Tuesday, September 16

🌟 Today’s Highlights:

• Pinterest expands its educational resource arm and funding

• Meta announces new ad options for Threads and Reels

• Traditional funnels are dead and GTM must evolve. Let’s talk about it.

• 📊 Stat of the Day: 52% of consumers are concerned brands will post AI generated content without disclosing it. (Source: Sprout Social)

• 💡 Today’s Insight: Hype is the new product, opportunity and challenge

📉 Traffic Is Down. GTM Must Evolve.

Traditional funnels aren’t cutting it. TOMORROW @ 1 PM CT, Rand Fishkin joins The B2B Growth Show to unpack how AI and changing buyer behavior are killing old-school demand gen.

Join the conversation and learn what’s actually working now.

🔗 Claim your spot!

⚡️ Today’s Headlines ⚡️

📌 Pinterest launches teacher resources and $1M education fund. Educators will soon have access to a Pinterest hub featuring lesson plans, activities, and classroom inspiration. The platform is also launching a $1 million fund to back teachers who create educational content.

⏰ Don’t have enough time to build a personal brand? While countless entrepreneurs are wasting hours dancing in TikToks that get no views, dozens of TNT clients are building a cult following where attention is more valuable than social… the inbox! 👉🏼 See if you qualify for a waived setup fee here.

💸 Meta rolls out new Reels and Threads ad formats. New ad formats include Reels trending ads, which place branded videos alongside top-performing categories like fashion, beauty, and sports. Threads also gets carousel and single-image/video ads, plus the option to repurpose IG and FB creatives, supported by “value rules” to target high-value audiences.

📈 UGC beats branded ads by 20%+. Grapevine is for DTC brands that are growing FAST, like Home Chef and Honeylove. They handles booking creators, whitelisting, & production. Are you looking to scale like the big names, and spending $100k+ on Meta? You could be a good fit! Learn more here.

👻 Snap unveils Snap OS 2.0 with native browser and WebXR. Designed to reduce friction for users and developers, the new Snap OS update powers immersive AR experiences directly in Snapchat and Spectacles. With WebXR support and expanded AR-first features, Snap is reinforcing its long-term bet on camera-driven computing.

💡 Today’s Insight 💡

Is hype the new product?

🗞 TL;DR - If you’ve heard the words Labubu matcha dubai chocolate, then you are in the hypeverse marketing bubble. Labubu, a quirky rabbit-like figurine, has become one of the world’s hottest collectibles, with secondary sales soaring past $200 million. The craze highlights how hype itself has become the product, echoing patterns once seen with NFTs (and similar to that, it is short lived in the grand scheme of things).

💡 Insight - What makes Labubu so powerful is not the toy itself (because it is not exactly cute let’s be honest), but the ecosystem of scarcity drops, resale markets, and cultural storytelling that surround it. There were eBay bidding wars on getting collectible Labubus when celebrities started flaunting them as an accessory - that casual endorsement fuelled the trend even more

This is the same formula NFTs once rode: perceived rarity, community validation, and the FOMO loop. We also see the same on a smaller more frequent scale with the Nike’s SNKRS app where limited-edition shoes drop and people are picked from a lottery and if you got the chance to buy one, you’d also recieve a special image (got ‘em!) that became a social media status symbol.

For marketers, it’s a stark reminder that the most valuable products aren’t always functional but they are cultural tokens people use to signal identity, belonging, and insider status. It also builds on the trend of blind boxes which looks like it is here to stay. Consumers love a little surprise and delight moment in any context, so a Labubu blind box does exactly that and creates this dopamine hit which is one of the oldest tricks in marketing (and also social media behavior!).

🔑 Takeaway - Hype is not a new tactic, it has just evolved to move at the speed of culture. Brands should study these cycles to understand how internet trends, scarcity, and community create perceived value. Rather than dismiss hype as a fad, use it as a lever. Scarcity mechanics like limited runs, surprise drops, and tiered releases, combined with strong narrative and community rituals, can fuel demand far beyond a product’s utility. But hype is a wave, not a foundation The long game belongs to brands that can capture short-term attention while anchoring it in enduring cultural relevance and trust.

5️⃣ Ways I Can Help You

Grow you a cult following 📈 // Generate you a sh*t ton of leads 🙏🏼 // Crazy affordable SEO 🔎 // Save $ on your CRM 💰 // 10 minute marketing nuggets 🎙️ //