The Marketing Matters Newsletter

More articles are now ​created by AI than by humans​. And it’s why the conversation about taste has been bubbling up everywhere lately. But don’t worry, this isn’t another AI-focused newsletter. Because taste is, in fact, the oldest skill in the book. You don’t need to look any further than the Golden Age of advertising.…

I was recently answering a media request, one of those roundups where they ask different marketers to weigh in on “the one strategy marketers should double down on in 2026.” As I started filling this in, I was looking for an answer beyond the AI hype. Finally, I decided to focus on something bigger than…

You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard all the chatter about Claude Cowork. I jumped on the hype train with a duffel bag of curiosity, trying to figure out how to use it best. I watched 30+ videos over the past week. These weren’t random YouTube recommendations—they came from my trusted…

I used to work with a team of architects who were genuinely passionate about their craft. They’d light up during a coffee break, discussing material choices or spatial flow. But whenever we suggested creating content, be it a project walkthrough or general interior design advice, they’d shut down. “Our value is in the work we…

Why can’t you smell your own home? Think about it. Whenever you visit someone else’s place, you immediately notice it has a distinct scent. Not bad, just theirs. You might even associate that smell with them after a few visits. “Ah yes, this is Sarah’s apartment.” But your own home? Nothing. Neutral. Just… regular. The…

I’m not going to surprise anyone here by saying this: I’ve been thinking about my professional upskilling journey for 2026 mostly in the context of AI. And every piece I’ve read about it points in a different direction. Master this platform. Learn that automation tool. Build agents. Use this prompting framework. Each article confident, each…

During a recent coaching session, I was talking with someone who wants to build his personal brand. He has real expertise in his field, hard-won experience that would translate into genuinely valuable content. But he wasn’t posting anything. He felt stuck. We talked through his ideas, the audience he wanted to reach, what made his…

If you had told me I’d spend a weekend watching a livestream of a ​moving miniature paper city​, I’d have assumed you were describing some obscure ASMR rabbit hole. But there I was, genuinely captivated by Stripe’s holiday campaign. For this year’s push, the payments company hired craftspeople to build a tiny handmade city featuring…

Every marketing blog I’ve scrolled through lately seems obsessed with the same question: “How do you get AI to recommend your brand?” Here’s what strikes me about this entire conversation: we’re optimizing for the wrong thing. We’re chasing AI visibility like it’s the goal, when really it’s just the scoreboard. And in doing so, we’ve…

Three episodes into Vince Gilligan’s new show Pluribus (from the Breaking Bad guy, major launch, the kind of production people get excited about), I found myself doing something telling. I was tapping on my phone. Not because the show was bad. It wasn’t. The writing was smart, the acting solid. But I simply didn’t care…

As a foodie and “The Bear” obsessive, I highly recommend Will Guidara’s book, “Unreasonable Hospitality.” But as a marketer, I recommend it even more. This is a book about customer centricity, only disguised as a book about a restaurant. One story in particular still stays with me. At Eleven Madison Park, they’d identified a problem…

The third floor of the Guinness Storehouse greets you with about a dozen clocks. My husband and I went there just doing touristy stuff on my free day in Dublin. I didn’t really set out looking for marketing ideas, but I guess I’m wired that way? The whole brand is obsessed with time. Specifically 119.5…

I have TWO full newsletter editions sitting in my drafts folder right now, ready to go. TWO! Do you know how satisfying that feels?! After months—no, honestly, after most of this entire year—of white-knuckling my way through weekly deadlines, I finally have a proper backlog. This didn’t come from some grand strategy. It came from…

Ten minutes before going live online, I’m sitting in my Dublin hotel room—comfortable overall, but bland as expected, and with the lighting conditions of a serial killer’s basement. I’m staring at my laptop’s WiFi indicator, and I’m thinking: “I should have said no to this.” The workshop I’m about to give is for The Roost—Louis…

Everyone’s using AI for content now. But most are stuck between two extremes: treating it like a magic “write this for me” button or constructing Byzantine automation systems that need constant maintenance. One undercomplicates, the other overcomplicates, and neither produces content worth reading. When AI works well, it’s not about eliminating the human from the…