A Plea for Purposeful Creation
Once you start thinking about “content,” it’s over. You’re already in a world of bottomless, numberless containers that need to be filled for their own sake. You’re already shouting messages no one wants to hear into holes no one wants to be in. You’re creating meaningless tokens that have no value outside of a game […]
Conversations Over Clicks
Are you bold enough to rethink the way you measure thought leadership outcomes? You can do it! Stop chasing numbers. Say no to metrics like views, clicks, likes, and leads. Stop worrying about SEO. Instead, start having conversations. Ask your sales team, “Did you use this in a meeting? How did it help you? What […]
When Convenience Leads to Poor Judgment
I messed something up. Made a bad judgment call. And now, I’m quite pissed at myself. Although I (hope) I learned a few things. Here’s what I did: I used a tool that sends canned messages to people letting them know about my newsletter. I wrote the content, and it did the work. If you […]
The Marketing Machine vs. the Human Heart
Let’s face it—writers are NOT an asset to marketing. We are a constraint. Because only so many humans can write only so much content during any given interval. AI shows the potential of finally getting writers out of marketers’ way. You can generate virtually infinite content. No supply constraints at all. Of course, the fantasy […]
From Content to Intent
The environment… Human rights… Democratic values… Content… They have one thing in common. They’re collapsing. And it’s our collective fault. I wish I had better answers for the first three. But even if I did, no one is asking me to be emperor. What people ARE asking me is to help with “better” content. They’re […]
A Call to End Digital Pollution
The environment… Human rights… Democratic values… Content… They have one thing in common. They’re collapsing. And it’s our collective fault. I wish I had better answers for the first three. But even if I did, no one is asking me to be emperor. What people ARE asking me is to help with “better” content. They’re […]
The Content Buffet
Like many Americans on Thanksgiving, AI is gorging itself on the products of our harvest, cultivated in fields it took from others. And if AI actually meant to save us from all the hard and annoying things about work, it would not only consume all the content but also poop it back out in private […]
Decoding the Myth of Data-Driven Objectivity
Relying on data is often nothing more than outsourcing your subjectivity. Data doesn’t say anything. People say things. Saying things takes sense-making. Sense depends on human context.
From ‘Demand’ to ‘Delight’: Transforming Your Marketing Paradigm
Everything changes when you realize that “demand” is just an anagram for “damned.” Many marketers (maybe most) live in a world of pain and demand and targeting. These are the actual words used. Ok, “but they are just metaphors.” There’s no such thing as just a metaphor, my friends. If you can get your marketing […]
Unpacking the Implications of the ‘Fill the Container’ Mentality
We call it “content” because we inhabit a world where we fill the databases and filesystems that were designed for us. And at some point, it became our job as “content creators” to fill those containers. It seems as natural as calling one of those several things that hold up a table a leg. The […]