Hey – Rob here.

Here are the smartest takes I spotted this week in the Salmon Crew:

1. Innuendo wins. While everyone's obsessed with sophisticated and AI-powered ad tech, M&S wins your feeds through a phallic-shaped pickle with rosy cheeks. Crudeness can very often beat cleverness.
2. AI projections. People panicking about Moltbook agents creating religions says more about our fear projections than AI's capabilities. Also: what if this is a prank, and it's just a bunch of coders chatting?
3. Synthetic decisions. Synthetic personas are 80% accurate based on past data. This makes them useful for testing but dangerous for strategy, because they can replicate decisions but don't know why.
4. Job buried. Job board businesses are struggling with their own positioning and purpose. This may be to do with internal struggles, AI ruining job applications on both ends, or all of that mushed up.
5. Hope not proof. That's what agencies sell, because you need to take a leap of faith to invest in something new. The problem for me is less the promise, but lack of effectiveness thinking to back it up.
6. CRM LLM OMG. Smart use case of LLMs: use them to interview different markets' CRM databases. This may help fill some brand or product proposition gaps when you can't afford big fancy research.
7. Anti-climb paint. Weird and lovely analogy for how organisations treat marketing spend as a defensive tactic. Sure, you may minimise wastage, but you're also limiting growth. Cue 12 months later...
8. BONUS. Just confirmed a new community panel. It's on how to drop killer workshops. Beast of a skill to get folks aligned. Join us.

Plus, some of the best images shared by members. Add your own context.

Thanks to Adam Ard, Alex Bone, Amber Smith, Andrew Hutanu, Ben McCluskey, Dan Hartley, Danusia Smith, Erika Brenner, Eve Moesis, Hemal Gill, Ian Elliott, Jared Clark, Jan Marcinek, Joe Burns, Jon Crowley, Kate Bower, Lara Cory, Liz Hatherley, Lou Goodman, Nikunj Agarwal, Olivia Lloyd, Piotr Bombol, Pollyanna Ward, Ross Macdonald, Sheeza Anjum and Victoria Gates-Fleming for the high protein contributions.

Want more non-algo energy in your life? Join the Salmon Crew.

Keep swimming,

Rob Estreitinho

Founder of Salmon Labs, a strategy studio