Target’s Zoom layoff glitch, a sneaky subject line tweak that lifts opens, and why pop-up moments are the new marketing moat... this week’s quick hit has range. You’ll also hear why showing up well in Gemini matters more than ever and a spicy pop-culture rant from Jay Schwedelson about platform responsibility.

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Best Moments:

(00:28) Target’s all-hands layoff Zoom glitches to a black screen and employees learn their fate by email instead.

(01:45) Put brackets at the end of your subject line to spotlight the key hook and lift opens about 15 percent.

(03:17) Cash App x Sabrina Carpenter pop-up racks up 30M views and proves short-lived moments beat evergreen noise.

(04:34) A B2B play you can steal now: a 24-hour “vault unlock” that disappears and concentrates attention.

(06:12) Gemini’s usage surges from 6.4 percent to 12.9 percent while ChatGPT slips from 87 percent to 74 percent.

(07:52) Big audiences, bigger responsibility: why amplifying junk conspiracies isn’t just silly, it’s harmful.

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Jay Schwedelson: we are back for what's up this week from the do this, not that podcast. This is a super short episode where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and pop culture, and then we still have our other ridiculous episodes the rest of the week. So let's get into it.

Jay Schwedelson: And did you hear what happened? Uh, Bloomberg reported this, which was so terrible. So they were laying off all these employees via a Zoom call. So everybody dialed into the Zoom call and they were about to announce on the Zoom, like which, uh, parts of the company were gonna have all the layoffs and who was gonna get laid off or whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: And then right at that moment, they had a technical glitch and it went to like a black screen or whatever. Right at the moment where they were gonna say exactly what was gonna happen and everybody was sitting there like, am I the one being fired? And it lasted for a while, and then the HR people had to just email out to everybody a summary of what the call was about.

Jay Schwedelson: And that's how you found out if you were. Let go. Oh my goodness. What a mess of a situation. Not good. Uh, so speaking about a marketing tactic that actually is good that, um, came out this week. So subject line.com released another cool trending email subject line tactic that's working really well right now that maybe you haven't tried.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause I need to start trying this one, which is. Putting something important in the subject line in brackets at the end of your subject line forever. Uh, a marketing tactic, whether you're a business marketer, consumer, marketer, nonprofit, doesn't matter. We've all hopefully been testing using brackets at the start of our subject line, right?

Jay Schwedelson: But now. The tactic of if you use a bracket at the end of your subject line, it's actually lifting email open rates by about 15%. So first off, for everyone out there that's listening, like, wait a minute, I haven't been using brackets at all. And when I say use brackets, so let's say you put the word new, any W in brackets or just in in brackets, or read this next in brackets.

Jay Schwedelson: Literally you put brackets around it, the square brackets, not the circle bracket. And, um, no. It does not cause you to go to the junk folder, spam folder at all. That's a myth. That's a lie. That's garbage. You could use brackets. And the reason brackets work so well is it kind of directs per people's eyeballs to.

Jay Schwedelson: The important thing in your subject line, and that's why a lot of marketers have always put it at the front of their subject line. The start, the first word, the first thing. But if you never tested actually sticking the really important thing at the end of your subject line and putting it in brackets, you gotta test that.

Jay Schwedelson: That seems to be doing really, really well from this new data from subject line.com. So that's kind of cool. Alright, what else is going on? What else is going on is, so did you see Cash App? You know, that's the app where you could buy stuff, whatever. They did this micro event with Sabrina Carpenter. Okay.

Jay Schwedelson: You know, the famous pop singer, whatever in New York City this week and where they released all this limited edition merchandise and it's all around this collab that they've been doing with Sabrina Carpenter. 'cause Sabrina Carpenter is very into like. You know, vintage clothes shopping, whatever, and they have this thing that they, this whole popup Sabrina is secondhand, well anyway, it generated over 30 million social media views and you're like, well, who cares?

Jay Schwedelson: You want to have this idea of creating a moment that doesn't last for a long period of time where people wanna jump on board. 'cause that's what we want. We all want like some version of an experience or a moment that's gonna disappear and that we can be a part of it in any way. It could be a small thing, right?

Jay Schwedelson: It doesn't have to be where you're doing a pop-up collaboration in New York City. So let's say, well, I'm in a boring industry. I'm in, you know. The, uh, healthcare technology category, and I can't do a Sabrina Carpenter collab. No, you can't. But what could you do? You could do something like the, um, the 24 hour, you know, med tech unlock, right?

