Likely Marketing

Instagram is stepping beyond short-form video and entering territory traditionally dominated by YouTube and streaming platforms. But who wins, and who loses? For YouTube, the threat is losing viewers and advertising revenue. For Instagram, it's balancing long-form viewing with the social interactions that made it popular. For creators, it opens new opportunities for discovery, TV audiences and...

Short videos have changed how we discover content. But what happens when we want to watch more? Instagram is bringing long-form video back with Features, connecting Reels to videos up to 90 minutes long. Unlike IGTV, which failed to build a lasting viewing habit, this time Instagram wants to turn quick discovery into deeper viewing, potentially extending the experience from your phone to your TV....

LinkedIn’s new features in 2026 point to a bigger shift: turning professional connections into business opportunities. From the Network Feed and digital business cards to creator monetization and paid consultations, LinkedIn is trying to connect content discovery, professional relationships and transactions. But what does this mean for creators, brands and marketers? Creators have new ways to mone...

Marketing has more data, dashboards, and performance metrics than ever before. Yet, are we becoming better marketers, or simply getting better at measuring what happens today? Performance marketing captures demand. Brand building creates it by making brands distinctive, memorable, and trusted. From Nike’s reality check to Airbnb’s brand resilience and Cadbury’s creative use of AI, this episode exp...

What happens when shoppers discover that a product image they liked was created using AI? Do they lose interest, trust the brand less, or become more willing to buy? In this episode, we explore the surprising research behind AI disclosure labels and reveal why an “AI-generated” tag can make a product image feel less human while nudging purchase intent in the opposite direction. Discover when brand...

I’m a coffee lover, and Starbucks is a brand I’d probably name if my AI shopping agent asked, “Which coffee should I always buy?” That simple question may become a new test of brand loyalty. AI shopping agents are learning our preferences, comparing products, remembering past choices and increasingly helping us buy. But when an agent can find the “best” option for us, will customers still name a b...

AI comedy is revealing something marketers may be missing about how audiences really feel about AI. As comedians mock overconfident chatbots, use AI to create material, or bring it into live performances, AI has become a shared cultural reference point. But the audience response isn't simply pro-AI or anti-AI. People are curious, skeptical, entertained and increasingly comfortable with AI, whi...

A Starbucks bear-shaped cup sells out in hours. A Labubu blind box turns opening a package into a ritual. LEGO brings adults back to childhood. What looks like a toy or Gen Z trend reveals something deeper: people collect to express identity, find belonging, reconnect with nostalgia and participate in a story. This episode explores collectible marketing and how brands turn ordinary products into o...

AI natives are entering marketing with a head start. They move fast, experiment freely, adapt to new AI tools and know how to collaborate with machines. But is AI fluency enough to become a great marketer? As AI removes friction from work, a different challenge is emerging: weaker recall, less effortful thinking, and gaps in judgement, communication and human interaction. For marketing, where trus...

AI is making content faster than ever. But as the internet fills with AI-generated images, videos, audio and text, a bigger question is emerging: what can we trust? That’s where AI watermarking for marketers enters the picture. In this episode of Likely Marketing, we explore how AI watermarking works, from C2PA’s digital provenance to invisible markers such as SynthID, and why AI companies, search...

What happens when technology stops merely looking human and starts feeling like someone we know? AI anthropomorphism has evolved from ELIZA and friendly mascots to AI that can speak with warmth, remember us, personalize interactions, apologize, collaborate and even act on our behalf. Advances in language models, voice synthesis, memory, avatars and AI agents are moving anthropomorphism from brandi...

Why do we talk to our cars, thank machines, or feel guilty interrupting a robot vacuum? We know they aren't human. Yet, for a moment, we treat them as if they are. That instinct is called anthropomorphism. It is our tendency to give human traits, emotions and intentions to things that aren't human. And long before AI, brands had already learned how powerful it could be. From the Michelin M...

