BIG QUESTIONS
Is your brand fascinating?
Amid all the tactics, strategies, and channels lurks a larger question that could be the secret to unlocking your company’s success: Is it fascinating? No, no, NOT interesting. Not intriguing. More intense than that. Fascination consumes us. It’s urgent and primal. Bewitching, even. It creates an irresistible attraction that ensures your message is heard and remembered. In a state of fascination, we don’t think and act logically or rationally. In the words of advertising legend Sally Hogshead, who wrote the book “Fascinate,” the state of fascination makes us “…do things we don’t fully understand. We believe messages we don’t agree with. We buy things we don’t need.” In short, with fascination on your side, your ideas are impossible to resist. Patagonia doesn’t just sell clothes; it spins a story about ecological purpose. Supreme drops a new product with no explanation, no ads, just mystery. Apple’s “Think Different” celebrated you as a creative rebel. To be fascinating, break the pattern, leave room for curiosity, embrace mystery, tell remarkable stories, live in the particulars instead of generalities, and involve the audience. (Oh, and hire us.) :-) ??
TOOL JOY
Speechify: Because who has time to read?
One of our clients from BetterUp mentioned she used Speechify to listen to an essay from the company’s visionary founder, Alexi Robichaux, and found it a super helpful way to digest the content. We thought, “Sweet, we hate reading!” (Just kidding.) But honestly, sometimes we want to take in information in different ways. If you create written content, you can easily plug it into Speechify and generate a link so your readers can listen instead. It features more than 200 natural, lifelike AI voices across 60+ languages and is great for Google Docs, news articles, emails, books, PDFs, webpages, and so on. The side benefit everyone loves: learning at 2–3X the speed of reading.
DESIGN WE ❤️
State of Create 2025
TL;DR – The creator economy is in the midst of a tectonic shift, away from the increasingly erratic traditional platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube – and toward “core fan” platforms like Patreon, BlueSky, Nebula, Substack, Gumroad, and Kajabi. This shift puts the power (and $$) back into the hands of creators, where it belongs, and helps build genuine relationships and community.
Patreon recently released State of Create, which is an excellent and comprehensive report on the rapidly evolving and complex creator landscape, all wrapped in a beautifully executed and interactive microsite that leans into scroll-based animation, bold typography, and juicy data visualizations. So if you’re a creator, stop chasing likes and follows, and chase your passion instead.
BEEP BOOP
Lots of link likers: For years, social media “experts” eschewed links in LinkedIn posts. But a new LinkedIn study finds that posts with links boost engagement by 13%. They also found LI carousels engage best, LI polls are a missed opportunity, and LI videos are wildly popular.
Lemon love: As website and store traffic slows, Lululemon goes all-in on brand-building. Their new global campaign: “Live Like You’re Alive,” anchored by the astonishingly swole 79-year-old fitness influencer Joan MacDonald.
Enshitified! How social platforms die: How social platforms die: First, they’re good to their users. Then they abuse their users to improve things for business customers. Then they abuse business customers to claw back the value for themselves. Then, they die. Remind you of anyone?
Billionaires & Guillotines: A new game for aspiring plutocrats and their enemies vying to grab the wealth of the world before their actions trigger a revolution where they all lose. (Feels vaguely familiar.) Provocatively titled “Billionaires & Guillotines,” the packaging is… um… suggestive. ?♂️
WORD TO THE WISE
“Above all else, your mission is to be who you needed most when you were growing up.”
Cliff Weitzman, the dyslexic founder of Speechify (mentioned above)
WHAT CLIENTS WANT
How to get your brand mentioned in LLM search
Meet the new kings of search: LLMs. And these throne-sitters don’t seem to worship the same SEO metric gods as Google. No, for them, content optimization means you should aim for depth, comprehensiveness, and how easy it is to read. How it breaks down:
- Perplexity and AIOs (all-in-one platforms like Google Gemini) weigh word count and sentence count higher.
- ChatGPT weighs domain rating (backlink authority based on third parties like Semrush and Ahrefs) and Flesch-Kincaid score higher (i.e., readability).
SPECIAL FEATURE
9 signs your product marketing sucks
- No one agrees who the ideal customer is.
- There’s a lack of clarity and alignment around the product roadmap.
- Product is unaware of what the competition is doing.
- There’s an endless debate about product direction.
- No one owns positioning and messaging.
- Sales lacks a compelling story.
- Product launches fall flat.
- Customers have no idea what’s new or why they should care.
- Your retention rates suck.
Obviously, product marketing is essential. Here at Pinwheel, we often work with product marketers on the story and messaging to make sure those product launches are successful and customers understand the value. It’s some of our favorite work.
ICEBREAKER
If your primary skillset was suddenly something the machines could do better, faster, and cheaper, what would you do?
Todd: My dream is to open a beer shop (i.e., a bottle shop) that also sells tacos. The slogan: “Beer and tacos and beer.” I can’t decide whether to put an ellipsis between “and” and “beer.”
Nick: I’d probably help Todd with the taco/beer shop and learn how to make a cochinita pibil that could rival any Yucatan joint.
Melissa: I would be a professional baker… likely with a bagel shop. I know it’s getting easier to get good bagels outside of NYC, but still. I make a mean bagel.
Laura: I would love to own a little neighborhood hardware store. Because of big-box stores, they don’t really exist anymore, so would probably have to move to NYC. Good by me.
John: I always fancied the idea of being an urban planner, helping to make towns and cities cleaner, greener, and more livable, with beautiful public spaces and less reliance on cars.Wait, AI can do that, too? Crap.
FALLACIES, PARADOXES & THEORIES…OH MY
The Frequency Illusion: The Frequency Illusion
Ever heard a word or phrase that suddenly starts popping up everywhere? That’s called the frequency illusion. It combines selective attention (where your brain decides something is important) and confirmation bias (when something feels increasingly prevalent, even though it isn’t). For marketers, it’s the hidden engine for familiarity, trust, and perceived relevance. Once a consumer becomes aware of a brand or product through repeat exposures, they start noticing it more – on social media, in stores, in conversations, etc. – reinforcing their impression that it’s everywhere, perhaps even essential, and oh my god I want one… what is it? (See also: omnichannel marketing.)
