Good morning. Ben Walker turned salt forks into six figures—what's the weirdest business idea you've seen work? Hit reply and tell me.

If you're new here, this is where we track the newest marketing tools, creator updates, and founders cashing out—without the noise.

NEW MARKETING TOOLS

1. Pikzels — Make viral YouTube thumbnails in seconds

Pikzels is an AI YouTube thumbnail generator that makes click-worthy designs like MrBeast in just a few clicks. Swap faces, use prompts, or train a custom model with your face for consistent branding across videos. Start turning every video into a click magnet today — try Pikzels here.

BIG MONEY

Salt fork creator turns weird idea into $100K+ business

Ben Walker quit his software dev job to make forks out of salt. Sounds insane? He just finished selling over 4,000 salt forks at $25 each after figuring out mass production.

His first YouTube video "What if forks were made of salt?" launched a year ago. Six months of failed prototypes later, he cracked the manufacturing process and built a full business around one bizarre idea.

This is the creator economy in action: take something completely original, make great content around it, then monetize the hell out of it. Sure, salt forks might be flash-in-the-pan, but Walker just proved you can turn literally any creative concept into real money.

MARKETING MOVES

Reese's masters 24-hour marketing with Taylor Swift

Reese's masters 24-hour marketing with Taylor Swift

When Taylor Swift dropped her album news on the Kelce brothers' podcast, Reese's had an ad live within 24 hours. The 15-second spot connected their orange packaging to Swift's "Orange Era" and racked up 3.6 million YouTube views in two days.

The speed here is insane—creative concept, production, YouTube masthead placement, and CTV buys all executed in under a day. Reese's leveraged their podcast sponsorship connection (Travis Kelce) to maximize cultural moment impact.

The lesson: Marketing agility beats perfect creative. Being first in cultural moments can generate massive attention, but you need systems ready to move at internet speed.

📺 PLATFORM UPDATES

TikTok slashes hashtag limits to 5 per post—time to get more strategic with your tags instead of stuffing everything in there.

Meta launches Professional Dashboard for creators with better performance insights and monetization tools.

Instagram testing "Picks" feature to highlight favorite shows, songs, and books on profiles.

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