I hope those of you in the U.S. enjoyed a happy and safe Independence Day celebration. My wife and I spent the long weekend recovering from Covid, so it wasn’t our best July 4th – but the weather has been gorgeous here in the Seattle area.
This month’s roundup features a mix of the weird, the brilliant, and the future-defining – with maybe just a touch of what some might call “AI Slop” thrown in for good measure. From BBQ joints run by digital twins to brands embracing their own AI fakeness, we’re seeing more experimentation—and more impact—than ever before. Below, you’ll find five standout examples that reveal how emerging tech is being used to drive sales, reimagine creative, and rewrite production timelines. Plus, a few research highlights and forecasts to help you separate the signal from the noise.
Top 5 Examples:
- Meet Shawn AI, the Pitmaster Who Never Sleeps – This Father’s Day, Cali BBQ quietly replaced its human phone operators with an AI agent named Shawn—and the results were anything but quiet. The voicebot, modeled off the restaurant’s real-life owner Shawn Walchef, handled 150 customer calls and is being credited with an 18% bump in Father’s Day sales, totaling $26,000 across 268 orders. Order ahead takeout spiked by 92% year-over-year—all processed through the digital version of Shawn. TAGS: customer service, generative AI, QSR, remote ordering
- May the Fizz Be With You: Coke Powers Up with Star Wars Fans – Coca-Cola is leaning hard into AR, cosplay and collective nostalgia with its “Refresh Your Galaxy” campaign, teaming up with Star Wars for a fandom-fueled activation that feels more Comic-Con than CPG. At the heart of the launch is a brand film starring fans decked out as Jedi and Sith who turn a screening interrupted by a broken movie projector into an epic lightsaber battle. Even the theater staff get in on the fun, rocking R2-D2 and C-3PO-inspired uniforms, pushing the whole experience into joyful brand fantasy territory. TAGS: augmented reality, CPG, entertainment, movies
- Betr Launches CTV Ad with Digital Twin Produced in 48 Hours – To promote his sports betting and media brand, Betr, Jake Paul dropped a new national connected TV (CTV) spot created using Waymark Cinematic, an AI ad production tool. The kicker? It took just 48 hours to make. TAGS: CTV, digital twin, gambling, generative AI, sports, video
- Kalshi Hijacks NBA Finals with Veo 3 Ad – Kalshi, the online prediction market known for letting users wager on everything from elections to hurricanes, crashed the NBA Finals with what might be the strangest ad break of the year: a fully AI-generated commercial made using Google’s new Veo 3 video model. The cartoonish 30-second spot popped up on YouTube TV’s stream of Game 3—not ABC’s linear broadcast—and featured a surreal mix of dancing aliens, crop-top-clad sports announcers, and manatee meat dealers. Think Grand Theft Auto fever dream meets campaign trail chaos. The ad was created by AI content creator PJ Accetturo. TAGS: gambling, generative AI, sports, video
- Even the Mom in This Ad Knows She’s Fake – Ritual isn’t trying to pass off AI-generated people as the real deal—in fact, they’re leaning into the falseness. The supplement brand’s latest campaign, whipped up by Giant Spoon using Google’s brand-new Veo 3 AI video platform, features avatars who flat-out admit they’re not real. One such pixel-perfect mom cradles her twin babies and informs viewers, “I’m not real,” before a montage of similarly phony parents dive into absurdity (think diaper ball pits) while spouting suspect health clichés. TAGS: CPG, generative AI, health, pharma, video
TOP RESEARCH AND DATA:
- The AI Teammate That Doubled as a Coach – Turns out, AI isn’t just a digital intern—it’s pulling weight like a seasoned pro. In a P&G and Wharton field study, GPT-4 helped junior staff perform at near-expert levels and single-handedly reproduced the output of entire teams, all without inflating costs or workloads. The kicker? Participants using AI were three times more likely to deliver top-tier innovations. And this wasn’t some lab-based fantasy; it was a real-world deployment inside the marketing and R&D trenches of P&G, covering everything from diapers to razors. TAGS: artificial intelligence, case study, CPG, generative AI
- Agentic AI Is the Shiny Object—And 40% of Projects May End Up on the Shelf – Gartner’s latest forecast throws cold water on the gold rush toward agentic AI, predicting that more than 40% of related projects will get the axe by 2027. Blame a combination of fuzzy business value, ballooning costs, and flimsy risk mitigation. A January 2025 Gartner poll found only 19% of organizations were going big on this tech, while nearly a third are still in wait-and-see mode. A major culprit? “Agent washing”—vendors slapping the agent label on everything from chatbots to automation tools, with little actual autonomy under the hood. Out of thousands of supposed players, Gartner says only about 130 vendors deliver real agentic capabilities. TAGS: agentic AI, forecast, generative AI
- AI Search Ads Are Gaining Ground – AI-driven search advertising may still be in its early innings, but it’s already warming up for a big game. According to Emarketer, ad spend in this category is projected to soar from just over $1 billion in 2025 to a hefty $26 billion by 2029. That’s a jump from accounting for 0.7% of total search spending today to a projected 13.6% in just four years. For brands leaning heavily on keyword-based search strategies, this shift could feel more like a disruption than a welcome upgrade. TAGS: generative AI, search
Thanks for reading—and for being part of this fast-growing community of marketing innovators. If something in this issue sparked a thought, stirred up a question, or made you laugh out loud, I’d love to hear about it. Please feel free to share the newsletter or drop a comment on LinkedIn. There’s plenty more to come.