The First Click
Verticals / Marketing & Design
Vertical

Marketing & Design

Brand, creative, martech and the consumer, read for the decisions behind the work rather than the work alone.

Marketing and Design covers the work of making people want things, and the decisions that sit behind it. Three stories a weekday at 11: a rebrand and what it risks, a visual system and why it was built, a consumer shift and what it costs to ignore. The beats are brand strategy, creative and design, martech, and consumer insights, with a Funny lane for the campaigns that made us laugh, on purpose or otherwise. We write every summary ourselves and link to the publisher, because the reporting is theirs. What is ours is the choice, and the editor’s note under the day’s lead says why it was made. Readers here run marketing functions, design teams and agencies in India, the United States and the United Kingdom, and the stories are chosen for what travels between those markets.

Original illustration of William Shakespeare by Chunks Microlearning

Picture credit

Every story we have kept in Marketing & Design, newest first. Headlines link to the publisher; the tags below narrow the list.

6 stories in Funny
Also covered here
Google · 5 Meta · 5 Apple · 4 Creative Boom · 4 London · 4 Dezeen · 4 OpenAI · 4 Seth Godin · 3 Samsung · 3 Adobe · 3 Anthropic · 3 Instagram · 3 Netflix · 2 iPhone Duo · 2 Nothing · 2 France · 2 Amazon · 2 Pokémon · 2 LANEIGE · 2 Affinity · 2 Pikachu · 2 Canva · 2 Tom May · 2 Foldable Smartphones · 2 ChatGPT · 2 Patrick Neeman · 2 Eric Wang · 1 Figma · 1 Lionel Messi · 1 CapCut · 1 Cognitive Bias · 1 Moshe Samet · 1 Liz Hunter · 1 3D Printing · 1 AI Content Disclosure · 1 suburban identity · 1 Dimension 20: Toylight · 1 Protein drinks · 1 Fiat 500 · 1 brand naming · 1 Jim Sutherland · 1 Mandy Bray · 1 Design Systems · 1 Reba McEntire · 1 LinkedIn · 1 Oreo · 1 Billion Dollar Boy · 1 Open-Source Consumer Electronics · 1 Visual Studio Code (VS Code) · 1 Alex Himel · 1 Samsung Galaxy Tab · 1 Hillel Maoz · 1 CinderClock · 1 Minor Adventures · 1 Product-Market Fit Beyond Features · 1 Google Search Console · 1 AI Ethics · 1 Sephora · 1 Georgia · 1 Higher Education · 1 Oracle · 1 Father's Day · 1 Ninja · 1 The Working Assembly · 1 iPhone 18 Pro · 1 Henry Ford · 1 PepsiCo · 1 Cursor Icon System · 1 Liz Hunter · 1 Linn Huang · 1 Apple iPad · 1 prompt-based interfaces · 1 Alphabet · 1 Hot Lab · 1 Gemini · 1 Flexible Displays · 1 Marek Minor · 1 Please Please Please · 1 Sitecore · 1 Wellness Marketing · 1 Nina · 1 YouTube · 1 AI-native design tools · 1 Fashion Trends · 1 William Shakespeare · 1 Carlo Ratti · 1 ESP32-S3 · 1 SVG Icons · 1 Disney · 1 Adam Brody · 1 Brazilian visual culture · 1 Mobile UX · 1 W. Edwards Deming · 1 Taylor Swift · 1 Visual Search · 1 Casa Kiki · 1 GitHub · 1 Poppi · 1 SoYoon Park · 1 Whole Foods · 1 Google Multisearch · 1 Claude Code · 1 Guy Holder · 1 Smart Glasses · 1 Henri Matisse · 1 Communication Arts · 1 Michael Townsen Hicks · 1 Character.AI · 1 Dinko Uglesic · 1 crowdsourced product development · 1 Mujou Hsiao · 1 Joe Slater · 1 Alex Cooper · 1 CARAVAN · 1 Sony Pictures · 1 Ethan Brown · 1 First Draft · 1 Instagram Reels · 1 Consumer Engagement · 1 Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI) · 1 Caroline Addison · 1 Electrolyte drinks · 1 Marc Jacobs · 1 Multimodal Search · 1 Education · 1 Guinness World Records · 1 Toniebox · 1 Théo Ducreux · 1 AI Search Visibility Measurement · 1 Perplexity · 1 samba album cover illustration · 1 Newcastle United · 1 Lenovo · 1 Fan-First Marketing · 1 WordPress VIP · 1 Energy drinks · 1 Meta AI Smart Glasses · 1 Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols · 1 Community-Led Growth · 1 Hender Scheme · 1 Google AI Mode · 1 Brand Parody · 1 Jazz series · 1 TD Bank · 1 Mas+ · 1 Polaroid · 1 AI Safety · 1 agentic workflows · 1 Garage Italia · 1 IDC · 1 MISSHA · 1 Miley Cyrus · 1 Tonies · 1 Rockstar Games · 1 Studio Sutherl& · 1 Microsoft Copilot · 1 Jolene Delisle · 1 brand storytelling · 1 Codicons · 1 Paul Leon · 1 Toasted Sandwich · 1 Short Dramas · 1 The Simpsons · 1 TikTok · 1 Reels · 1 Human-AI Interaction · 1 Charlotte Fox · 1 creator economy · 1 GitHub · 1 Lou Wang · 1 Open-Weight Models · 1 Google Lens · 1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) · 1 OMI · 1 DS3231 Real-Time Clock Module · 1 Kroger · 1 Mission District · 1 Journal of Marketing Research · 1 Raleigh · 1 Ryo Kashiwazaki · 1 OpenAI Codex · 1 BME280 Environmental Sensor · 1 Acquia · 1 WEBTOON · 1 Fabricio Teixeira · 1 Hexed · 1 Adam Mosseri · 1 Forrester · 1 AI-driven content creation · 1 Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses · 1 Mas+ hydration drink · 1 Artek · 1 FORVM · 1 Tim Cook · 1 Frederick Taylor · 1 Edits · 1 Target · 1 Take-Two Interactive · 1 Dan Maccarone · 1 American Marketing Association · 1 Brennan Lee Mulligan · 1 Dropout · 1 AI search content decay · 1 Häme University of Applied Sciences · 1 Short n' Sweet Deluxe Album · 1 Adult Friend Finder · 1 Generation Z · 1 Xbox Series X|S · 1 Devil May Cry · 1 Casetify · 1 Dolly Parton · 1 Untold · 1 HubSpot · 1 Plastic bag bans · 1 RhinoShield AirX Case · 1 Thunderbird · 1 Walmart · 1 John Ternus · 1 iPhone Ultra (Foldable iPhone) · 1 Image SEO · 1 Touch ID · 1 Red Dot Studio · 1 7UP · 1 Beyoncé · 1 Tsareva Age of Tales · 1 Samantha Garner · 1 Patricia Urquiola · 1 Suprey · 1 User Experience (UX) Research · 1 Microsoft · 1 Consumer Psychology · 1 Circle to Search · 1 Lenovo Tab · 1 Sabrina Carpenter · 1 Rebranding · 1 User Behavior Analysis · 1 Stool 60 · 1 Millennial Burnout · 1 CapCut Auto Cut · 1 Country Music Hall of Fame · 1 ESP32-S3 Processor · 1 Rose La Prairie · 1 PlayStation 5 · 1 K-Pop Demon Hunters · 1 Alvar Aalto · 1 Gifting · 1 AI Hallucinations · 1 Physics · 1 nostalgia marketing · 1 Andrew Footit · 1 Piet Southey · 1 Wetherspoons · 1 Digital Minimalism · 1 Unwell · 1 Yoga Tab · 1 Trader Joes · 1 Rikki Janae · 1 LinkedIn · 1 Adobe Firefly Quick Cuts · 1 Amorepacific · 1 Endothermal Systems · 1 Rob Nelson · 1 Ninja Creami · 1 Kelsea Ballerini · 1 Paul Garland · 1 RhinoShield · 1 Cursor · 1 ZDA · 1 Golden Bell · 1 Intrepid Heroes · 1
Advertising i
2026-09-04
About Our Super El Niño Climate Crisis–Accurate Hot Pilates Studio

