This week we have Simon Swan back with his monthly newsletter, Simon digs into why so many “transformation” programmes stall and why the real operating system for change isn’t a new AI platform or a shiny innovation lab, but emotionally intelligent people working in the right way. Simon also introduces his SPARK framework which will likely help you in your next big change project.

Thank you for your feedback and the love shown for my reverse engineering of New Balances rise since 2020. If you missed it enjoy it below.

Thanks for reading again today and have a great weekend

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Change Agents Need A Skunkworks: Why EQ Is the Missing Operating System for Transformation

Most organisations do not struggle to come up with ideas, they struggle to make new ideas stick.

That’s because the organisation lacks the discipline of creating and putting in place an operating model or system.

That is why I keep coming back to the skunkworks model.

Years ago, I wrote about skunkworks as a way to support digital transformation:

“A small, protected, cross-functional group with enough autonomy to test new approaches away from the drag of business as usual”.

I still believe that.

Fast forward 10 years to now and I’d update my thinking to:

A skunkworks only works when it is driven by the right change agents and shaped by emotionally intelligent leadership.

In other words, the structure matters, but the human system matters more and that is especially true now.

Enter AI

AI is making it easier to automate, analyse, generate and optimise. But it is also exposing something many organisations have ignored for too long.

That the real constraint is often not the technology but more so starting with Emotional Intelligence rather than platforming. It is the fear, lack of trust, rigid hierarchy and low psychological safety that’s not being addressed

It is managers who still think transformation is a rollout plan instead of a social shift. Amy Edmondson describes psychological safety as a key factor in healthy teams and says a leader’s job is to create a space where people can speak up, make mistakes and bring their full selves to work.

That is not a soft side issue. It is the condition that allows experimentation and learning to happen at all. This is where the idea of the change agent becomes more useful than ever.

Change Agents

The real change agents inside organisations are usually the ones who connect dots across functions, challenge outdated assumptions, learn in public, influence without authority and make new ways of working feel practical rather than abstract.

That sits very closely with Jane McConnell’s “gig mindset” work, which grew out of more than a decade of research into organisations in the digital age and then shifted focus from the group to the individual.

Her argument is that organisations need more people who operate with initiative, adaptability and breadth inside formal structures, not just outside them.

No More Hidden Innovation Lab

Today, a skunkworks should not be thought of as a hidden innovation lab off to one side of the organisational chart. It should be a practical engine for organisational learning.

A small, trusted unit that can test better ways of working, prove what works, and then help the wider organisation adopt the change, in other words, to create a repeatable path from experiment to operating model tied back to the business objectives.

Why This Matters More In The AI Era

Seth Godin’s Brainwashed still feels relevant because it challenges the old compliance mindset many organisations still reward.

Seth argues that people have been trained for obedience when what the modern economy needs is connection, generosity, initiative, courage and the ability to ship work that matters.

AI raises the value of those qualities rather than reducing it. When generic production becomes easier, human judgment, empathy, creativity and trust become more valuable, not less.

That lines up with what we are seeing more broadly.

Start Small

Amazon’s two-pizza teams were designed to keep teams close to customers, reduce communication overhead, and increase ownership through small, single-threaded teams.

Adobe’s Kickbox gave employees a structured way to develop new ideas from the bottom up and later open-sourced the method.

My own experience at the Met Office reinforced the same lesson. The progress there did not come from a single big-bang programme.

It came from starting small, proving value, linking work back to purpose, and building internal belief over time. The Digital Academy helped people think differently, connect across departments and build digital culture as much as digital skill. That is what a good skunkworks does at its best: it creates a place where new behaviours can be tried, seen and then scaled.

The Practical Framework: SPARK

If I were building this approach inside an organisation now, I would use a five-part framework.

S — Select the right change agents
Start with people, not org charts. Choose a small cross-functional group of credible operators.

Key Insight: Curiosity, influence, adaptability, resilience, generosity and the ability to work across boundaries. You are building a catalyst team.

P — Protect the space
Give the team real cover. Protected time. Senior sponsorship. Permission to test. Skunkworks fail when they are expected to transform the organisation in the gaps between BAU meetings.

Key Insight: Small-team models work because they cut decision friction and increase accountability.

A — Anchor the work in a live problem
Give the team one meaningful challenge the core system struggles to solve. That might be onboarding, content operations, approval speed, internal capability building, customer journey friction or AI workflow adoption.

Key Insight: At the Met Office, progress accelerated when digital work was tied clearly to the creation of digital principles we used to anchor the work.

R — Run on EQ as well as process
This is the missing bit in most frameworks. Use rituals that build trust and reflection, not just status updates. Check-ins. Retrospectives. clear team norms. Honest discussion about resistance.

Key Insight: Compassionate leadership matters here. That kind of leadership helps people feel heard, lowers defensiveness and creates the conditions for change to spread.

K — Knit the learning back into the organisation
A skunkworks is only useful if the wider business changes. Build internal champions. Share tools and methods. Train managers.

Key insight: Translate experiments into simple playbooks others can adopt. The goal is to make its ways of working normal.

The core skills to build

The old model of capability often overvalued technical depth and undervalued human range. I believe we are seeing this change where the core skills companies will need from their workforce will be centred around:

• Sensemaking — knowing how to interpret signals, ask better questions and apply judgment in ambiguous environments.

• Curiosity — testing, learning and acting before everything is certain.

• Cross Team collaboration — working across silos based on skills and shared outcomes, not just formal reporting lines.

• Learning agility — updating how you work as tools, expectations and markets change.
  

Human & AI Future

A scan of LinkedIn and you’d assume the future all about AI literacy but rather, It is about human agency.

AI can accelerate output, but it cannot replace the people who make sense of change, bring others with them and create the trust needed for adoption.

I still believe in skunkworks more centred around social technology for driving transformation not structural transformation.

And to do this is by gathering the right people, giving them enough space, equipping them with the right emotional and practical skills, and let them model a better way of working before the rest of the organisation is ready.

Because that is how real change usually happens.

Want To Go Further? This is a great podcast to listen to help you understand how people are driven and what science and research studies

Definitely connect with Simon on LinkedIn

Simon On LinkedIn

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend

Danny & Harry

As a reminder if you missed it, last Friday I offered a number of Growth ponderings to how help you shape the future. Thanks to the kind people who replied and said its nice to reminded you can and should be a change agent.

This week I wanted to inspire you with a change of pace, offering you the modern-day brand turnaround story: New Balance. NB managed to turn a “suburban dad shoe” company into a $10 billion cultural driving force.

We’re going under the hood of how they did it and, more importantly, what it means for you as a CMO or VP of Marketing inside a complex, political, often distracted organisation.

The New Balance Playbook Reverse Engineered

This is not a trainer/sneaker story. It’s a playbook for using brand, operations, and ambition to shape both your business and your customers’ opinions – even if you’re currently seen as the “uncool”, “legacy”, or “stuck” brand in your category.

1. Start with a Single Muse, Not a Broad “Target Market”

Before New Balance could become culturally relevant, it had to get radically specific about who it was talking to.

In 2019, leadership “quieted the noise” and centred everything around one target consumer: the 18–34-year-old “global independent”. This wasn’t a persona slide; it was a forcing function.

It gave product, brand, and commercial teams permission to stop trying to serve everyone. Decisions became simpler:

• Does this campaign speak to the global independent?

• Does this product look and feel like something they would wear?

• Does this collaboration earn us credibility with them?

For you as a CMO, this is the first uncomfortable truth: if your teams are trying to hit every demographic and every channel, they’re not being strategic – they’re operating out of fear.

Narrowing the muse is how you create edge. Edge creates talkability. Talkability creates disproportionate growth.

2. Action Plans, Not White Papers

When COVID hit and revenue dropped to around $3.3 billion, New Balance didn’t respond with theoretical rewrites of the five-year strategy. CEO Joe Preston asked for something much less glamorous and far more powerful: action plans.

Cross-functional teams were given three things most organisations talk about but rarely operationalise – the 3 A’s: Accountability, Authority, and Autonomy.

The agenda narrowed to the few topics that mattered, and timelines were tight.

From a Marketing perspective, this is the difference between “brand guardianship” and “brand leadership”. This is what I call brand coaching vs brand policing. Why? Policing always leads to resentment within businesses.

Brand guardianship protects assets.
Brand leadership moves markets.

In a crisis – and for many categories, the post-pandemic years have been a rolling crisis the job of the CMO is to shrink the scope, sharpen the priorities, and force decisions into motion:

• Fewer decks. More decisions.

• Fewer “options”. More clear trade-offs.

• Fewer committees. More accountable owners.

New Balance used wartime constraints to accelerate a decade-long repositioning project. Most brands used wartime as an excuse to pause, delay, or over-analyse. That’s a choice.

3. The Strategic Pivot: Owning the “Uncool Truth”

The heart of the New Balance turnaround is brutally simple: they stopped trying to escape who they were.

For years, the brand carried the “dad shoe” stereotype – chunky, practical commuter shoes.

Instead of pivoting into hype-driven reinvention and abandoning that heritage, they did something braver: they leaned into it.

They treated the “uncool truth” as the starting point:

• Known for comfort and orthopaedic credibility.

• Core silhouettes were chunky, grey, functional.

• Associated with lawn-mowing, not front-row fashion.

Rather than running from that, they asked: What if this is the moat?

Over a 10–15 year period, they reframed their “dad brand” into “heritage performance” and then into “ironically cool” premium fashion.

The now iconic 990 went from suburban cliché to high-fashion staple, not through gimmicks but through constraint: tighter shapes, elevated materials, more considered colour stories.

Authenticity became the growth lever.

When the market swung towards normcore, comfort, and “quiet luxury”, New Balance wasn’t chasing the trend; it was ready for it.

For CMOs, the lesson is clear: there is almost always an “unfashionable” or “uncomfortable” truth about your brand. You can fight it (and lose), or you can embrace it and use it as the anchor for something distinctive and enduring.

4. Collaboration Architecture: From Logo Slaps to Cultural Brokers

If authenticity was the foundation, collaborations were NBs bridge.

New Balance didn’t treat collaborations as hype releases to juice quarterly demand. They treated them as a translation layer between heritage and modern culture.

Instead of stacking logos with anyone who’d answer the phone, they built a “cultural broker” model:

• Partners like Stone Island, Aimé Leon Dore and Joe Freshgoods weren’t asked to decorate existing products; they were invited to reinterpret them.

• Storytelling was rooted in specific geographies – Washington D.C., Chicago, London – not just another brand with a generic idea of “urban culture”.

• The design language cleaned up the dad shoe aesthetic for luxury and streetwear while keeping the core DNA.

The outcomes were measurable: collaboration-driven media impressions spiked; New Balance became one of the fastest-growing brands on StockX (secondary markets are signal for cultural change); and organic endorsements from figures like Rihanna and Timothée Chalamet reframed the 990 as part of the “off-duty” uniform of modern icons.

The point for you: collaborations are no tjust another tick box exercise or a substitute tactic. They are an amplifier of long-term strategy.

If you haven’t first defined your uncool truth and your muse, collaborations will be noisy, inconsistent, and forgettable. With those in place, they become compounding assets that pull your brand into new circles of relevance.

5. The Rising Star Model: The Brand as Co‑Protagonist

New Balance’s approach to talent is another deliberate departure from category norms.

Where many sports brands overspend on established superstars – renting borrowed interest – New Balance backs ascending talent: pre-peak, high-upside, aligned with the challenger narrative.

Coco Gauff is the flagship example. Signed early, supported consistently, and positioned not just as a sponsored athlete but as a co-author of the brand story through platforms like “Call Me Coco” and “We Got Now”.

Across sports, the pattern repeats:

• Basketball: a guard-heavy roster and quiet superstars like Kawhi Leonard to underscore performance legitimacy.

• Football: young, culturally resonant players such as Bukayo Saka and Arsenal team mate Eberechi Eze (seen below with chess grand master Magnus Carlsen) to unlock global youth relevance.

• Olympic and women’s sport: athletes like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to anchor a serious performance narrative.

• Cultural ambassadors: Jaden Smith and Jack Harlow bridging sport, music, and culture.

The cost base is smarter. The brand equity is often much deeper. The narrative is coherent: New Balance stands with rising, hard-working, often understated talent rather than loud, finished products.

As a marketing leader, the question isn’t “who’s the biggest name we can afford?” but “who can we grow with – and what story are we co-writing?”

6. Operations as Brand Equity (and Story Fuel)

Most brands treat operations as a cost centre. New Balance turned theirs into a story.

While almost every competitor fully offshored production, New Balance kept six factories in the United States. That decision wasn’t framed as nostalgia; it was framed as an operational and emotional moat:

• Deeper process knowledge.

• Shorter feedback loops.

• Higher quality control.

• Authentic “Made in USA” resonance with values-driven consumers.

• A parallel “Made in UK” story for their other core market.

For CMOs, this is one of the most underused levers: your supply chain, your quirks, your constraints are often more compelling than any campaign line.

Behind every operational choice is a narrative about what the company values.

Your job is to surface those truths, tell them honestly, and connect them to the muse you’ve chosen.

The reported sales figures show impressive growth1

7. Terrifying Goals and Human-Centred Leadership

Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the New Balance story is the ambition.

After the pandemic hit, leadership didn’t aim to “stabilise”. They aimed to double. The plan to reach $7 billion by 2026 was hit two years early. Now the target is $10 billion.

These aren’t vanity numbers. They’re alignment devices. When everyone understands the size of the ambition, the organisation is forced to behave differently. Small bets, incremental campaigns, and safe decisions no longer make sense.

At the same time, Preston understood this level of ambition breaks people if you treat them like machines. His philosophy casts executives and employees as athletes: recovery – sleep, nutrition, mental health – is non-negotiable.

He normalised vulnerable conversations on topics like Alzheimer’s and mental health and found these sessions often generated more engagement than pure business updates.

For you, this duality matters:

• Your targets should scare you a little.

• Your culture should make it safe to pursue them.

Brilliant marketing cannot compensate for a burnt-out, cynical organisation. New Balance’s rise is the product of an entrepreneurial, scrappy culture welded to disciplined, data-rich global execution – not one or the other.

8. The New Balance Canvas: A Playbook for Modern CMOs

Strip the logos away and you’re left with a framework you can take into your next offsite.

1. Identify the “uncool truth”
   Stop denying your brand’s most obvious stereotype. Name it. Own it. When you are set up use it as an anchor instead of a liability.

