Google’s AI Overviews now reward deep storytelling and hard-won expertise, not cookie-cutter pages. If you want your products to pop into buyer feeds, it’s all about proving you know your stuff in ways competitors can’t fake. Search Engine Journal’s summary explains why your next campaign should blend real client wins and industry know-how directly into your site copy.
An "invisible win" is when AI systems cite or reference your brand in their responses to user queries, creating valuable brand exposure and influencing buyer decisions even though these mentions don't show up in traditional website analytics. Savvy brands are getting these invisible wins more and more—those mentions help shape reputation and buyer decisions, even if analytics don't always capture the full story. Learning to measure those moments is key if you want to understand where your influence lands in the new world of answer engines, not just search rankings.
OpenAI just dropped Atlas, a full-blown AI browser that thinks, searches, and answers without you ever touching Google. Instead of ten blue links, you get instant intel—research, product specs, competitor moves—served up conversational-style. For promo pros, this means buyers might skip your site entirely if your brand isn't showing up in AI answers. Time to make sure your "invisible wins" are loud enough for Atlas to notice. TechCrunch's take here.
Hollywood’s scramble over Sora 2 proves AI video can now remix blockbuster content—faces, voices, and instantly recognizable storylines—on demand, with studios on defense and talent agencies pushing to protect their IP. Here's the question we’re wondering for brands: If Sora’s rapid-fire content engine can shake Hollywood’s foundations, are brands next in line? With Sora 2’s creative power coming for movies and TV, it’s only a matter of time before branded assets—logos, style guides, merch designs, mascots—get swept into the remix culture. Is your customer’s brand ready for the era when AI video can generate your story for every trend, every audience, every platform? Read Hollywood’s inside look to see what’s unfolding and check the new Sora 2 while thinking about what remix culture means for brands. Us? We’re ready for an AI throwdown between Duolingo’s Duo the Owl and Geico’s GECKO.
Talkers in the promo game know that great ideas burst out loud—not from keyboard grinding. Paraspeech lets you capture those first-take brainstorms, so you can search and rework genius without the email back-and-forth. When you see how it works, it’s obvious: real-time capture means your team’s best thinking doesn’t evaporate or get lost in some Slack sidebar.
Search is moving beyond classic websites and blue links—Google now surfaces video demos, forum threads, and user-generated content right at the top, connecting shoppers with real conversations and dynamic how-tos instead of static product descriptions. Google’s tweaks mean buyers see lively demos, forums, and authentically shared knowledge way more often. For promo shops, that’s permission to ditch the static product detail grind and create fast-moving, utility-forward content. Read Search Engine Journal’s breakdown if you want your products to pop when and where it counts—on the real buyer journey.
150 merch pros dropped intel on the real AI moves happening now in the industry—think product research, design hacks, and client wrangling. What’s the most popular tools for marketing, client research, and design? How are promo pros using AI now? If you want to know how some of the best in the biz are using AI today, check out our survey results. Get the full scoop and see how the smartest promo shops are working AI into every workflow.
Team SCG's Shayna Cohen survived losing 40% of revenue in 2020, then fired 20% of her clients—and somehow grew from $5 million to $30 million in four years. Her secret weapon? A relentless focus on being "easy to do business with" and trusting her gut when data said to play it safe. Listen to the full skucast here.
Claude Skills are the latest big drop to hit AI. What are Skills? Pre-built “recipe cards” that let anyone (not just developers) teach Claude how to do specialized tasks—think branded docs, custom spreadsheets, pitch decks, or compliance phrasing—by packaging clear instructions, templates, and examples all in one reusable kit. What makes this so important is that Skills finally turn Claude into a true teammate: it automatically follows your standards, runs company-specific processes, and stays consistent with your brand, no matter who’s prompting. Instead of relying on endless prompt engineering or one-off chats, Skills let you capture your best workflows and scale them everywhere, instantly—unlocking speed, quality, and expertise that generic AI assistants just can’t touch. Anthropic’s breakdown shows why real-world knowledge and process are now baked into every task you automate. Here’s Claude breaking it down for you in under a minute. How have we used it? We uploaded our brand guidelines as a skill and then pointed Claude at an article and said “build us a presentation” and it did it, in seconds.🤯 We're uploading skills into agents Matrix-style. Next-level runtime smarts.
🔖 Ditch the note pileup—Lazy lets you clip, capture, and command info without leaving your flow. One shortcut, endless ideas.
🎙️ Clone voices, amplify narrations, and spark emotion with Fish Audio’s AI voice magic.
🌐 Strawberry’s another new AI browser on the block.
🎨 FLORA is your backstage pass to every top AI creative tool—visuals, videos, vibes. Dream bigger, create smarter. And, we really dig their take in this article “When we treat AI as a tool for infinite expression rather than a rival intelligence, we restore creative agency to the individual.”
📹 Brands are eating up Google’s Veo 3.1 video magic for million-dollar looking ads (minus the spend).
🎬 Flask fuses Notion and Loom for creative teams—collaborate on videos, tag feedback, organize chaos. This is how you get creative, together.
⚡ MAI-Image-1 cracks the top 10 for image generation—think fast, stunning visuals at real workflow speed.
🤖 150 promo pros spilled their AI secrets—grab our new research study and see which tools are crushing it