I’m sure you’ve noticed all of the recent posts on LinkedIn trying to distinguish ‘brand’ from ‘marketing,’ often with a lament that today’s data-driven marketers are trying to do brand tasks (read: badly) and that brand-builders and marketers need to ‘stay in their lane’ to ensure the best branding and…

Recently I’ve found myself in conversations where digital marketing is blamed for everything from social media’s ills to privacy-eroding data usage (ads that follow you across the Internet) to SPAMmy click-bait content. These technologies and behaviors aren’t “digital marketing”! Or are they? How should digital marketers view their contributions to…

A few years back I went for a late-night run (well, to the casual observer it probably looked more like a ‘jog,’ but there you go…) and stopped to sync my Fitbit tracker with the app on my iPhone. It malfunctioned — well, at least I think it did, since…

I’m sure many of us Gen X-ers remember the movie War Games, a look into the present and future impact of technology — back when the main worry was the Cold War. It had that “hey — let’s trust the launch of nuclear missiles to computers rather than ‘code seal-breaking’…

Four years ago I posted about a retailer who replaced their digital agency with an AI, reaping superior results (even though the AI wasn’t cheaper). At the time, I was intrigued at the potential of automation to improve digital marketing, as well as threaten digital marketing jobs. …

Despite the catchy title (pet videos pretty much rule the internet) I’m actually making a point about the power of specific data-driven insights in marketing…and ultimately a ‘call to arms’ for marketers to dig hard into data to yield a singular, powerful insight. Some background: Many marketers think of analytics…

This holiday season I was reminded of a conversation I had with a mailman some years ago…on Christmas Day, a mailman knocked on my door to deliver a package — surprised, I said “I didn’t know you worked on Christmas Day!?!” to which he replied “well, today we only deliver…

Over 80% of consumers will pay for better experience, and a third would switch after a single poor experience. And digital marketers, punch-drunk on the promise of “contextual” engagement and “right place, right time, right message” activation through AI and mobile these past 5–10 years or so…. are not sufficiently…

With 96% of website visits ending in an action other than a desired ‘conversion,’ it seems that digital marketers can either concede they are failing (a bit extreme, really) or re-frame their view of success to include areas of valuable engagement that occur at far higher percentages than 4% of…