This week marks the fifteenth anniversary of my blog. Crazy, right? I realize that nobody cares about an anniversary like this … I don’t even care, honestly … but I thought I would use the milestone as a teachable moment because blogging changed my life. And here is the main lesson of the milestone: To stand out in this world, you have to be known. To be known, you have to show up consistently. Consistency is more important than genius. Unfortunately, this is where most people fail. They stop and start, or perhaps they never start at all. In my Personal Branding Master Class, I show a slide ..read more

The world is going bonkers over a bombastic claim implying that AI is the doom of marketing. On a recent episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast hosted by Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput, the hosts referred to an interview of Sam Altman on a site called Our AI Journey. The interview is behind a paywall, but Paul relayed this specific quote about the doom of marketing and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Paul noted that it is unusual that Altman would comment on something so specifically. Here it is: “Oh for that (marketing) it will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strat ..read more

All over the web, I’m reading accounts about the ineffectiveness of purpose-driven marketing. Have marketers ruined everything again? The story goes like this: Companies make claims of civil service, altruism, and environmental goodness and then don’t follow up with actions. Bad actors have been in the news so much many people — especially young people — don’t trust any corporate claims any more. Now here is where it gets weird. Research shows that when your brand aligns with a consumer’s values — when you have shared meaning — it can be the highest driver of brand loyalty. So it’s not like w ..read more

A friend forwarded a post to me penned by digital superstar Neil Patel. I like and respect Neil a lot, and generally I agree with him, but in this case, I don’t — and I think his post provides a great lesson in the value of personal branding. Which works better? Today we’ll examine the business value of the personal brand versus corporate brand. Personal brand versus corporate brand Neil’s post goes through a detailed analysis of the number of followers on his personal and corporate accounts. He does his best to attribute revenue streams to his personal brand versus corporate brand, to determ ..read more

When I dress for the day, the first question that enters my head is, “I wonder how old this shirt is?” So … I’m not a shopper. But I do love studying the marketing behind shopping trends, and there is something going on right now that is blowing my mind. Temu and Shein are dominating the retail scene, seemingly coming out of nowhere. And when I say out of nowhere, Temu was founded 18 months ago and is now the most downloaded retail app in the world with 250 million customers. Shein has been around longer, but since the pandemic, it has become the number one fashion retailer in the world.  ..read more

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the most famous blog post I’ve written, and arguably one of the most well-known blog posts in marketing history. I am not one to reminisce or grow crazy over anniversaries, but publishing this post ten years ago was a unique, unexpected life experience and cultural moment worthy of explanation. Today, we’ll look at the impact of Content Shock and lessons from one of the most widely shared business blog posts in history. The idea behind the blog post It was the summer of 2013. I was on a plane to give a speech in Montreal, but I couldn’t relax because I ..read more

Somebody in my community asked me, in the coming year, what are your plans to grow your business? This question stopped me in my tracks for a moment because this year, I have no plans to grow my business. Isn’t that a strange and unexpected answer? Might make a good story. So here it is. A different view of success I used to be a corporate pig-dog, climbing the corporate ladder. I was a high-flying executive being groomed for an executive position. And that meant quite a bit of stress along the way. One time, I was in a corporate training program. We were out in a lodge in the middle of the w ..read more

I just went through a bizarre experience in a big brand Discord community where I received death threats and encouragement to commit suicide. When I go through something troubling and new in the marketing world, I usually write about it. So here we go. Attacking the problem I decided that I would write up this case study but NOT name the brand involved. I am here to attack problems, not people and believe me, somebody would surely lose their job over this incident (and probably did). However, to appreciate the gravity of this situation, you need to know the context. I was threatened and haras ..read more

Over the past few months, I’ve been immersed in projects and research that have reinforced the idea that creators and community are driving huge changes in commercial strategies. These new dynamics are re-inventing what we used to think of as media and media buying. It’s already happening. Consider that a YouTube star like Mr. Beast has a bigger following than all the prime-time American news channels combined. One of his videos might get 100 million views. If you’re advertising on Fox News, you’ll be lucky to reach 2 million viewers. Many creators are branching off to create their own brand ..read more

Open AI, the parent company of ChatGPT, recently introduced new functionality that allows you to create an AI personal assistant — a custom GPT — software anyone can program by simply typing in what you want. The press responded with headlines like “game-changing” and “earth-shaking,” and I actually agree. Anyone of moderate intelligence and a $20/month subscription can now be a software developer — even me! In time, any person or company can even sell their software creations on a GPT store, similar to the Apple App Store. ChatGPT allowed every person to access AI. This new development allow ..read more