2. Choose constraint over reinvention
   Pick your most recognisable, even “unfashionable” product, proposition, or capability and make it the hero. Refine, don’t erase.

3. Architect cultural brokers, not random collabs
   Work with partners who can translate your heritage for specific subcultures and geographies. Depth beats breadth.

4. Back rising stars early
   Invest in up-and-coming talent – athletes, creators, influencers and customers – and build platforms where they co-author the story, not just pose in the campaign.

5. Turn operations into narrative
   Look hard at your factories, logistics, customer service, data, and processes. There is brand equity hiding in the way you work.

6. Use BIG numbers to force real choices
   Set ambitious, numeric goals that demand different behaviour. Missing a bold target is less dangerous than never setting one.

Underneath all of this sits a simple belief: you are not a passive respondent to market forces. You are an active shaper of them.

My 5 Coaching Notes

Here are five personal notes I added to my brand essentials docs for coaching and consultancy clients:

1. Culture Can Be Your Commercial Engine

• Treat culture as a core route to market, not a comms channel; if you’re not in the conversation, you’re not in the consideration set.

• Anchor everything in a clear brand truth and a consistent “in‑character” behaviour set, then give teams permission to take calculated risks that earn you a seat in culture.

• The bar is not “did we post?” but “did we create a moment?” – the London Marathon pub or a 990 ad that works for supermodels and dads are templates for intent, not accidents.

2. Brand Scale Comes From Disciplined Experimentation, Not Bigger Media Plans

• Brand scale is the output of a system: for NB, roughly 50% proven, 30% calculated risk, 20% high‑variance experimentation hunting for the next big unlock.

• You scale by graduating ideas: 20% bets that work move to 30%; 30% plays that deliver become 50% foundations. This is how one‑offs become playbooks.

• Treat search and other leading indicators as an early warning system for future revenue so the C‑suite sees brand as a growth engine, not a cost centre.

3. Balance Local Edge With Global Coherence

• At NB scale, the real work is holding the tension between local sharpness and global consistency: avoiding “out of character” local wins that dilute the global asset.

• Start with a globally coherent brand truth and personality, then let local markets interpret it through their own cultural codes and occasions, not their own strategy. Tactics roll into departmental plans that roll up to company-wide strategy.

• The CEO and CMO job, together, is to coach (not just police) this balance: protecting the core while giving local teams room to be interesting, relevant and commercially aggressive.

4. Differentiate By Behaving Like a Challenger, Whatever Your True Size

• Challenger is a mindset, not a market share position: you’re challenging norms, categories and consumer expectations, not only the current number one.

• In “low‑interest” or cluttered categories, the win comes from being the one brand that feels human, opinionated and emotionally available when every product “does the job”. Make customers feel something.

• Make it explicit: are you trying to be best or biggest? That choice should show up in your partnerships, creative risk appetite and the types of stories you tell.

5. Treat Transformation As An Operating Model, Not a Project

• Moving from product‑led to brand‑led is not a rebrand; it’s a rewiring of how you set strategy, brief teams, measure success and allocate risk. This takes true management (day to day) and leadership (vision setting and inspiring the team).

• Vertically, you still need category and product teams to hit the number; horizontally, you need a strong brand spine running across the business so every touchpoint feels like the same company.

• Transformation sticks when marketing clearly connects brand work to commercial outcomes, so the organisation sees experimentation, cultural relevance and consistency as non‑negotiable, not “nice‑to‑have marketing stuff”.

The Wrap Up

New Balance went from “lawn-mowing dad shoe” to runway staple not by chasing every trend, but by committing long-term to a coherent, authentic, and occasionally uncomfortable strategy.

As a CMO or VP/Head of Marketing, you hold the same levers: who you choose as your muse, what truths you’re willing to admit, which constraints you embrace, and how brave you’re prepared to be with your goals.

Take this playbook to your boardroom. Quiet the noise. Pick your muse. Choose your “uncool truth”. And start shaping the market’s opinion of you, before someone else does it for you.

Listen Further

Here are two great resources that helped me break down New Balance, from an interview by The Profile’s with their CEO and an interview between Forbes and their CMO

If you would like to take away the core lessons as a deck, hit download below:

The New Balance $10b Blueprint

12.5MB ∙ PDF file

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Let me know if you would like this series to continue by hitting the ❤️ button or hitting reply and telling what you think.

Have a great weekend (and for those who celebrate a long weekend with Easter) and we will see you next week!

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

I think it is safe to say Harry’s article on the marketing of the Manosphere kicked a few hornets nests…a little like Louis Theroux Netflix did in his documentary ;-)

This week, I’ll plant a seed into your head about Growth and how it’s different to what you think it is. I have 4 observations (and ALOT of questions) about how you can work towards a new breed of growth.

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What if growth isn’t net new users? ⭕️

What if growth is thinking about the circles of people around the user?

What if growth was leveraging your user to use your product more but through friends and family? Growth can be different

Less Is More 🔗

What if growth was spending less time on your app?

What if growth was spending less time on your website?

What if growth is sending a request & receiving a link to complete the transaction?

Growth Is Focus 🎯

What if growth is killing off your Android app?

What if growth is a faster website and better user experience?

What if growth is quicker logistics, quicker deliveries, getting known for your service…?

Chat Over Scroll? 💬

What if growth is more chat, less scroll?

What if growth is qualifying you through smart questions and uploads, and less scrolling and guessing where your customer need to go to?

What if conversation is the next big conversion lever?

Accuracy As A Lever To Pull 🩻

What if growth is uploading a long list of likes, dislikes, allergies and your body type?

What if growth is building custom products and bespoke products vs generics with high returns.

What if growth is hyper personalised higher priced products, not cohorts based on generics?

Voice Not Type 🗣️

What if growth is voice based not type and scroll?

What if growth is having conversations with your customer, based on guided conversation threads?

What if growth is a new part of your app or site? An ‘always on’ companion

Time For Growth Rebrand? 🔓

Growth especially Performance Marketing is hitting the limits of being overly optimised, it’s all starting to look and feel the same. It is time to rebalance this.

Growth and Product Growth has for a long time been about more, more people, more nudges, more scrolls, more “asks” from us. More = more, more rarely = less.

What if growth is now about being the company who helps others gain smarter discounts through their friends and family members. This is something that could be measured and embraced.

What if growth doesn’t let algorithms define and dictate what you and your brand are and achieve…

What if growth is about less time with an app or site but a quick chat leading to a complete transaction link inside of the chat interface you live in already? This is already possible.

What if growth is less overheads and tech to maintain? Instead, it’s about the best service to gain growth.

Or what if growth is actually helping customers using their natural language or their native language? Being hyper connected and an interface providing long-term help. Being highly trusted like a creator or a podcaster is...

Growth should/would/could look different, feel different and interact different.

Pure play growth often reminds me of the famous Henry Ford quote:-

- If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

It’s on us to understand the difference between what customers say they want and creating campaigns and products that our actually customers want.

The biggest growth impacts I’ve had in my career have come from thinking differently, stepping up and building solutions customers wouldn’t know they wanted or needed. In some cases, the most successful actively ignored feedback, as it’s my job to make the feature or campaign easy to learn, easy to use, easy to share and then easy to personalise. And when they haven’t been super creative, growth initiatives has been operationally astute.

Growth is going to be high trust, high speed and high fidelity.

Growth is capital ‘B’ Brand, is definitely operational - it’s technical, creative, rethinking what’s being used and misused and then rethinking what’s been done and optimising the experiences.

A business leader is supposed to be a change agent (and i don’t say that lightly). Sometimes we forget this in our everyday battles while arguing who owns what with the CPO, CRO and CFO…

Growth comes from the unexpected, from the unpredictable and often from the hard to measure. Business growth is often built more on gut feel and experience as much from a model or complex set of forecast models. What if Growth comes from rethinking how your customers work and who they’re connected to, with more marketing nudges, emails and messages…

As a Growth or Marketing leader, it’s our job to drive change, to be a ‘change agent’. So the question to think about today is:-

What flavour of growth will you try next?

Let me know by hitting reply or hitting button below to chat directly

4 Observations From This Week

• Agentic AI Is Being Primed To Take Centre Stage: Marketers are being primed to shift toward AI agents as the new promise land of the operating system for personalisation, predictive analytics, creative execution, and decision-making, positioning AI as core infrastructure rather than just a tool. Keep an eye as these promised land tools are still early and buzz definitely doesn’t = success.

• Agentic Commerce Push Ahead: OpenAI have rolled out their partnerships Sephora and Shopify this week, the question remains will customers want to shop by search/prompting in a chat window for a product or set of products? (the irony isn’t lost that I push this could be a growth tactic)

• SEO Being Positioned As GEO/AEO: With AI-powered “search” dominating conversations, the focus is moving from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimisation and AEO. As Brands we must optimise for zero-click answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and the other conversational platforms to stay visible but the ways of tracking and reporting is murky to say the least. Be mindful treating SEO and AEO as the same discipline as although very similar AEO will look to move from content - citation to click to checkout and optimise throughout these touchpoints (I go into detail why AEO and SEO are different here)

• Short-Form Video & Micro-Drama Dominate: As I suggested in our 2026 predictions - Short-form video remains the top content investment for many brands, while the “micro-drama” formats (with large brands now sponsoring and creating their own) gaining strong algorithmic traction on platforms like TikTok and Reels driving engagement and conversions. Expect to see a huge push of micro drama ads and brands becoming even more unhinged to cut through the algorithmic feeds. Here’s a good podcast breaking down the micro-drama landscape

Harry’s favourite article from this week

Trashing the ‘science’ behind ad research: System1 and Effie recently published “The Creative Dividend’ a 122 page, self congratulatory puff piece about how creativity and media work together to drive reliable, predictable, and repeatable business results. Daniel Gilbert, CEO of Brainlabs was having none of it, instead pulling out an arsenal of chainsaws, pick axes, Claymores and intercontinental ballistic missiles to rip it a new one. It’s an extremely well constructed take down that raises questions over the tension of research crafted under the umbrella of vested interest- go an read it here

Thanks for reading this week and have a great weekend!

Danny Denhard

Welcome back to #73, this week we switch up the pace with Harry tackling the making and marketing of the Manosphere.

If you missed last week’s MU, Paul delivered a great reminder of how internal boredom and chasing algos hits Marketing teams.

If You’re Sick Of Hearing About Moneymaxxing Manotools, You’ve Only Got Yourself To Blame

‘Absurdism’ is one of my favourite words. Albert Camus proposed the philosophical sentiment that us humans exist in a meaningless, chaotic universe, but have a passionate need to find meaning and purpose in anyone and anything that crosses our synapses. Absurdism Highlights the constant (and ultimately futile) conflict between our search for meaning and the irrational universe.

Camus suggested that to maintain sanity, we must embrace this absurdity – rather than becoming despondent because of it, we should find freedom and joy despite it.

So far, so Camus – he wasn’t always bang on with his hypothesising around sources of joy (I had to read L’Étranger for my French A Level, and it made me sad in both French and English). However, with absurdism, he may have stumbled upon something in 1942 which gets proven every minute of every day in the AI-enabled, socially amplified, divisively weaponised and intellectually divorced era of the mid 2020’s.

Absurdism is why the Manosphere such a powerful and influential phenomenon.

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The Louis Theroux Effect

Much has been written about the recent Louis Theroux Manosphere documentary. I haven’t watched it and I probably won’t. If I want to spend an hour in the company of preening, misogynistic, brain-farting dickheads, I can just think back to the five years I spent as a student at Harrow in the late 1990’s.

What Theroux has done (which he does extremely well) is to take a disturbing segment of society and set it free – allowing it to self-immolate, fuelled by a mix of ego, perceptive wealth, social reach and baby oil.

The so called ‘manosphere’ (I disagree with this title on principal as IMHO, the bad actors in this space show all the manly traits of rice pudding) didn’t materialise out of nothing so much as it metastasised. You can trace its roots back to men’s rights forums at the start of the century and pickup artist communities (remember ‘negging’? Pfft…) that festered in some of the darker corners of the internet.

These were safe spaces in which male loneliness evolved from common or garden teenage angst (which has been around since Cain and Abel decided petulance was easier than puberty) into abject entitlement while nobody was paying attention.

Turbo boosted through gamer communities, the dark web and social media algos that fed such social discrepancies, these male hidey holes became petri dishes for incel culture, growing apathy, entitlement and rage like a Monty Don allotment.

The 2008 financial crisis acted as an accelerant, after which a generation of young men who’d been promised economic freedom found themselves out of work, out of ideas and fleeing reality online 18 hours a day.

Smart Tech Or Smart Business?

The proliferation of smartphones transformed any charismatic narcissist with a divisive playbook into a media powerhouse and big social tapped into this pulsing vein (eyeballs = revenue, after all) by rewarding outrage over nuance.

Throw in a pandemic that isolated millions of teenage boys in their bedrooms with nothing but WiFi, a dopamine deficit and a diminished sense of self-worth and you had the perfect storm – a vulnerable, lost audience of millions looking for someone – anyone – to make it all make sense.

Mocking ‘the manosphere’ as a fad or a joke is a massive mistake. Just because its proponents are clowns doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken extremely seriously. It’s evolving far faster than any regulatory or educational response to it. Tate gets arrested and his engagement goes up, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed by others in the space. Andrew Cortes may as well have ‘Outrage equals eyeballs’ tattooed on his forehead as a reminder of his business model every time he looks in the mirror (which, one assumes, is constantly).

So what if platforms occasionally ostracise creators who take their outrage schtick too far into the realms of the illegal? They just pack up their man bags and ‘women should serve me’ playbook and migrate to Rumble, Telegram, Discord or their own subscription sites, taking their audiences with them like a shiny, penis-wielding Pied Piper.

The result? They can stop pretending there are rules they need to adhere to, shedding the last pretence of societal moderation on their way out.

Next Gen

You can be sure the next generation of manosphere front runners won’t be as obvious as Tate et al. Instead, they’ll be AI-enabled, algorithmically fluent, and sophisticated enough to avoid the overtly crude misogyny that gets them shadow banned or blacklisted.

Regulating any industry where harm is a feature is notoriously difficult, but difficulty isn’t an excuse. These preening twats are able to lie, con, cheat and profit with impunity because they operate in an environment with zero accountability. They can say anything, to anyone, at any time, on platforms engineered to amplify the worst of it. Big Social is structurally incapable of giving a shit, because outrage is engagement, engagement is revenue, and self-regulation is just PR lawyer’s addendum.

