hate smoke and mirrors. The authenticity only gets destroyed when brands fake participation by using agencies to astroturf, deploying canned responses, or trying to game the system. If you’re genuinely helpful and transparent about who you are, Reddit makes room for that. If you’re not, the community will tell you to leave.

That’s the filter working exactly as it should.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• The Creator Economy Shift by

• Why Are We So Good At Making Ourselves Mad by

• How to Do B2B Influencer Marketing by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Dove r/eal Reviews Campaign

• Apple Music’s Super Bowl Halftime Strategy

• The Most Controversial Super Bowl Ads

• Rating Super Bowl Ads

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

Let's talk

One was responsible for the most-watched half-time show, the other wasn’t.

Apple Music has been sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show since 2023 after Pepsi ended a 10-year sponsorship deal.

But Apple Music has something Pepsi never had: real-time cultural intelligence.

They can see what 120M+ people are streaming in real time, which artists are trending, and which moments are going viral across different audiences.

Pepsi picked performers based on popularity and safe bets, whereas Apple Music picks based on data + cultural momentum.

This resulted in 4 of the top 5 most-watched Super Bowl halftime shows in history being Apple Music’s picks:

• Bad Bunny: 135 million views

• Kendrick Lamar: 133.5 million views

• Michael Jackson: 133.4 million views (by Pepsi)

• Usher: 123.4 million views

• Rihanna: 121 million views

But Apple didn’t stop at the 15-minute performance – they turned the halftime show into an entire content ecosystem.

Ahead of this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Apple Music users were able to listen to a variety of playlists from “Bad Bunny Essentials” to songs handpicked by the artist himself.

Apple Music Radio played songs inspired by Bad Bunny’s background days before the Super Bowl and hosted a “Halftime Show Press Conference” to interview Bad Bunny.

In person, fans can visit select Apple stores to hear the artist’s discography in Apple Spatial Audio, turning his music into an interactive experience.

Even people who attend the Super Bowl can find local food spots using Apple Maps’ custom “Let’s Eat” guide.

According to Apple Music, Bad Bunny listens on Apple Music were up 7x right after the Super Bowl halftime show and “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” became a top 10 song in 9 U.S. cities.

By separating the halftime show from the game itself through their content ecosystem, they made it accessible to people who don’t care about football but love the performances.

And Apple Music’s access to real-time cultural data enables them to curate specific events and interactive moments to further push the halftime show.

That’s how a 15-minute TV moment becomes a global, on-demand event that lives beyond the stadium and beyond Super Bowl Sunday.

What are your thoughts on Apple Music’s Super Bowl strategy?

Leave a comment

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• Super Bowl Predictions: Marketers are on the edge of their seat awatitng this weekend’s Super Bowl ads. From brain rot to AI slop, we break down our predictions on the trends shaping the most expensive 30 seconds in advertising.

• 2026 as the “Year of Analog”: Everyone’s suddenly going analog in 2026, except they’re all posting about it. Has authenticity become the ultimate performance?

• Optimizing Content for Conversational Search: Users are no longer changing their phrasing to match how search engines understand their queries. Instead, they expect search to understand their way of asking questions.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🏈 Super Bowl Ad Predictions

Another Super Bowl, another year of unforgettable ads

“The ads are the best part” — every marketer during the Super Bowl this weekend.

Here are our predictions based on recent trends and teasers.

🧠 Brainrot humor: Nonsensical, weird content goes viral fast. It’s exactly the type of ad that cuts through the Super Bowl noise like Mountain Dew’s seal ad in 2025.

Viral attention online can be as powerful as a successful TV spot, so when brands take a multi-channel approach and tailor their ads to the media, they can turn them into unforgettable, cultural moments.

📺 Nostalgic throwbacks: We’re gonna see a lot of brands tapping into nostalgia and throwing it back to old films, trends, and memes. Just like last year’s Super Bowl Hellman’s ad with the cast of “When Harry Met Sally.”

People are growing tired of the media framework, flooded with performative content and optimization, so audiences want storytelling that feels personal, not manufactured.

🤖 AI Slop: This is the real game everyone should be prepared for. We’ve already seen it happen with Kalshi’s Super Bowl Ad in 2025. Produced in under 72 hours for $2,000, this ad gained over 10 million impressions, acting as an early example of AI disrupting conventional marketing processes.

Two camps will emerge: brands using AI to produce ads faster and cheaper, and brands doubling down on human creativity as an anti-AI stance (like Doritos’s creator-focused contest).

What are some of your Super Bowl trend predictions?

Leave a comment

📺 2026 as the “Year of Analog?”

The analog bag trend that has everyone in a chokehold

Is 2026 the year of analog? Or did we just get better at performing authenticity for the internet?

2026 was branded the “Year of Analog” because, apparently, people hit a breaking point.

So much so that everyone started making “analog bags”.

People are packing tote bags with film cameras, journals, puzzles, and sketchbooks, like an “offline emergency kit” to detach from their phones.

So why exactly is the analog bag trending?

People are desperate to reclaim their attention and detach from the digital world, which is why they are entering this so-called “offline era.”

Stats show that 83% of Gen Z say they’re phone-dependent, they have the highest daily average screen time at about 9 hours, and they’re tired of AI slop flooding their feeds.

So the bag proves to everyone that you’re not like everyone else, glued to your screen.

