Paul Butler had long dreamed of moving to New York City. So when he finally had the chance to move for work, only to find out a week later that his social marketing position at Amazon was being eliminated, he said it felt like a “rug was pulled out from underneath [him].”

He turned to social media for support. “Follow along so I can still figure out how to live my dreams,” he wrote atop a video showing his emotional response to the news.

Butler had been pursuing content creation prior to Amazon’s October layoffs, building a following of more than 50,000 across Instagram and TikTok with posts that included countdowns to his big move, but the video about his layoff really extended his reach. To date, it has more than 1.3 million views and 100,000 likes on TikTok, plus an additional 65,000 likes on Instagram.

“People obviously resonated with my story,” Butler told us. “That tells me that a lot of people are dealing with a lot of hardships, and they’re either having empathy because they’ve seen my situation or they’re going through something similar.”

Creating while unemployed, Butler said, not only allowed him to make up for some lost income, but also opened the door to new opportunities and even some job interviews.

“There were a ton of people who reached out to make connections for me, which was so kind and generous of them,” he said. “I had people offer to refer me to roles at their companies. I had people offer to review my résumé, cover letter, anything I had…to the point where it was almost overwhelming.”

As layoffs continue to hit the marketing industry for reasons ranging from cost-cutting to mergers and acquisitions, some in the industry are turning to content creation as a professional and financial safety net. A handful have even made full-time careers of it, though marketer-slash-creators told us that it may be more challenging to achieve than some may think.

Continue reading here.—KH

We all love that one friend who tells us what to buy, right? Maybe not.

In early November, Amazon sued Perplexity AI over the AI startup’s shopping agent, Comet, which can automatically place orders for users on e-commerce sites including Amazon. The outcome of the case, which Perplexity has argued comes down to the advertising business of one of the world’s largest shopping platforms, could have wide-ranging implications for the marketing industry, ad sellers, and retailers.

In the lawsuit, Amazon alleges that Comet AI poses security risks, and that Perplexity disguised the tool’s automated browsing as human activity, constituting fraud. But in an opposition filing later in November, Perplexity’s legal team argued that it believes Amazon’s central concern comes down to Amazon’s inability to sell products to human users through ads if AI agents use the platform instead.

“AI agents don’t have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with,” the filing read.

In a counter-filing, Amazon’s legal team seemed to acknowledge that argument, but pushed back: “Amazon’s concern is not that its customers will miss out on advertising,” its filing read. Instead, it argued that the company’s “reputation will suffer” on Amazon if they were to use Perplexity’s tool, and that Perplexity offered “no explanation as to how the court could calculate the number of customers who did not visit the Amazon Store due to lost goodwill.”

Both Perplexity and Amazon referred Marketing Brew to their public statements when asked for comment.

The outcome of the lawsuit could have larger implications for any publisher or retailer that operates direct-to-consumer relationships, Andrew Frank, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, told Marketing Brew.

“There’s a huge amount of value at stake for anyone who wants to have a relationship with their customers,” he said, noting that agentic shopping could stand to cannibalize ad revenue opportunities, as well as degrade direct relationships between consumers and shopping platforms.

Read more here.—JS

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Shereen Ladha is VP, head of strategy, North America, at Sid Lee, an international creative services firm founded in Montréal. She has also worked at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Rethink, and McCann WorldGroup Canada.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? The Apple HomePod spot, “Welcome Home,” directed by Spike Jonze and starring FKA twigs. I’m drawn to any piece that uses dance and movement to tell a story (and if you look at my body of work, it’s definitely a pattern). The way the concept pushed the boundaries of what the “home” can be and its possibilities, paired with the visual of the space expanding as her movement becomes freer, is striking. It’s the perfect blend of strong storytelling and high craft.

Continue reading here.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Patrón will serve as the official tequila partner of the Grammys.
• Apple inked a multiyear deal with Google to use Google’s Gemini models for Apple Intelligence.
• US Soccer tapped the agency Praytell to serve as its PR partner ahead of this summer’s FIFA World Cup.
• Dove and Netflix teamed up on a Bridgerton-themed spot ahead of the debut of the show’s fourth season.