Happy Sunday, Everyone! I trust you’re soaking up the final few weeks of summer sun (as depressing as that is to say). Football is back, school is in session (well, at least for many schools around here) and the final month of Q3 is around the corner. It’s hard to believe, but we’re only 138 days - just over 3,300 hours - until 2027. For this week’s issue, I wanted to write about something timely. There’s a post from Peter Quadrel that’s been making its way around X and LinkedIn that dives...
16 days ago • 9 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! I hope you're enjoying the last few weeks of summer, with back-to-school in full boom, football season around the corner and the final few vacation-acceptable weeks on the horizon. Back in my younger years (yeah, I feel old even writing that, but it's true), I loved video games. While my favorites were always MMORPGs, there's a special place in my heart for turn-based strategy games like Civilization - which is why I still play it every once in a while. A few weeks...
23 days ago • 14 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! Over the past few weeks, I've spent a considerable amount of time reading - mostly because it's light later into the night, and sitting on the patio reading is a fantastic way to unwind. But - because I'm a workaholic - I've spent most of that time reading exceedingly boring titles like The Principles of Product Development Flow. We are who we are. If you want to fall asleep faster while avoiding Tylenol PM, I highly recommend it. One of the many themes the book...
about 1 month ago • 21 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! I trust you’re all enjoying your summer - the late sunsets, the warm weather, and the (hopefully) slightly slower schedules. Somewhere in the last hour, a few million people read a short block of copy that felt written specifically for them, deepened their attachment to an affinity group they claimed voluntarily, and left more likely to come back tomorrow. The organization behind that copy knows almost nothing about any of them. No CDP. No identity graph. No...
about 1 month ago • 20 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! I hope this finds you all well (and if you’re in the northeast/upper midwest, enjoying an orange sunrise and lots of smokey haze). If your inbox looks anything like mine, you're getting pitched an AI audit tool once or twice a week. "Upload your account, find every issue & increase your ROAS 24% in 90 seconds” (yes, that’s an actual email subject line). I've rejected every single one - at least, up until now. But, while I was bored on vacation (and with a LOT of urging...
about 1 month ago • 17 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! A few months back, in The AI Regulation Wars Begin, I walked through the legal minefield forming around AI-generated creative: the New York synthetic-performer law, how the penalty/compliance structure created massive liability for any advertiser serving ads in the State of New York and the 15+ states considering similar-ish legislation. That issue was about what’s happening, what you're not allowed to do and the (very real, very high) cost of getting it wrong. This...
about 2 months ago • 11 min read
Happy 4th Weekend, Everyone! I hope you’re all enjoying the first weekend of the back-half of 2026! I hope you had a wonderful, fun, relaxing 4th of July. I spent this past week in Houston for the World Cup - and while I’m not a huge soccer/football fan, this was truly something else. I watched Brazil-Japan, and the entire stadium was jam-packed in yellow, green, red, white & blue. The energy in and around the entire city was unlike anything else - it was contagious. Standing in that crowd,...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! It’s hard to believe, but this is the final issue of the first half of 2026. We are (almost) officially closer to 2027 than we are to 2025…which makes sense, because Christmas feels like a lifetime ago (or maybe that’s just me). This week’s issue came out of a client conversation I had on Monday - I was talking to an incredibly smart, well-read CMO who said (paraphrasing): I’ve read thousands of pages on AI stuff. I know it’s important. I hear from our customers that...
2 months ago • 14 min read
Happy Sunday, Everyone! We recently audited a brand in the healthcare space that, by any outside assessment, should have been crushing it. They are the undisputed heavyweight kings in their space. They’ve completed more complex procedures for this niche issue than any other provider out there. They’ve changed (at least) 20,000 lives. They’ve received ~3,200 5* reviews. Every industry award there is to win, they’ve won it (usually at least twice). The face of the brand is charismatic and...
2 months ago • 19 min read