A mock brand launch sells a pilates studio on the climate crisis itself, parodying wellness marketing that borrows the language of catastrophe to move a workout.

Funny Wellness Marketing Brand Parody Research → McSweeney's Internet Tendency
2026-09-04
Nice Bottle Of Scotch For Fathers Day Confirms You Can Put A Price On Dad

After years of poor presents a father is handed a good bottle of scotch, satirising Father's Day gifting cliches and the sentiment sold alongside them.

Funny Father's Day Gifting Research → The Betoota Advocate
2026-09-04
Tomato Inside Toastie To Maintain Steady 5.5 Trillion Kelvin And Continue To Threaten The Collapse Of Universe

A toasted sandwich's tomato is reported holding a temperature last seen shortly after the Big Bang, giving an everyday kitchen injury the full apparatus of physics.

Editor's noteFraming a toastie mishap in cosmological units works precisely because the scale is absurd and the sensation is not. Reaching for the language of the early universe to describe a burnt tongue says the ordinary complaint has outgrown ordinary words, and only borrowed grandeur will do it justice.

2026-09-03
Local Woman Struggles To Sleep Knowing Gen-Z Could Bring Back Fedoras Any Day Now

A woman lies awake at the prospect of Generation Z reviving the fedora, satirising fashion cycles and the particular dread of watching your own era come back.

2026-09-02
Generic State University Pivots to Dark Academia

A public land-grant university rebrands around the dark academia aesthetic it has no history to support, satirising institutions that chase a look instead of a position.

Funny Rebranding Higher Education Research → McSweeney's Internet Tendency
2026-08-12
Yes, we saw the video. Heres how to clean your Ninja Creami.

An influencer's viral video showed maggots in her Ninja Creami ice cream. The issue stems from improper cleaning of the device's lid, which collects moisture in crevices where flies breed. Proper dishwasher cleaning and thorough

Get The First Click, free.
One read a day, never twice. Unsubscribe in one click.
Become a Member →

We use essential cookies to run this site, and — with your agreement — analytics and advertising cookies to understand what is read and to support the publication. You can change this at any time from the privacy policy.