Campaign autopsies, briefings, and field notes. We dissect marketing failures, publish opinionated takes, and share the data that informs how we work.
Hacker News asked "What even is DevRel in 2025?" The community's answer: nobody knows, the conference-talk playbook stopped working, and developers now start their journey with ChatGPT — not the channels brands spent years building presence on.
Apps froze when BTC hit 83k. $1B liquidated in 24 hours. Reddit's verdict was immediate. Retail trading communities have an adversarial default assumption about financial platforms — and fintech marketing keeps pretending it doesn't exist.
r/esports asked why certain brands become gaming icons without advertising. The answer isn't budget — it's origin. The endemic/non-endemic divide is a trust gap that campaign spend alone cannot close.
BMW pulled all esports sponsorships. Astralis IPO'd and crashed 90%. G2 burned through tens of millions. LEC franchise slots are being abandoned. Full autopsy of the European esports sponsorship collapse.
Klarna signed Snoop Dogg, made A$AP Rocky CEO for a day, and built a pink lifestyle brand around buy-now-pay-later credit. Then its valuation dropped 85%. And now the EU's CCD2 will force every BNPL ad to say “Borrowing money costs money.”
€2.1B in GDPR fines in 2023. Voodoo fined €3M for tracking users who refused. TikTok hit for €345M. Three layers of EU regulation that make US marketing playbooks functionally illegal in Europe.
Brands adopt gaming slang, post memes, and say "GG" on social media. The gaming community sees through it instantly. Here's the pattern and why it keeps repeating.
Robinhood restricted GameStop trading in January 2021 and ran a "we are all investors" Super Bowl ad three weeks later. The pattern of brands that promise one thing and do the opposite.
YouTube leads at 64%, but only 17% of gamers trust online ads. Channel-by-channel breakdown of where your audience pays attention and where your budget is being wasted.
In 2022, the world's biggest brands rushed to build in platforms with almost no users. Walmart's Roblox store went viral for being empty. JPMorgan's Decentraland lounge had a roaming tiger and 30 daily visitors. Full autopsy.
AT&T lobbied against net neutrality, then sponsored esports. Bud Light targeted underage viewers. Mastercard's "Priceless Moments" became a sarcastic meme. The pattern of brands getting rejected.
The U.S. Army created an esports team and Twitch channel for recruitment. Moderators banned viewers who asked about war crimes. Congress got involved. A case study in platform mismatch.
A neobanking app targeted Gen Z investors with legacy finance messaging. The campaign became a meme on FinTwit. Full teardown incoming.
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