Likely Marketing

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...

In a world obsessed with publishing more content, brands are learning a hard truth: AI doesn’t trust what brands say about themselves as much as what others say about them. In this episode of Likely **Marketing, we explore why AI visibility is no longer built on content alone, but on citations, credibility, and repeated validation across the web. From Reddit discussions and podcasts to digital PR,...

In the age of AI search, brands are no longer competing only for rankings. They’re competing to be understood. When someone asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, or Perplexity about a company, the machine first asks: “Who exactly is this brand?” In this episode, Shivendra explores Entity SEO — the invisible layer shaping visibility in AI search. From vague positioning and confusing brand names to sch...

The first version of the web gave us clicks. This one quietly takes them away. In this episode, we explore how AI browsers like Dia Browser, Comet Browser, Opera Neon, Atlas Browser, and Google Chrome are turning the internet into an intent-driven system where decisions happen before clicks. What starts as a search becomes a conversation, then an action—summaries replace scrolling, agents compare...

It starts as a pattern you almost ignore—until it repeats. A clothing brand releases a music video. Then a fintech app. Then an airline. Not ads or placements, but full-scale productions with original songs, choreography, and stories. This episode explores the rise of brands using music videos to become culture, not just commercials. As audiences skip ads, brands are shifting from buying attention...

AI didn’t kill websites, it made them invisible. There was a time when platforms like Google defined discovery, and ranking meant relevance. Websites were the internet’s home. But today, AI search, social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and voice assistants intercept intent before a click ever happens. Answers are delivered instantly, journeys are compressed, and clicks are disappea...

A quiet trade show aisle changes in seconds: one ordinary booth becomes a portal, and curious passersby step into branded worlds they can see, touch, and remember. In this episode, “From booth traffic to brand immersion: The new power of VR in events marketing,” we explore how VR for events marketing is transforming static booths into immersive experiences that attract crowds, deepen engagement, a...

It began with a small shift inside Instagram, a simple “Add link” button that marketers had waited years for. But this wasn’t just a feature update. It was a signal. For a decade, “link in bio” shaped how traffic flowed, powering tools like Linktree and defining what organic growth looked like. Now, with caption links available only through Meta Verified, the journey from discovery to conversion c...

A flicker. A shadow. A heartbeat that isn’t yours. Millions press play not just to watch horror, but to feel something deeper. Horror fans aren’t passive viewers—they seek intensity, remember what moves them, and reward what earns their attention. In this episode, we explore the psychology behind this behavior—from sensation-seeking to emotional memory—and why it makes horror audiences more open,...

You open your analytics dashboard, searching for the next big content bet—sports, food, drama but nothing sticks. Then you notice a pattern: horror. Not jump scares or gore, but something deeper. Since 2015, horror movies have evolved into a global attention engine with low budgets, massive ROI, and strong retention across theaters and streaming. But the real story lies in the audience—young, dive...

AI search is quietly rewriting the rules of discovery. With Google AI Overviews, users increasingly get answers directly on the search page without clicking a website. Convenient for users—but disruptive for publishers, creators, and brands whose content powers those answers. Now Google is exploring something unprecedented: letting websites opt out of AI-generated search summaries while staying vi...

We are living in an age of information overload where AI can generate content faster than ever. Feeds are full of polished posts, perfect visuals, and algorithm-friendly messages—yet most of it disappears from memory within seconds. This episode explores the growing tension in AI for branding and marketing. As generative AI floods the internet with “AI slop”—content that looks impressive but feels...

The room goes silent. The CFO asks: “If we move budget, what happens to revenue?” In today’s privacy-first, AI-driven chaos, guesswork fails. This episode explores how Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is becoming a strategic edge through Google Meridian and Google Scenario Planner. Meridian analyzes aggregated, multi-channel data to uncover true incremental impact. Scenario Planner turns that model in...

For years, digital advertising chased cheap scale. Programmatic buying promised low CPMs and limitless reach, but brands lost control of context. Ads appeared beside misinformation, low-value content, and misaligned audiences. Privacy laws tightened, cookies faded, CAC rose, and trust declined. This episode explores the rise of curated advertising — premium, handpicked environments like Private Ma...

The deal closes. Headlines celebrate synergy. Valuations look strong. From the $5T M&A peak of 2021 to regulator-blocked moves like Adobe’s attempted acquisition of Figma, boards focus on balance sheets. But between signing and rebranding, a quieter loss unfolds. A high-ranking domain is redirected, thousands of indexed pages collapse into generic URLs, backlinks break, and AI answers stop cit...

At the start of the year, you open your marketing plan and wonder: is Threads worth the effort, or just another platform to maintain? When Meta launched it in 2023, 100 million users signed up in a week. Today, it sits at nearly 400 million monthly active users with strong engagement and Gen Z attention. So why aren’t marketers prioritizing Threads for marketing? This episode explores the tension...

I clear a puzzle level on my phone. Fireworks flash. A choice appears: watch 30 seconds, earn extra coins. I tap yes. That’s in-game advertising — opt-in, rewarded, seamless. In this episode, we explore why in-game advertising is becoming a core growth engine. Gaming is a $124B+ industry with 3B players across mobile, PC, console, AR, VR, and cloud. Gen Z attention lives here. Free-to-play models,...

Two brands meet. Not on a billboard. Not in an ad break. But quietly—where trust already lives. Over the last five years, brand collaboration marketing has stopped being a flashy stunt and started behaving like a system. A new operating model for growth. One where brands borrow credibility, share culture, reduce risk, and expand meaning—together. In this episode, How brand collaborations quietly b...

Late one weekend, a marketer falls down a quiet rabbit hole called Google Labs—and realizes something important is happening in plain sight. This episode explores how Google Labs tools for marketing aren’t random AI experiments, but early signals of how Google is rebuilding its entire advertising ecosystem. From AI-generated images, video, music, and copy to conversational assistants and 3D produc...