What if your martech stack stopped looking like a stack? CRM, CDP, automation, content, analytics and sales tools have long defined how marketers work. Now, agentic AI is beginning to blur the boundaries between them. AI agents can increasingly plan, execute and optimize multi-step marketing tasks while external agents interact with the platforms marketers already use. In this episode, we explore...

Marketing AI has quietly entered a new chapter. AI no longer just answers questions, it takes action. From researching competitors and analyzing campaigns to drafting content, managing workflows, and connecting your marketing tools, AI agents are changing what marketers spend their time on. In this episode, we explore how agentic AI, including OpenClaw, Manus, and Claude, could reshape marketing o...

Luxury retail experience trends are changing what it means to own something extraordinary. A customer walks into a luxury store expecting products but discovers art, culture, hospitality and stories that linger long after the visit ends. That's the future of luxury. In this episode, we explore how changing luxury customer behavior is reshaping flagship stores across the US, UK, Europe, India a...

What if the biggest AI advantage in marketing isn't the chatbot you subscribe to—but the AI infrastructure you own? While most marketers compete to write better prompts with ChatGPT or Claude, another AI revolution is unfolding through open source (open-weight) LLMs. In this episode, we explore why companies like Meta, Google, Alibaba, Mistral and DeepSeek are releasing powerful language models, w...

What happens when the audience stops belonging to platforms and starts belonging to creators? Creator TV may look like creators making longer videos for bigger screens, but the real story runs much deeper. As connected TVs, streaming and long-form content reshape viewing habits, creators are beginning to function less like influencers and more like independent media networks. In this episode, we e...

The creator economy isn't simply growing. It's being built. What started as a side hustle for a few has become a global economic system shaped by four powerful forces: changing audience behavior, platform monetization, lower barriers to content creation, and growing institutional support from governments and investors. Together, these forces are transforming creators from independent indiv...

Nostalgia marketing isn't about bringing back the past. It's about reconnecting people with emotions they already trust and making those emotions relevant again in today's world. In this episode, we explore why campaigns from McDonald's, White Rabbit, Frankie & Benny's and other brands succeeded by reviving authentic memories through modern experiences rather than simply re...

Every brand begins its influencer marketing strategy by looking for reach. Bigger creators. Bigger audiences. Bigger numbers. But what if growth doesn't begin with followers at all? This episode reveals why the most successful influencer partnerships are built on something far more valuable: trust. As creators, brands, and audiences increasingly seek authenticity, shared values, and genuine re...

For decades, brands have obsessed over how they look and sound. Soon, they'll need to decide how they move. As humanoid robots enter stores, hotels, banks, and customer service environments, marketing faces a challenge it has never encountered before: designing a brand's physical behavior. A robot's posture, eye contact, gestures, reaction time, and presence may become as important as...

For years, brands could win on social media by publishing more content, chasing algorithms, and buying reach. But that era is fading. Subscription models, declining organic reach, stricter regulations, platform fragmentation, and audience fatigue are creating a new reality: a tiered social media world. In this episode, we explore how platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, X, YouTube, Substack, Discor...

A marketer has an idea—a landing page, a campaign, a new brand direction. Not long ago, turning that idea into reality meant weeks of briefs, revisions, approvals, and waiting. Today, a prompt can generate it in minutes. Welcome to the era of Vibe Design. In this episode, we explore how AI-powered design workflows are collapsing the distance between ideas and execution, transforming marketers from...

For years, marketers chased audiences across social media feeds, battled changing algorithms, watched email open rates decline, and begged users to download yet another app. Then, an old technology quietly evolved. In this episode, we explore how RCS Marketing is solving a problem social media created: the loss of direct access to customers. Combining the reach of SMS with the rich experience of m...

A brand invested in great content, strong SEO, and a consistent online presence. By traditional search standards, everything looked right. Yet when AI search tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity generated answers, the brand kept disappearing. Why? Because AI search has changed the rules. AI no longer simply finds webpages. Through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), it decides which source...