Paolo - Paolo Provinciali

Why Can’t We Fully Automate Media Yet?

By Paolo - Sunday 2nd February, 2025

Too many variables: audience shifts, inconsistent metrics, and creative impact. Automation optimizes, but strategy needs human inference. The challenge is balancing tech efficiency with smart decision-making.

Last week, a colleague hit me with a question that seemed incredibly simple on the surface: If we know the drivers of impact and the KPIs that influence them, why can’t we automate 99% of media planning, buying, and optimization? It’s not even AI, just basic automation. I had to pause. Not because the question wasn’t valid—but because a…

Risk-reward ratio (video)

By Paolo - Monday 11th November, 2024

This and other video posts on this blog were originally shared on LinkedIn to publish different kinds of content. Since they got particular traction or positive feedback, I’ve also decided to publish a selected few of them here. This video, in particular, also connects to the post I published a few months weeks ago about hedging bets in marke…

Marketing is like dieting (video)

By Paolo - Sunday 10th November, 2024

This and other video posts on this blog were originally shared on LinkedIn to publish different kinds of content. Since they got particular traction or positive feedback, I've decided to publish a selected few of them here as well. Here's the original post copy: Marketing is pretty much like dieting through calorie counting. 🍔 🍨 🍕 …

Balancing Risks: Hedging Bets in Marketing and Corporate Strategy

By Paolo - Tuesday 20th August, 2024

The other week, I came across this AdWeek article about Nike’s marketing team’s restructuring, which inevitably piqued my interest. The article linked to a post by Massimo Giunco, former Nike Brand Director, who shared his take on how Nike’s CEO, John Donahue, and Nike’s President of Consumer, Product and Brand, Heidi O’Neill, decided to enact a series of changes between August 2020 through March 2021 to eliminate all categories from the organization, focus entirely on D2C (direct-to-consumer) divesting from wholesale, and shift the marketing model to prioritize digital content generation over brand narrative. According to Giunco, going all-in on this strategy led to record-low performance over the last few quarters, and now that the market cap is at its lowest since 2018, the company is reversing its approach.

While it’s somehow evident that Massimo Giunco has personal issues with Nike’s leadership, his narrative allows us to draw a parallel with the question we often grapple with: how can we invest in something that may yield long-term value like brand building but doesn’t offer good short-term measurability or certainty for success?

Four Ps

By Paolo - Wednesday 27th March, 2024

Anyone with a Business or Marketing degree has likely heard of the following framework from the illustrious marketing professor Philip Kotler.

Marketing is the combination of the 4Ps: Price, Product, Promotion, and Place.

While many can agree with it, when we think of Marketing in most companies and business circles, we tend to focus on a subset of one P: Promotion.

If you reacted to the previous sentence by thinking, “Yeah, that’s kind of true,” you may be interested in taking a few minutes to think if your Marketing team is doing everything it’s supposed to do in your company.