That leaves legislation, and not the toothless ‘online harms’ frameworks that take years to pass and are obsolete before the ink dries. What’s needed is platform-level liability that makes the infrastructure as accountable for distribution as the creators are for production.

The next gen wankers (Manoprick 3.0, if you will) will be the T2000 wipe clean version -legally-Tefloned to protect their ‘brand’. They’ll replace old school rage bait with plausibly deniable self-improvement content that radicalises young men by inference rather than instruction.

Meanwhile, the disciples are getting younger and more engaged as the manosphere expands and optimises itself. Kids as young as ten are swallowing this bulls*t and asking for more, and the parental awareness gap is as expansive as it is unforgivable.

The Response Required…

Taking lessons from effective problem gambling support frameworks, sector specific regulation twinned with education and end user support, delivered in the right media at the right time with, crucially, the right TOV is a good start.

The response needs to be as multi-channel, socially adept and organically customised in the media where young men live online. Any workable solution must be as digitally and technologically literate as the problem itself, which means platform-level accountability enforced through legislation, not self-regulation.

It means age-appropriate media literacy embedded alongside Maths and English in schools.

It means constant and engaging counter-narratives delivered with the same production quality, tonal intelligence and platform fluency as the content they’re competing against.

The manosphere won’t be defeated by outrage or moral panic.

It’ll be outgrown when we give young men something better to click on.

The UK government is aware of this problem, but as usual they’ll approach the solution in all the wrong ways.

First, you need to understand WHY the audience of young men feels so lost that they’ll lap up any scurrilous bullshit offering an escape from eternal loneliness.

Then you need to educate young men - not by preaching, but by engaging and entertaining them, offering hope as an output, not the suggestion that they’re the ones at fault.

Finally, regulate the hell out of Big Social who clearly love breaking the world one piece at a time and selling off the parts for gold.

Monetised Issues

Until the cost of hosting this abhorrent content exceeds the ad revenue it generates, nothing will change, so we need to act as a society, swiftly, intelligently and decisively. Fail, and we’ll lose entire generations of young men for good, sending ourselves back to the 19^th Century on a societal level.

Either that, or embargo the sale of jaw flexers, baby oil and penis injections - that might keep some of these odious turds offline for a few months while we try to put the brakes on our collective decent into hell...

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Bonus Content / The Concisely Absurd Manosphere Glossary

• Alphas and Betas — A binary wolf pack theory repackaged as a personality brinkmanship, where every man is either a dominant silverback (yay!) or a simpering doormat (boo!)

• Chads and Stacys — The manosphere’s archetypes of peak desirability. He’s jaw-chiselled and dominant, she’s attractive but vapid. (See Ken/ Barbie for reference)

• Cuck — A reignited medieval insult for any man who shows empathy or respect for women

• Gymcel - A subset of the incel movement that promotes bodybuilding as a means to overcome celibacyTL;DR – guns without EQ aren’t always enough

• High-value male - A reference to someone with superficial markers of value like fitness, wealth and, apparently, a rental Lambo.

• AWALT — “All Women Are Like That” — the cheat code that lets Chads dismiss half the planet, including their own mother.

• Red Pill / Blue Pill — A Matrix rip off, suggests the delusion that women secretly run everything to the detriment of men (or at least particularly fragile some men)

• Sigma male - The Lone Wolf archetype – meant to be a metaphor for strength, instead suggests a lost, howling dog that needs a haircut

• Simp - An insult targeting men perceived as excessively kind, deferential or supportive of womenAKA normal, egotistically secure men

• Wagecuck - A slur mocking men with regular jobs who aren’t, you know, money maxxing in Dubai with plastic teeth, tits and tans and a credit card bill that would sink Coutts

Thanks for reading again this week, if you have something to say on this article hit reply or add a comment.

If you have something important you’d like to share with over 2500 Marketing Leaders get in touch

Have a great weekend and we will see you next week!

Danny Denhard & Harry Lang

Today we have Paul Thomas returning for his second instalment on Marketing Unfiltered serving up a great reminder - maybe we get bored of our ads before our customers do…

One More Time - Your Customers Aren’t Bored, YOU Are.

There’s an advertising concept I’ve always been sceptical of called “wear out”. The theory is that after a while, ads become less effective as audiences get bored of them.

But if that’s the case, why are Jet2 still using “Darling Hold My Hand” nine years on - and why has it just gone viral on TikTok with over a million uses of the sound?

@warnermusicaustraliaDarling hold my hand 🗣️🗣️🗣️ Credit: @rosie #jet2 #jet2holiday #jessglynne #holdmyhand

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The ad that supposedly should have worn out years ago is now soundtracking millions of videos and being parodied live at Jess Glynne concerts.

What if there are vested interests at work here? Because agency commercial models have tended to be linked to production rather than creativity and value, it’s no surprise there’s a push to keep doing new work. As one analysis put it, wear-out “seems like a practical reason to be able to bill for new projects on a regular basis.”

The evidence backs this up. System1 tested 50,000 ads - some very soon after launch, others up to 7,000 days later. If wear-out were real, older ads would score worse. They didn’t.

Analytic Partners ran a similar analysis and found that of 50,000 campaigns pulled for showing wear-out, only 14 were actually experiencing it.
Mark Ritson’s verdict:

“Consumers don’t get tired of ads. Only advertisers do.”

History Repeats Itself

In my first job at HMV I must have heard “Fields of Gold - The Best of Sting” nearly a thousand times across December. No amount of staff pleading could get the in-store CD changed. Why? Because each hour, new customers heard it and bought it.

In subsequent roles I’ve pulled my hair out at perfectly good campaigns being changed because “it feels like it’s time to move on”, or “we’ve been pitched a great idea”, or a new CMO or agency wants to make their mark. It’s wasteful, vain, and bonkers.

I got another reminder at a recent Run For Cover gig. Sweet Caroline - half the band rolls their eyes when it’s on the setlist. As usual, it brought the house down.

They’re not bored of it. You are.

And it’s not just external messaging that this applies to. At EE and Hyperoptic both organisations had a clear “North Star” purpose.

The problem with these strategic goals is that they tend not to change much and progress often isn’t measured in weeks or even months.

The temptation creeps in to “talk about something else” at the all hands or annual company kick off. But, especially where the organisation has a large front line contingent of engineers and customer service call centres, a consistent message around connecting everyone everywhere or bringing full fibre to millions of homes across the UK shouldn’t get old.

Sure, you might remix the delivery for freshness but the vision bears repetition. Just because the privileged few in HQ are tired of hearing it doesn’t mean those with proper jobs are.

Test It

So before deciding something’s worn out check whether the problem is actually you. What’s the data saying? Have you swallowed the myth of wear-out? Pound for pound, making existing assets work harder is likely to give a better ROI than prematurely creating new ones.

If this resonates, it’s exactly the kind of commercial challenge I work through with clients at pro-spective. Sometimes the highest-value thing a fresh pair of eyes can do is tell you to stop changing things and help you get more from what’s already working. If you’d like to explore that, feel free to drop me a message.

Connect With Paul On LinkedIn

Read Paul’s First MU Article ⬇️

Thanks for reading again today and have a great weekend!

Danny & Harry

This week: Simon returns and offers us a way to address the current ways of working and challenges our thinking to shift from a rigid role approach to helping team members embrace adaptive capabilities.

Not only to improve company performance but importantly, ensuring constant professional development.

In the shift towards Hybrid AI team and AI assistants joining teams, Simon offers a 4 step framework (i) Audit, (ii) Mobilise, (iii) Augment, and (iv) Measure to roll out.

Looking to get in front of 2500 Marketing & Growth leaders? Get in touch with us mu@dannydenhard.com to discuss your options

Why EQ & ‘Change Agents’ Are The Future of Talent Strategy & Company Performance

In environments shaped by AI, automation and constant market shifts, competitive advantage is increasingly defined by how quickly people can apply their skills in new and evolving contexts.

Today, a key question is no longer simply whether the right person occupies the right role, but whether the capabilities are in place to evolve as strategy, technology and customer expectations change.

The focus is shifting from roles to resilience and that means developing people who can adapt, re-learn and align their skills to where the business creates the most value.

The question is no longer
“Do we have the right people in a specific role?”

It is rather:
“Do our people have the capabilities to adapt, re-learn and evolve to the needs of the business?”

Individuals are too re-assessing how they position themselves in the world of work and the journey they decide to take

Author Rishad Tobaccowala, in his manifesto, “The Company of One Mindset” observes that “It is projected that in 2027, 86.5 million people will be freelancing in the United States making 50.1 percent of the population”.

Tobaccowala argues that your career is no longer defined by tenure or title, but by how well you keep your skills current and can deliver value independently…

From Roles to Capabilities

Skills-based workforce mapping, internal talent marketplaces, and re-skilling opportunities are alternative methods to how we could be replacing rigid employment structures where you are measured by the job description and not the more lateral skills that could be deployed across a company

But change to a capability mindshift also means a change to what is defined as good “leadership”.

There is an important balance to consider here.

There is a need for more leadership, and that won’t be delivered through top down processes, but rather from people that can complement their management skillsets through Emotional Intelligence.

As Jenny Burns, CEO at Magnetic describes:

“If efficiency and profit become the only measures of success, AI will simply amplify the worst instincts of leadership.
If we anchor AI in human-centred leadership, it can amplify the best.
The future of leadership isn’t AI or humans. It’s humans choosing how AI is used and what truly matters”

Enter the Change Agent: The Hidden Multiplier

The “Change Agent” is a growing trend inside organisations that perhaps offers a glimpse to the future as to how employees and employers adapt and an evolving team development.

Rather than being led by a “fixed role” mindset the change agent adapts, relearns and moves themselves inside an organisation where their mix of skills are needed, tasked to work in specific areas inside an organisation.

These individuals are not always “formal” leaders, but they are catalysts who connect strategy with execution, challenge legacy processes, and break down silos.

As discussed in my previous work on change agents, organisations that empower these people build momentum from within and embed transformation in the culture itself.

A handbook for leading change inside organisations

Kelly and Medina found these individuals share a consistent profile, they are future-oriented, energised by possibility rather than certainty, and willing to challenge the status quo not for recognition but because they genuinely believe the organisation can do better

In their book, Rebels at Work, they define characteristics of leading change as someone who “doesn’t regard recognition as a driver for them, but problem-solving and improving the way things are done, are. They care about ideas and making a difference at work more than creating the ‘right impression”.

Leadership and Self-Awareness

To initiate an alternative approach in navigating a career path inside organisations to drive meaningful change starts with leaders who are confident in driving opposing views forward that supports more so the benefit of the organisation rather than getting their own personal needs, ego or expectations get in the way

“How can you lead others if you can’t lead yourself?”

Behind the confidence of senior leadership often lies a more complicated reality.

EQ Leadership

The antidote begins with self-leadership, a developed sense of who you are, what you stand for and where you are taking others.

It is this internal clarity that allows leaders to move from reactive to intentional, and to build the kind of psychological safety that capability-led cultures depend on.

And there’s a growing suite of courses and views on this approach:

Training courses such as “The Compassionate Leader Pathway” demonstrates that empathy, self-reflection, and intentionality are not soft skills but business-critical capabilities.

Leaders who develop these qualities can guide their organisations through complexity, empowering both capability growth and culture change.

Leadership Can Be Test & Learn

Chris Barez Brown, founder of Upping Your Elvis backed this up in a recent video championing that good leadership moves away from the text books and more to honing skills through experimenting, test and learns and trying new things out to add value in becoming a good leader i.e. use your initiative, energy to your work, critical thinking and being inquisitive

This is reinforced by a simple but powerful idea from leadership advisor Thomas Barta: Bravery = Purpose minus Fear as discussed on Jon Evans Uncensored CMO Podcast:

If you want to lead with more courage, either deepen your sense of purpose, reduce the fear holding you back, or ideally do both.

For leaders navigating capability-led change, this is more than a motivational prompt — it is a practical lens.

The change agents and self-aware leaders this article describes are not fearless.
They have simply developed enough clarity about why they are doing something to act in spite of the doubt.

So it requires deliberate choices about how people are deployed and how people decide (and encouraged) to show up.

The organisations that move fastest on this are not waiting for structural permission. They are making deliberate choices today across four areas:

A Modern Four-Step Framework for Capability-Led Change

1. Audit – Map current capabilities and opportunities
Identify the skills, experience, and adaptability inside your teams.

Where do you have embedded change agents? Where are the gaps? Use workforce mapping, internal talent marketplaces, and performance data to understand not just what people do, but what they could do with support.

💡 Example takeaway: Look at your digital, analytics, and commercial teams — which individuals are quietly driving improvements or innovating within processes? Capture and recognise that capability.

2. Mobilise – Deploy people where they’ll have the highest impact
Shift from fixed roles to capability-driven assignments. Move people onto initiatives that stretch their skills and align to business objectives.

Empower your internal change agents to lead pilot programs or cross-functional projects.

💡 Example takeaway: A marketing analyst who thrives in collaboration could be seconded to a product innovation initiative — their impact and learning far exceeding the original job description.

3. Augment – Leverage tools and data to amplify skills
AI, analytics, and automation should complement people, not replace them. Provide digital dashboards, real-time insights, or smart workflow tools to let teams work more efficiently and make better decisions. The goal is to enhance capability, free up leaders for strategic thinking, and let change agents multiply their effect.

💡Example takeaway: Use a data visualisation platform to help internal teams spot trends themselves, rather than relying solely on external consultants. Build processes for test and learn initiatives to turn trends into new ways of working inside the organisation and provide a platform to feedback this new approach and learnings

4. Measure – Link capability and culture to real outcomes
Move beyond KPIs that focus on activity. Track how capability building, team alignment, and change agent deployment influence business outcomes such as revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

💡 Example takeaway: When a cross-functional team pilots a new process or digital initiative, measure not only the revenue or traffic uplift but also the learning, adoption, and collaboration patterns that emerge.

The organisations that will outperform are those that treat capability as a strategic asset. They understand that growth depends on people who can learn, redeploy their skills and work fluidly across boundaries.

Technology will continue to accelerate performance, but it will not replace leadership.

In fact, the more AI is embedded into Marketing and Operations, the more human judgement, emotional intelligence and self-awareness will differentiate high-performing teams from average ones.

