I'm feeling thirsty, so let's start off today with THREE DRINK SWIPES!

I thought this was a fun and clever ad from Guinness that was released around the Kings Coronation:

For this Banana Shake ad for McDonald's I like their use of dumb puns!

“Go bananas” “It’s got appeal”

I’m Loving It 😂

This ad justifies drinking Kool-Aid over soda for it’s nutritional value and price value. I might call BS on the “nutritional value” of it, but overall this old print ad does a great job of justifying the purchase of Kool-Aid over the competitor!

One upside of social media is how people are incentivized to put a lot of information in a small amount of space.

Here's 3 examples:

This image shows four ways of reducing traffic noise to a residential area:

This little square lists 72 different AI tools all categorized: 

This chart shows booms & busts happening with regular frequency.

I love when something takes a lot of complex data and simplifies it like this:

Small square + Lots of Info = Cool!

The email subject line of this SWIPES email is always pretty standard:

I was out of town all this month, and am excited to be back home in Austin!

Here's a pic of me in Barcelona:

Cool hotel I stayed at:

It's times when I leave this long that I realize how cool it is to work primarily from the internet.

Happy to be back home again!

This happens at every wedding I go to: 

People take pics on their phone and immediately post to Instagram where they get shared/liked/commented instantly.

3 Months Later you get an email link from the bride/groom with professional photos…wayyy after the moment has passed😕
I was discussing with a friend that it'd almost be cooler to hire someone to take good pics with their phone and immediately post them during the event! 

They would post from their phone, tag people, and the event would spread on socials. 
This whole "I'll send you photos 3 months later" thing seems antiquated now and really misses the fun of posting them around the main event. 

Also anytime I've hired a photographer part of the deal is I get their raw photo dump right after the shoot. 

I make sure they know at the end of the photo session I'm going to pop that SD card into my laptop so I have the photos now!

Here's a fun book I've been reading: The Wright Brothers.

Reading about historical events makes you realize huge technological shifts followed by fear is totally normal.

In 1903 the Wright Brothers made the first official powered flight, and it's fun to read accounts of how "flight will totally change EVERYTHING and we are not ready for this!!!! "

Now we completely take flight completely for granted.
 

I saw this posted on a bulletin board at my gym and snapped a pic:

The reason I thought it was cool because it was:
- Super simple.
- Customized to the community it was posted on.
- Has easy way to follow/contact/book (Instagram handle).

On the same trip to the gym I saw another incredibly simple (yet effective) advertisement:

I biked by and the couple selling all their stuff had basically moved 100% of the merch except a single couch.

It doesn’t get simpler than writing out you’ve got a yard sale than a flipped over cardboard box and Sharpie!

Grab people's attention by being:
- New
- Novel
- Unique

This hilarious billboard I drove past in Houston was all of the above 😂

Of the hundred other lawyer billboards I saw that day, THIS ONE STOOD OUT!

I do kinda wish they had a better CTA though.

While it caught my eye, I barely noticed the name, and have no idea what kind of things they help with 🤔

I have to admit the branding of it was pretty hilarious and probably drums up business in indirect ways.

My favorite traffic stream is having an article that ranks top of Google AND has a YouTube video version on it.

- This creates virtuous cycle of high metrics on Google/Youtube.
- Higher metrics on YouTube keep it getting recommended.
- Higher metrics on Google keep it #1.

The virtuous cycle looks like this:

While everyone is completely distracted by AI stuff, I think spending the next quarter massively improving my own SEO/YouTubeSEO might be worthwhile!

I've had a bunch of travels spanning alllll this May, and I'm currently in Madrid for an Indian wedding!

However the main thing I was impressed by last night was the McDonald's automated ordering system 🍔

To be honest this is waaayyyyyy better, waaayyyyyy more fun, and waaayyyyyy less judgemental than ordering from a live person (especially at 1am) 😂

Have you ever used these automated ordering systems? It's 300% better than a human IMO!

In 1980 Phil Knight (the founder of Nike) wrote out these rules…or guidelines….or motivations…or “manifesto” on how to operate Nike as a company:

I loved the simplicity and vibe of this manifesto!

While this is meant to be a funny meme I totally relate to it!

