Threaten your audience.

I’m not one to click ads.

To read most of them is to either overdose on melatonin or swoon over the words from conniving snake oil salesmen.

Or rather recently, a beer ad I got for what I feel was telepathically — never once muttering its unpronounceable name, or googling it when I got home, only to then start receiving said ads.

I’d love to run a conspiracy on this, though let’s chalk it up to geofencing.

At the time of writing this, April 7th, 2026, Cape is running ads via Brave Browser, a competitor to Safari.

If you’re unfamiliar with Brave, how it works is you open the browser and, before going to a website, rather than just a grey background with your bookmarked websites you’re never getting back to, you see an ad.

Brave’s edge over others is its stronger privacy features, which makes a fair billboard for privacy-related products.

With me being a fan of privacy, seeing the tagline “Protect Yourself with Private Cell Service” warranted a click.

I like their value proposition.

Not a fan of their advertising.

Why does all SaaS advertising have to be boring?

Diving deeper into the company, LinkedIn shows me an out-of-home advertisement they’re running as of a month ago with the tagline:

Your mobile carrier sells your data.

Yeah, is it — really, are they?

Guys, are we even trying?

First off, who are they even selling it to?

Second, and more importantly, 99.99% of all purchases ever done between the past, now, and forever are done so because of feelings.

More importantly, perceived and tangible feelings — the greater the severity, the better.

You buy food because you feel hungry. You buy cologne because you want to feel attractive (or, at the very least, not smell). You swipe endlessly on apps to feel the cheap dopamine that comes from laughter, tepid romance, and pointless knick-knacks.

You don’t feel anything from “Your mobile carrier sells your data” because there’s no immediate perceived threat, severity of risk, or anything tangible.

Here’s how I’d make it better.

I would switch up the entire awareness campaign around the idea of Big Brother Telecom.

In essence, I’m taking their villain — mobile carriers — and making it feel a little more threatening.

I’m not an illustrator, so let’s imagine adverts that feel 1984, Soviet Union, Orwell-esque, with taglines:

“You’re being watched right now.”

“Big Brother Telecom is watching you.”

“Let me see what’s on your phone — I didn’t ask.”

“Your phone? No, that is our phone.”

Because “Your carrier sells your data” is a statistic.

“We are watching you” is a threat.

For the intangibles, you damn near threaten your customers.

Or so, at least I think.

George