Aligning Marketing Actions with Strategic Insights
“Marketing sometimes has this activity reflex, where they just go and do things without really taking the time to properly align those things with the underpinnings of the problem.” As quoted in an excellent article in The Financial Brand by Sean Allocca Marketing trends like growth marketing and demand generation play a dual role—they are […]
Marketing Meets Animal Ethics: Rethinking Strategies in Light of Science
Can marketing catch up to animal science? The answer lies in the 117 powerful words below. Scientists are increasingly willing to concede that animals have the capacity for consciousness and that such an understanding entails ethical responsibilities. They are walking away from the moral disregard of behaviorism. It relates to marketing in that so many […]
Avoiding Unsavory Marketing Tactics
Don’t adopt tactics that are more ick than tact. At any given moment, there are voices shouting at you trying to get you do the wrong thing. They want you to second-guess your moral instincts. Maybe things really are different in some new world they trick you into imagining. They want you to reject your […]
The Power of Interaction Without Expectation
A more accurate title for Charles Duhigg’s Supercommunicators would be “How to Use Friends and Get Things From People.” Some of the insights are interesting enough, until you realize they are a guide to straight-up sociopathic behavior. Even if you make it up with the lipstick of “connection,” using vulnerability to obtain an outcome is […]
Why Authenticity Can’t Be Automated
So, time for a harsh truth. If you need AI to generate your “content ideas” for you, you are a fraud. You are doing nothing more than bullshitting people. If someone is curious enough to gather some surface-level, maybe-or-maybe-not-accurate content about your subject matter, why wouldn’t they just use AI to generate it for themselves? […]
Content for Content’s Sake? Time to Brake and Reset
If the only thing you have to offer is content instead of meaning, just stop. Seriously. Stop. Value comes from meaning, not from filling empty digital containers with more emptiness. One of the best indicators that it’s time for a strategic reset is noticing that you’re chasing content for content’s sake. But content inertia sets […]
How External Insights Disrupt Internal Echo Chambers
One guaranteed way to dislodge groupthink—work with external third parties who engage with you as trusted partners. You need people who can have shared values and shared commitments without being part of the same collective trance. Obviously, I say this with a fair amount of self-interest. But that’s part of the point. Differing incentives are […]
Strategic Musings of a Twelve-Year-Old World Conqueror
When I was 12 years old, I had a strategy to achieve global domination. Quite literally. I was an extremely weird kid. The world is lucky I turned out to be kind and ethical. But there’s a lesson about “strategy” in this story. My childhood strategy was about 20 pages of notes on how I […]
Clarifying Expectations Between Clients and Service Providers
When you engage external firms, you need clarity on why. Do you need outcomes or just task completion? Do you need extra time and hands, or do you need expertise? I’ve been on both sides of this equation, and friction around these expectations is a common source of frustration. Things we should normalize: – Service […]
Ensuring Validity in Strategic Decisions
When you want to use research to support a strategic decision or marketing claim, remember a few things: – What people do is more important than what people believe. What they say they believe isn’t always a reflection of their full reality. Data about actions is more valid than data about survey responses and intentions. […]