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🪩 Volume 141 | June 17, 2026

 

At least an hour of every weekday I'm BREATHING marketing—soaking up campaigns, brand moves, and consumer behavior like it's my personality. (It is.) Without that habit, this newsletter would SUCK. 

 

Yesterday, I focused solely on what was going on inside my email inbox. 

 

→ Good subject lines (will for sure open) / bad subject lines (immediately archived).

 

→ Great email design (now I want to buy this thing) / bad email design (wtf do you want me to click on). 

 

→ And of course… the newsletters that keep me up-to-speed on all things marketing and advertising (like, The Marketing Millennials, The DTC Newsletter, Ad Age + more) 

 

LO AND BEHOLD, there is more chatter than ever (still, ugh, I’m tired) about AI, data centers, ethical AI usage…

 

TBH… it’s on my mind, too. And I KNOW it’s on yours. I KNOW if you’re reading this, you know the telltale signs of AI copywriting (which is the bane of all marketers and consumers' existence right now—we can smell it from a mile away, and btw I typed that em-dash MYSELF OKAY). 

 

I’m just over here saying: there are a few core things from a marketing perspective that you should NEVER use AI for… and what I absolutely cannot, and never will, replace. If you’re frustrated as hell when it comes to marketing your brand (right now, in the past, or in waves), this newsletter is for you. 

 

Let’s get into it. 

 

 

I got a text from my friend Aurrie over at Hopson Rae about sitting in a coffee shop and overhearing some “bros” next to her say “We just had ChatGPT + Claude do all of the branding and code our new website, and other people in our company finally use it to help simplify our emails. “Yeah like before you’d have to go out and pay an agency to do this kind of stuff and now you can do it in minutes.”

 

LOL EXCUSE ME WHAT??? 

 

When I was skimming Daniel’ The Marketing Millennials newsletter yesterday, what caught my attention was not the “AI slop trope” but a list of things brands need to really harness to NOT be like every other brand using AI in marketing. We’re going to heavily assume the aforementioned “bros” AI usage is way less than original. (I'd pay to see it. Nothing like a good game of AI bingo. Spot the “Honestly?” & "The result?", the em dash addiction, and the obligatory “In a world where…”).

 

And since we’re assuming, the things brands need to harness surely comes down to creativity, having an original thought, not speaking into the echo chamber of AI engines... 

 

 

→ Understanding why YOUR humans buy (emotions, identity, status, relief, belonging—marketing psych 101, y’all)

→ FREAKIN’ GOOD copywriting (that’s done manually)

→ Conversion principles that predate the internet (social proof, urgency, why one landing page converts higher than another)

→ Having ROOTED positioning - “AI can help you execute the positioning, it cannot find it for you” (please!!! This is why my agency exists!!!! We do this LOL!)

→ Having some damn empathy (can’t market successfully to people you don’t understand) 

 

 

→ You need to have relationships with your people… like actually talk to them. It’s one thing to see what they’re saying on the internet; it’s another thing to interact with them. And if you listen to them, they’ll hand you marketing gold. Pay specific attention to: how they talk about their problems, the words they use to describe your product/service, and what they choose to focus on (and don’t mention at all).

 

→ To take the empathy note further: you have to meet people where they’re at. Are they losing sleep over the problem you solve? Are they exhausted from doing so much research to compare options? How can YOU make things easier on them? Purchases are never purely logical. Sitting next to them for the emotional side of things is what empathetic selling is all about. And when it comes to the physical nature of marketing… Do you truly understand if your buyer is chronically online, or offline, or a healthy mix of the two? One of my team members at the agency BARELY goes on social media—so she’s learning about products in the physical world (or through friends who recommend them). If that was your majority audience, how would you reach them? 

 

Search engines and LLMs have made it very easy to turn to when we’re struggling with something, and in many cases, they’re useful. 

 

But they CANNOT fix core brand problems. And if you’re constantly revisiting your “positioning” AKA how you speak about the brand, what’s in your IG/LinkedIn/you-name-it-social media bio, the headline and home page of your website… so on… Then I’m TELLING YOU, you have a positioning problem. 

 

And positioning problems show up in:

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re a target person at all, you know Wild & Fable, Pillowfort, Cat & Jack, etc… those are all Target exclusive brands. And fun fact: these brands are curated by Target to provide shoppers with affordable, trend-forward alternatives to national labels. TREND-FORWARD. Target has always been a place I love strolling to see the creativity of brands, and now it all makes sense, because they cultivate that themselves, too. What I love is that they not only create these brands, they create a brand PRESENCE for these brands… that are exclusively sold at Target. Just friggin’ neat if you ask me (pun intended). Have you tried the new Neato disinfecting wipes yet???

 

 

Lmao. And then I called her out on it… kind of. I messaged her on LinkedIn like heyyyyy girl I know you’re probably slammed with launch! And, shocker, she was. I mean this brand is DOING THE MOST—Y2K collaborations galore and a chip launch of the century. I’m furiously taking notes and still very much plan to bring you a whole issue on it since we pushed out our call a few weeks post-launch. DON’T WORRY IT’S COMING (also fun fact, I found out this week that Kat Stickler is part owner. There is an insane amount of “influence” behind this launch… cannot wait to hear how it plays out).

 

Til the next cake drop,

 

🍰 Lauren