On one hand you wonder why your neck might be stiff, then you realize for 12 hours a day you’re slouching over a screen or looking down at a phone.

The solution seems obvious after seeing this 😂
 

Guinness Beer had this famous "Animals Stealing A Guinness" campaign running from 1930 till 1982.

However it was the toucan that stole the show, and was the most popular part of this 52-year-running brand awareness campaign!

Some other fun animal Guinness ads include:
- The seal
- The bear
- The turtle
- The crocodile

What a fun, effective, and frame-able ad campaign!

The economy is an ever-shifting system that keeps evolving with technology. 

Destruction of one job is the creation of another. 

It's almost impossible to look forward and predict the next set of occupations.

Sometimes a picture can say MANY words...and it takes your brain far less work to understand it.

Without a single word this demonstration shows how strong this DKW car was by carrying 30+ men:

Or this image that instantly conveys that social media platforms can potentially be like drugs. A great visual statement.

The image alone here does most of the talking in this 1963 Whopper ad. It has 4 pieces of copy I really like:

“It’s a meal in itself!”
“Only 39¢”
"Actual Size”
“Try one with a Coke!”

I kind of want a Whopper now 👀

Of all the social networks I've ever been on, Twitter is the king of fostering Virtual → IRL friendships.

Just hung out with @AlphaSignalAI! Super smart ML/AI engineer guy who just moved to Austin:

Also this is how one of my neighbors Sam see's if I'm home 😂

In this great interview Stephen Wolfram says the best prompt engineers for things like ChatGPT are "Expository Writers." 

He goes on to explain that an "Expository Writer" is somebody who can explain stuff really well. 

I've been seeing that people who are great at writing are also great at getting AI to do things for them.

I use ChatGPT, Google Bard, and other AI tools every single day. I just made a quick AI video course on:
- Over-hyped features.
- Features I use every day.
- I show you how here (members only video)

If you want to see more ways I'm using AI and copywriting to improve businesses, then join Copywriting Course right now.

One thing I'm secretly gonna be doing in June 2023 is focus on SEO.

Search engine traffic isn't as sexy as social media traffic because it doesn't feel immediate....but it's the secret driver of many big sites on the internet.

I've personally used Ahrefs for 7+ years now...and if you want to improve your website's SEO checkout Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a powerful SEO tool that tracks your website's performance in search engines, fix SEO issues, and improve your website's ranking.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools:

• Track your website's organic traffic
• Identify and fix SEO issues
• Improve your website's ranking
• Research keywords
• Track your backlinks
• Monitor your website's performance

I personally use it to rank in search engines, then make YouTube videos about those articles....which creates this "virtuous cycle" that makes my blog article AND YouTube video more popular:

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is perfect for anyone who wants to improve their website's SEO. It's easy to use and packed with features that can help you take your SEO to the next level.

Sign up for a free trial of Ahrefs Webmaster Tool today and see for yourself how it can help you improve your website's SEO.

Click here to sign up for a free trial: ahrefs.com/AWT

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A simple but effective flyer....this guy getting free dating leads with a simple physical flyer 😂

It's a solid flyer too!

What I’m seeing with AI stuff for creators:

You be creative and make things....then the AI creates all the “supporting content” like tags, captions, timestamps, bullet points etc.

It's personally been saving me tons of time on tasks aren’t AS important.

For example, making video "chapters" is a pain, but now AI can do that stuff:

So neat!

Jobs getting destroyed (or changing) is scary, but throughout history as jobs get destroyed, higher-paying and better jobs are often created.

For example:

Here's 333 jobs that no longer exist, or have been radically changed:

On the flip side, here's 333 jobs that've been created in the last 20 years alone:

I've already started radically shifting what it means to be a copywriter but utilizing AI everyday.

The advancement in this area is nuts. For example I've been playing with Google Bard (the Google version of ChatGPT), and it's pretty awesome.

Instead of "typing out" a response, it delivers it as a fully done article. You can then click through 3 different drafts, which is super helpful for generating ideas!

This is a tool that didn't exist in the world till like....YESTERDAY!

Kind of wild to have all these extra capabilities, feels a bit like a superpower.

My friend Sam lives a few doors down from me, and we "pop-in" to each others houses all the time. This is how Sam sees if I'm home.

