What we are thinking about.
Notes from running 8 publications and building tools for them. Restaurant SEO, local marketing, the boring parts that move the needle.
Dove Men’s World Cup Campaign Hijacks ‘Seven Nation Army’ for a Skincare Sellout
Dove Men+Care’s World Cup campaign hijacks soccer’s iconic anthem 'Seven Nation Army' for a cringe-worthy skincare pitch, exposing the lazy side of sports marketing.
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Seth Matlins Joins Vox Media to Launch ‘Create/Destroy’ Podcast—But Will It Break Marketing’s Echo Chamber?
Seth Matlins’ new podcast with Vox Media promises brand-building insights but risks falling into the same marketing echo chamber of hype and jargon.
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Dentsu’s Takeshi Sano Is Hustling Hard — But Retaining Heineken Won’t Save Them From Microsoft’s Loss
Dentsu’s CEO Takeshi Sano may have kept Heineken on board, but losing Microsoft exposes deeper cracks in the agency’s strategy and innovation.
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Expedia’s Year-Long IShowSpeed Hustle: Gen Z Marketing or Desperate Clout Chasing?
Expedia’s year-long partnership with Twitch star IShowSpeed is less about innovation and more about desperate clout chasing. Viral reach without substance is a losing game.
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Agentic Media Buying: Reinventing Programmatic or Just Another Accountability Black Hole?
Agentic media buying promises to change programmatic advertising, but without transparency and human oversight, it risks becoming another opaque black box hiding accountability failures.
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Inside the Programmatic Black Box: Why Brands Are Done Playing Google and Meta’s Opaque Games
Brands and agencies are fed up with Google’s Performance Max, Meta’s Advantage+, and The Trade Desk turning programmatic advertising into an opaque black box that favors platform profits over transparency and results.
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Marketers Scramble to Patch Geo Targeting as Zero-Click Search Devours Traffic
Marketers are frantically recalibrating geo-targeting strategies as AI-driven zero-click search slashes traditional traffic, exposing the futility of legacy SEO tactics.
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WSL’s CMO Dumps Football Tradition Playbook to Score Real Growth
WSL Football’s CMO is smashing football traditions, using social media and real fan engagement to drive growth and attract serious partners.
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The 4Ps of Sports Sponsorship: Why Marketers Are Still Playing Catch-Up
Sports sponsorship isn’t about product or price anymore. To win, marketers must master the new 4Ps: people, passion, prominence, and partners.
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Brands Plan Hiring Spree—But Marketing Teams Brace for Stagnation and Budget Cuts
Only a fifth of brands plan to grow their marketing teams in 2026, revealing an industry stuck between budget cuts and AI-driven efficiency pushes.
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SEO Agencies in 2026: The Same Old Grift, Now Drenched in AI Bullshit
In 2026, over 85% of SEO agencies rely on AI content generators, doubling the amount of low-value output since 2023.
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AI Content Detectors in 2026: The Inaccuracy Epidemic Wrecking SEO Workflows
By 2026, AI content detectors like OpenAI’s classifier and GPTZero are failing to correctly spot AI-written text over 60% of the time, fueling endless, pointless content wars.
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Schema.org Adoption Gaps: How Lazy Marketers Leave Google AI Blind Spots
Over 70% of top-ranking sites still lack proper Schema.org markup in 2024, hobbling Google's AI overviews and screwing user experience.
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B2B Marketing’s Humor Hang-Up Is Killing Its Own ROI — Stop Acting Like It’s Medicine on Pizza
The fear of using humor in B2B marketing is outdated and harmful. Embracing sharp, strategic humor drives engagement and breaks the cycle of boring campaigns.
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Keisha Taylor Starr Didn’t Just Play the Game—She Flipped the Women’s Sports Script at ION in Two Years
Keisha Taylor Starr transformed ION’s women’s sports division into a revenue powerhouse in just two years by ditching feel-good fluff for financial discipline and creative audacity.
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Fox News Launches Over-the-Top 250th Birthday Promo Campaign, Because Patriotism is a Ratings Game
Fox News has launched a bombastic promotional campaign for America’s 250th birthday, trading nuanced history for a ratings-driven spectacle. Fox Business joins in too.
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Morning News Ratings Show Networks Still Battling for Relevance Amid Stale Format Clashes
Morning news ratings for the week of April 27 show all three networks growing, but the real story is a tightening race amid stagnant format fatigue.
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Marketing’s Pay Gap Paralysis and the Myth of Category Differentiation
Marketing’s pay gap is widening, and the obsession with category differentiation is mostly superficial noise. It’s time for real accountability, not buzzword bingo.
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