Efficiency alone is not a strategy, but the direction and decision making is.

Talent strategy is no longer about managing headcount or filling roles.

It is about deliberately building the capabilities that drive revenue, innovation and customer value and creating a culture where those capabilities can evolve as fast as the market demands.

Simon Swan.

Simon is a Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Director → join him on LinkedIn

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Thanks to Simon for a great mini guide to rethink traditional leadership and offer his 4 step framework you can take on yourself.

Have a great weekend and we will see you next Friday

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

PS If you are struggling with AI and leadership, here are a number of ways to improve using a few techniques

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This week we dive into what new TV ad formats aka 'commercial enhancement' really means for CMOs, brand affinity, and the future of live sport. Could your brand be generating resentment instead of equity?
Let's talk about where the line is where we can't uncross.

Thanks for reading last week’s metrics and communication article, from the feedback it’s safe to say it is something CMOs and their directs needed to read.

Would you like to us to cover something? Or have a question you’d like us to answer anonymously? Complete this short form below

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Are Ads The Problem? Are Platforms To Blame, Or Are We?

The relentless encroachment of advertising into previously untouched cultural spaces is clear in ITV’s recent in‑game adverts during the Six Nations rugby broadcast.

Traditionally, commercials have been kept to dedicated ad breaks on UK TV. Now, they are making unprecedented “mid‑match incursions” into the live viewing experience.

This Scrum Is Brought To You By…

During 20‑second pauses for scrums, ITV deployed a split‑screen that replaced the stadium audio and commentary with the orchestral soundtrack of a Samsung mobile phone advert. Later in matches, the same intrusive format was used for Virgin Atlantic.

These ads triggered 300+ Ofcom complaints on the first weekend of the Six Nations:

@ofcom.org.ukOur latest TV complaints update 📺 This week a GB News programme, two Six Nations matches, and Love Island are on the list. #TV #sixnationsrugby #loveisland

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This mirrors the stop–start nature of American sports, where every pause becomes a “sponsored moment”. ITV have framed this as a necessary “commercial enhancement” to keep premium sports on free‑to‑air television.

The unspoken truth: without advertising money, many premium sports broadcasts simply wouldn’t exist.

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The BBC already spends a large percentage of licence fee revenue on sports rights (rumoured to be around £150 million per year).

It’s not just rugby and free‑to‑air channels. We’ve seen an extra ad slot added before kick‑off on Premier League coverage on Sky Sports, and new ad units integrated into TNT Sports (Discovery+) coverage of the Premier League and Champions League. RTE in Ireland are trialling these styles ads too.

Why This Is Different To Social Media

On platforms like YouTube or TikTok, advertising is the accepted currency for free content, but users retain control: skip a pre‑roll after five seconds or swipe past a sponsored post.

By contrast, the rugby broadcast created a completely captive environment. Viewers couldn’t skip the 20‑second split‑screen ads for Samsung or Virgin Atlantic, which hijacked half the screen and overwrote the live experience.

Ultimately, both models rely on the same premise: if you are not paying for the product, your attention is the product. But many viewers already pay for ad‑free or reduced‑ad experiences through subscription services.

Just as social media users have slowly adapted to heavily monetised, algorithm‑driven feeds, UK television viewers are now being pushed to accept “mid‑match incursions” as the price for avoiding full sports paywalls.

In the long term, broadcasters will keep testing how much they can disrupt live games before backlash outweighs revenue.

I asked our regular contributors what their thoughts were:

I’d love to first see the analysis of audience feedback on the intro of such ads…something bland and boring, I can understand the drawback and interruption to the user but could there be an opportunity to take a more creative angle that for example connects to the 6 nations game taking place? Eg Oreo “you can still dunk in the dark” or 2018 football World Cup with Specsavers running “should’ve gone to Specsavers” - Simon Swan

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There were times when I was watching England play ‘rugby’ over the last two weekends when I dearly wished a multi national brand would takeover the screen with a fifteen minute long brand ad. Hell, just a bopping QR code bouncing across the screen would’ve been more entertaining than some of our defense, attack, kicking, passing and tackling.

The thing is, for all of ITV’s delight in ‘creating a new ad format’, the end result is just clunky interruption. Yes, they try to slip them into breaks in the game but it’s those breaks when commentators tend to catch up on the in game analysis. Or you chat to your mates in the pub about Henry Arrundell’s apparent vertigo...

What I’m not doing is considering my next phone or TV purchase via Samsung or holiday flight on Virgin Atlantic, so when their (presumably very expensive) ad spots pop up, they’re not greeted with joy - they’re blockers, the corporate equivalent to a seven foot tall, Guinness-guffing man in a Puffa jacket standing in front of me at Twickenham. - Harry Lang

ITV Or Advertiser Impact?

From ITV’s official statement: Mark Trinder, ITV’s director of commercial sales and partnerships, said: “At ITV throughout 2026 we’re bringing the most exciting advertising opportunities of the year to brands – live, free-to-air sport on a scale we’ve never seen before”.

For CMOs and Marketing leaders, the question is:
If we’re first to try these major ad slots, what are the risks and benefits, and what are the second‑ and third‑order effects?

Will early outrage be outweighed by orders and flights booked, or will British rugby fans quietly decide not to buy the latest Samsung Android phone or not to fly with Virgin Atlantic?

My suspicion: fans are more frustrated with ITV’s decision than with the brands who took the punt on an expensive new slot.

But the irritation still rubs off.

Upcoming Football Fever

With the football World Cup coming up in the summer and ITV’s significant investment into showing 51 games and having huge former players as experts, this rugby trial could resurface in the world cup games via on‑field treatments or VAR replays. Imagine VAR decisions brought to you Coca Cola or Aramco.

The reaction in this situation would be very different.

The Failure In Ads Leading To Fatigue

This aggressive expansion of advertising creates significant strategic risks and sets up difficult conversations for CMOs not just with customers but with their bosses...

1. Trading Brand Affinity for Brand Resentment 🤔

When advertising forces its way into the middle of a live event, it disrupts the experience. Viewers heavily criticised the Six Nations ads as “intrusive” and “disruptive to the flow of the game”. Even the Six Nations chief executive admitted the experience was “uncomfortable for viewers”.

Placing a brand where it actively annoys the target audience is dangerous, particularly with the high‑value viewers who watch their national team play for 80 minutes. If a fan’s primary association with your brand is that you interrupted a crucial match, you’re generating resentment, not equity.

Some brave CMOs will accept short‑term pain for a long‑term frequency play in the middle of major events.

Others will see this as a line not to cross.

2. Destroying the “Theatre” of the Product 🏉

Effective marketing relies on context. Hyper‑aggressive advertising often ignores the nuances of what it interrupts.

England’s hooker (this is a rugby position) Jamie George highlighted the specific “theatre” of scrums in rugby: the tension, the build‑up, the referee’s microphone. That atmosphere is the product.

When advertisers overwrite the very content audiences tuned in to see, they position themselves as antagonists and erode the ecosystem their advertising depends on.

3. The Fallacy of “Sponsored Moments” 👀

Just because technology and rights deals allow a space to be monetised doesn’t mean it’s a wise investment.

In‑game ads are normal in American sports, but forcing that format onto sports with different rhythms creates a jarring, “Americanised” feel that alienates UK audiences.

CMOs must recognise that forced exposure does not equal effective engagement. Networks may justify these ads as financially necessary, but it’s the advertiser’s brand that takes the reputational hit when the public lashes out against the intrusion.

Boss Pressure?

Founders and CEOs often love the status of big TV moments and talk about them with friends and peers. This creates pressure for CMOs to follow through on these formats now they know they exist and can make waves internally.

As platforms and media owners attempt to colonise every spare micro‑moment of our attention, Marketing leaders risk crossing the line from being visible to being actively hostile.

Guilty by association may be enough to trigger a new kind of backlash many just don’t plan for.

Bold CMOs will see this as an opportunity to stand out and get buzz around the brand. It’s an expensive pay to play but one many will be enquiring about.

Others, in more delicate positions, might feel compelled to keep buying into these formats for the cachet they bring, even as the audience grows more fatigued.

So over to you, what would YOU do? Please vote below

Thanks for reading today and let me know what you think of these ads by hitting reply!

Danny, Harry and Simon

This week I’m answering a subscriber’s question on how to move your reporting from vanity metrics to commercial impact, plus giving you a simple exercise to run with your team.

(You can ask your own anonymous question through our Google Form)

If you find this useful, hit the heart, leave a comment, or pass it on to one person who’d benefit.

Last week: Don’t forget to read my deepdive (below) on how to build your commercial storytelling engine.

Executive Metric Communication

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Metrics and impact communication stumps everyone at every level. You are never really taught how to communicate and its a critical skill you have to work on and never stop improving.

Once you hit the top tier of the C-Suite you should be conditioned in translating your department metrics into business metrics, this often is the difference between great and good C-Suite leaders, Marketing leads can struggle (more than most) to get out of the engagement metrics, volumes of activity & the why, which misses the mark and doesn’t communicate the business impact.

The Known Issues

I have spoken to a number of founders, CEO, CMOs, CGOs in recent months and other than the explosion of channels and uncertainty, the main theme is the disconnect in communicating Marketing success and the impact it is having on the business.

Earlier this week, I received an anonymous question from a Marketing leader who is struggling to make their leadership team understand the impact that their team is having and removing the famous corporate leadership glaze over when you are discussing Marketing activities and connecting to Marketing and then business results.

In the rule of 3, I break down metrics into 3 core categories:

• Level 1: Business Metrics

• Level 2: Department Metrics

• Level 3: Team Metrics

Let’s dive into the levels and how to shape communications to those around you at Leadership team level and how to shape reporting and analysis for your team leads to help you communicate your business impact.

The Metrics Hierarchy: From Vanity To Strategic

→ THE “C-SUITE” ZONE

1. Business Metrics

These are the numbers the founders, CEO, COO, CFO, and Board truly care about.
If it doesn’t eventually impact these metrics, the C-suite considers it “noise” or “Marketing fluff”.

I have used as standardised examples as possible, please replace with what your business metrics.

Examples:

• Total Revenue / Net Sales: The top-line growth.

• EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation. This measures operational profitability.

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Total sales and Marketing spend divided by new customers acquired.

• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account.

• LTV:CAC Ratio: A measure of efficiency. (A 3:1 ratio is still considered the “Gold Standard“).

• Churn Rate / Retention Rate: The percentage of customers leaving vs. staying.

→ 🧠 THE INFORMED CMO ZONE

2. Department Metrics - The “Director/VP” Level

These metrics show how the Marketing department, as a whole, contributes to the business metrics above. These are what you work on, optimise constantly and drive efficiencies towards.

These metrics guide the Department leaders, Teams leads and teams on how successful they are and connecting into the company strategy and the most important metrics.

Examples:

• Marketing Originated Revenue: Revenue that started from a Marketing touchpoint.

• Marketing Pipeline Contribution: The pound/dollar value of deals in the sales funnel generated by Marketing.

• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Revenue generated for every pound/dollar spent on advertising.

• Cost Per Lead (CPL): How much it costs to get a potential customer into the system.

• Marketing Share of Voice (SOV): How much of the “market conversation” your brand owns compared to competitors.

→ ⚠️ THE CORPORATE DANGER ZONE

3. Team Metrics - The “Manager/Execution” Level

These metrics are diagnostic. They help the Marketing team understand why the department metrics are up or down. These metrics help to connect to Team and Department goals and ladder up to Department Metrics, these are often seen as vanity metrics, but, without these it is hard to understand what is happening on the ground. It’s the sense check Marketers care about that others suggest is noise not signal.

These metrics give the team the feel of the market and how customers are reacting to Marketing activities.

Examples:

• Conversion Rate (CVR): The % of visitors who take a desired action (e.g., signing up for a demo).

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Effectiveness of ad creative or email copy.

• MQL to SQL Conversion: The speed and quality of leads moving from Marketing to Sales.

• SEO Keyword Rankings: Visibility for high-intent search terms.

• Social Media Engagement: Engagement metrics like views, reactions, likes and replies

• Email Open/Click Rates: Engagement levels of your existing database.

FWIW your CPO has vanity metrics too including total registered users, app downloads, feature clicks, and your Sales lead/CRO has vanity metrics like activity count, calls made, leads generated, lead count, outreach numbers etc.

Ways To Diagnose Performance Issues Through Vanity Metrics → Business Metrics 💡

Here is a key example of why vanity metrics are still important and how you can help improve your leadership teams knowledge by connecting the vanity metrics up through to known business issues through diagnosis of performance drops or revenue drops.

Diagnosis & Steps Taken:
(1) Channels & Conversion: Check revenue and traffic by channel – what’s up, down, or flat?
(2) Product & Tech: Confirm any outages, releases, or bugs that could have hit performance.
(3) Search & Algorithmic Updates: Review SEO rankings, ranking URLs, AI overviews, and recent Google updates for any major changes.

This will work both in excel as a checklist or fits nicely on a slide/image.

Coach The Team On The Difference 📈

When Marketing leaders first join exec meetings, they often fall into “over‑explaining and over‑defending” drowning the room in tactics and vanity metrics instead of leading with business impact.

Part of your job is to coach them on this shift before they walk into the room.

Complete This Internal Department Exercise ☑️

Run this as a working session with your Heads of / Team leads:

List every metric you report today and put each one into Level 1 (Business), Level 2 (Department), or Level 3 (Team). Then map your Level 1–2 metrics directly to your OKRs or equivalent. If a key objective doesn’t have a clear metric, or your metrics are all Level 3, you have a focus problem.

This is always well received with my coaching and consulting clients.

Hint: Understand in your specific business where K-Factor and NPS (or CSAT) sits, some boards still consider NPS as their key metric to positively push on.

Remove These Words ❌

There are certain words that quietly weaken Marketing leaders in exec rooms: a bit, a little, extremely, just, kind of, pretty, quite, really, slightly, so, sort of, stuff, very.

Audit your next deck and and speaker notes/script – remove them and see how much more decisive you sound.

Go ahead with confidence anonymous, map this out and treat it as a team exercise, you can choose if its you and your Heads of / Team leads or a whole team exercise. This should provide you confidence to drive your Department and business forward.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend,

Danny

PS You can always recommend the MU newsletter to an industry friend or your team you think would benefit from our weekly newsletter - copy and paste https://www.marketingunfiltered.co/p/metrics into your WhatsApp group, Teams or Slack on share and tag me on LinkedIn or hit the share button below

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What a wet week!

