AI tried to make me poetry at 3am 📊 (+ $100M TikTok numbers)

Good morning Monday marketers.

Nothing says "Happy Monday" quite like discovering your AI assistant has rewritten all your marketing copy in haiku form because "studies show poetry increases engagement by 47%." While I debate the statistical significance of robot-generated poetry, here are the numbers from the last week in marketing…

B2B and Digital Marketing Highlights

Biggest Win 🏆 

TikTok Shop absolutely crushed Black Friday 2024, hitting $100 million in U.S. sales and tripling their 2023 numbers. With over 30,000 shopping livestreams viewed in a single day, it's clear that social commerce isn't just a trend - it's the future.
Anyone else convinced that TikTok Shop is just QVC but for Gen X…

Fattest L 😬 

Coca-Cola's attempt at AI-generated holiday ads turned into a festive nightmare, with distorted figures that looked less "winter wonderland" and more "uncanny valley." A reminder that while AI is powerful, it still needs that human touch - especially when it comes to Santa Claus.

Who's Treading Water? 🏊‍♂️ 

Meta's swimming through regulatory waters in Australia, prepping for new ad verification rules by February 2025. Meanwhile, traditional advertising channels are gasping for air as micro-influencers continue to steal the spotlight with their authentic, niche-focused content (Numbers below). Everyone saw this coming right?

Cool Trends Going On 📈

1. Influencer marketing is proving its worth - contributing about 20% of U.S. e-commerce revenue on Cyber Monday (up 7% from last year). Micro-influencers in particular are seeing engagement rates up to 60% higher than their macro counterparts.

2. Video content isn't just growing - it's exploding. Short-form video engagement has increased by 150% year-over-year across platforms. Kinda just seeing video everywhere now. On all platforms. LinkedIn included. I’m over there, come see my talk into a tiny mic. (I named him small Michael).

3. AI in marketing is becoming more sophisticated, with brands using it for everything from content personalization to predictive analytics. I’m loving what I’m seeing with lead enriching from the likes of Clay, using RB2B to gather the initial leads. Very cool stuff.

Whilst AI is trying it’s hardest to take over. People wanna see people. That human element is too pervasive.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how B2B doesn’t have the drama of B2C marketing…

🏗️ Penfriend Update

Big day today. I hope. It’s 3 of 3 for feature updates. Bottom of Funnel templates go live. I will report the launch of this later this week, and the feedback we get.
This is the one I’ve been wanting the most behind echo’s. (Which we dropped last week).

This is around 3 months in development. 5 different templates. Pushes the prompts per article for some of these to around 500. Bunch of website scrapes, learning of pricing structures etc. Really the first agentic approach we’ve got to building content. I’m really proud of this one.

app.Penfriend.ai/sign-up for 3 credits every month.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go film my first TikTok Shop livestream. Anyone want to watch me awkwardly sell marketing strategies?
_{Can you still make a livable wage as a TikTok NPC?? Gang gang.}

✌️ Tim
CCO @Penfriend

P.S. How are we finding these? I’m really enjoying making them. And the feedback I’ve gotten so far suggests you do too. Would love to know what you think.
At the end of the day, this is all an experiment. It’s just content marketing…