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🪩 Volume 120 | January 21, 2026

 

HEY. Welcome to Funnel Cake.
Yes, it has a new name (see last email announcement). No, the takes did not soften.

 

We are officially weeks out from the Super Bowl, aka my personal marketing Olympics.

 

And if you’ve been around for a minute, you know I don’t care about “best ad” lists. I care about what brands do with the attention once they have it.

 

The Super Bowl is never just one commercial.
It’s a campaign moment. An ecosystem.
A test of whether a brand knows how to reinforce, not just interrupt.

 

Which is why today’s email is less about ads being “good,” and more about why some messages land instantly… and others get skipped without a second thought.

 

Put your strategist hat on. We’re getting workshoppy. 🍰

 

 

 

We, as brands, are all fighting for market share. We all have loyalists.

 

Keeping up with platforms, formats, and algorithms is exhausting. It’s also a necessary evil. Pretending otherwise is optimistic, at best.

 

But lately, what’s become clear to me isn’t that marketing is ceasing to “work”—it’s that iconic interruption stopped working the way it used to.

 

 

Now when I say interruption hasn’t been working, I don’t mean ads don’t convert.

I mean people no longer grant brands ambient attention.

 

Every message now has to pass an internal filter:

 

“Is this relevant?”
“Do I trust this?”
“Does this make my decision easier?”

 

If the answer isn’t immediately clear, it’s not rejected—it’s completely skipped. Y’all, this happens so fast it’s scary. (Pay attention next time you’re scrolling through… anything).

 

 

SO IN TODAY’S EMAIL, we’re gettin’ workshoppy. I’m going to share with you data-backed examples of what’s actually “stopping the scroll” or “turning heads” → because you live in a vacuum just as I do. You overthink marketing. (Hey that’s okay).

 

I’m just your newsletter bestie trying to help you through it, kk? :) Here we go:

 

 

Old model: email worked because people scanned everything. Subject lines were hooks. Volume WON.

 

New model: the inbox is now a complete and total triage system. Every email hits a faster filter than social:

If the answer isn’t immediate, the email is achieved, swiped or left to ROT.

What’s working in email now is:

 

What a funny beast OOH is. You have no sound, no caption, no explanations. Just a FEW quick seconds to think “do I recognize this, or not?”

 

Old model: say more. Be clever. PACK IT IN.

 

New model: OOH works when it confirms, not explains.

 

Across every channel, the rule is now the same:

 

Whether it’s:

The winning brands are doing less introducing and more reinforcing.

 

For sh*ts and giggles, here are a few emails that DID have me opening, scrolling, clicking and BUYING:

 

→ SPEAKING OF thumb-stopping content; Alli, the copywriter on my team, shared Clean Towels with me recently as a brand that is ~ crushing it on social media ~ and I have to agree. Problem solved here: single use towels, so you're not using yucky bacteria ridden washcloths over and over again. Idk, I'm sold. ALTHOUGH HUGE MISS on not selling the sweatshirt/sweatpants set in their merch shop. I'd buy.

 

→ Not to mention De Soi twice in one email, but I'm mentioning De Soi twice in one email. If you can't tell already… I'm a marketing/brand loyalist to some more “natural” minded goods (Primally Pure, De Soi, Beekeeper's Naturals, Canopy). AND IT DOESN'T HELP MY CASE HERE THAT THEIR MARKETING IS SO GOOD. Literally DROOLING over this email “quiz" De Soi sent out via email yesterday. I screenshotted it and am sharing a link here, but zoom in when you view it to give the full effect (start at the top). Email gold right there.

 

Anyway. It's marketing-gold season as the Super Bowl approaches. Be prepared to be sick of me (but I'll cry if you unsubscribe, so don't do that).