Paul’s first MU struck a note, this week I tackle storytelling and how it’s becoming a commercial weapon for many who build out their engine.

Storytellers Are Your New Commercial Weapon

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Many founders think they are Steve Jobs.

They think they can go on the biggest stages and be entertaining, charismatic and wow a crowd in person and on the event video. But they don’t…

Old PR Is Not Modern Storytelling

To a point, founders have been conditioned to think this by other founders, podcasts, and industry press.

Many comms and PR teams follow two strict rules:

1. They are official spokespeople and only they do the talking

2. Only the CEO and hand-selected spokespeople can speak formally. Podcast appearances, speaking gigs and interviews all need approvals.

New Media New Evolving Landscape

Neither of these is ready for new media; very few would last more than 15 minutes on a top-tier podcast, this world was built for 2-3 minute interviews segments on radio and TV stations; their status would be removed with one prying question, and the strict company guidelines would restrict any leeway.

With all this said, Brands are actually more elastic than ever before. Brands can dip into the news and leverage, they can refuse to comment, they can push hundreds of messages out about their latest product launch, they can come back from manufactured “viral” clips and Brands can now engineer popularity by understanding their market and always have the chance to pivot away.

Cultural Impact

There is no monoculture; it has become thousands of subcultures. The bifurcation of feeds and content is both an opportunity and a threat.

This is why the movement to Storytelling Teams is happening.

We saw a push for storytelling teams just before Christmas, with well-known PLG companies pushing the trend forward, as Notion did, basically rebranding their Marketing teams
“We merged our internal comms, external comms, social, and influencer teams into one: the Storytelling Team”

I love Notion but is a narrative in rebranding Marketing, again ;-)

Let’s Play Storytelling Out

Recently, I broke down the different ways and formats you can storytell on:

• The product

• The SKUs

• The service

• The packages

• The impacts

  • Cultural impact

  • Economic impact

• Customer stories

  • External customers

  • Internal customers, i.e employee stories

  • Scratching your own itch

• Founder stories

• Company leaders stories

• Leaked screenshots

• Highlighting the nuance

• Leverage data

  • Most often, internal data

  • Integrating external or survey data

• A commissioned documentary (on Channel4, Netfix, YouTube)

• Screenshots and allowing stories to come from screenshots (underutilised)

As you can tell there is huge opportunities in creating, curating and remixing content and Product information. A storytelling company will have a field day and be inspired for these options, not be intimidated by the list.

Corporate storytelling is not about more video content, copying competitors, prettier decks and more social content; it is about creating momentum that moves revenue, reputation and relationships.

Why Storytellers Now Matter Commercially

Most firms still look to the CEO, founder or official spokesperson to “do the storytelling” then wonder why company stories stalls and brand salience flatlines.

Scaling your founder, CEO or spokesperson is hugely limited, and the things they say or even hint at have real underlying implications, so what companies are questioning now:

How do we scale this?

Dedicated storytellers change that because their job is to turn products, services, customer experiences and data into narratives that buyers remember and act on. The outcome is sharper demand, higher conversion and internal alignment around what really makes you distinct.

Storytelling should sit inside the commercial engine, not on the edges in “comms.”

When storytellers are close to product, sales, customer success and finance, they can show how your work actually lands in the real world, from cultural impact to economic value.
Done well, your stories start to pre-handle objections, compress sales cycles and make you easier to buy.

Designing A Storytelling Engine, Not Another Campaign Or Interview

The real miss in most corporate storytelling is operational.

Leaders talk about “being a media company” and then starve storytellers of context, access and support.
If you have worked in a company on the stock market, you’ll know how much you are and are not allowed to say… and how much you are restricted to say and narratives are built for quarterly earnings and Product launches.

The result is flooding social media with trend based fluff, sporadic content that looks fine in isolation but never compounds into the pipeline or share of voice.

A storytelling engine takes one moment and turns it into multiple assets tuned to channels and audiences.

Marketing’s problems often comes from our approach to channels and messages:

• Over saturating channels

• Concentrating on an ill informed ICP or persona

• Creating ask fatigue (asking our customers for more, buy more, do more, download more) not solving problems

• And important how we have engineered comms to be one-to-many and not smaller more relevant messaging

The engine should include:

• A killer interview with the founder

• A customer win and quick snapshot of why, not huge long case studies and long videos

• A product release that answered really specific problems

• A strong internal point of view or the the anti view, these can be sliced into clips, posts, emails, podcast segments, internal narratives and talk tracks for sales.

The commercial outcome is simple: more high-quality touchpoints from the smaller chunks of effort (with hybrid AI (this is human + AI) help), with stories reaching customers wherever and whenever they already pay attention.

Let Others Drive The Story

Some of the most effective stories about your brand come from people who do not have “Marketing” in their title.

Let’s be inspired by the waves of AI companies spreading their message far and wide.
Developers showing their work on a podcast, Product Managers sharing a screenshare of a cool trick or feature enhancement, specialists speaking at events, customers interviewed by journalists, industry bloggers covering your hackathon or using your live data, these stories often outperform classic campaigns.

Storytelling comes from Product usage, it’s engineered and built into the Product build ethos, it comes from the customers and users who find great prompts and share across social, newsletters, and YouTube videos and huge numbers try them, edit them and share again.

This engine has been critical to Google Gemini’s success, not just a stronger more integrated product and worksuite.

This shift is from “how do we talk about ourselves” to “how do we design moments other people want to talk about.”

When you connect customers with media, open up data, invite creators behind the scenes and equip internal experts to speak, you create a mesh of independent voices reinforcing your positioning.

Your CEO can add top level and top line revenue by adding tactical perspectives, appearing on core key interviews and industry podcasts and discussing core areas within the earnings reports or on that leaked pitch deck or internal email…

That network effect shows up as lower paid media dependency, higher credibility and a brand that feels alive in the market conversation.

These engines have to be built - they are rarely earned!

Outcomes-First Decision Making When Stories Break

In a feed-led world, stories about you will surface with or without your involvement.

A niche TikTok creator, a respected researcher, a well respect sports person, a reality TV star or a fan account might create a moment you could never plan for but help to drive commercial growth.

A quick personal story: The beloved Scottish comedian Kevin Bridges shared his dislike for our pages being everywhere, thanks to the meticulous work we engineered with sharing functionality front and centre of the Product, paired with our Press efforts and putting our customer success first throughout the business (thanks Kevin, for one of my highlights of my career when you covered this in your BBC standup special), I have never received as many WhatsApp and DMs about the product we built and many have borrowed the mechanics over the years.

The question for leaders is not “do we like this” but “what outcome do we want from this.” Unfortunately we were not in a place to truly capitalise like anyone would be today.

You have a serious set of levers you can pull: amplify, ignore, comment, reward, repurpose.

Each comes with trade-offs for trust, reach and long-term narrative but creating an engine and newsroom to be proactive will drive the right Marketing goals to be set and drive business change.

A loyal customer might not care if you stay quiet on a clip, but future customers and partners will often be watching how you handle it.

The way AI is surfacing brands and answering prompts means you’re response might just be the difference.

Treat these choices as strategic, not reactive, and you turn random mentions into deliberate connection and reputation building.

Acting Like A Modern Media Company

Sports are the clearest illustration.

Clubs never rely on one press release or one interview (although I bet many wish they could); they create continuous waves of highlights, behind-the-scenes content, fan channels, remix culture and, at times, manufacture leaks to keep their story moving or moving another narrative along.
They use internal creators, staff, players, legends, pundits, fans and even critics to keep attention and emotion high.

The UFC have been front and centre of this over the years, (just look at their YouTube) they have made every channel work for them, they have made the fighters tell their stories, their coaches become a part of the fight narrative, the media and media personalities have their say, they incorporate sponsors into the build up and they overly invest in their own staff’s part from fight picks, to the way they interact with the fighters to who sits front row close enough to the octagon to be hit with the blood of the fighters mid fight.

2 Examples: UFC have former world champions now interviewing sporting royalty to build deeper content libraries and fan connection, they run a week long fight build up series called Embedded to feature the main fighters, their camps and offer exclusive behind the scenes access.

Media Business Leaders

One company that has accelerated this in recent months is a16z, the VC leader, they have designed the use of channels, from sharing opinion pieces, promoting chart of the week on their blog and Substack, to podcasting with their founders, their internal arms of the business they repurpose their content across every relevant medium, to republishing any a16z partner or analyst guesting on other podcasts on their own podcast feeds, to each team member being active across social media not to flood the zone but to offer real value to their customers (even their competitors) and fans.

Loving ❤️ Storytelling: Lovable have fully embraced company-wide storytelling, from the founder’s prolific social media shares, to developers sharing their vibe coded projects and talking deeply about their releases, to their Growth team members (check out Elena’s substack - it’s packed full) embracing storytelling to advance their startup.

Any ambitious company could adopt the same mindset.

Put an internal creator or storytelling lead at the centre, wire them into leadership and teams, and task them with turning everyday operations into story assets that support growth.

When you judge storytelling by its impact on pipeline, pricing power, hiring, retention and partnership opportunities, it stops being a nice-to-have narrative exercise and becomes a core lever of business performance.

Founders and leaders love to say they’re a storytelling business but then leave storytelling buried in comms decks, the comms team to red pen most interesting and compelling stories and be hidden in campaign calendars and social media spray and prays. ​

The next era will belong to companies that wire storytellers into the commercial engine, let customers, builders and experts carry the narrative, and build systems that turn one smart moment into a hundred meaningful touchpoints. ​

In this market you’re going to be targeted, clipped, screenshotted and remixed it would be smart to be the driver of this bus.

If you’re serious about this, make one decision today: who is your internal storytelling team, and what’s the first story you’re going to engineer around them in the next two weeks? ​

This single decision is how you stop admiring other people’s stories in your feed and inboxes and start owning the one the market tells about you.

If you need help with storytelling engines drop me an email (mu@dannydenhard.com) or hit reply and lets chat

Thanks for reading today and have a great weekend and we will see you again next week

Danny Denhard

This week we have Paul Thomas’ first serving of Marketing Unfiltered, offering lyrics, nostalgia with a main of smart guidance.

Remember to hit share to help inform other Marketing & Growth Leaders

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You’re So Vain: Why Most Brand Stories Fail Before They Start

Listen, I get it.

You work for massive Brand X, zeitgeist start-up Y, or you have built Tool Z that is going to change your sector.

You might be proud, quietly battling imposter syndrome, or under pressure from the CEO to “mention the latest fundraise”.

Your product may well be brilliant.

Your business model might be revolutionary.

Your AI genuinely next level.

Your pricing extremely competitive.

All of that may be true, but until I understand the problem you solve for me, I don’t really want to hear any of it.

I have seen, and made, this mistake more times than I care to admit.

One extreme example came when I was a music buyer for Tesco and I almost inadvertently got an EMI account manager sacked. His label boss was furious because I dared to read a newspaper during a retailer playback of Radiohead’s Kid A.

“But this is art, why isn’t he paying full attention to their genius?”

Brilliantly, the account manager replied, “I think Paul can read and listen at the same time.”

Oh, and by the way, he is the customer.

I have also staked my own credibility getting Samsung HQ’s accessories team in front of EE’s top brass, only for them to burn 80 per cent of the meeting showing SKUs that were only relevant to the Korean market.

And don’t get me started on Apple keynotes.

Which begs the question. Why, when we get the chance to tell our story, do we so often make it about us?

To try to kill this particular disease, I am on a mission to make the lyric

“You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you”

stick permanently in the part of your brain that lives on Spotify.

Because it is the fastest way I know to avoid the five most common mistakes in brand and marketing storytelling.

Roll the Top of the Pops theme.

5. Putting the “what” before the “why?”

“We use the latest AI tools to drive our CRM platform.”

“Snack brand X is sourced from sustainable ingredients.”

Those things might be impressive, but I don’t need to know how you do something until I have decided what you’re for. Start with the problem you solve, not the machinery you have built.

4. Being boringly predictable

This is a particular danger at the “we’ve cracked it” stage.

Rinse and repeat marketing, meeting agendas and opening lines creep in.

Reliable can be reassuring. Predictable is dull.

When audiences feel they know what is coming next, they stop paying attention, especially when what is coming is still mostly about you.

Ironically, this is the moment when even successful brands need to think like challengers again. Call out the problem, highlight where the status quo has drifted, and remind people why you exist. If you are the incumbent, even better. You get to fix it before someone else does.

3. Completely forgetting the customer

“Look how much money we have raised.”

“Look how clever our CTO is.”

“Here is our new brand campaign.”

Sigh.

Even Apple, to be fair, usually tries to anchor this in “our customers tell us…”, but better still is “in the last 12 months our customers have saved money, time and stress because of what we do”.

Or the timeless “You said. We did.”

Which KFC lovingly parodies each Christmas by refusing to sell turkey.

2. Too much content for the attention span

Whether it is cramming extra copy into an OOH ad or turning up with 30 slides for a one hour meeting, forgetting the context your message lands in is a classic error.

It is not about what you feel you need to say.

It is about what the other person is likely to take away.

Less is more, especially when attention is scarce.

1. Supplanting the customer as the hero in their story

I heard a great analogy recently. If companies told the story of George and the Dragon the way they go to market, the hero would not be George, or even the dragon. It would be the Dragonslay 3000, milled from space grade titanium to slice more smoothly through troublesome reptilian scales.

That is peak You’re So Vain behaviour.

Brands are not George.

They are not the dragon either.

They just sell the swords.

When you make yourself the hero, you push the customer into the role of spectator, and spectators don’t buy.

So there you have it. Let’s all be less You’re So Vain and more It’s All About You.

Paul Thomas

Connect with Paul on LinkedIn
» Paul is a Fractional CMO and The Sound of… keynote speaker, combining business thought leadership with pop music to help teams find their growth rhythm.

Thanks for reading again this week, if you have something unfiltered to say or share, hit reply or email mu@dannydenhard.com and we’d love for you to feature here.

Danny & Harry

On Friday I shared my 65 leadership and leadership team tips and today Harry and I thought let’s tackle the world’s biggest stage, the Super Bowl ads…

Will AI Make The Superb Owl’s Ads Fly?

Typos aside, the Superbowl is, well, like the Superbowl of advertising.

An absurd, egregious pinnacle of rampant consumerism twinned with rabid tribalism and a healthy smattering of old school American fanfare.