But in performance culture, aesthetics require documentation.

People are posting about their analog bags, flaunting their offline status while they’re online talking to you about not being online.

The word ‘authenticity’ no longer reflects its meaning – it has become performative.

Quite frankly, the analog bag videos are really about signaling identity, where it shows that you’re the kind of person who values presence and slow down time over doomscrolling

Then there’s proof of transformation, which shows that you’re doing the work to be offline

And seeking validation from the comments confirms you’re doing “offline” correctly

If you don’t document your personal growth, does it even count? Apparently not.

But documentation doesn’t stop because the only communal space we have left is online.

So are we truly resisting participation in the current online atmosphere, or is this just another performative trend?

Leave a comment

🔍 Optimizing Content for Conversational Search

A full guide to transforming static content for conversational interfaces

Before you can think about advanced conversational structures, you need to get the basics right.

1. Use clean, semantic HTML: Use your headings (H1, H2, H3) to create a logical hierarchy. Use actual HTML heading tags, not just bigger text. Use ordered and unordered lists of bullets and numbers. This provides a structural map that search engines and AI crawlers use to understand your content.

2. Comprehensive metadata: Your page titles and meta descriptions are still incredibly important. Make them descriptive and accurate. Fill out your image alt tags, as they tell search engines what an image is about.

3. Write like a human: Write in a natural, accessible tone. If you wouldn’t say it to a colleague in a conversation, don’t write it on your website.

4. Prioritize content freshness: Regularly review your content to remove or update anything that’s no longer accurate. When optimizing content for freshness, make sure you’re not just changing the date but actually adding new, relevant information to improve content quality.

Read the full guide here

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: Why is it important for someone to optimize their brand content for conversational search?

A: Users are no longer changing their phrasing to match how search understands their query. Instead, they expect search to understand casual phrasing as if they were having a conversation with a friend or colleague. Content needs to anticipate the full cycle of a user’s journey, not just the snippets of keywords. The goal is to become the authority, the definitive answer across multiple platforms from AI Overview to ChatGPT.

Q: Do you think structuring content for AI to crawl compromises its readability for humans?

A: Absolutely not, in fact, it’s the complete opposite. Making your content easily parsable by LLMs actually improves readability for humans. Structural elements like question-based headings and HTML tables help readers (and LLMs) scan for what they need, and can even tease enough value to encourage them to keep reading. The foundational advice hasn’t changed all that much. Write for your users, answer questions they are asking, and ditch dense, difficult-to-decipher content. When you structure content around natural questions and provide clear, concise answers, you’re essentially making it easier for everyone, human and AI, to find what they need.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• The “contentification” of marketing by

• Are people getting tired of “unhinged” brands? by

• How do you measure brand? by

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Super Bowl OOH Ad

• Dr Pepper Commercial Jingle

• Substack TV App

• Apple Creator Studio Changes Everything

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

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OpenAI’s latest campaign signals a shift we can no longer ignore.

Their “Frontier Builders” OOH ad features startup CEOs in black-and-white portraits – the kind of style you’d expect from Forbes or Vogue. Leaders like Kareem Amin, CEO of Clay, and Christina, CEO of Vanta, are highlighted in this campaign.

In 2026, OpenAI is repositioning its identity by marketing to enterprise leaders.

ChatGPT sees 800 million users weekly – it has the credentials to say it’s the most popular AI platform. But this campaign is betting on evolving that reputation.

By showcasing real CEOs who’ve built real companies using its API, OpenAI signals: “We’re the infrastructure that serious businesses are built on.”

And by using black-and-white photography, it represents the visual language of legacy while also being deeply human-first, presenting real people who are real builders.

AI platforms are launching faster than people can figure out which one to use. So how do you differentiate when the technology starts looking the same?

When features are all you have, competing on identity becomes the next step. OpenAI is clearly saying ChatGPT is for builders, for leaders, for people who want to scale companies and move industries forward.

And by highlighting established builders, OpenAI tells ambitious users exactly where to go when they’re ready to build and scale. The question users need to ask themselves hangs in the air: Which AI platform do you want to be associated with?

What are your thoughts on OpenAI’s latest OOH ad?

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Would you rather look for Substack reccomendations on your phone, laptop, or TV?

Substack just announced the launch of its TV app for Apple TV and Google TV. The app allows subscribers to watch videos and livestreams on their TVs, along with a “For You” feed that surfaces recommended content from their subscriptions.

The only problem is that Substack writers were not too thrilled.

Writers expressed their concerns, saying that their community feels abandoned.

Substack built its entire brand on differentiation – the place where content writers could thrive without the noise from an algorithm. Except now they’re following a broader industry pattern: chasing formats that drive the most engagement and watch time (which Instagram did last year with the launch of their Instagram TV app).

So is this a strategic pivot or a compromise of their brand identity?

Well, Substack is positioning this as a natural evolution.

In 2025, 82% of Substack’s top 250 creators used audio and video, an uptick from 50% in 2024. Pushing videos to the big screen means they’re not only publishing essays, but also supporting creators who produce short-form and long-form content.

By expanding their toolkit, they’re betting they can balance both – serve the writers who built the platform and the video creators driving subscription growth.

But let us know, what are your thoughts on Substack launching a TV app?