He's like a real life Dennis The Menace 😂

The point of copywriting is to know how to increase every feeding funnel into your business...

...it's an omni-skill that can be applied to ANY business you run:

That's why I love copywriting as a skill, it can be applied to ANY industry you go into.

Remember this chart from above?

My friend Chris Dunn made this cool Mind Map out of it that breaks down copywriting into sub-sections:

The way he did was:

1.) Tell ChatGPT "Please create a detailed mind map of [INSERT WHATEVER] using the markmap.js formatting.

2.) Copy the output text and paste in https://markmap.js.org/repl

3.) Save interactive HTML file and open it.

This is the result, a neat "mind map" of "COPYWRITING" broken down into little sections!

I did this myself, and used the topic "CREATING A POPULAR EMAIL NEWSLETTER" to make this mind map:

Kinda neat!

Let's start today off with THREE different swipes!

1.) This is a “writing mark-up” ad that explains each feature of these huaraches shoes:

There's something just so dang eye-catching about hand-writing when overlaid on an image!

2.) Welllll maybe eating Jello all day won’t make you lose much weight, but in 1952 this was promoted as a great tasting yet lower-in-calorie dessert. Not sure why he’s weighing himself with loafers on…that’s like 1 extra pound on the scale 😬

3.) To be honest this is a great pitch for Rick.

He’ll never:
✔️ Give you up
✔️ Let you down
✔️ Desert you 😂

Sometimes a complex subject can be better illustrated than told. For example this is a cool graphic that shows all the stuff that comes out of a barrel of oil:

While electric vehicles and transportation is clearly the way of the future, it's interesting to note that oil propelled our species forward for several hundred years.

This graphic shows a portion of the other products that it helped provide.

Checkout this concise 8th grade overall exam from 1912.

Think you can pass it??

I'm in St. Kitts all week and it's awesome!

Here I am walking over an old 400 year old dam:

My hiking outfit (and doing my best to avoid sun damage) 😬

After I finish this newsletter I'm immediately jumping into the ocean 🙂

As Apple started getting bigger and bigger, its logo got simpler and simpler:

I spoke about this before in this video:

It basically says you should pick a slogan based on your company size: 

• Small Company: Be very direct. 
• Medium Company: Can be slightly vague. 
• Big Company: Aspirational.

For example:

When you’re a giant brand you have many products and many services, so a “direct” slogan is hard.

That’s when you can go aspirational and vague like:

A Redditor said his mechanic brother sent him this sketch to easier understand different tires…super simple, and you instantly understand!

Forget running a Twitter Poll, just run an outdoor  to see which house color your neighbors prefer!

What a fun idea + way to meet the neighbors 😂

I made a Twitter Cheat Sheet.

Can help spark new ideas to post 🔥

I like making cheat sheets where a single image can spark a thousand ideas!

Apparently pestering your kid to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or business owner really works!

A possible reason for the average income of Indian's (at least in the USA) is there's a large percentage of business owners as well as engineering based professions.

Take a look at data supporting this:

Basically the more "engineer-y" your job is, the higher your lifetime earning potential is.

My buddy Nick Gray is famous for throwing "2 Hour Cocktail Parties", and one fun thing he does is organize parties at OTHER people's houses:

He held one of these parties on Wednesday, I was there for a speedy 2 hours, met a bunch of people (old and new) and left!

He will often invite a special guest, this time it was Andrew Wilkinson whose company just went public (guy in the middle):

Nick always conducts at least 1 or 2 quick ice breakers, here's him in action:

This party was hosted at Cody Mclain's house here in Austin, and he had this secondary backyard area where the whole party could stand around:

This ice breaker was HUGE, maybe 40 or 50 people, so Nick kept the train moving quick and the icebreaker was done in 13 minutes flat (I timed it) 😬

Was a fun time!

Anyone else notice when messaging groups get too big, the quality goes down dramatically? 

Like if you're in an iMessage or WhatsApp group where people keep getting added, it has some sort of natural size ceiling before it devolves into annoying-ness:

In the last few months I've left several text groups (or at least muted them) that have just got too chatty. The main problem is your phone pinging 100 times a day from a single group...that's personally too much for me to handle.

I love “Marking-Up” images to explain features. Checkout this Esprit Shoes ad showcasing the features of these huaraches: