In this What’s Up This Week edition of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson fires through the freshest marketing trends, tech headlines, and pop‑culture quirks—from Meta’s AI‑powered ad push to TikTok’s “Dinosaur Time” foodie craze.
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Best Moments:
(00:51) Meta’s earnings call: AI‑generated ads take center stage
(02:41) Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of AI advertising
(03:28) Why May is the prime month for emojis in email subject lines
(04:54) Meta’s controversial “MovieMate” test encouraging phone use in theaters
(06:44) Jay’s personal boycott of Blake Lively’s new film Another Simple Favor
(08:00) The ridiculous “Dinosaur Time” food trend sweeping TikTok
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Transcript
Jay: We are back for what's up this week from the Do This Not that Podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where Breakdown, what's going on this week in business, in marketing and life. So what's going on? So first off, meta this week they just had their latest earnings call, and of course Meta owns Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and all that stuff, and they shared some serious detail.
Jay: On what advertisers need to know about running ads on their platforms, and it was really. Eye opening. Basically, it's all about ai, and if you want your ads to convert right now in any of the meta platforms, they're saying that you need to be using their generative AI ads recommendations tools, and it's not because.
Jay: They produce this great stuff, in my opinion, it's because Meta is prioritizing as it are created using their generative AI ad tools, right? Because they want more and more people to use them. So first of all, what can you do with their AI generative ad tools? You can auto generate ad copy. Image variation generation.
Jay: You could upload one image and it can create a alternate versions for you. It can remove backgrounds, and they in beta right now is this, uh, video creation tool as well. Now, why does this all matter? Number one, if you want your ads to perform great, they're actually saying, meta is actually saying that they're seeing a 5% increase in ad conversions for ads that are being created.
Jay: Utilizing gem generative ads, uh, recommendation tool on meta. So basically, if you use their tools, you're gonna see an increase in conversions, but here's the real secret sauce of actually what's going on. So, mark Zuckerberg sat down for an interview this week. And he shared his vision for the future of advertising, and this was on the website, the Verge, and this is an exact quote of what Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and Meta and all that said, he said this.
Jay: We're going to get to a point where you're a business, you come to us, you tell us what your objective is, you connect to your bank account. You don't need any creative, you don't need any targeting demographic, you don't need any measurement except to be able to read the results that we spit out. I think that's going to be huge.
Jay: I think it's a redefinition of the category of advertising. So basically what he is kind of saying is, listen, we're gonna be using AI to kind of upend the entire advertising industry, from design, from data, from reporting, from targeting. The whole ecosystem. He wants to control that and he's gaming the system right now by making the ads perform better, that are utilizing their AI tools.
Jay: So this is gonna be fun to watch how this all goes down. Alright, what else is going on that's more useful right now? So May is a huge month for emojis. All right, I just lost half of you. It is emojis in your subject lines. For sure, because you have Memorial Day, you have Cinco De Mayo. Do you have Memorial Day?
Jay: I think you do. You have Mother's Day. You have all these different things going on, and for both business, which I know business people, business marketers always tune this out, but they shouldn't. And consumer marketers, emojis are where it's at, especially for the month of Maine. Everyone's like, yeah, but they're, they're being used all over the place and there's some new data out from subject line.com.
Jay: That's just not true On average. Less than 9% of all promotional emails use an emoji in the subject line. Okay. In the month of May specifically, we actually see when you do use an emoji in the subject line promoting around any of those holidays, consumer brands see a lift of about 14% in their email. Open rates and business brands see a lift of about 11 to 12%, uh uh, in their email open rates.
Jay: You could use all sorts of different emojis, a calendar emoji, a check mark, a heart, whatever. But this is a great month to be testing emojis. And one of the other things about emojis that nobody talks about is emojis in the pre-header, that second subject line, less than 1% of marketers actually are putting emojis in their pre-header, and those are performing incredibly well.
Jay: So if you haven't tested emojis, this is the month. To do it. All right. Another thing you wanna get more annoyed at Meta while you're about to, did you see this Meta ran a test this week of something called Movie Mate. This is Real. So the other day, this past week, they ran a test of movie mate, which was, they partnered up with the company that made the movie.
Jay: Megan, which is this horror movie because apparently we're halfway to Halloween. This was their halfway to Halloween event, and they rereleased this movie Megan in select movie theaters, and they did a test with this new thing that meta rolled out called Movie Mate. Movie Mate is a chatbot that encourages people to use their phones while they're watching movies, right?
Jay: So that way while you're watching the movie, you are interacting with stuff on your phone. That's. Synced exactly to what's going on in the movie, like trivia and funny things that you could say. And you're basically chatting with people in the movie theater and basically Meta has positioned movie mate as a way to get audiences back in the theaters because apparently nearly 20% of all moviegoers, six to 17 send text messages and use their phone during the movies according to the national research group, I think this is.
Jay: Complete and total garbage. Nothing is more annoying than seeing that screen light up. When you're sitting next to somebody in a movie theater and they're on their phone, the fact that now we're gonna be encouraged to use our phones, it is not okay. Like there needs to be like a warning label. This stupid movie's using movie mate.
Jay: This stupid movie is not using movie mate because I am not gonna go sit next to somebody that's tapping on their phone the whole time. That is super annoying. So hopefully that doesn't take off. It was a limited test. So we'll see. You know what else I hope doesn't take off? So of course I have to talk about stupid TV and movies and whatever.
Jay: So I was with my wife this weekend. We're sitting on the couch. I go, what should we watch? And we saw that the movie, another Simple Favor came Out. Another Simple Favor is on Amazon Prime. It is the sequel, okay, to the movie with Anna Hendrick and Blake Lively and Simple Favor was a great movie. Blake Lively, Anna Hendrick.
Jay: It was a couple years ago. It was a great movie, and if you would've told me back then the sequel was coming out, I'd be like all in, but I just could not bring myself to watch a Blake Lively movie. Is that terrible? I don't know. I can't do it, you know, put aside all the craziness with her and Justin Baldon and suing each other and all this stuff.
Jay: The thing that I couldn't take was when. She was out there promoting, uh, it ends with us. Okay. That was her, it was a movie about, uh, domestic violence and stuff. And when she would do interviews, she was promoting her, her alcohol brand, whatever that was called, Betty Booze or something like that. I don't know.
Jay: And I'm like, what are we doing? This is a movie about a serious topic. And I'm like, I couldn't do it. I was just like, and so now I was like, I really wanna watch the movie, but I didn't watch it because I can't support what's going on. I can't, maybe you can. I don't know. Terrible speaking of terrible. This last thing, which is why do everything I talk about is totally ridiculous?
Jay: There is a new food trend on TikTok. Have you seen this ridiculous trend? It is called Dinosaur Time. Why is every trend so stupid? It is called dinosaur time. It's all over TikTok. And what it is, is, uh, it was started by this woman, Amy Garrett. The idea is you act like a dinosaur when you have to eat your vegetables and stuff.
Jay: So you, instead of putting like a bunch of like leafy greens or, or spinach on a plate and eating it, or you, or raw broccoli on a plate and eating it, what you do is you act like a dinosaur. You take a big handful of vegetables, raw vegetables or, or, or salad, and you don't, and you just grab a handful and you shove it in your mouth like in one giant amount.
Jay: And you act like a dinosaur, the way that they would eat, like, you know, big greens or whatever. And it's called dinosaur time. And people are like, it's so great. 'cause now we're eating healthy and we're doing whatever enough. Can we, can we act? What are we doing? We have a knife and a fork. You put it on a plate.
Jay: You don't need to act like a dinosaur to eat some broccoli. Uh, you don't need TikTok to tell you it's dinosaur time. What is going on between movie mate and dinosaur time? I can't do it. I, I, I, I just need to give up anyway. Listen. I appreciate you being here. Um, what should you do right now? Well, first of all, don't do dinosaur time and don't use movie meat.
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