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.
Coca-Cola’s CEO Banks on ‘4Is’—But Is This Just Another Corporate Buzzword Circus?
Coca-Cola’s CEO touts the ‘4Is’—Insights, Innovation, Intimacy, Integration—as the company’s new north star. But this feels like another round of corporate buzzwords masking the hard work ahead.
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Mastercard’s AI Bet: Building for a Future Where Machines Make the Calls, Not Humans
Mastercard is engineering a future where AI doesn't just assist but fully drives decision-making, signaling the end for outdated human-led financial models and traditional advertising.
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The Funnel Is Dead: Why Marketers’ Most Trusted Myth Just Flatlined
The marketing funnel is dead, and brands like Sephora and Liquid Death are proving why clinging to it is a losing game in today’s chaotic consumer landscape.
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FCC Targets Disney’s ABC Stations with Early License Renewals After Kimmel Joke Controversy
The FCC has ordered eight of Disney’s ABC TV stations to file early license renewals following scrutiny over a controversial joke on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, signaling a rare regulatory crackdown.
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Omnicom’s $3.2B Agency Fire Sale Reveals the Cracks in Big Holding Company Glamour
Omnicom’s plan to offload $3.2 billion in agency revenue is less a strategic focus and more a confession: the big holding company model is broken and bloated beyond repair.
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Trade Desk’s Jeff Green Tries Damage Control After Publicis, WPP, and Dentsu Walk Out
After months of acrimony with major agency groups, Trade Desk’s Jeff Green extends a cautious olive branch—but this isn’t reconciliation, it’s damage control. Agencies beware.
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Big Brands Admit Their Ad Measurement Is a Dumpster Fire — And No One’s Fixing It
Nestlé, Haleon, and Molson Coors openly admit their ad measurement systems are hopelessly broken, exposing a marketing industry stuck in a cycle of useless metrics and vendor grift.
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Snapchat Turns Ads Into AI Chatbots — Welcome to the Era of Agentic Spam
Snapchat is turning ads into AI chatbots that invade your DMs, ushering in a new era of intrusive, agentic advertising that’s more spam than innovation.
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Stagwell’s Agent Cloud: Another Half-Baked SaaS Gimmick for SMBs in the AI Era
Stagwell’s new 10-agent marketing toolkit for SMBs is just another SaaS gimmick exploiting AI hype without delivering real results. SMBs deserve better.
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CMOs Are Still Playing Second Fiddle to CEOs Despite Talking Big Game on Strategy
Despite claims of strategic contribution, only 8% of CMOs are seen by CEOs as actual strategy leaders, exposing marketing’s ongoing struggle for executive influence.
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Walmart’s Scintilla Data Push: A Half-Baked Self-Serve Illusion for Agencies and Advertisers
Walmart’s Scintilla data platform teases self-serve access for advertisers and agencies but falls short of true transparency, locking users into controlled, half-baked data releases.
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Soul-Destroying Stagnation: Why Most Marketers Are Trapped in Career Quicksand
Most marketers today are stuck in soul-destroying career stagnation, trapped by lazy agencies, misleading SEO grifts, and an industry obsessed with meaningless metrics.
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Budweiser’s World Cup Ad Leans Hard on Emotion—and Football’s Biggest Names to Pour Out the Feels
Budweiser’s World Cup campaign ditches cleverness for raw emotion, starring Erling Haaland and Jürgen Klopp with a blunt message: let the feelings—and the beer—pour.
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Marketers Aren’t Just Embracing AI — They’re Freaking Out, And It Shows
Marketers are caught in a panic cycle over AI, driven by fear and hype rather than real, honest adoption. The future belongs to those who treat AI as infrastructure, not magic.
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CEOs Are Finally Waking Up: Marketing Is Not a Magic Bullet, It’s Overhead — And They’re Calling It Out Loud
Marketing is shedding its mythic halo and being recognized by CEOs for what it often is: overhead. The latest survey shows CEO frustration with CMOs has hit a new high.
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WPP CEO Cindy Rose Ditches Q1 Earnings Call as Revenue Takes a Nosedive
WPP reported an 8.9% revenue decline and CEO Cindy Rose skipped the Q1 earnings call, signaling leadership’s reluctance to confront tough questions amid turmoil.
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Chipotle’s Bold Bet on Fernando Machado: Can a Burger King Marketing Wiz Rescue the Brand?
Chipotle’s new Chief Brand Officer Fernando Machado, ex-Burger King CMO, is tasked with shaking up the brand’s tired marketing to execute a bold growth turnaround by 2026.
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Structured Data for Google AI Overviews: The Missing Piece Your Lazy Competitors Ignore
Everyone’s obsessed with keyword stuffing and backlink tricks, but the real edge is structured data — the secret sauce Google’s AI actually reads. Your competitors? Still asleep at the wheel.
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