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5 marketing ideas you should to steal this week.

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Happy Monday!

Every week I send you the 5 smartest marketing moves I spotted in the wild. Quick real examples, the stuff you can steal tomorrow.

Let’s go ↓

#1

Anthropic is running ads on your error messages (and it’s genius)

Here’s a sneaky Google Ads move I loved:

When a developer hits a bug, they often copy-paste the error message straight into Google (hoping to find a solution). For most of these niche errors, there are barely any search results. And definitely no ads.

So… Anthropic started bidding on those exact searches:

h/t Mason Hall

Think about it: Someone is literally stuck, already googling for a fix, and Anthropic shows up saying “I can solve this for you right now”.

My take: you don’t need to be an AI company to do this. Just think about what your audience googles when something goes wrong and bid on that keyword. Even spicier: bid on the actual error messages your competitor’s product shows.

#2

Coinbase put Subway Surfers on their earnings call

Yes, really 😅

Earnings calls are the most boring content any company produces.

So Coinbase released their Q4 results video with a Subway Surfers game playing on the top half of the screen. Like a TikTok brainrot meme, but for financial reporting.

People loved it:

This is exactly what Slack does with their App Store release notes. No one actually reads them. So the marketing team of Slack stopped pretending anyone would:

My take: Every company has boring touchpoints - release notes, legal pages, earnings calls, etc. These are the BEST PLACES to inject personality, because everyone expects nothing there. When you surprise people in a space they’ve learned to ignore → it works 10x better than being creative where everyone is already trying to be creative.

The marketing idea is this:

1. Look at every touchpoint you control.

2. Find the boring ones.

3. Go be weird there. The bar for standing out is basically zero.

#3

Make your website playable

People don’t read websites. They scroll. Fast.

Unless there’s something to play with 🙃

That’s workers.cloudflare.com - one of my favorite finds this weekend. You can spin the globe, drag it, interact with it. Almost every strip is playable.

Even the footer SVGs are draggable:

We see this at Wiz too. We built a nutcracker strip that lets you click to crack security problems. On our heatmap - it’s the #1 most clicked element on the entire homepage. By far!

Why you should do it: interactive website = longer visits = stronger SEO = more organic traffic.

#4

Spotify is selling a $495 urn

An urn is what you put someone’s ashes in after they die.

Spotify and Liquid Death made one together… With a Bluetooth speaker in the lid.

You can actually buy it right now for $495.

The idea is that your family can play your favorite songs at your grave. Forever. Which is either beautiful or INSANE (depending on how you look at it). 🤣

They also made an Eternal Playlist Generator that builds a post-mortem playlist from your listening history.

It’s a super smart stunt:

1. ❌ Will they sell many urns? Nah… a few dozen maybe.

2. ✅ Will millions of people talk about it? Yes. Already happening!

The marketing trick is to manufacture a tiny batch of something crazy. The product IS the press release.

My take: The formula is simple. (1) Take your biggest fan. (2) Ask: what’s the most ridiculous way I could serve them? (3) Create a small-batch product that does it. Spotify’s answer was “let them listen to their playlist in their grave”. And boom. They got a fantastic headline.

#5

Google just killed the $2,000 product photoshoot

Google Labs dropped a tool called Photoshoot this week.

You upload one basic phone photo of your product → the AI turns it into clean studio shots or lifestyle images in under a minute. 🤯

Watch the full video because it’s actually insane:

My take: Go grab it while it’s free. Try it here.

Have an amazing week ✌️