Leave a comment

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• Hermès goes anti-AI in their latest move: Anti-AI branding is on the rise, with brands like Almond Breeze and Equinox jumping on the trend. But sometimes, the brands that make the least noise stand out the most. That’s exactly what Hermès did.

• OpenAI drops ChatGPT ads: ChatGPT ads are here, and users are not happy. With AI platforms like Claude receiving praise for heading in a different direction, we can’t help but wonder: will we witness the downfall of ChatGPT?

• The future of search in 2026: Everything you knew about search in 2025 is changing in 2026. From foundational concepts to AI optimization strategies, we’ll let you in on where search is heading and how to stay ahead.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🎨 Hermès goes anti-AI in their latest move

Why Hermès’s website redesign is a pivotal move in the age of AI-slop

Hermès just did what every luxury brand is afraid to do: hire an illustrator.

Hermès commissioned French artist Linda Merad to create illustrations for their website redesign. Hand-drawn elements appear throughout the experience – integrated into navigation and transitions.

The site feels less like a traditional e-commerce platform and more like a space designed to be explored, where visual storytelling takes priority over efficiency. On the other hand, typical luxury brands follow the same digital playbook: photography, tight layouts, and isolated product shots.

But what makes this move stand out is the timing.

Some brands have been automating any design they can because it’s fast and free. Meanwhile, consumers are exhausted and figuring out ways to combat AI slop fatigue.

While this redesign is a testament to Hermès keeping their standards high for human craftsmanship, it’s also strategic positioning. Hand-drawn illustrations have started to trend because they’re the outlier to AI-generated sameness.

So where perfection is automated and abundant, imperfection becomes premium.

A hand-drawn design signals presence because it proves someone invested time in the creative process. And as consumers continue to combat AI slop fatigue, human touch and investment of time become the differentiators.

What are your thoughts on Hermès tapping an illustrator?

Leave a comment

🤖 OpenAI drops ChatGPT ads

How ChatGPT solidifies their brand identity

Are ChatGPT ads the right move for OpenAI?

OpenAI just announced that they’re testing ChatGPT ads across free and Go tiers in the US. Sam Altman says responses won’t be influenced by advertising, nor will your data and conversations be sold to advertisers.

While the announcement received mixed reviews amongst ChatGPT users, this move wasn’t unintentional.

ChatGPT has what other AI platforms don’t — first-mover advantage — meaning that for many users ChatGPT has become the default option for everyday questions and tasks.

With such a large user base, ads become a natural next step to set up a sustainable revenue stream for a freemium model. We don’t see this with AI platforms like Claude or Gemini because their use cases and target audiences are completely different.

Claude steers away from being the “go-to, default AI” path and primarily targets enterprise users and developers. Gemini’s use case is built on identity – using Google’s identity to emphasize AI integration rather than distinction.

Each AI platform is finding and defining its own brand identity. Because all the tech feels similar, the user behavior and subsequent positioning is what creates that differentiation.

What are your thoughts on ChatGPT ads?

Leave a comment

🔍 The future of search in 2026

Learn how to build a future-proof search marketing strategy

Common Search Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2026

1. Ignoring AI search entirely: Your competitors are already optimizing for it. By the time AI search is “mainstream,” you’ll be playing catch-up with established players who’ve spent years building citation authority.

2. Abandoning traditional SEO: It’s still the foundation; you can’t skip steps. The marketers succeeding in AI search all built strong traditional SEO first.

3. Obsessing over vanity metrics: Rankings and clicks tell an incomplete story in 2026. Focus on engagement, conversions, and business outcomes.

4. Not adapting measurement: Using 2022 KPIs for 2026 search leads to misread performance. Update your dashboards, educate stakeholders, and redefine success metrics.

5. Siloing strategies: SEO, SEM, AEO, and social media should work together, not in isolation. Break down team silos and create integrated strategies.

6. Forgetting the human element: AI-generated content without genuine expertise won’t win in traditional OR AI search. Both reward authentic expertise and original insights.

Read the full blog here

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: What design skills are becoming more valuable in the era of AI slopification?

A: In today’s era of AI slopification, the value of design skills have been fluctuating dramatically. Unfortunately, fine art skills such as sketching, painting, sculpting, rendering (both on paper and digitally) are losing value since it’s becoming increasingly easier to generate “hand-drawn / designed” visuals with just a simple prompt. While I do not support using AI as a replacement for designing visuals, I believe that learning how to work with AI to support the design process is really important today. If I had the time, I would 100% be designing everything by myself.

However, in a fast-paced industry like marketing, it’s important to find a balance between designing from the ground up and using AI. This is where critical thinking becomes important. When creating a design, where can AI be used to expedite the process, without resulting in another generic looking AI generated ad? Using AI to generate small elements within a design, such as textures/icons/specific imagery, instead of generating the entire design is a way designers can still control the outcome. Additionally, when using AI-designed elements, it is crucial to look at the design without bias, so it becomes clear if the design breaks the balance and looks like AI-generated slop.

Q: At what point do you think hand-drawn design crosses over from being authentic human craftsmanship to just another marketing tactic?