Jay Schwedelson: Where we're launching all of our best content for the year, all of our resources, all of our reports or whatever, and we're launching this 24 hour vault. Unlock where you'll have access to all of it, and then you build up to the launch of this vault, unlock for a week or two, and then for 24 hours, you're like, oh my goodness, now's the time to jump in on our med tech unlock or whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: You're creating a moment, and that's where you can create energy around your brand and then it has to disappear. We do this a lot, so right now, for example, my guru conference, our big email event. I think this idea of just putting like these slack communities out there is total garbage. 'cause after a few weeks, whatever the industry is or the topic is, nobody goes to the Slack community 'cause it's really, really boring and it dries up.

Jay Schwedelson: So like what we do is we do popup communities. So right now, for example, we just launched our guru conference, 30 day free Slack popup community. And it's gonna disappear in just a few weeks. And we've had a, we've had a rush. We've had over 500 people join this Slack community. Okay. In a matter of like. 48 hours and then the thing's gonna disappear.

Jay Schwedelson: So. Um, as, as marketers we're looking at the impact of things like chat, GT, uh, and Claude and all the different things on our marketing, well, we all better be paying attention to Gemini. That's Google's AI tool, because I thought this from the beginning that Google was ultimately at some point gonna win.

Jay Schwedelson: But Gemini is really gaining ground in terms of usage, uh, as one of the, the AI tools that's out there. And there's some new data out from SimilarWeb. So if you look back 12 months ago. Gemini was getting about 6.4% of the total web traffic for all the online AI tools. This is from SimilarWeb. Now they're at 12.9%, and if you look at chat GBTA year ago, they were at 87% and now they're at 74%.

Jay Schwedelson: This really does remind me a lot of the original browser wars back in the day when Netscape had like 90%. Okay. And then Microsoft Explorer and and Chrome were trying to gain share and now look at it, Chrome just dominates. So you really wanna be looking at how your brand is showing up in Gemini. 'cause you fast forward a year, two years from now, it's gonna be a very different story than chat t being the behemoth that it is now.

Jay Schwedelson: So what is going on in useless information pop culture? Well, there's a show that's coming out that I'm not gonna be watching. Okay. It's a new show called All's Fair. Now this is a legal drama. Why am I not watching it? Well, first of all, it looks terrible. It stars, and this is not like a reality show. It stars Naomi Watts and Kim Kardashian as the actresses.

Jay Schwedelson: Now, in general, I actually like Kim Kardashian a lot. Maybe a lot of you'll gimme hate for that. That's fine. Because I think that she, uh, she goes out there, she got her law degree or whatever, and I know she's over the top and all the things or whatever, but she generally does not seem like a horrible human being.

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, so I'm a fan of Kim Kardashian. But this week did you see what happened this week? Very, very frustrated by this. So, uh, the new season of the Kardashians came out. Am I watching? Of course I am. I have no life. But this was all over the news in one of the episodes that just came out. Uh, Kim Kardashian said that she believes that the, that we didn't land on the moon, that the whole lunar landing.

Jay Schwedelson: A zillion years ago with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and the whole thing, it wasn't real. And she got her information off of TikTok and that wasn't real. Now, first of all, that's completely ridiculous. That's one of the worst conspiracy theories of all time. I'm not even gonna go down the rabbit hole of how incredibly stupid that is.

Jay Schwedelson: Um, but the problem is, let's say she thought this, okay. Uh, and she and she really did believe it. Okay, fine. You wanna believe that that's a you thing, whatever. But her, she reaches 350 million people on her social media platforms. Everybody consumes what she talks about. And now there are a bunch of doofuses out there that see this, that Kim Kardashian, who they respect and like, and whatever are saying it didn't happen.

Jay Schwedelson: So now they're like, oh, I don't think it happened either. 'cause nobody has their own brain. So I just think that people that have a platform like this need to really. Be a little bit more careful with amplifying garbage conspiracies, whether they believe them or not, because, um, yeah, it's not cool anyway.

Jay Schwedelson: That's my rant. I'll probably get some hate for that. I don't care. You wanna watch this new TV show? Watch it, try it. I still like Kim Kardashian, but that wasn't cool. What's going on anyway? What's going on with me? I don't know. Listen, I appreciate you being here. Leave this thing review. It helps. I know you're ignoring me.

Jay Schwedelson: Don't ignore me. Keep it real. Appreciate you later.