🤳🏼 Creator Studio.
Facebook launches AI Creator Studio for iOS, WhatsApp tests scam alerts that may affect cold outreach, Google removes language targeting from Search ads, and more.
In this issue
Good morning.
We’ve already survived dill pickle Oreos, KFC gravy ice cream, and soup-flavored hard candy.
So when Oreo and KFC filled a cookie with 11 herbs and spices instead of creme, we didn’t even flinch. In a world where all of that exists, this one might actually be a winner.
Would you try it? Would we? Well, we prefer not to answer.
Facebook hands creators an AI coach, and WhatsApp starts flagging your cold outreach
Three Meta updates, three very different effects on your day.
Your Facebook strategy now comes with a second opinion: Creator Studio is open to all iOS creators in the US and Canada.
It reads your actual account, not generic best practices, then suggests formats working in your niche and drafts comment replies in your voice.
Results from the test group: one creator reported a 144% earnings lift in seven days. Another gained 4,000 followers from a single suggested format.
Free strategy layer. Go take it.
Now the part that might sting: WhatsApp is beta testing Scam Alert, an on-device model that flags messages from non-contacts.
Recipients see a private warning with three options: block, report, or trust.
It sounds great at first but…
If you send promos or outreach to numbers that haven’t saved you, scam-shaped copy is now a reporting risk. Urgency, bare links, and too-good offers all match patterns of scam messages, whether real or not.
Email marketers already have some experience here, and now it seems deliverability will be a key part of WhatsApp marketing too.
Lastly, a design choice has been made: Instagram refreshed its wordmark for the first time in a decade, swapping in a script-and-print hybrid.
Users are unhappy about the “s” and the “r.” You should be checking media kits, decks, and footers to update the Instagram wordmark.
You don’t want to be like those websites that use the Twitter bird logo instead of the X logo.
Google is taking language targeting off your hands, ChatGPT is making small updates too
¿Hablas automation? Google is removing campaign-level language targeting from Search campaigns and Search inventory in Performance Max in late September.
Your creative and landing page language become the matching signal.
No restructuring required, but if your multilingual setup uses that setting for eligibility control or compliance records, review it now.
Nearby and ready to walk in: PMax store-goal campaigns get Local customer optimization, prioritizing high-intent users across Maps, Waze, and local Search formats.
One catch: It won’t work alongside Merchant Center. Product feeds and online conversion goals disqualify a campaign, so you may need a separate one.
All bark, no new bite: Google reworded its YouTube and Discover Feed ad requirements. Editorial changes only, with no new rules or enforcement shifts. If things weren’t clear for you before, give it a read.
Sponsored by nobody, apparently: Google is testing a “Featured Store” heading in place of “Sponsored,” plus a “Shop these top products” subheading. Softer label, same ad unit.
Over at OpenAI, two smaller tests sprouted too:
- The Sources button is moving into the three-dot menu, which will bury citation clicks.
- Descriptive headings are showing above in-response ads, apparently AI-written. Google tested the same thing, and advertisers weren’t sold.
Controls are shrinking while labels get friendlier. Not a new trend at all, and it’s clear ChatGPT is following Google’s lead in this regard.
1,200 affiliates. One program. A lot less manual work.
Growing an affiliate program sounds great until your team is manually approving applications, onboarding creators, generating links and codes, sending products, and trying to keep hundreds of partners engaged.
That’s the challenge Cymbiotika faced as its affiliate program scaled.
Using Superfiliate, Cymbiotika brought its affiliate and creator workflows into one place, making it easier to enroll, manage, and engage more than 1,200 affiliates. Automated applications and onboarding reduced the operational lift, while product gifting helped turn affiliates into active brand advocates.
The program has since generated 77,000+ unique clicks and 7,000+ conversions.
The takeaway for marketers? Scaling affiliate isn’t just about recruiting more partners. You need the infrastructure to activate and retain them without adding hours of manual work.
