The Friday Brief
Your weekly dose of marketing news 5.8.26
Jack Dorsey brought Vine back. Disney wants to be WeChat. Anthropic’s co-founder said AI will soon improve itself with zero human input.
Meanwhile The Bear is ending, a Finnish supermarket joined Tripadvisor, and FOX is paying someone $50K to watch football in Times Square.
The oldest PR trick in the book. Still works. Let’s go.
📱 5 Social Moves You Need to Know This Week
Reddit Is Where People Actually Decide What to Do With Their Money
72% of Reddit finance community members took action after a thread, bought, sold, or switched. Not your polished brand content. A stranger's comment thread. Plan accordingly.
X Tore Down Its Entire Ad Platform and Built a New One
Rebuilt from scratch, powered by xAI, rolling out now. Still half the revenue of 2021 Twitter. Bold move. The receipts will come later….maybe
Vine Is Back. The Guy Who Killed It Is Running It.
Jack Dorsey's relaunching Vine as Divine, short video, anti-AI slop, TikTok in its sights. We've heard this before but why am I still excited?
Your YouTube Thumbnails May Not Look How You Designed Them
YouTube is testing variable thumbnail sizes on mobile, same upload, different crop depending on device. The original file stays intact.
YouTube Moved the Buttons Again
Home and Subscriptions tabs are shifting from the bottom to the top of the screen on mobile. Nobody asked. Testing underway.
🔍 SEO: What’s Hot
Google to Vibe Coders: Don't Forget SEO Exists
Mueller confirmed AI build tools won't optimize for search unless you explicitly tell them to. Your vibes don't rank.
Microsoft Ads Just Made Your Reporting Actually Useful
Custom columns now include all conversion metrics. Build the dashboard your boss actually wants. Finally.
Google Broke Its Own Rules. Then Fixed Them.
AdSense's back button ad trigger now violates Google's own spam policy. Gone June 15. Classic.
😎 Cool Campaigns
IKEA Shot an Entire OOH Campaign From Inside the Blue Bag
FRAKTA Point-Of-You turns the world's most recognizable shopping bag into a camera frame. Everyday life, shot from the bottom up. One of the simplest creative ideas of the year.
Why Is a Finnish Supermarket on Tripadvisor?
No, really. It's listed. People are reviewing it. There's a reason and it's actually brilliant
Adidas Just Won the World Cup and It Hasn't Started Yet
Timothée Chalamet, Messi, Bellingham, Bad Bunny, Beckham, Zidane, five minutes, one street pitch, zero clichés. The best football ad since the Nike airport one. Go watch it.
The Guardian Just Remade Its Most Iconic Ad With One New Line That Says Everything
Kathy Burke. Same street. 40 years later. The update writes itself and it does, brilliantly.
FOX Is Hiring Someone to Watch Football for $50K and Calling It a Job
All 104 World Cup matches. Times Square. On the payroll. The oldest PR trick in the book and it still works every time
An Insurance Company Just Made a Reality Show. On Hulu. It Works. Architects, engineers and inventors compete to climate-proof tiny homes. $100K prize. Branded content as the whole product not the interruption
Liquid Death Made a Safety Video About Water. It's Unhinged. Obviously. Mountain water is dangerous. That's the brief. They ran with it. Liquid Death doing Liquid Death things and we are here for it every time.
🛸 Weird & Wonderful
Quentin Blake Is 93 and He Just Won a 25-Year Fight
The man who drew Roald Dahl's world is finally opening an Illustration Centre in London this June. It took a quarter of a century. Worth the wait.
Disney Wants to Be Your Super App
Parks, streaming, shopping, experiences one app. New CEO Josh D'Amaro is building the WeChat of childhood nostalgia. Bold move. Massive execution risk
The AI That Improves Itself Is Coming. The People Building It Are Saying So. Anthropic's co-founder just described asking AI to make a better version of itself and it simply does. No humans required. Sleep well
Coinbase Lost $394M Last Quarter. The Crypto Exchange Is Done Being a Crypto Exchange.
Trading revenue down 40%. 14% of staff gone. Brian Armstrong wants to trade everything, not just tokens. Bold pivot or panic? Both.
The Bear Is Done. June 25. All Eight Episodes. No More After This.
Carmy quit. Sydney, Richie and Sugar inherited the mess. One last service, one shot at a Michelin star. Clear your calendar for June 25.
A Headless Asteroid Made the Moon's Biggest Crater
Just the metallic core, no outer shell hurled into the moon billions of years ago. Artemis astronauts may land right next to the evidence.
Someone Built a Device That Records Your Spotify to Cassette Tape
Point it at your phone, it captures the audio in lo-fi, plays it back on a portable tape player. Completely unnecessary. Absolutely perfect
Hackers Just Held 275 Million Students' Data to Ransom
ShinyHunters breached Canvas, the platform running 40% of US colleges and want paying by May 12. Or the messages go public