Monday Memo

A Byte of Knowledge

We read a piece from Google about reimagining the mouse pointer for the AI era.

The gist? Instead of typing prompts into a chatbot window, you'll soon just point at something on your screen and say outloud "fix this" or "show me directions"...and the AI will know what you mean.

This is just one example of what AI is doing to the physics of marketing itself.

For over two decades we've tuned the same variables:

Attention, friction, the distance between curiosity and checkout.

The buyer "lands" on a page, scrolls, clicks, abandons, returns.

That whole choreography assumes a screen full of options and a human doing the navigating.

Strip that away, and the funnel diagram we've drawn on every whiteboard since 2005 stops describing reality.

In its place, something stranger takes shape...

Abuyer who never really shops in the old sense at all.

They gesture, mumble, glance, and a machine assembles the offer around them before a competing tab ever opens.

Sit with our own offer this week and run a thought experiment.

Ask how does its physics bend when the buyer never scrolls? When discovery happens through a voice instead of a search bar?

And the harder question underneath all of it... how do you start preparing for that version of the market now, while there's still runway?

🚀 WATCH: How These AI Copy Bots Are Producing World-Class Sales Copy 50X Faster Than Even The "BEST" Copywriters On The Market…

(Plus… They Don't Get Sick, Miss Deadlines, Or Ask For Raises Either!)

Watch the full AI Copywriting Tell-All Video Here

Something to Ponder

We Asked – AI Answered

Our Question: 

“Do brands still become categories in and of themselves? Like Kleenex is to Facial Tissues or Chapstick is to lip balm?"

AI's Answer: The Verb Game - How Brands Still Eat Categories Whole🏆

Short answer? Yes... it absolutely still happens.

📋 The 2020s Class of Brand-as-Category

A handful crossed the line in the last 5 years:

🔹 Ozempic = weight loss drugs. Here's the twist... Ozempic is FDA-approved for type 2 diabetes, not weight loss (Wegovy is the actual weight-loss version), yet the public uses "Ozempic" for the entire GLP-1 category.

UC Law professor Robin Feldman has documented people using "Ozemp-ify" as a verb meaning to shrink something down.

🔹 ChatGPT = AI itself. Major dictionaries are now drafting entries defining "chatgpt" (v.) as to generate text via AI. People say "I'll ChatGPT it" while using Gemini, Grok, or Claude. OpenAI even bought the domain ai.com to lock it in.

🔹 Botox = any cosmetic injection (Dysport, Xeomin, Jeuveau all called Botox) 🔹 Uber = ride-hailing ("I'll Uber there") 🔹 Venmo = peer payments ("Venmo me") 🔹 Zoom = video meetings (post-COVID lock-in)

🧠 The Mechanism: Why This Works

Marketing scientist Byron Sharp at Australia's Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls this "mental availability"... the probability your brand pops into a buyer's head at the moment of decision. His research shows mental availability outperforms even product quality in driving long-term market share.

When you BECOME the verb, three things happen:

→ You're the DEFAULT (no decision needed) → Competitors fight cognitive friction just to be considered → You write the rules for the entire category

Each winner above had to nail four things:

1️⃣ Show up FIRST in a genuinely new category (not just a slight improvement)
2️⃣ Build a product dramatically better than what existed
3️⃣ Pick a short, saying-friendly name (1-2 syllables crushes)
4️⃣ Move at massive distribution speed before clones could land

⚠️ The Dark Side of Winning Too Hard

The legal term for "your brand becoming the category" is genericide... and it can kill your trademark dead.

Famous brands that lost protection this way:

• Aspirin (Bayer lost it in 1919 via the Treaty of Versailles)
• Escalator (Otis lost it in 1950)
• Thermos
• Cellophane (DuPont)
• Yo-Yo (Duncan Toys)
• Zipper (B.F. Goodrich, 1930)
• Kerosene (Abraham Gesner, 1854)

This is why Xerox famously ran ads pleading: "When you use 'Xerox' the way you use 'aspirin,' we get a headache." The company has spent millions since 2003 actively policing the trademark.

The reward for being the category... can be losing the right to own your name. 😬

🎯 The Marketer's Takeaway

The category-defining brand is alive and thriving in 2026. But the playbook is tighter than ever:

✅ Be FIRST in a brand-new category (not just slightly better)

✅ Pick a name short enough to verb (1-2 syllables wins)

✅ Move at distribution speed... you have months, not years, before clones arrive

✅ Defend your trademark the moment it starts working in the wild

Don't try to make a better lip balm. Try to BE ChapStick.

Don't build a slightly better tissue. Become Kleenex.

Position your product so that when someone tries to describe the thing you make... they can only do it by saying YOUR NAME.

That's a moat no ad budget can ever buy. 🏰

Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.

Until next time!

The AI Marketers

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