See how Cymbiotika scaled its affiliate program with Superfiliate.
Learn how Superfiliate can help you build and manage your own creator and affiliate program.
Mistakes sell better than perfection
Wrong color mix. Fingerprint on the canvas. Nutmeg where the pepper should’ve been.
Turns out those “ruined” batches might be your best-selling stock, according to Science Says, breaking down research across 7 experiments and 3,114 eBay auction sales.
People pay a premium for products that went wrong. Buyers were 27.3% more likely to buy a painting with an accidental mark, and willing to pay 71.8% more for it.
A chocolate bar with an accidentally enriched flavor was wanted 26% more often than the same bar made on purpose. Songs with an unplanned sound? 18.8% more likely to buy.
The word doing all the work here is “accidentally.” Same product, different story, wildly different willingness to pay.
“Unique” beats “flawless” in the buyer’s brain: A mistake makes a product feel out of the ordinary, and unusual reads as one-of-a-kind.
That holds even when the mistake makes the product objectively worse, and it doesn’t depend on scarcity. 100 units or 10,000, the effect sticks.
It breaks in two very specific places: If someone’s buying for a function like a supplement or a deodorant, then uniqueness stops mattering, and the effect vanishes.
Same if you’re a new brand, because buyers assume beginners make mistakes, so yours doesn’t feel special. It feels sloppy.
The lesson: Reputation is the permission slip. Established brands get “charming quirk.” Newcomers get “cheap.”
Don’t apologize. Reframe. Hair accessory brand Artist Colette went viral on TikTok addressing a misprint on their calculator claw clips, offering refunds and replacements.
That stock could have been sold as a limited, deliberately odd run with a deadline that ends when the stock does.
Worth keeping in mind: Refunds cost twice. Once in margin, once in the signal that your product wasn’t worth keeping.
One caveat: Nobody tested this on luxury goods, or on mistakes that make a product unusable. And if you overplay it, it reads as sloppiness, not charm.
Next misprint, resist the urge to eat the loss.
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Stop tweaking your logo, your brand ROI lives in another place
Turns out, endlessly tweaking your logo’s hex code won’t save your bottom line.
If you want actual branding ROI, you have to turn up the volume:
The chart is quite straightforward:
- Brand awareness campaigns deliver the highest ROI at 29%.
- Customer experience alignment (23%) and messaging frameworks (20%) closely follow.
- Flashy visual identity systems land at a modest 11%, while partnerships (7%) and internal culture (6%) linger at the bottom.
The Crew’s Take: Reach and alignment beat aesthetics every time.
High branding ROI happens when top-of-funnel exposure meets consistent operational delivery.
A slick logo cannot fix broken messaging or a disappointing customer experience. Focus on broad reach and positioning first.
Actionable tip: Prioritize top-of-funnel awareness and messaging frameworks over rebrands.
Audit customer touchpoints to ensure they match brand promises before spending budget on visual polish.
AI MARKETING: This daily newsletter condenses the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. They read the noise, pull out the signal, and explain what actually matters for work, strategy, and the tools your team is already using. Trusted by 700k+ readers. Subscribe right here.*
YOUTUBE: Ask YouTube, its in-app AI chatbot, is now open to all signed-in US users 13 and up across desktop, mobile, and TV, no Premium required. Conversational answers replace video lists, so your discovery strategy now competes with a summary too alongside a thumbnail.
SNAPCHAT: Rx campaigns finally get room to breathe in the US. Up to three disclaimer CTAs can now sit alongside your primary link across Snap Ads, Story Ads and Commercials, with Sponsored Snaps later this year.
TIKTOK: Online spend only, but in July, card-transaction data put TikTok Shop ahead of Target, Costco and Home Depot’s e-commerce sales, at 2% of US online retail. Power users are the engine: 5% of Q2 buyers drove 30% of spend. Worth testing TikTok Shop as a sales engine.
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