It’s the Guinness Surfer of the sporting calendar (in the US, at least) and a focal point for big brands (well, those with a reported $8 million per ad slot burning a hole in their pocket) who want to embed themselves in popular perception.

For 30 seconds.

On the 8th of February, the New England Patriots will try to dislodge the Seattle Seahawks in Superbowl LX (60) to claim their seventh title.

The Seahawks (from the home of Starbucks), meanwhile, want to double their tally, having only won it once in 2013, when rookie Quarterback Russell Wilson and star running back Marshawn Lynch made mincemeat of Denver’s MVP, Peyton Manning.

As a Brit who became briefly enamoured with College football during a visit to LA back in the mid 2000’s, I won’t be staying up to watch three and a half hours of standing around interspersed with brief glimmers of sporting action. However as a marketer, I watch the Superbowl ad highlights on YouTube religiously every year, partly out of professional curiosity, a little from rubber-necked morbid fascination but mostly to witness peak creative extravagance from a nation for whom excessive grandiosity may as well be a constitutional right.

Year 2 Of AI Ads

Last year, the culmination of the NFL season became known as ‘The AI Super Bowl’ due to the excessive use of artificial intelligence in the ads, and because there were an abundance of cash rich, land grabbing AI tools and platforms advertising.

Sector darling OpenAI opened the bidding with a 60-second black and white arthouse ad about ‘The Intelligence Age’ whilst Google’s Gemini pushed its chatbot, alongside 50+ geo-targeted ads showing how it was effectively the second coming of Christ for small US businesses (ironically, it was busted having edited one of Gemini’s answers about Gouda cheese. Artificial? Definitely. Intelligent? The jury was still out).

Meta’s Ray-Ban AI Glasses had the Tier 1 Hemsworth, Salesforce pulled out whistlin’ Matthew McConaughey, the ever present GoDaddy (surely Go Grandaddy by now?) showed up, the world’s most profligate advertiser Booking dot com did what they always do - all the big names featured with their AI augmented wares. Over the course of the night they wowed global audiences with soft-humoured, ‘amuse everybody/ exclude nobody’ slots designed to demonstrate just how bloody clever and necessary their AI technology was (or just how foolish the audience would be to not leap on their AI party bus as a matter of life and death).

As the volume turns up towards 11 and beyond at this year’s Superbowl, with enough hyperbole, fakery and bullshit to make Karoline Leavitt worry about job security, what can we expect from the AI ad crowd?

The TL;DR is:- LOADS more of the same.

$2.7 Trillion

According to data from CB Insights there are around five hundred privately owned AI unicorns globally, cumulatively valued at a combined $2.7 trillion. Despite their largesse, they’re in a bun fight - an old school, dot Com era Klondike Gold Rush. The simple truth is the world doesn’t need 500 AI behemoths. Some will be ingested into the hungry mouths of their bigger rivals, some will amalgamate with competitors to protect themselves whilst the remainder will go full Icarus, flying too close to the sun before running out of money, ideas and customers before falling to earth in a ball of Dollar-burning flames.

Besides the advertisers, sports fans can expect a creative Scheiße-storm as both AI platforms and traditional brand advertisers whip their agencies into creating ever more outlandish masterpieces which move the needle away from astute, creative advertising insight towards an absurd, brash Hollywoodesque apocalypse. How many creative teams have been held at their laptops at gunpoint, forcibly plugged into the unlimited realms of AI, unimpeded by such wasteful fripperies such as physics, nuance or quality?

My guess is we’ll see more abstract, rainbow coloured assaults on the senses - think a million butterflies for healthcare brands or a billion indulgent burger munchers for fast food. They’ll look impressive, they’ll sound brain numbing but they’ll smell of the desperation seeping from the pores of CMOs who know they need to squeeze eight million Dollars worth of value into a tiny thirty second box, trying desperately to use an AI butter knife as an ineffectual crowbar.

The new kids on the block this year could well be Web3 Prediction Markets.
In a statement, Tim Schlittner, Director of Communications at the NFL, said that

“...six total [betting] ads are permitted from the period leading up to kickoff through the game’s conclusion.”

According to a recent report by Gambling Insider “CFTC-licensed platforms have enjoyed significant activity so far this season. The biggest Prediction Market platform in the US, Kalshi, recorded almost $450 million in trading volume during the NFL playoffs”. These platforms are cash rich, perfectly positioned for the Superbowl audience and technologically expert - so if they are allowed to feature on the NFL ad roster, expect big name sports stars riding AI-powered rollercoasters around dollar-dripping, futuristic worlds.

Look out for the upcoming ad teasers so far includes: Pepsi Vs Coke (a cheeky inclusion of the Coke polar bear combining with a classic throw back to the brilliant pepsi challenge 80s campaign), Bud, Matthew McConaughey, Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Ben Stiller, Emma Stone & The Duolingo Owl. Here is a great read of the super bowl economics by advertiser Ro

Apple Of The (Ads) Eye

I’m still looking forward to the Superbowl and the ads that surround it, but I’m fairly certain the most relevant ad foreshadowing the potential perils of the AI epoch will be this warning shot - fired exactly forty two years earlier in 1984.

Harry Lang → the CMO of a leading Blockchain and author of the 5 Star rated marketing guidebook ‘Brands, Bandwagons & Bullshit,’ available on Amazon. You can connect with Harry on LinkedIn

What’s your take? Vote below

Thanks for reading and have a great few days and see you Friday.

Danny & Harry

This week: I offer 65 (yes 65!) hints and tips to improve your leadership skills and improve how you and your leadership operate and work together.

These tips and hints are from my experiences, coaching and consulting, so if you are experiencing any and want to chat in more detail hit reply or email me mu@dannydenhard.com

SHARING’S CARING ❤️:

Please forward to your colleagues & hit share on LinkedIn to help friends and industry colleagues (or copy and paste → https://www.marketingunfiltered.co/p/65 into your favourite leadership WhatsApp group)

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The 65 Tips To Improve Your Leadership & Leadership Team Connection & Performance

I have broken down the 65 tips into 3 categories, (i) operations, (ii) executive leadership team (ELT) and (iii) communications. These are ideal for those in the C-Suite, in SLT and ELTs or ExCo’s and if you are about to join these levels this will be an operational way to onboard & hit the ground running & lead from the front.

Operations 🔧

1. Create a high operational skills level between the C-Suite, set the bar high - it will create the right standards, it will be noticed in the business and when partnering externally it will be accepted as the norm.

2. Roll out a Decision doc - highlight and identify what, how, why and when you made a decision as a leadership team. This is to be shared across the business

3. Have a “Sit Down” each week as a leadership team - debrief is critical when the business is doing well or doing badly (like a stand up but more debrief and more relaxed - this brought one of the leadership teams I sat on closer than any other team building or bonding)

4. Walk and talks always beats in office chats - remove the barriers of the office and remove the status updates

5. Remove status update requests (especially in 1-2-1s or department meetings) - async is best for status updates

6. Rehearse QBRs - QBRs are more than just numbers and commentary, they often are a performance needs practise and performing

7. Reduce down the number of unofficial apps and channels. The side WhatsApp groups, the numerous slack and team channels

8. Build collective scar tissue - leadership teams often don’t build muscle memory together, help to build tolerance and muscle together, togetherness and team spirit is critical at the top

9. MRS (meeting recovery syndrome) is real and can impact your day and week, reduce the meeting load and audit your calendar. Only by auditing and owning your time can you control MRS

10. Run management performance updates - allow Q&A, be the exec sponsors, allow department leads to own this and back up where required. Be engaged!

11. Team and department plans not strategies - strategies removes the importance of the company strategy - words matter especially between tactics and strategy

12. When goal setting and frameworks start to fail, look to centre everyone back to simple goals. Think big act small by when for simplicity works

13. Run 1-2-1s and check-ins away from the office - office environments often create low trust environments

14. Complete the 9 box exercise (you choose if you involve HR) - this is a hard point for many to control however identifying and sharing your high standards sends a signal to your leadership peers - expect questions and push for head count removal or reduction. You have to manage this

15. Have grievances with an executive colleague? Air it out in person first, not on chat apps or email - if you need to protect yourself move to email or chat apps

16. Embrace HR

    1. Into the leadership team meetings

    2. In regular updates and 1-2-1 style catch ups with them

    3. Reduce the fear of HR as a leadership team (and if you cannot embrace the fear factor)

17. Give interview practise internally - especially if you are not hiring, interview each other and allow those more junior to be the interviewer

18. Create a cross functional pairing will help you and your colleagues to collaborate and drive performance improvements. Review the pairing and match well, poor pairings lead to cross-functional issues

19. Coaching, training & reverse mentorship

    1. Pilot reverse mentorship - connecting you with cross-functional colleagues who can provide updates, insights and connect you to the pulse of the company is invaluable

    2. Actively coach and mentor management layers - you should be coaching each other and those layers below you. This doesn’t have to be weekly but regular mentoring and coaching will set standards and indicate how important development is

    3. Find an executive trainer away from the business who can facilitate and hold the room - this is a high trust role that needs the other fit

20. Bring in experts and specialists into ELTs - ensure there is a “exec translator” to help bring clarity (someone in the team who can explain between departments and department heads)

21. Remove vanity metrics when reporting up into the C-Suite, this is always overlooked and causes confusion and distrust

22. High potential & high performer

    1. Identify “high potential” and help to shape their development. Who you see in your team others might see others

    2. Identify “high performers” and connect with management and leadership levels - studies show high performers raise those up around them

23. Identify internal influencers - they will be great at sharing messages and insights, they also have outsized influence on decision making with their peers

24. Phase re-onboarding back to the business - people operate in 3 stages,
    (i) what the company used to,
    (ii) what it is today and
    (iii) what it’s going to be - most operate in phase 1, you should be operating in phase 3 and pushing the business into phase 3 at every given moment

25. Get around the camp fire - eat together, the connection and trust increases

26. Always align on cross functional requests - no alignment = no performance

27. Ensure your number 2s have a strong relationship together and with your leadership peers

28. Specific working relationships are closer than others - call these out and agree on these being normal

29. Call out the boundaries you have individually and collectively and have created (inside and outside of work)

30. Agree to onboard new leaders onto the leadership team - must be able to understand your relationships (most important), your rhythm, your flow & your comms cadences

31. Have a collective impact (like a hype file) Slack/Teams channel - share great feedback, great campaign and results

32. Culture means many different things to different people, some are happy to come in and do their job, some would like everything to change and others want a perfect environment - your job as a leader is to drive performance and create a safe environment, allow people to thrive in where they can. Always manage expectations

33. Have members of the leadership team who are Customer obsessed & those who are competitor obsessed (for their strengths and weakness) - but they have to meet in the middle, this has to be connected and cannot blindly copy competitors and ignore customer/consumer feedback

ELT 👩‍💼👨‍💼

34. Share your executive lessons - this can be small or large but sharing exec lessons help you all learn and develop together

35. Allow critical distance - allow others to step away and think through issues, critical distance is the difference between good and bad decisions especially when the stakes are high

36. Optimise meetings, optimise agenda’s, feedback loops, communication styles etc. Do not settle for a style - they stagnate and frustrate many and only comes out when someone has had enough or blows their top at a peer

37. Decide if you are a writing and document leadership team, a meeting team or something else. Writing is deliberate and challenges your thinking, without this rigorous approach many will talk and talk and become a low action organisation

38. Tiering happens in leadership in C-Suite team, be prepared to be tiered and if unhappy address head on - don’t let it bubble under the surface. This is one of the most unspoken areas

39. Set deadlines for feedback loops. Call it out and set reminders, this also ripples through the business, hold accountability

40. Agree to disagree - disagreement is healthy as long as action is taken

41. Leave the dispute in the board room, don’t take onto the floor and don’t burden this on your leadership peers or your own management team, this causes huge behavioural problems

42. Disagree and commit only works if all members of the leadership can actually disagree and commit - this approach takes a long time to mature

43. Remove I told you so and every variation of I told you so - and if it rears its ugly head, kill it as soon as it happens

44. Allow AMAs to happen in public - if you are confident in the C-Suite AMAs drive performance and create a deeper level of connection and high trust. If you or colleagues are not as good on your feet, expect this to be a work in progress and hard work to begin with. Be wary of the problematic employees attending

45. Set colleagues up for success - ask pre approved questions to set them up for success

46. Declare what type of meeting you’re going to host (a brainstorm, a decision making session, a performance review, problem solving etc)

47. No agenda no meeting rule at senior levels - and that goes with the CEO too

48. Create management pods - pods that can support each other and rotate if you have a large ELT

49. Have designated roles within the C-Suite - the approachable one, the direct one, the one who speaks in front of the business etc. The clearer the roles the easier it is for your company to have the right people at leadership levels

50. Reduce drinking cultures away from C-Suite but go for food or drinks together, drinking can be a real benefit but often leads to problems and causes distrust

51. Increase / decrease volume and presence of the leadership team in the business - too much volume = noise, lower volume = trust

52. There will be a time you have to remove a C-Suite peer when their and or their department’s performance isn’t good enough. Have the criteria set - often this won’t be completely agreed upon but then reduces any surprises

53. Combat vs conflict - understand there is a difference and call it out once becomes conflict

54. Play to your strengths as executives and work out if your weakness needing fixing or can hire / invite others in to address these

55. Have your executive roles - the ones who are approachable, the ones who are front facing, the others who are happy to be behind the scenes

56. Embrace cultural differences - this improves how you work together and removes exec group think and biases

57. Enable skip meetings - especially with number 2s with founders and CEOs. Increases bonds and trust levels throughout the business

58. Politics is going to be played. Either agree to play as a team or prepare to be played and manipulated - and even when its agreed political players play the game (PQ = political intelligence is a critical part of work)

Communications 🗣️

59. Agree on the leadership sub-culture you have and what is in and what is out of culture. Your leadership sub-culture leaks into the business and sets the tone and behaviours others mimic and copy

60. Kill jargon and your discipline buzzwords in important meetings - remove the need for translation and too much cognitive load

61. Remove over communication - you are short on time and energy, if people are over communicating it is taking time from everyone

62. Remove long emails and long threads. Have a rule of x length & if hits it arrange a call or call for clarity

63. Remove long docs - leverage tech with BLUF (bottom line upfront), use deliberate updates on the front page. Long docs are powerful providing there is a style and agreed working style with them

64. Create exec work with me docs - this is a way to understand how to communicate, collaborate and work with each other at a deeper level

65. Understand that everyone has their audience size they thrive with, whether that’s 1-2-1, 1-2-few, 1-2-group, 1-2-many - help colleagues to thrive and own where there are confident and comfortable

If there any you are struggling with and need some support, remember you can hit reply or drop me an email by hitting the button below

Email Me

Audio Version 🎧

» If you prefer audio this is a great run down created by NotebookLM

Vote Below

Thanks for reading again today and have a great day and we will see you on Monday with a special edition

Danny Denhard

PS if you missed last weeks newsletter take a read below

Simon’s article last week really struck a chord, thanks for the kind words and feedback.

