If you knoll you know
Sorted verses unsorted pictograms should be used strategically, depending on whether the messaging is promotional or prohibitive. If eight out of 10 dentists endorse a toothpaste, for example, a sorted pictogram would make consumers feel favorably about the toothpaste. However, when depicting that 8% of children alive today will die if current smoking trends continue, an unsorted pictogram would be appropriate.
research…found that frequency pictograms, which convey proportions and probabilities, induce optimism in consumers when they are presented in a sorted way.
facts don’t have any meaning unless people pay attention to them, and people pay attention to, and remember, good stories.
Save your features rich messaging for the purchase decision moment.
“Once upon an 800 lb weight capacity…” doesn’t hit the same.
Match the narrative your shopper is telling themselves in the moment they meet your message.
via Collab Fund
Marketing is messaging. And messaging is the act of setting expectations by guiding perception.
This Nudge newsletter on placebos covers it well.
Adding the color red to a painkiller pill makes it more effective.
We assume customers are rational.
We think there’s no way a headache can be cured by colouring.
But the sham surgery proves that’s not true. Marketing alters our perception.
Amazon wants to be the Google Ads of CTV (potentially) moving to auction-based buying.
Lower costs, no delivery guarantees, and (I’d imagine) a workflow many digital-first buyers are more familiar with.
Now for the jargon:
non-guaranteed delivery across run-of-service (ROS) inventory, targeting any Amazon DSP audience, but with a dynamic pricing model.
That pricing flexibility allows real-time bid optimization within a defined range—marketers set a floor and a ceiling, and Amazon’s system works within those bounds to find available impressions.
OXO started as an accessibility-centric company.
“Oversized” handles for easier use by arthritic users.
Designing for edge cases and accessibility usually benefits all users.
🍏 👀
The truly astounding part of WWDC is that they made my nostalgic for iOS 7.0’s readability.
What are we doing here, y’all? This isn’t even 101-level design; I saw better stuff on boingboing & Envato’s design roundup listicles in 2010
— Thomas Cannon (@thomascannon.me) Jun 9, 2025 at 2:09 PM
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The tariff situation shows why messaging matters:
If these big household brands and retailers are talking about this stuff, that’s almost going to have a bigger impact on how consumers feel about the economy and how they spend than it will be if they’re actually putting their budget into a spreadsheet and finding out that they’re spending more money. It’s a communications thing as much as it is like an actual brass tax increase in prices
Are vibe-cessions the inverse of irrational exuberance?
via EMARKETER
Survey says…
41% of consumers say they want more personalized deals and offers, not simulated conversations [from AI]
The chatbot form factor is the default box that AI deployment is being thought of within.
Break outside the box!
via MarTech
I misheard “monetization upheaval” (in regards to publishers in the age of AI) as the “monetization of people”
Which, isn’t that really the root here?
The shift to social, the rise of influencers, Substacking the newsroom.
The person is the atomic unit of relationships. Mastheads are molecules.
American Eagle is taking a new route to reach its Gen Z audience—through the written word.
&
Though Substack may not be the first choice for brands to reach Gen Z, its appeal is rising among the younger generation.
Something something zig vs zag
Or, as I once said:
Short-form video has eaten the world, which means another format will soon disrupt it.
via EMARKETER