A: With how easy it is to generate realistic-looking hand-drawn imagery, actual hand-drawn design is becoming more valuable. Especially the hand-drawn design that has “imperfections” or looks “raw”. Hand-drawn design has personality and character - something AI generated visuals cannot capture. If more brands are able to successfully leverage raw and organic design, they will have a completely unique and distinct brand identity that sets them apart from competitors. While this would take a LOT more time to execute, the results will be significantly more human, relatable, and consequently, better.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Friction-Maxxing in 2026

• Storytelling is overrated

• Instagram’s CEO bets on the momentum

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• 2026 is the new 2016

• Topgolf 4 Logan

• Apple launches Creator Studio

• What happened to metro design?

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

Let's talk

Is 2026 really the new 2016?

The 2016 filter on TikTok is trending, TikTok reports that searches for “2016” surged by 452% in the last week, and stats from Spotify show a 71% increase in “2016” playlists last year compared with 2024.

For many, 2016 felt like the last time social media felt truly social because it was a time before people performed for relevancy and before AI slop flooded our feeds.

People posted what they felt like posting, whenever they felt like posting it.

They might post a picture of their dinner on Instagram — not because it was a brand collab, not because it was to promote fitness and nutrition, but just because it looked tasty.

In 2016, social media status was about living in real moments instead of just chasing virality.

But this is more than just nostalgia.

This signals a collective rejection of the current internet infrastructure itself: algorithms, performance pressure, posting for views, and curated feeds that turned self-expression into a full-time job.

2016 represented a balance between offline and online culture. It was a version of the internet where you didn’t live in a personalized echo chamber.

Nostalgia has now become a coping mechanism for people’s burnout from years of optimization, surveillance, and currently, synthetic content.

To clarify: Gen Z and Millennials aren’t exactly asking for a return to the past – they just miss the conditions that made 2016 feel good (e.g. the ability to just exist online without constantly performing).

Considering how viral this trend is, we wouldn’t be surprised if brands started capitalizing on it.

We’re already seeing this with popular 2016 bikini brand, TRIANGL, who teased the launch of new bikinis styled exactly like their 2016 drops.

We may see popular 2016 brands mine their 2016 archives, either turning it into content or re-releasing their most iconic pieces from that time.

Do you think 2026 is the new 2016?

Leave a comment

From Mikayla Nogueira’s Lash Gate to Jaclyn Hill’s Angel Tree fiasco, we’re seeing influencers get called out left and right, but this shift is deeper than you think.

We’re witnessing the rise of the aware consumer: consumers who are critical about where they spend their attention, time, and money, based on whether who they’re buying from aligns with their moral compass.

Whether it’s undisclosed ads, constant wealth flexing, or tone-deaf messaging, audiences are no longer justifying behavior that feels performative or out-of-sync with reality.

Remember Mariah Carey and Sephora?

In November, Mariah dropped her annual “It’s Time” video and it received backlash due to being interpreted as mocking working-class struggles. Neither Mariah nor Sephora responded to the criticism.

Then a month later, it was announced that Wham!’s “Last Christmas” topped the Billboard Global 200, dethroning Mariah globally. Coincidence? Maybe.

It’s hard to ignore that Mariah lost her global crown the same season she starred in a tone-deaf campaign that alienated the very consumers who’d made her the “Queen of Christmas.”

Then we had the Sydney Sweeney and her “Great Jeans” fiasco where people collectively decided to boycott American Eagle and cancel her for the questionable campaign. There was also the downfall of Duolingo where they witnessed a mass unfollowing after the CEO announced being an AI-First company.

This is what aware consumers look like in action. They’re not just doom-scrolling anymore, they’re thinking twice about who they’re going to support.

• Mikayla Nogueira got backlash for lying in her product reviews

• Jaclyn Hill got backlash for being out-of-touch with reality

• Mariah Carrey and Sephora got backlash for mocking the working class

• Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle got backlash for promoting eugenics

• Duolingo got backlash for becoming an AI-first company

Recently, billionaires have been called out for wealth hoarding. Now, influencers are facing the same scrutiny, especially when they flaunt excess while followers struggle with rent and groceries.

For brands leveraging influencer marketing, this means the quality of their character matters more than ever. A million followers means nothing if the audience is disengaged. The influencers who foster understanding and are self-aware of who their audience is are the ones who get the most praise and recognition.

So choose individuals who aren’t just participants in your brand or industry. Choose people whose morals and intentions align with your brand values.

The same goes for brands who plan campaigns months in advance. Think about what kind of content your target audience consumes and how they respond to xyz. Creating a successful, relatable campaign means its messaging comes across in a way that speaks to their customers beliefs and habits, while also maintaining brand identity and values. Balance is critical, especially as aware consumers continue to grow.

Let us know your thoughts on this.

Leave a comment

Equinox recently tapped into the AI slop conversation, dropping a campaign called, “Question Everything But Yourself.” The message being: in a world where almost everything is fake, one thing isn’t – your body.

The AI slop conversation is a hot topic for brands to take a stance on and Equinox hit the nail on the head. Brands that have taken a stance on AI have received nothing but praise and gratitude for their transparency.

But Equinox may have also missed the mark. While Equinox’s campaign emphasizes the physical human body as an act of rebellion, they still evidently used AI-generated content to get that message across.

Gabe Miller, the executive creative director behind the campaign, said that “a campaign that accurately reflects today’s AI trends and memes has to include things not everyone will like. If we had held back, the campaign would not feel credible.”

