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Rebrands and pivots, trailblazing women in media & copy resource of the week

Author

Kimberly Houston
March 16, 2025

Hey, hi, howdy, and welcome to Issue #38 of The Subhead, a bi-weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing & media, and a look at some of the women who make it great.

In today’s edition:

✨ This week in freelancing

✨ Rebrands and pivots that made companies more money

✨ Trailblazing Women in Media: Caitlin Dewey

✨ Copy Resource of the Week: How to Create an Email Newsletter That People Want to Read

✨ Just for Fun

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This week in freelancing

This week I completed a couple of articles about women’s health topics for my healthcare client, and started researching/organizing client outreach I’ll double down on for the rest of March (to fill that hole maybe? possibly? vacated by a regular monthly client I’ve been happily working with for over six years who seems to have … disappeared, at least temporarily). 😊

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Successful Rebrands and Pivots

From Apple to Old Spice and Taco Bell to Target plus lots of others in between, here are 30 examples of companies that rebranded or pivoted their product to increase their sales.

Includes before-and-after images + brief, yet compelling, notes on the situation both before and after the rebrand, along with the real-world sales impact of making the changes.

Fascinating!

(And proof positive that the right positioning is absolutely imperative.)

Check it out here:

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Trailblazing Women in Media: Caitlin Dewey

Caitlin Dewey is a freelance journalist and creator of the newsletter, Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends, which goes out to over 23,000 readers.

Dewey was the first digital culture critic at The Washington Post, and has written about technology, culture and other topics for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Elle, and Cosmopolitan, among others.

Dewey describes her newsletter, Links as:

“. . . a digital culture newsletter for people who miss the old internet: the one that wasn’t crowded with Elon Musk reply-guys, viral attention-hackers and shrimp Jesuses. It’s interested in big-picture questions about technology and how it shapes our lives and culture. But it’s also fun and serendipitous and sometimes deeply weird — all the things that social media really isn’t now.”

(I’ve read a few issues and I’m a fan, though my guess is the target audience likely skews way younger than me.)

I’m in total alignment with her philosophy on business-building, which she shared in an interview with Creator Spotlight. So many people want to build these huge media businesses, and fine for them, but I’m with Caitlin ...

Someone told her she needed to decide from the jump if she was building a lifestyle or an empire, and she said, “I am absolutely building a lifestyle. I want to be comfortable and pay my mortgage, pay my bills. I want to be doing writing that feels intellectually and creatively fulfilling to me. And I want to be able to travel a little bit or something. But beyond that, I'm good.”

That made me totally fall in love with her (but not in a weird, stalker-y way). 😊

Dewey is currently based in Buffalo, NY, where she works on projects for The Buffalo News, her hometown paper, among her other freelance assignments.

 

Learn more about Dewey and her work at the inline links above, and / or check out:

Her newsletter, Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends

Her chat with Creator Spotlight

And finally, this amazing round-up / guide she created of 135 newsletters recommended by more than 50 writers, AKA, “Your favorite newsletter’s favorite newsletters”

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Copy Resource of the Week: How to Create an Email Newsletter That People Want to Read

While this comprehensive article might not seem like a copy resource per se, it is a helpful resource all the same, as one of the topics it covers is how to create engaging content for your newsletter … so it becomes something people want to read.

As the article points out:

“With a newsletter, the emails are the product, so to speak. If your emails are unengaging, and if people aren’t getting in the habit of opening your emails simply because they love them… then you’re going to struggle to monetize or grow.”

Writing engaging content is just one of the pointers for creating an open-and-read-worthy newsletter.

There’s also helpful advice for:

· Finding your niche

· Designing your email newsletter

· Choosing the right tools to support your email newsletter

· Getting your first newsletter subscribers

· Monetizing your newsletter

· Growing your newsletter

All with lots of helpful real-world examples to illustrate each topic.

Discover the goodness here:

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Just for Fun

EPSD Virtual Calming Room: Do Nothing for 2 Minutes

From birdsong in the forest to waves crashing on the shore, these 2-minute videos will give you a brief, peaceful respite from “things.” If you know what I mean, and I think you do. Wink, wink.

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That’s it for this week, my friend.

As always, thanks for reading, I appreciate you!

Be well. Stay curious. See you again in two weeks, on March 30.

Warmly,

Kimberly