👋 What’s growing:  TikTok’s influence on sub-cultures. It’s getting more people into movie theaters (a TikTok survey said users are 44% more likely than non-users to visit the movies every month), it’s turning unheard songs into indie hits (‘End of Beginning’, anyone? 🎵), and its niche recipes are making stores sell out of cucumbers, cottage cheese, and probiotic soda. 

🤓 

Trivia

Which tech brand apologized for a 2024 ad showing machines crushing creative tools, like pianos, paint and turntables?

• Apple

• Samsung

• Microsoft

• Google

Scroll to the bottom to find out!

TACTICS

🧠 3 landing page rules you’re allowed to break. 1 reason why.

If it was just about following the rules, everyone would be converting more.

Break some rules:

1. Your CTA doesn’t have to go above the fold. It’s okay for your readers to scroll if they’re not ready to take action yet. Give value before making the ask. Marketing Experiments ran A/B tests and got a 20% conversion increase when they pulled readers below the fold.

2. You don’t have to keep it short. “People don’t read long content” isn’t the full story. People don’t read boring content. Long copy can and does convert for the right audience. If you’re selling high-ticket items or explaining a complex concept, don’t limit yourself by word count.

3. You don’t have to stick to one CTA. Sometimes, it’s okay to ask for a sale and throw in an alternative CTA for readers who want to learn more. Keep the not-ready-to-buys in your funnel.

Why you can break these rules:

Because you’re following the One Rule To Rule Them All: you know your audience, and can give them what they want.

That’s right. Classical CRO rules are more like guidelines that will work better on average, but they’re by no means absolute.

Steps to figuring out what your audience wants:

• Find out everything about them in a few clicks with Semrush’s One2Target.

• Check reviews, social mentions, and forums to understand their language and pain points.

• Test and iterate—use A/B tests, heatmaps, and analytics to see what works best.

• Conduct surveys or interviews to get direct insights into their needs and preferences.

• Analyze competitor pages to see what resonates with similar audiences (you can easily find competitors with the Semrush Market Explorer tool, and then see their top pages with the Top Pages report)

• Map out their buyer journey and understand how they make decisions.

Bonus: a few ways to think of awesome CTAs, courtesy of Harry Dry.

2025 CREATIVE TRENDS

🎨2025 design trends: What’s everyone trying to escape from?

After a brief fumble with authenticity, brands are fulfilling a need to escape. But from what? 

Adobe’s 2025 Creative Trends Forecast highlights shifts that can help your campaigns capture the zeitgeist. Escapism seems to be the aesthetic of the year. 

1. Generative AI technology. Brands are creating worlds without limits. GenAI brings more complex ideas to life and empowers creators to conceptualize the most strange and surreal scenarios. 

Check it out: ‘Gopuff Bring the Magic’ on YouTube

2. Fun & laughter. We’ve been using comedy to escape daily mundanity since some guy called Aristophanes wrote funny plays around 427 BC. Or maybe before that. We weren’t there to confirm. Humor in advertising is going strong, with 72% of consumers buying from brands because of humor, according to Oracle research.

Check it out: ‘CeraVe Michael Cera’ on YouTube (the fake news-style campaign won awards including The Cannes Lion Grand Prix for Social & Influencer, and three D&AD Yellow Pencils.)

3. The future is for sale. 2025 kinda feels like the future. But brands are taking it further and embracing #retrofuturism, an art movement depicting the future through visuals of the past. The hashtag has around 35m posts on TikTok.

Check it out: Search ‘Philips Besser als neu’ on YouTube (That’s German for “Better than new”!)

4. Surreal fonts: Distorted and dreamy fonts like Doctor Glitch and Blacklisted will be a hit in 2025, says Kapwing. 

Pantone’s “Mocha Mousse” Color of the Year is bucking the trend, though. A sobering, mousey-brown dirty water shade? How do we escape that?

DATA POINT

💻 Email is still the conversion champion

Research by Unbounce laughs in the face of anyone who says email is dead:

Like most things in life, classics don’t get old.

And, like most things in life, nuances apply:

1. First, the results above don’t apply to cold or purchased lists. Cognism says engagement metrics (conversion, open and click-through rates) typically trend 50-70% lower for these. It’ll mess up your sender reputation anyway.

2. Next, average email conversion rates vary between industries, with finance consistently leading the pack.

3. Last, “conversion” doesn’t necessarily mean a sale. It’s the completion of any goal, like a website visit or click.

Takeaway: email is excellent at converting warm audiences. Cold, not so much.

🤓

Trivia