But comments like, “nothing more disappointing than a luxury brand resorting to AI” and “you’re making everyone question the quality of your brand overall” tainted their stance. This begs the question: how can we identify true anti-AI marketing efforts?

Leveraging AI-generated content to position yourself as an anti-AI brand isn’t being anti-AI, it’s a rage-bait tactic.

From what we’ve seen, anti-AI statements often look like tagging creatives in animated content pieces, posting behind-the-scenes clips to show proof of human craftsmanship, or even adding a subtle “made by humans” somewhere.

This is where Equinox messed up – despite using AI bodies as a stark contrast to real bodies, there is still a clear use case of AI from generation to finalized public post.

As AI slop-ification continues to rise, brands will start to be held accountable for taking a stance on AI. And the difference is in the execution, not just the stance itself.

Do you think Equinox approached this the right way?

Leave a comment

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• OpenAI x Pinterest acquisition: OpenAI has their eyes on one thing in 2026 and that’s Pinterest — specifically their database. But with users already frustrated with Pinterest’s latest AI features, it raises a question as to whether they will continue to stay on the platform or flock to another once the acquisition happens… if Pinterest approves.

• The future of organic social: Authenticity is out, transparency is in. From starting a branded content series to the rise of intellectual influencers, 2026 becomes the year for storytelling and knowledge. But there’s still more to explore and the year just started.

• AI companies tap into brand identity: Hot take or normal take — the AI industry is becoming oversaturated? If almost every AI platform boasts about its tech, efficiency, and time-saving capabilities, how can users figure out which LLM is best fit for their lifestyle? This is where AI companies start to sell a brand identity.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

📌 OpenAI x Pinterest acquisition

Why OpenAI acquiring Pinterest makes more sense than you think

OpenAI might place a bet on their biggest acquisition yet – Pinterest.

OpenAI plans to leverage Pinterest’s database to compete against giants like Amazon and Google. But why Pinterest? Because they’d rather work alongside them than compete with them.

Pinterest recently rolled out AI-powered tools like conversational search and AI pins – elements that are great sources for training AI models. There are three features OpenAI has their eyes on: images, search, and commerce.

With over 200 billion images intentionally labeled, it becomes a goldmine for training AI on how people browse and search. But remember when someone leaked ChatGPT ads?

Pinterest has a monetized ad platform optimized for search-driven shopping that OpenAI doesn’t have yet, and this just may be a necessary step for them to complete that vision. Pinterest also connects people to merchants, an edge in commerce that OpenAI has only recently started tapping into.

Essentially, Pinterest would give OpenAI access to all the tools they need to understand human search behavior better and sell users products. But Pinterest still has a choice: to accept or reject the acquisition.

User sentiment online hasn’t been positive, with people expressing their concerns about this offer (especially those already frustrated with Pinterest’s AI pins). With the marketing trend of Anti-AI labels rising, Pinterest could either approve or deny this offer to solidify their stance on AI.

This acquisition would be a strategic move for OpenAI, but it risks alienating a user base that values Pinterest because it feels different from other platforms.

What are your thoughts on the potential OpenAI x Pinterest acquisition?

Leave a comment

📱 The future of organic social

Predictions for the biggest shifts in organic social in 2026

In late 2024, we predicted that 2025’s biggest shifts in organic social would center around reactive social listening, employee-generated content (EGC), and outbound community engagement. We were right… but the year delivered even more than we anticipated.

10 organic social trend predictions for 2026

1. Taste becomes the flex: The more AI accelerates creation, the more value concentrates in what AI can’t replicate: original taste, intellectual depth, human judgment. Anti-AI labels will start appearing on content the way “organic” and “handmade” do on products to signal luxury.

2. Social search optimization: Users already treat social platforms like search engines, so platforms are responding by releasing features that let creators see search insights, optimize for discoverability, and treat their profiles like landing pages. Social search will only continue to grow in 2026.

3. AEO for social: If social search optimizes for humans, AEO optimizes for AI engines. The distinction matters because AI tools are increasingly crawling and citing social posts, particularly on platforms like Reddit and YouTube. Brands need to think about how their content shows up when AI synthesizes answers.

4. Premium content comeback: Long-form storytelling (cinematic social films, episodic series, podcasts, essay-length posts) earns sustained attention precisely because it’s rare. Substack continues its rise as brands realize owned editorial properties give them leverage that rented attention on social platforms never will.

5. Transparency over authenticity: The trust equation has changed. Over the years, “authenticity” became a buzzword that brands co-opted until it lost all meaning. Transparency is harder to fake. Audiences have developed an emotional radar for what’s real versus what’s performed.

Read the rest of our predictions here

🤖 AI companies tap into brand identity

How AI companies are turning tools into lifestyle products

That shift from caring about AI capabilities to caring about identity is rewriting everything about how AI companies approach marketing and building communities. When users are grappling with decision fatigue and (in the case of AI at large) philosophical and existential anxiety, brand becomes the biggest tie breaker.

AI branding in three acts

1. The Feature Race (2022-2023): ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and broke the internet: 1 million users in five days. Every week brought a new model, a new benchmark, a new “this changes everything” moment. In other words, marketing was product velocity, while branding was an afterthought. This worked because earlier audiences cared about what the technology could do. The answers about technical specs were enough, because the audience was among the innovators and early adopters.

