There’s a lot of hype right now about agentic buying the idea that AI agents will soon buy from other agents, automating entire decisions on our behalf. In theory, your AI talks to my AI, they compare specs, negotiate price, and everyone saves time.
That sounds efficient.
But here’s the tension: buying, as well as selling and marketing, …
Tag: marketing strategy
What Smart Companies Get Right About Brand Building (and Marketers Often Forget)
Marketers can be really freaking annoying.
“You need to build a brand.”“You can’t only invest in the short term.”“You have to think long term, blah blah blah.”
And yes, they’re right.Just like I should spend 20 minutes stretching, meditate, journal, and hit the gym every morning.
Instead, I chug my coffee, drag my daughter…
Marketing in the Age of AI: Build Your Brand’s Center of Gravity
AI isn’t just changing the way people discover content. It’s changing how your brand shows up, and increasingly, you won’t be the one writing the script.
AI Overviews are now summarizing your business straight from scraped articles, reviews, forums, and social chatter. Generative ad tools are remixing product headlines, visuals, and CTAs …
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…
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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