Today I am offering a different perspective on and for the Modern CMO and you need a plan to show you are an executive not just another Department lead.

The Modern Day CMO

Dear Leaders,

By now you’ve felt it: the CMO role is no longer a “nice-to-have creative voice.” It’s a high‑stakes leadership seat at the intersection of growth, transformation, and risk.

It’s hard f-ing work! I have the scar tissue, I bet you do too.

You’re expected to behave like a Chief Growth Officer, think like a Chief Transformation Officer, and still carry the brand (yes capital B Brand) – all under sharper scrutiny and shorter timeframes than ever.

At the same time, your customer has more choice, less friction, and more tech helping them than they’ve ever had. You’re effectively presenting to your boardroom and then presenting products, SKUs and the brand to the customer board.

Any plan you bring forward has to stand up to both boards.

Most CMOs I speak to and work with are fighting on these 5 fronts simultaneously:

1. Boardroom & Financial Pressure - Proving incremental ROI, closing the CFO credibility gap, balancing short‑term performance and long‑term brand, doing more with flat budgets – all while holding the shortest tenure in the C‑suite.

2. AI & Technology Paradox - Avoiding AI‑driven brand sameness, moving from simple prompting to agentic AI, taming martech bloat, turning “do AI” hype into value, and managing governance, risk.

3. Data Privacy & Measurement - Navigating signal loss, building first‑party data infrastructure, staying ahead of regulation, making sense of omnichannel attribution, and breaking down data silos across Marketing, Product, Sales, and IT.

4. Talent & Org Design - Managing burnout, hiring and upskilling for creative + data‑literate + AI‑native skills, reducing friction with Sales and Product, maintaining culture in hybrid teams, and supporting employer branding.

5. Market Dynamics & Consumer Behaviour - Staying culturally relevant without tipping into “cringe” (or falling into the completely unhinged trap) reaching fragmented audiences while distribution channels are dying, rebuilding trust in an age of AI content, managing volatility, and standing out in crowded categories. While, watching out for those random popular TikTok’s about and abusing your brand.

None of these arrive one at a time and often all at once.
And yet, your job is to prioritise, simplify, and keep the business moving forward.

That’s Why I’m Writing to You

I’m not listing these to add weight to your shoulders.

You already feel it, on both shoulders.

I’m writing this because there is a way to move through the next 6 months that is structured, honest, and commercially grounded.
And that gives you space to lead, not just react.

My work with CMOs is typically coaching first, consulting second. Everyone needs help especially at the exec table, its challenging, lonely and every day feels like an episode of the Traitors…

I’m not here with another generic playbook you could download. I’m beside you, as you:

• Decide what genuinely matters in the next 90 days

• Shape the narrative for your board and CFO

• Protect your team while you change the engine
  

Today’s framework is super simple:

• Phase 1: Triage (Days 1–30) → stabilisation & alignment

• Phase 2: Efficiency (Days 31–90) → optimisation & integration

• Phase 3: Scale (Month 6)→ transformation & future‑proofing
  

Underneath that is one question:
Q: How do we stop the bleeding, earn credibility, and make room for real transformation – without burning you or your team out?

So here is a viable option to move forward with:

→Phase 1: Days 1–30: Triage, Trust, Guardrails

Focus: stop revenue leaks, secure the boardroom, and set AI guardrails.

• Quick Wins & Credibility - Cut or fix the bottom 20% of spend, reallocate, and walk into the next board meeting with a cleaner, simpler story. Trust comes from impact aka relationship building, results and becoming a force to reckon with.

• CFO Alignment - Agree a shared, simple definition of “Marketing success” this quarter in a joint and agreed language.

• Cultural & Capacity Check - Audit scheduled/automated content for risk, and run a quick capacity review to free your team from low‑value “busy work”. Kill the long slack and team threads - help drive deliberate focus and remove chat seen as doing work.

• AI Governance - Put a practical internal AI policy in place – enough to protect, not enough to paralyse. Then go and teach the org how you did it, how you use it and how they collaborate with it. (Here are 5 executive prompts to help you with AI)
  

→Phase 2: Days 31–90: Efficiency & Integration

Focus: fix the engine and align the org.

• Data & Tooling (to Day 60) - Understand your exposure to third‑party data loss, rebalance toward first‑party, simplify martech, and introduce a realistic attribution approach (you’re likely being pushed towards MMM or equivalent - do the deep research to understand the pros and cons - MMM looks great but rarely provides real insights for better work vs knowing what you already knew).

• Cross‑Functional Alignment (to Day 90) - Run a focused Sales + Marketing (or with Product) session to fix definitions, handoffs, and SLAs.

• AI Value Story - Deliver 1–2 AI pilots with real outcomes (time saved, cost down, revenue up) and a clear narrative the board can follow.

• AI Hackathon - Go that step further and co-create with your department and your peers. AI hackathons are as much about the working process and creating shared language and creating opportunities the business couldn’t sign off in an effort vs reward matrix and start to deliver with AI not just individuals using tools. Be the leader who shows progress and owns transformation

• Agentic Commerce - Not to push the AI train too hard but get across how you will work with agents and with agentic commerce.
  UCP is the new offering that will be changing your landscape.

• Brand & Performance Balance - Add a simple brand health measure alongside performance dashboards to change the conversation.
  Hint: Have analysis driven dashboard not just metrics - enable the business to understand and feel you understand and are addressing issues.
  

→Phase 3 – Month 6: Scale & Future‑Proofing

Focus: move from fixing to leading. By Month 6, we’re working on:

• Agentic AI Workflows – governed, repeatable AI processes that will become a collaborator and in some take routine work off your team’s plate

• First‑Party Data Activation – using your data to create more relevant, human experiences tied to revenue.

• Brand Soul in an AI World – create and practise a practical “Brand Soul” guide for humans and machines, so you don’t sound like everyone else and people connect deeply with your brand - here are a few more of my tips. Brand is a moat in 2026, but if you don’t have a brand customers know, like or love your competitors will win

• Talent & Skills Strategy – mapping the roles and capabilities you actually need next, and how to build or buy them.

• Sharper Category Positioning – answering “Why us, why now?” with six months of better insight behind you.
  

This is where the work shifts from crisis navigation to leadership development: how you show up, what you choose to say NO to (always be prepared to and confidently say NO), and how you build a team that can sustain the pace.

I Invite You!

If you recognise yourself in any of this, you don’t need more noise, decks, or unpersonalised templates.

You need:

• A clearer way to prioritise the next 90 days (as offered above)

• A sharper, calmer narrative for your leadership peers and board - clear, concise and critical communication wins the executive battle, don’t fall into the over explain, over communicate under deliver trap many CMOs fall into!

• A confidential place to test the decisions you already know you need to make

If one area feels most acute right now
(i) Boardroom, (ii) AI, (iii) Data, (iv)Talent, or (v) Market – reply with which one and I’ll happily chat (my email is danny @dannydenhard.com or DM me on LinkedIn) or point you to the most relevant previous newsletter or we will cover in upcoming issue of the newsletter.

Go grab that bull by the horns and drive your business forward! Your team, business and career will thank you!

» If you would like a doc to take away download the supporting deck here

Free Deck

Thank you for reading again today and have a great weekend!

Danny Denhard
⇒ I help coach, I work as a consultant & as a company advisor

Thanks for the brilliant feedback on Harry’s actionable guide on finding a CMO role in 2026!

This week we have Simon Swan returning with a great take on why usefulness is most important in today’s Marketing & business landscape.

If Your Content Disappeared Tomorrow, Would Anyone Notice?

Today’s customers aren’t just overwhelmed by content - they’re actively filtering it out. AI summaries, algorithmic feeds, private communities, and zero-click search results mean brands are increasingly invisible unless they earn attention by earning trust.

Users drowning in content. AI summaries answer questions before anyone clicks. Feeds refresh faster than we can keep up. And yet, brands keep publishing more posts, more videos, more “thought leadership” - hoping something sticks.

Technology has enabled a faster race to the bottom as referenced by this article in particular: “The ad industry was one of the first to be supercharged by AI. And for better or worse, what a long way we’ve come. In June, Meta promised that pretty soon, advertisers will be able to use the platform’s tools to enable complete ad automation, with the goal now being to help brands create advertising concepts from scratch”

Technology has levelled the playing field so much so that we still measure the quantity of content published rather than the quality of content and the impact it has back to the brand and what the business is wanting to achieve.

Low Cost

But the problem isn’t AI - it’s that technology made content cheap, so brands doubled down on volume while keeping the same outdated metrics that reward activity, not impact or realising that the human element of content and creative production has become even more important now, an ability to orchestrate what technology could be used and how best to conduct both human understanding

If we take SEO, Andrew Holland argues that the goals of traditional SEO (ranking for keywords) are shifting - AI-driven and generative models now prioritise content that provides clear answers and real problem-solving rather than just optimised pages.

Usefulness As A Tactic?

If you want attention now, you don’t earn it by following the herd, you can earn it by being useful.

That’s the core idea behind Jay Baer’s Youtility published in 2013 and for me it’s more relevant today than arguably when it was first published. Baer made a simple argument: instead of trying to be amazing (which is subjective and short-lived), brands should focus on being helpful to build trust and get remembered.

In the book Baer discusses 3 categories of marketing:

• Top of mind used to mean TV ads and billboards. Now it’s short-form video, creators, and paid social - often forgotten five seconds later.

• Frame of mind used to be Google search. Now it’s search, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, and increasingly AI tools that summarise answers without sending traffic anywhere.

• Friend of mine awareness is the one that still cuts through. This is where brands behave less like advertisers and more like people you’d actually listen to.

What Youtility Looks Like in the Real World

• Duolingo: Yes, they’re funny. But humour isn’t the point. They show up consistently, understand their audience deeply, and don’t force product into every interaction. That restraint is the strategy.

• Sephora: Their Skin IQ and Virtual Artist tools don’t feel like marketing. They feel like help. You get value immediately, whether you buy or not.

• Notion: Free templates, workflows, and community resources solve problems people already have. The product becomes the obvious next step, not the hard sell.

These brands don’t lead with “here’s what we sell.”
They lead with “here’s something that might make your life easier.”

How Marketers Can Actually Do This (Without a Big Budget)

This is where Youtility often falls apart - it sounds nice, but teams don’t know where to start.

Here’s a practical way in and to help and something I referred to in a previous post for Marketing Unfiltered. You need to get comfortable with Market Orientation. This is about taking a big step away from your organisation and putting yourself into the shoes of the customer.

Actually Listen To Your Audience

It’s listening to your customers where you pick up the frustrations, challenges and real needs they have that can provide you with the content direction you need to ensure you’re cutting through the noise.

Your best content ideas aren’t in keyword tools, real time trends or following your competitors, they’re still in sales calls, support tickets, onboarding questions and they are hiding in users venting in short form videos. Now is the time to embrace internal and external content to drive your business forward.

And Your Non Customers

Even consider your non customers who can reveal the unmet needs and problems with your current offerings. At the start of my career, we were given a KPI to pick up the phone 5 customers who had stopped buying from the business to ask why, the reasons for the change and what we could have done better, this could still be true today.

Customer Service Goldmine

Spend some time with your customer service team, listen to their customer conversations to get a better understanding into common pain points. Sentiment analysis and wider analysis is easier with the right AI tools, Gemini, Co-Pilot and ChatGPT can help you understand your customers more clearly.

Use Your People

Your smartest content is most likely already sitting inside your company. Canva’s workshops and Notion’s community docs work because they let real experts share what they know. Community content is a key component to their successes, we all know the power of community created content is that some embraced it and enabled it, others ignored it and others would never have that Product that drove these behaviours.

My time at the Met Office took a customer approach through the development of a content strategy in reaching wider audiences through weather content in competitive market.

All of the expertise surrounding meteorology lived with scientific experts but they operated in different depts so we introduced a system called “Pair sharing” – where my team worked across the offices to find pools of knowledge and get people to work together to produce valuable content

Could you do the same in your business? Identify the knowledge experts to call them in based on your user needs and work with them to create the insights your organisation holds to help differentiate?

Accept That This Is Long-Term And Measure Accordingly

This will take time and some of your best work won’t work immediately. Start small, measure return visits, saves, shares, branded search but also a steering as to how this approach compares to your competitor set through Share of Search.

A Key Thing To Remember

If your content disappeared tomorrow:

• Would anyone notice?

• Would anyone miss it?

• Would anyone thank you for it?

If the answer is no, the problem isn’t distribution. It’s usefulness.

» Simon
- connect with Simon on LinkedIn

Read Simon’s other MU articles

Lastly, did Liquid Death go too far with their unhinged Marketing? Vote below

Have a great end to your week and we will land back in your inbox next Friday!

Danny Denhard

We are shifting gears from my Marketers Anger Index & bingo card from last week and onto this week, Harry shares his very actionable survival guide to today’s job market.

Let us know what you think by hitting reply or hit the ❤️ button.

Thanks and have a great weekend,

Danny

How Thick Skin, AI Tools & Community Helped Me Land My New CMO Role

Something a little different in the newsletter this week. I’ve seen first hand how difficult it is for marketing job seekers out there right now – and those across all disciplines for that matter. A fractured market, ATS, thousands of applicants for every position, ghosting as the rule rather than the exception and such a lack of feedback it makes you wonder if manners were culled from the HR KPI set alongside human insight and pragmatism.

I’m thanking my lucky stars to have started a new CMO role but I’m still licking the wounds picked up in the battles of thankless application and interview processes last year – and I know I’m not the only one who was in those wars…

Being unemployed can hurt on financial, self-esteem and mental health levels. Some days you wonder if you’re actually invisible, others whether you need to just drop marketing as a career and do something – anything – instead.