2. The First Efforts (2024-early 2025): Early 2025 was the year AI companies realized they weren’t just competing with each other anymore; they were competing with people’s fear, confusion, and decision paralysis. The early adopters had already signed up. But the next cohort on the adoption curve chose based on ~vibe~. They picked the AI that felt right, not the one with the best specs. And “felt right” meant something specific: safe, accessible, proven, permissible.

3. The Identity Wars (late 2025+): By mid-2025, AI companies figured out what the early majority actually needed; not just better benchmarks or feature announcements, but mental and emotional frameworks. AI adoption was becoming inevitable, but how to adopt it in a personal(ized) way wasn’t as obvious. The pivot had two parts: make it feel human, and give people a clear framework to understand what kind of AI user each of them is, or could be.

Read the full blog here

Build your AI search strategy beyond SEO

Nearly 60% of people use AI tools to influence their purchasing decisions.

That’s why maintaining brand visibility is more important than ever for organic success.

Join NoGood’s CEO, Mostafa ElBermawy, January 12th at 12PM EST for a FREE lightning course on how to build your AI search strategy beyond SEO.

Learn how to make your brand visible in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews before your competitors do.

Sign up here

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: As AI capabilities evolve, will brand identity become more important or less important?

A: Way more important.

The tech is groundbreaking, as we are reminded with every single “revolutionary” release or product update, but the pattern I see (and am frankly more excited about) is this: as people get more educated about AI — as they understand what these models actually can and can’t do, embrace it willingly or against their will — they stop making decisions based on “which one is best” and start making decisions based on “which one feels best to me.” It’s the same shift you see in any maturing category. Early adopters care about specs. But once the early majority shows up and everyone can do the same core tasks with roughly the same quality, people start choosing based on aspiration. Which identity do I want to step into? What does using this say about who I am, or who I’m trying to become?

That’s why OpenAI holds the mass appeal crown, Anthropic carved out intellectual territory, and Gemini just absorbed into (and elevated) Google’s ecosystem. When the technology underneath keeps converging, that story becomes the entire differentiator.

Q: You identified three acts of AI branding. Do you have any predictions as to what will happen after Act III: The Identity Wars?

A: I think the identities fragment, and hard.

As the market gets more saturated and AI becomes genuinely commonplace, those broad frameworks between the most prominent players (ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Perplexity vs. Gemini, and that’s not even counting Grok, DeepSeek, Qwen, and more) won’t be enough. Brands will get hyper-niche because they’ll have to.

And here’s a bit of a hot take: people won’t pick just one identity; they will be free to contain multiple identities at once, based on the context and the need — a lesson we have learned with Gen Z’s shapeshifter approach to their self, especially in contrast to more crystallized millennial and Gen X identities.

We’re heading into an era of multi-hyphenate AI users where someone might use ChatGPT for quick everyday tasks, Claude for deep thinking work, and Perplexity when they need to verify something fast. This is not an example of brand disloyalty; it’s an example of identity flexibility, with different tools for different parts of who you are. This fundamentally changes the game because brands will no longer compete for 100% of someone’s AI usage anymore; they’ll be competing for share of identity.

So Act IV is about brands getting specific enough for people to connect with storytelling about who they become when they use it. Even if they’re assuming five different identities across five different tools.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Is taste a sign of intelligence?

• Brand in and outs for 2026

• The best growth tactics of 2025

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Instagram heads to the big screen

• Out-of-touch influencers aren’t tolerated in 2026

• Marty Supreme marketing strategy

• The great meme reset won’t last

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

Let's talk

Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• The McDonald’s Christmas ad fiasco: Due to the rise in popularity of generated AI ads, McDonald’s decided to jump on the bandwagon and drop their own version for the holidays. The only problem is that they were met with backlash. But was that backlash intentional?

• Blending paid and organic social: Paid social is your first impression at scale, but organic is where the relationship actually develops. Both only reach their full potential when they operate as a unified ecosystem, shaping how people discover your brand, connect with it, and ultimately see themselves reflected in it.

• Data bias in growth marketing: Data bias has existed long before the integration of AI into the systems and platforms we use every day; however, the introduction of artificial intelligence has led to a shift in how we look at and understand data bias. Now, you need to recognize your data biases early before they become detrimental to your efforts and costly to replace.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🍟 The McDonald’s Christmas Ad Fiasco

The truth behind the McDonald’s Christmas ad

McDonald’s just made an AI Christmas ad and it’s somehow worse than Coca-Cola’s.

The ad follows a bunch of Christmas scenarios that go wrong, which lead everyone to spend Christmas at McDonald’s.

But to top it all off, they AI-generated the entire ad.

After watching Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ads get destroyed by the entire internet for the last two years, how did anyone think this was a good idea?

McDonald’s is taking tone-deaf marketing to a whole new level, but that might actually be the goal.

Because right now, brands would rather have you talk about them than like them.

AI marketing has become a sort of rage-bait contest where raw attention is valued higher than creating brand affinity.

So if attention was their only goal? Mission accomplished.

But just recently, they decided to take down the video on YouTube after turning off their comments.

It seems like not all attention is good attention, and when you’re a brand as big as McDonald’s, we can’t help but wonder, is sacrificing decades of brand affinity and trust worth 15 minutes of attention?

