Hey, it's Payton. 👋
It's Friday, and these are the 4 dangerous things I found this week worth your attention:
🟢 Steal it
🟡 Adapt it
🔴 Leave it be
1. Domino's wins the day again 🍕
Sony recently announced it's killing physical PlayStation discs, and gameheads L0sT their mind.
Domino's UK smelled blood.
Two hours after the announcement, Domino’s UK posted a fake "BREAKING NEWS" bulletin: Domino's is doing "digital pizzas only" too (the box is digital, obviously).
6.2 million views. 305,000 likes. Then GitHub one-upped everybody and offered to burn your public repos onto actual CD-ROMs (1,000 of them, first come first served).
🟢 Steal it.
For a lot of us, a PlayStation on the floor with a pizza box next to it is the whole '90s-kid memory. We grew up on CD-ROM games and a large pepperoni. So when Sony said "digital only," it poked a memory a lot of people didn't realize they were protecting.
That's the opening.
Every product lives inside a pattern your people love, and when that pattern breaks, whether you break it, culture breaks it, or some other company does, you get a short window to react.
Here’s how you prepare for the spontaneous:
Map the pattern your people have with you, the ritual nobody thinks about (a game and a pizza, coffee and a commute). The day that pattern breaks is your opening.
Keep one doc with the 3 storylines your audience already argues about (for me: AI fear, storytelling tropes, marketing moves), your angle pre-loaded on each.
When one pops, start a timer and ship a rough 7 out of 10. A same-day 7 beats a polished 10 that lands late.
Move fast, but read the room first. Have fun in the market, just never at someone's real expense.
2. CeraVe’s smooth move with Kevin Durant's dry legs 🧴
Here’s another example of leaning into something “negative.”
The internet spent years clowning Kevin Durant's dry legs. CeraVe stopped fighting it, leaned all the way in, and made him the "New Face of Legs" (well, the legs the new face of legs. this is getting confusing.).
For lotion.
🟢 Steal it.
Search your niche for memes, jokes, and the complaint people keep repeating.
Pick the one that actually hurts a little, and make the self-aware version before someone else makes the mean one.
3. Getting cited by AI is not the same as getting chosen 🤖
Ahrefs seeded a pile of "best conferences" lists featuring their own new event, and it worked: 72 AI-answer slots that used to be empty, with 82% citing their own pages.
Feels like a cheat code.
There is always a catch. 43% of the time the AI cited their page and then recommended a competitor off the same list.
It barely moved the needle for an already-known brand (6%), and it only really landed on narrow queries ("best SEO conferences," 66%) over broad ones ("best marketing conferences," 16%).
🟡 Adapt it.
Win one narrow question and ignore the broad ones. (pssst, Payton here. I suck at doing this)
Broad terms backfire: the AI cited Ahrefs, then recommended a rival 43% of the time. They were LITERALLY funding their competitors.
Narrow wins: Ahrefs hit 66% on "best SEO conferences" versus 16% on "best marketing conferences."
Name the one query you can honestly win ("best [narrow thing] for [specific audience]"), write the page that earns it, and re-check monthly: ask the exact query in ChatGPT and Perplexity in a fresh window and see who gets named.
4. Your AI editor is curating what you believe 🧠
Cornell Tech ran a wild study I have to share. They had 2,500+ people write out where they stood on pretty divisive stuff (death penalty, fracking), and half of them did it with an AI autocomplete that was slanted one way, nudging the words for or against.
Their essays tilted the AI's way, which you'd expect. BUT so did their actual opinions, measured after they'd walked away from the screen, and almost nobody could feel it happening.
Researchers warned some people the tool was biased before they started. Didn't matter. They explained the whole thing afterward. Still didn't matter. Anyone else a wee bit spooked by this?
I use AI every day to build this newsletter (you know that). I'm not here to scare you off the tools. I just respect this risk more than most, because you can keep every word the machine hands you and lose a little of what you walked in believing.
Exhibit D: my voice draft next to the robot's.
🔴 Leave it be.
Diff every AI rewrite before you accept it (yes, like code).
After any AI pass, drop your original and the rewrite side by side and read both out loud. Your ear will catch drift before your eye. (Google Docs will even redline it for you: Tools → Compare documents.)
Hunt for softening: the "should" that became a "might," the stance that flattened into a summary.
Wherever your conviction was dulled, delete delete delete and type it back in your own words. Let AI carry the forearm burn, brunt work, NEVER the thought, the heart, the soul, or the humanness behind the content.
What I’m Working On 🧪
My two boys and I are building a little thing called Three Kings Cards. Real Pokémon packs with one rule: when you buy a pack, we send a matching one to a kid having a hard day, whether that's a hospital, a shelter, or just a rough stretch.
Every pack also hides a Scribblin, an original little creature the boys hand-draw (the Generous Griffin, the Kindhearted Kraken, that whole crew). A full Scribblin world is on the way.
We want our boys to learn how to build something good and then give it away. Nerdy Pokémon stuff + great life lessons is a bonus. Come see it: threekingscards.com.
And if you’re an inspiring or aspiring artist, reply and let me know. We want you to add to our Scribblins and help get the word out!
Bottom line
Be you and have fun. Dangerous creativity follows.
—Payton ✌️
