Picture your next discovery call blowing up before you even hit Dial…
Until recently, your website was your frontline. SEO helped build authority, generate inbound leads, and usher prospects into a funnel you could control. It was a narrative crafted by Marketing and executed by Sales. Pricing was the final card you played, after lengthy disc…
Category: New Blog Posts
Surviving AI’s Strip-Mining Era: A Playbook for Publishers and Creators
If you are a publisher or content creator today, you have probably noticed the slow leak: search traffic slips, ad revenue thins, and AI widgets answer readers’ questions before they ever reach your site. Jason Calacanis calls this the “Strip-Mining Era of LLMs” because the models vacuum up work that journalists, editors, and filmmakers paid…
Not Dead, Reborn: How AI could Ignite a Marketing Renaissance
[This post was first published as a LinkedIn article on my profile for distribution. Re-posting it here for record keeping]
People say AI is going to kill marketing.
Honestly? Some days, it kind of feels like it might.
Scroll through your newsfeed, and you'll see the headlines: Mark Zuckerberg envisions a world where you hand Meta your pr…
Why Can’t We Fully Automate Media Yet?
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…
Balancing Risks: Hedging Bets in Marketing and Corporate Strategy
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?
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