Watch the full video here

📱 Blending paid and organic social

The benefits of blending paid and organic social in growth marketing

Benefits of Combining Paid & Organic Social in Growth Marketing

1. Quality through community: People rarely make purchase decisions based on a single ad. Instead, they engage in a layered process of searching, browsing, observing (and, most critically) feeling. A strong organic footprint across social, blogs, and other owned channels doesn’t just build visibility, it builds trust.

2. Efficiency through identity: Paid ads will get people in the door fast, but not as efficiently if those ads aren’t backed by a brand that feels trustworthy, relatable, and authentic. If you combine paid and organic social, though, you extend your brand across much more of the user journey, and make the whole thing feel a lot less transactional.

3. Compounding creative strategy: Your paid performance data is a goldmine for insights and so is your organic performance data! What you can learn from performance data across paid and organic has value not just for each respective discipline, but for landing pages, blog strategy, and even product copy. The more you reuse what works and share innovations and learnings across the team, the more efficient your creative pipeline becomes.

4. Lifecycle optimization: When blended, paid and organic social media help support a full customer lifecycle. For example, someone might follow your brand on TikTok after seeing a cool or thoughtful video, only to later be served a targeted ad for your new product that feels surprisingly relevant to their current needs. This isn’t because of luck, but because of their connection with your brand’s community, and they are now primed to take a meaningful action on your paid ad.

Read the full blog here

📈 Data bias in growth marketing

How to avoid data bias in growth marketing

4 of the most common types of data bias in growth marketing

1. Datasets that include negative consumer behavior: We often leverage predictive models to optimize our audience targets. However, feeding an algorithm data that only represents your “ideal” customer can create a confirmation bias loop as it learns to prioritize people who look like your past best customers, potentially overlooking new, high-value segments or future trends.

2. Platform bias & persona validation: This issue is a form of dataset shift or population drift, where the audience on one platform may not be representative of your broader target market. To overcome platform bias, you should diversify the platforms in your go-to-market strategy.

3. Confirmation bias in marketing: Confirmation bias occurs when marketers favor information and actions that support existing ideas with little to no predictive value. In order to avoid this bias, you need to question your idea of ideal customers every so often. You can use Audience Insights from Facebook and Google Audience Insights to learn more about your site visitors and find other common denominators that can lead you to new and promising customer segments.

4. Predictive lead scoring: Sales teams often hunt for the biggest and easiest leads to close, which can lead to a bias toward revenue opportunities over long-term customer health. A modern approach involves building a lead scoring model that incorporates metrics beyond revenue.

Learn more about data bias here

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: We’ve been seeing an increasing number of companies drop AI-generated ads. Do you think “taste” will become more important than technical execution?

A: I think taste and technical execution go hand-in-hand in a world with generative AI. It’s like taking photos with a polaroid in 2025. While in the 80s that would just be how you take photos, today it’s a statement. Sure, you could take that photo on your iPhone and have it ready immediately. But there’s a feeling with the polaroid that your iPhone just can’t replicate. It’s the same with AI ads. In a world where you can skip all the guardrails and make an ad in 5 minutes, those who choose to do it “the old fashioned way” will be making a statement in doing so. Even though that’s previously just how we did it.

Q: What’s one decision brands should make now to prepare for the future of generative AI advertising?

A: Brands need to decide what matters more: being talked about, or being liked. So far, these “AI ads” have only been met with backlash — and the tides don’t show any signs of shifting. That said, if McDonald’s or Coca-Cola had made their ads without generative AI… there’s a good chance nobody would’ve really talked about them. Not all publicity is good publicity, but there is a lot of publicity for the brands who are choosing to make these ads. Will your brand trade your trust for their 15 minutes of publicity?

✍️ We wish we wrote this

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👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Pantone just destroyed their brand’s reputation with this one color

• The top tone-deaf marketing stunts of 2025

• Solidcore drama explained

• Youtube Recap versus Youtube Rewind

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Welcome to NoGood News, your bi-weekly pulse on all things growth. We break down successful brand campaigns, provide you with the best guides for all things growth marketing, and share emerging trends and insights to keep you ahead of the curve. Plus, exclusive interviews with some of the best in the game.

Here's a quick TL;DR of what's below:

• Spotify Wrapped 2025 recap: Spotify Wrapped flopped last year, so was 2025 any better? Spotify Wrapped 2024 pushed its latest AI features, which caused backlash. But this year, they cooked up something different, and it might’ve won those users back.

• Your follower count is irrelevant: The gap between who follows you and who actually views and engages with your content continues to widen. Signs point to one thing: follower counts don’t hold the same value that they used to anymore.

• The strategy behind Wicked: For Good’s marketing: Rather than a routine movie drop, they transformed Wicked into a multi-year-long event thanks to their “slow burn” campaign.

Ready? Let's get into it. 

🎶 Spotify Wrapped 2025 recap

How Spotify won their users back through gamification

Spotify Wrapped flopped last year, so was today any better?

Spotify Wrapped 2025 dropped today, marking the 5th year of Wrapped dropping on a Wednesday.

Last year, Spotify received backlash for pushing their latest AI features onto Wrapped: the AI DJ, AI podcast, and AI-generated playlists.

Many fans were disappointed in Spotify’s choice, claiming it felt less personalized and more like a product launch.

But Spotify Wrapped 2025 leaned into a completely different direction: gamification.

