Hey 👋 The Crew here.
Hard debate. Do you eat breakfast the moment you wake up, or a few hours later?
It’s the marketing equivalent of jumping on a new trend. Do you go all in immediately to catch that first wave of engagement? Or do you wait, gather more data, and risk showing up late to the party?
It’s a tough croissant to crack…
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The smart tactic to rank #1 on Amazon and gain momentum that ads alone can’t buy
Most Amazon sellers hit the wall: ad spend keeps rising, rankings don’t budge, and reviews trickle in too slowly.
That’s exactly what happened to Lenny & Larry’s.
They were stuck at ~1,000 units per month.
Stack Influence activated 1,560 influencers in a 12-month campaign.
Each one bought the product on Amazon (a verified purchase), shared authentically on social media, and left organic UGC.
The outcome?
- 11× recurring sales
- 525 reviews
- 2.3M impressions
… Momentum that ads alone couldn’t buy.
Apophenia
If you look at the sky and spot a heart-shaped cloud, you may think it’s a cosmic message or a “sign.”
Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s just your brain’s incredible ability to spot patterns, even when no patterns or connections are immediately obvious.
Pattern-spotting is an evolutionary survival mechanism that helps us make sense of a chaotic world.
In ancient times, spotting patterns helped humans avoid predators or find food. Today, it helps us plan projects, analyze data, or identify problems that need solving.
There’s an issue with this power, however: Our pattern-detection engine can go into overdrive.
And when it does, we think we’re making meaningful connections where in fact there are none, which leads to phenomena like superstition, conspiracy theories, and more.
That’s Apophenia—the term coined by German neurologist Klaus Conrad to explain that our brains crave order so much that when there isn’t any, they invent it. Just like that.
While Apophenia helps us learn, it also makes us open to suggestions.
And yes, the human need for patterns is something marketers can use to their advantage. By hinting at patterns, we can guide customers to conclusions that feel like their own discoveries.
Let’s connect those dots.
1) Weave a narrative with suggestive advertising
Everyone loves a good story.
And our minds particularly love when they have to fill the gaps to create one. You don’t have to spell it all out or spoon-feed your customers. Let them connect the dots.
When people feel they’ve uncovered a hidden meaning, the connection to your brand becomes much stronger and more personal.
A good example of this? Cinema. If you’re a cinephile, you’ve probably followed the promotional material for the horror film “Weapons.”
Months before hitting the big screen, its marketing studio used cryptic trailers, live streams, and even fake websites that made people talk about the mystery.
Naturally, horror fans scrambled to piece together the clues, building viral hype in the process.
How to replicate this: Create a campaign that hints at a larger world, like a series of ads and email that tease your next clothing line, for example.
Or, offer tiny glimpses of a new feature or a rebrand. Engage your community to solve a puzzle, or use evocative taglines that spark interpretation rather than explain everything.
2) Build brand meaning through association
Apophenia makes us link things that appear connected… even if the connection is illogical.
Place your brand next to a desired concept, and our brains will build the bridge. This way, you don’t provide direct claims, but instead you build a constellation of ideas around your brand.
Over time, the brain sees this as a coherent pattern and accepts the association as true.
A legendary example of this occurred in 1929, when a PR pioneer Edward Bernays hired young women to join New York’s Easter Parade and publicly light Lucky Strike cigarettes.
At the time, it was taboo for women to smoke in public.
But when a group of fashionable young women marched down Fifth Avenue with lit cigarettes and called themselves “Torches of Freedom,” everything changed.
Suddenly, cigarettes become symbols of women’s liberation and equality. Press coverage exploded. And the industry expanded—which was ultimately the goal.
You can use Apophenia to tie your brand to ideas and emotions you want it to evoke. Like Red Bull surrounding itself with F1 and extreme sports, or Nike with success.
3) Build “streaks” into loyalty programs
Seeing patterns in random outcomes is a form of Apophenia.
You might’ve heard that gamblers will always place the same bet as long as they’re winning because they’re afraid to “break” the streak… even though science itself disagrees.
The point: When users see a clear path to a reward, their brain perceives a pattern of progress.
This makes them more likely to continue the behavior to complete the “streak.”
We can use a similar principle—ethically, of course—in gamification and loyalty programs to encourage engagement.
Duolingo’s daily streak system is a great example. That visible “flame” counter grows with each consecutive day of practice and the streak itself becomes a reward.
You can do the same by building visible, incremental progress markers into your program.
Leverage progress trackers, completion bonuses, and emails and nudges that make progress visible—and perhaps most importantly, fragile.
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AI MARKETING: Remember when face-swapping was the peak of digital comedy? Well, now OpenAI is making a major play with its new Sora app, a TikTok-style platform based on collaborative AI. Where you can now create AI cameos for your friends and deepfakes…Uh-oh.
E-COMMERCE: From chatbot to checkout. ChatGPT now lets Plus, Pro, and Free users in the US buy single items from US Etsy sellers right inside their chats. OpenAI says “millions” of Shopify merchants are “coming soon.” So are multi-item carts and more. It was a matter of time.
GOOGLE: AI search might be the hype right now, but here’s a reality check—Google still handles about 14B searches daily vs. ChatGPT’s 66M search-like prompts. Yep, Google’s volume is 210 times larger. That puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?
INSTAGRAM: Your influencer vetting process might become a lot simpler. Instagram is testing downloadable PDF summaries that allow creators to share account and content stats with brands. Could be a game changer for brands and agencies evaluating potential partners.
INFLUENCER MARKETING: Are podcast hosts the new ultimate influencers? Ad spend is projected to hit $3B, so probably. Advertisers are looking to leverage the deep engagement and trust that makes these hosts powerful voices in media today. Seems like a worthwhile strategy.
*This is a sponsored post.
ICYMI, last time we looked at Weber’s Law.
The “Pattern-spotting” Crew
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