💌: Juneteenth, copywriting, & buyer 🧠

This weekend is one of celebration here in the U.S. as many are celebrating Juneteenth (go here if you want to learn more about the holiday). Of course, marketers ruin everything and cannot resist the opportunity to attach their brand to significant events in the spirit of inclusivity. So, what’s the problem with that? Well, when you don’t have representation in your marketing department, you get cringe-worthy content.

I say this sincerely: marketing is one of the worst offenders of co-opting culture for clout and staying relevant. You can see this all day long on social media. You pick the app, I’ll point out the culture vultures. Not every event is appropriate for your brand to attach to.

Should there be retail promotions and sales like this one?

I could write about this all day. I don’t have a solution for it at the moment, though. Other than to encourage myself and fellow marketers to make sure there are seats at the table with a wide range of backgrounds and points of view. And equity across salaries while we're at it.

I'll get off my soapbox now – let’s get into this week’s edition!

🎥 Social & The Creator Economy

• This story of TikTok creator Grace Wells is crazy dope. She started making fake ads on TikTok, but then they went viral. Now brands are hiring her to make real ads for them. Inside this article are some gems on how to go big on TikTok. The biggest takeaway for me is how important showing your creative process is.
• It appears TikTok is testing in-app shopping. Given their influence on purchasing behavior already, this has room to be huge.
• On the topic of testing, it appears Facebook is now testing its upcoming live audio rooms feature (aka their Clubhouse clone). Oh, and Spotify released their Clubhouse clone too, Greenroom.
• Speaking of Facebook, this week they rolled out a bunch of new tools to help community organizers lives easier. These are a welcome set of new features for anyone growing their community on FB. Most interesting are AI tools that will automatically moderate and stop toxic conversations.
• Facebook Will Enable Indie Artists To Get Their Tracks Used Across Instagram Stories, Reels, & More — I think this is great. The way music gets picked up on social and goes viral these days is an unprecedented thing. Now, anyone can have a chance at having their song be next up. Check this out if you make music or have homies that do.

📣 Advertising

• Here’s a fun fact for you: Google acquired YouTube in 2005 for $1.65 billion. YouTube’s ad revenue for 2020 alone was $20 billion 🤯 — That’s up 31% from the year before. Some would argue this is fueled by all of our pandemic-era video binging, but what if there is even more room to grow? Let’s go inside the ad, ad, ad, ad world of YouTube.
• Well, it was nice having Instagram Reels without ads, but that’s all over now. Zuck is going to get his coins one way or another. Don’t believe me?
• Well, Facebook is also running ads in virtual reality via Oculus. Is Facebook just an ad company that makes social media apps?

📝 Content, copywriting, & Design

• Here’s a good breakdown on the basics of logo design and logo theory: A beginner’s guide to different types of logo designs. I think all non-designers take logo design for granted, and this article made me realize I'm guilty of that too!
• Ok, buyer psychology time. Is it better to use X% off or $X off when you’re running a sale? Here’s a deep dive into which one to use, but the TL;DR is: If your product is less than $100, use % off, and if greater than $100, use $ off. Buyer psychology is fascinating, and I always learn something when one of these deep dives pops up.
• Twitter user Ross Simmonds is one of my favorite follows when it comes to content marketing. This week, he shared a great thread on getting blog posts to rank by using classic copywriting fundamentals.
• Speaking of blog posts: lots of writers focus on the title, but then miss the mark with the intro paragraph. So, here are 5 easy ways to open your blog post with a bang.
• How to create a winning “About Us” page <— pro-tip: that page is still really about your customer, not you.

🤣Just for fun

I opened this one pretty heavy, so let’s end it with some laughs! Laughter is contagious, so join along in uncontrollable laughter with comedians Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer.

The joke? No setup, just pure authentic every day life stuff. Comedians laughing is a top 10 thing in life.

Along those same lines, I watched Bo Burnham’s new Netflix special, Inside, and was amazed at the quality of the production, especially considering he filmed and edited it all himself from the same room in his house. That’s so...creator economy or something.

Thank you so much for reading with me for another week! I'm really excited about a few things coming soon and how this will evolve over time.

- Forge

🤝 How to support

If you’d like to support and keep this newsletter going, here are the top ways to do that:

• Share this newsletter either by forwarding to someone or sharing the website to your network.
• Buy me a coffee — it fuels the early morning writing. Who am I kidding, it's actually whiskey and late night writing.
• Become a founding member of Forgematic — it really helps the continued creation of the newsletter, and you’ll be getting some cool extras in the future (not just my book).
• Follow me over on Twitter where I'm trying to share more of this during the week.

Thank you again and see you next Sunday 💌