One big difference in its UX was vertical scrolling.

They ditched swiping through stories for a format users are already hooked on, which aligns with their efforts to become more like a social media app (aka their DM feature).

But the gamification went beyond just scrolling.

Spotify added interactive elements that turned your listening habits into a social experience:

• Top Song Quiz: Users could guess their most listened-to song before the reveal, adding an element of surprise and engagement.

• Wrapped Party: Friends can start a party or join one using a code to compare music habits side by side, turning listening to music into a competition.

• Listening Age: Spotify guesses your age based on the era of your song choices this year, adding a playful twist to self-discovery.

• Wrapped Clubs: Users are placed into clubs based on their listening style and assigned roles like Leader or Scout, creating a sense of community and identity around music taste.

After last year’s AI backlash, Spotify had a choice: double down or pivot.

Instead of highlighting their features, they highlighted what you do and made it competitive, community-driven, and interactive while tapping into people’s reward systems.

Spotify Wrapped is arguably one of the most popular cultural moments of the year (marketers and designers can attest to that), and risking their reputation wasn’t an option.

To protect that legacy, they needed to practice social listening, and deliver what their users actually wanted.

And by doing that, Spotify Wrapped can stay on top against other “wrapped” players like Apple Music Replay.

What are your thoughts on Spotify Wrapped 2025?

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📱 Your follower count is irrelevant

Why it’s time to rethink how you measure social media success

The baseline definition of a “follower” is simple: someone who clicks the “follow” or “subscribe” button on a social media profile or page. For years, this definition came with an implied understanding: that a follower is someone actively opting into viewing, liking, and potentially sharing your content with their own network. It was a clear transaction: they follow you, they see your posts, they engage.

The problem? While the baseline definition remains unchanged, the actual value and function of a follower has been fundamentally disrupted.

The follower fallacy boils down to one critical misunderstanding: treating the follower as a functional marker of your audience when it has become merely symbolic. With the rise of algorithm-driven feeds and search-driven platform behaviors, the majority of people who see your content aren’t following you at all.

This doesn’t mean followers are completely worthless, but it does mean you can’t view the follower count metric in isolation (or treat it as a reliable indicator of reach, influence, or impact). Follower count is one data point in a much larger picture, and it’s very often not even the most important one.

The sooner we stop obsessing over this vanity metric and start looking at what actually demonstrates content performance and audience connection, the better equipped we’ll be to achieve real, tangible growth.

Read the full blog here!

🫧 The strategy behind Wicked: For Good marketing

How Wicked’s marketing team beat customer fatigue

1. Targeted Brand Partnerships: Instead of spearheading generic efforts like Wicked Happy Meal and being done with it, Universal launched a strategic campaign to secure the brand deals they knew would matter to their target audience. Michael Moses, the CMO of Universal, was interviewed about the Wicked marketing by Variety last year, and compared their marketing strategy to Barbie’s; it was similarly massive, and aimed to mainly appeal to women (as did both of these movies).

2. Strategic Pop Culture Placements: In February of 2024, they released the first ever trailer for the film as a Super Bowl ad, ending it with a sneak preview of Wicked’s most iconic song, Defying Gravity. By releasing the first trailer during a cultural moment such as the Super Bowl, Wicked cemented itself as a cultural moment of similar importance (plus, we know from the effects of Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce on the NFL that cross-marketing works).

3. Social Media Community Ownership: Instead of only pushing official content, however, Wicked’s marketing strategy lent itself to sharing and remixing as a result of the highly quotable aspects of the musical, its press tour, and its other marketing efforts. This inserted Wicked into spaces where it previously wasn’t present in an organic and relatable way, a stark contrast to their paid campaigns.

More on Wicked's marketing strategy

🎙️ Q&A with an expert

A bi-weekly interview series with the best in the game

Q: “You don’t own your followers; the platform does.” Can you elaborate on this statement?

A: Here’s the reality: followers are platform-held audiences subject to algorithmic gatekeeping, not owned assets. What you actually control is your content and its reach potential – and the data increasingly shows these are decoupled metrics. When a single post can reach 10 million non-followers while your follower base sees 2% organic reach, optimizing for follower count becomes a vanity metric that actively obscures real performance.

Q: Are there cases where follower count remains relevant or where reach-driven/social-search-driven strategies underperform?

A: Yeah, absolutely. Follower count still matters in specific contexts – it’s not completely dead, just dramatically less important than we used to think. The clearest case is community-building contexts. If you’re trying to launch a membership platform, a course, or any kind of paid community, follower count can serve as social proof that you have an established audience base to convert. It’s not that the followers themselves will all convert, but it signals you’ve built something people wanted to opt into at some point.

✍️ We wish we wrote this

Articles that caught our eye these past 2 weeks:

• Plot twist: clicks don’t equal trust

• Has busyness become a status symbol?

• Good strategists need to know what 6-7 is

👀 Keeping up on the socials

Because IYKYK is better than FOMO:

• Yahoo just dropped the best collab with Graza

• Product placement for Tiffany & Co in Frankenstein was chef’s kiss

• The Grinch takes over the Dr. Seuss account

• Vine just got revived but for different reasons than you think

🚀 Ready to meet your NoGood partner?

Tell us where you are and where you want to be — and we’ll help get you there.

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