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If you’ve lived in Los Angeles or San Francisco long enough, you know the sound. It’s not an earthquake, not a tech IPO, not even a new Erewhon opening. It’s the unmistakable thud-thud-thud of media announcing itself . Loudly. Confidently. With puns. Many, many puns. That sound, this January, belonged to The California Post , which burst onto the West Coast scene with all the subtlety of a leaf blower at dawn. The launch campaign—cheerfully titled “Text on the Beach” —blanketed Los Angeles and San Francisco with billboards, street activations, radio spots, digital ads, and one extremely on-brand food truck collaboration with Yeastie Boys . The message was clear: We’re here. We’re coastal now. We brought carbs. And like all bicoastal transplants, The California Post arrived convinced that the locals were just waiting for it. A New York Attitude With a California Zip Code Let’s set the stage. The California Post is the West Coast sibling of the New York Post , itself a proud proper...

Influencer marketing is having a moment. And by “moment,” I mean it’s ballooned into a $24 billion industry where everyone is pretending to be authentic while customers quietly unfollow, brands loudly overspend, and agencies insist the answer to everything is “a multi-channel activation with lifestyle creators who really speak Gen Z.” Meanwhile, the average consumer is sitting at home thinking, “Why is my favorite baking YouTuber suddenly trying to sell me crypto?” Welcome to influencer marketing in 2025: the house is bigger, but the foundation is cracking, half the walls are fake, and someone definitely bought their followers from a guy running an Instagram farm out of a garage. According to the research by Duffek, Eisingerich, and Merlo, authenticity—not aesthetics, not algorithms—is the actual currency that matters. And while 88% of consumers say it’s important, nearly half believe influencers are about as real as a reality-TV plotline. The paradox: brands are investing more mon...

By 2030, performance marketing will no longer be about who writes the best ad copy or finds the lowest CPC. It’ll be about who can train their AI twin to do it while they’re still drooling into their pillow . Welcome to the world of Agentic PPC , where your campaigns work harder than you do — because you trained a robot to copy your bad habits perfectly . Let’s dissect this glittering dystopia, one “AI assistant” at a time. From Scripts to Personal AI Assistants: Goodbye Manual Labor, Hello Algorithmic Overlord Remember when PPC meant setting alarms for 3 a.m. bid adjustments and living in spreadsheets like a caffeinated accountant? Yeah, your AI agent remembers — because it learned from your suffering. In 2025, automation is like a toddler with a calculator: it does math faster than you, but it still eats glue. By 2030, however, your PPC tools will have evolved from “helpful scripts” into digital clones that think like you — minus the crying when Meta Ads Manager crashes again. ...

Ah yes, Guinness. The sacred pint. The foamy black altar at which hipsters, dads, and office lads with “one quick after work” intentions all worship. It’s not just beer. It’s the beer. It’s not even beer, really — it’s a lifestyle choice with a thick white head and just enough bitterness to remind you life’s not always fair. So naturally, Aldi — the budget temple of discount detergents, mystery meats, and suspiciously familiar-looking candy bars — has decided to swagger into the stout ring with Mulligan’s . Because what the world really needed was a knock-off Guinness, right? And here’s the kicker: apparently, Mulligan’s might even taste better. Oh, and it’s 76p cheaper per four-pack. Aldi is basically walking up to Diageo, flicking them on the forehead, and saying, “Come at me, bro.” But according to Andrew Tindall of System1 — a man who knows both marketing theory and stout foam density — Aldi’s new stunt is less about beer and more about whether marketing itself still matters. ...

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and bots, gather ‘round for another thrilling tale of global capitalism doing what it does best: pretending to care about your country the moment the tax man backs off. This week’s protagonist? Our ever-curious overlord of all things digital— Google , whose recent move into India’s AI ad space is about as subtle as a bull in a Diwali sweet shop. Why the sudden affection for the Subcontinent, you ask? Well, it turns out love blooms where taxes don’t. India, in a generous display of geopolitical appeasement and corporate courtship, decided in March 2025 to scrap the so-called “Google Tax” — a 6% levy on digital ads that had been giving U.S. tech firms mild indigestion and giving trade representatives in the Trump administration something to yell about between rounds of populist bluster. With the red tape cleared, Google has now gleefully cartwheeled its AI-powered marketing arsenal straight into India like it’s just discovered curry. And why wouldn’t it? Ind...

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let AI Gaslight My Marketing Department Well, well, well. Look who decided to put on their Big Bot Pants. Google sauntered into I/O 2025 like the overachieving valedictorian who didn’t just do their homework — they rewrote the curriculum and replaced all the teachers with artificially intelligent substitute drones. And what's on the syllabus this year? Agentic capabilities. That’s right, agentic . A word you’re probably pretending to understand right now while secretly Googling “agentic meaning.” (Spoiler alert: It means autonomous, intelligent, and ready to steal your job while smiling about it.) Let’s talk about the new era of Google Ads, where every marketer’s least favorite chores — data wrangling, ad copywriting, campaign optimization — are now performed by a caffeinated AI assistant who apparently read The 4-Hour Workweek and said, “Hold my neural net.” 🧠 “More Intelligent, Agentic, and Personalized” — Says the Megamind Behind th...