So here’s my Tuppence worth – what worked for me, what to avoid and how to manage the expanses of confidence-sapping dead time you’re likely to be experiencing.

Good luck out there, and if you know anyone else in a similar boat, please don’t hesitate to share this with them.
Harry

1/ Job Search Strategy

I have a simple rule for this:-

One exceptional application will have a better hit rate than one hundred generic submissions. Customise your CV and cover letters to the Nth degree (yes, this is also so you can flirt with ATS more successfully), cherry pick roles you’re a 75% fit for and ignore those fishing expeditions where you’re missing half the required skills and experience.

Next, weaponise your job search. Treat it like a work project with a brief, KPIs, schedule and channel strategy with a methodology you can work to every morning for a couple of hours max. Every new CV iteration and bespoke cover letter requires research, keyword placement and enhanced copy skills. Every interview has it’s own strategy document including the JD, company research, interviewer bio, key experience points related to the role and insightful questions for you to ask them.

The market is packed full of exceptional talent, so you need to bring your AAA game to every interview, no matter what stage or level.

2/ Polishing Your Personal Brand

I love writing, and my ego clearly enjoys putting my errant thoughts out in the ether, so promoting myself comes relatively easy. However even if this isn’t your bag, some degree of personal PR is a must.

First, write a positioning statement for yourself first to frame how you want to be perceived and the kind of approaches you want. One line, keep it simple and really focus on what problems you fix. Mine sounds something like this:-

“I’m a highly effective performance, growth and brand marketing leader – a creative problem solver and motivating team builder who has globally scaled numerous B2C digital and mobile entertainment brands. I acquire, convert and retain new customers through brave, innovative and data-driven integrated channel strategies augmented through AI”.

Next, write your project plan for how you’re going to speak to your audience (yes, this is literally an extension of your job seeking strategy for brand YOU). How often will you post, which speaking opps will you apply for, which media can you pitch articles to etc.

If you’re up for it, shoot video as you’re walking the dog/cat/kids to school. Talk about a news story related to your positioning. Have an opinion, offer creative solutions. Be interesting so you STAND OUT from the crowd.

3/ How I Found My New Job

I spoke with over 70 recruiters and headhunters and kept them updated with my CV and status every month while I was looking. Rather than just sending yet another iteration of my CV, I shared updates on my consultancy projects, this newsletter, speaking engagements and yes, even my metal detecting finds. If I couldn’t be interviewed, at least I wanted to be memorable!

Engaging with my marketing friends and communities (thanks CMO Circle, RTG and Marketing Leaders in particular) and my wider network on LinkedIn was critical. With these communities, you get out what you put in – so help others when you have the opportunity and you’ll be amazed how helpful people will be in return. It may be karma, it may be simple courtesy, but nice people like helping nice people, so get involved.

One piece of oft-quoted advice I read was:- ‘Have a coffee with 100 contacts’.

…and I believe that would be time way better spent than spamming your CV to 100 lookalike AI-filtered opps on job boards or LI.

In late September (just as I was about to start the refurb on our new house, ironically) I was approached about six new roles in the space of 24 hours, with another coming three days later. Two came from headhunters, two came from LinkedIn applications, two came via recommendations from community friends in my network and one was a passive approach I received from someone who saw my newsletter articles and posts.

Don’t spread yourself too thin, but I’m a firm believer in the mantra:-

‘You’ve got to be in it to win it’

…so keep irons in multiple fires, as you never know where your dream role could be hiding.

4/ Grow Thick Skin. It’s Gonna Be An Ugly Ride…

How long is too long to wait for feedback after a final interview?

As regular readers on LinkedIn will know, I had a Q4 run of form as far as new job opportunities went. Seven C-Level B2C marketing positions, in processes taking place over six weeks. Here are the stats:-

• Four turned into actual interviews – the other three either weren’t feasible or went dark

• Twenty two interviews in total over the four live roles – six for two of them, five for the other two

• Four presentation decks, raging from three straightforward capability/ expertise questions to a thirty slide strat deck covering multiple geos, KPIs and channels that took me a couple of days to complete

• One rejection with rationale soon after the final interview

• I only finished one (rapid) process and received a courteous ‘no’ with solid rationale soon after

• Of the remaining two, I finished one three weeks ago and another five weeks ago.

I’ve still not heard from the ghosting business, but the other made me an offer – a great one – for a different job to the one I spent 2 months interviewing for.
I’ve now started, and I bloody LOVE it!

Delays are par for the course I’m afraid. I completed three processes last year and STILL haven’t heard whether I got the gigs!

But seriously, how long is too long?

When do you bypass the talent team and drop a friendly mail to the CEO?

When do you give up and move on?

In tough markets, the first casualty appears to be courtesy. Don’t take a lack of communication (ghosting) personally – it’s just a symptom of the times, albeit one I swear I’ll never be guilty of myself.

5/ Lean Into Technology

You know this already – AI is already a significant pillar of any marketing career, so embrace it. Join free courses, download tools, build stuff. I’ve used YouTube to learn how to build AI agents, made a (crappy) App in Lovable, designed countless images with Leonardo and crafted data sets and done business profiles with ChatGPT. Check out the AI Edition of this newsletter to see the tools and platforms other marketers are using every day and embrace the opportunity to augment yourself like some weird marketing Robocop.

6/ Keeping Your Chin Up

When you’re ‘outside’, it can feel like nobody wants to know you – like you’re an incontinent, foul-breathed Reform voter at a wife swapping party. The ghosting, the thankless effort, the wasted work and the frustration – OH MY GOD the frustration of getting NOWHERE day after day after pitiful day, no matter what you do. Yes, it gets to you, hard at times.

Job hunting takes progressively longer through your career, and the marketing job market is a pyramid shaped hierarchy. There are fewer jobs at the top end and they pay more, so they’re highly competitive with longer processes. Be prepared to bed in for a while - perhaps even a long while…

This can, and does, become onerous, stressful and depressing, so I’d suggest spending no more than a couple of hours max at the start of each day on approaches, personal PR and applications, then segment your day to focus on other, more positive endeavours.

Try, against all odds, to maintain your sense of humour. Nobody wants to hire ‘Gill from The Simpsons’ and frankly, life’s hard enough without you beating yourself up needlessly.

It’s an absurd time to be a marketer, and things may feel overwhelming when your options appear to be limited/ non-existent. I’ve found great solace in the ‘CMO Ready To Go’ community (a subsect of the CMO Circle). Lots of awesome senior marketers in the same unemployed boat keeping each other motivated and entertained with pragmatism, cheerleading and irreverence in equal measure.

As ide from consultancy work, my goals were to finish, edit and submit my book ‘The Fossil Hunters’ ✔️, find a house and start refurb ✔️, take up metal detecting ✔️, spend time doing fun (cheap) things with my family ✔️, invest time in learning AI tools and platforms ✔️, build out my new channel knowledge (✔️, with my metal detecting TikTok channel and several AI platforms) and exercise more (✔️, sort of, with long daily dog walks).

You’ve got loads of time (finally!!) so spend it on things that are good for you mentally, physically and actually.

7/ Staying Productive While You’re Out Of Work

I’m going to cheat here and link to an article I wrote for Marketing Unfiltered a while back. There’s some overlap with the suggestions I’ve already made above, but most of them are worth repeating IMHO.

8/ Be Honest With Yourself

We can’t all be CMO at Google. Hell, only 100 people get to lead the Marketing in the FTSE 100, so at some point you may realise that what you dream of and what you get might be two very different things.

Personally, I prefer the challenge of scale up B2C brands and find slow moving corporate behemoths are overtly political and often boring. Plus when you’re working with tens of thousands of people, you’ll likely be siloed into a niche sphere of influence and creative decisions, when debated by committees, turn into what I call ‘the brown soup of compromise’ more often than not.

You may need to take a step back down the ladder in salary and title, but that’s OK - it’s fine. If it makes your ego feel better you can always call it a pivot – an interesting left turn on your career journey. The only person who really cares is you, and you have the wonderful capacity to get over yourself.

Being unemployed for a long time can make you feel worthless - like a failure, even - but it absolutely, unequivocally shouldn’t. Yes, when you’re on the hunt the silence really is deafening, but be reassured:-

· No, it’s not you.

· Yes, loads of people are in the same boat, fighting for the same roles

· Yes, AI, ATS and a ridiculous volume of applicants mean you may be repeatedly passed over for jobs you’re perfect for

· Yes, it will get better (if you grit your teeth, maintain your humour and are pragmatic in your job seeking strategy).

In a modern marketing career, unemployment is as common as a typo in a CRM email or an ill-advised social post, so stop beating yourself up, recognise that you’re simply a product of circumstance and soon enough you’ll be stuck in a meeting, dreaming of the days you spent your mornings sat in your PJs, crafting AI enhanced cover letters to appease thankless ATS Gods.

Then again, maybe not…

If you’re having a tough time, do join the communities I’ve mentioned above and work to magnify your personal brand.

If you’ve run out of ideas and the weight is crushing you, please get in touch - I’ll try to help if I can.

Good luck out there,

Harry!

PS. Keep an eye out for next week’s newsletter, Simon Swan shares: An Alternative Approach To Content Hype - If Your Content Disappeared Tomorrow, Would Anyone Notice?

Harry and I hope you are ready the year ahead an got some R&R.

We have a two parter for you today:

(1) As its the new year we are having a little fun with the 2026 buzzword bingo
and
(2) The annual anger index, going that step further, explaining the new buzzwords and applying an anger score for buzzwords, phrases & challenges Marketing & Growth leaders will receive.

The Marketing Unfiltered Buzzword Bingo Card 2026

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The Annual Anger Index

So rather than just give you a LOL or spike your frustration a little before Monday, here’s a list of the buzzwords (and "official words of the year: “slop” selected by Merriam-Webster and “rage bait” by Oxford University Press) that will give you some anger this year, with a simple explainer of each buzzword and phrase you will hear all about in the coming days and weeks.

Here is the full buzzword explainer card with accompanying anger index, so 1 (ok that’s annoying) 😤 → 5 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 (about to blow my top if I hear that again)

AEO We will continue to be told, sold and reminded how important AEO/AIEO/GEO/LLMO is - 😤

Agentic - Agent and “agentic AI” is being built in the background, while many opt out of agentic, many early adopters will move to enable agentic commerce - 😤😤

AI Feature - Despite consumers not loving AI and being hyped on AI there will be internal pressure on AI features and including AI in everything - 😤😤😤

AI First - Competitors spring up out of nowhere, we will see a number of AI first competitors spring up and create loud marketing. There will be a number of startups who pressure incumbents on AI and being AI first - 😤😤

AI Share Of Voice - Most likely the most important metric companies will be pushing and trying to measure this year and next year - 😤😤😤

AI Slop - We are already inundated with low quality and mass produced AI content, we will see a lot of content being labelled slop and AI slop and its on leaders to own how you respond - 😤😤😤😤

AI Tools - Expect your inboxes to be full of AI tools being sold to you, low cost to high cost tools chasing to be the first to measure AI and AI’s impact - 😤

Anti AI - Apple have already pushed the anti AI ad and promoted how long and artistic anti AI is, expect this to be a key trend and one embraced by many companies - 😤😤

Brand campaigns - We saw this a lot in 2025, the push for brand campaigns and the experts pushing brand again. Brand will be important as ever but how frequently we hear those around us and executives reference brand will be important to take note and guide - 😤😤

Brain Rot - Many customers are complaining of low quality content (short form, meme’s, social videos etc) and it will be something many companies will want to be aware of and expect pushback from customers, whether loudly with videos and comments or unfollowing and blocking across feeds and CRM - 😤😤😤

Community - The shift to deeper connection with our audience has been promoted since 2022, the need for deeper and direct relationships will mean more companies and team members will reference community. Expect a huge wave of recommendations for building a community from executive peers, team members and agencies - 😤😤😤

Cult Brand - Social media will be promoting the brands with intensely loyal fans and customers who rave about the brand and their products. Expect to hear this in agency pitches, social media experts and younger team members - 😤😤😤

EGC - Employee generated content is something we have all craved, whether that’s organic promotion from our team members, an employee wanting to be the face of the brand or becoming the interviewer for social video’s, expect to hear about EGC and an increased demand for inhouse creators - 😤😤

Episodic Content - Not new but becoming popular, content that are part of a series or designed to be watched as box sets. Episodic content will be the area that social networks expect brands to create 😤😤

Fandom - A core connector to community, fandom is the next level of advocacy, creating the superfan and those who love your brand or products and sell across social and live commerce 😤

GTM Engineer - Not just someone who can build AI automations but someone who can build your go-to market and develop out your AI automations to improve your team’s output and remove the human barrier in creating better ads, analysis or creating social updates - 😤😤😤😤

Headcount Request - The pressure for more headcount will never be higher, while others invest into building operationally and with AI others will be in battle for headcount requests and being creative with budgets. CFOs will be squeezing on headcount and requests - 😤😤😤

Layoffs - Layoff pressure will intensify unless markets improve—watch competitors reframe AI investments and productivity gains as justification for headcount reduction - 😤😤😤😤😤

Live Shopping - Many have seen the power of selling across social networks, there will be continue pressure to sell via live streams and platforms like whatnot. Expect live shopping to be the area many external partners recommend and push for - 😤😤😤

(Marketing) Events - The return to meaningful connection and meeting IRL is going to be loaded this year, with a huge number of brands investing into more events, more in person events and organising in person meetings and activities to connect their users and build affinity over competitors. Expect to see and hear a lot about events - 😤😤😤

Micro Drama’s - Micro-dramas are bite-sized video series (under 3 mins) designed for binge-watching, expect brands to explore sponsorships and product placements in episodes - 😤😤
» Here’s a great explainer from a micro drama director

More With Less - Operating with reduced budgets and headcount will be the baseline. Expect constant pressure to deliver more impact with fewer resources - 😤😤😤😤😤

Paid Marketing Performance - Paid performance is becoming more and more of a black box, although some channels are performing well without knowing what exactly is working expect even more scrutiny on paid marketing performance and knowing how to ramp paid channels. Predictability = investable - 😤😤😤

PLG - Product led growth hasn’t gone anywhere but the need to find and keep PLG has ramped up in the age of AI. Expect challenges on your numbers and reporting and what is attributed to PLG and what’s attributed to Marketing - 😤😤😤😤

Productivity Gains - 2026 is the year of AI ROI, there will be continued pressure to justify investments into AI and AI tools and proving productivity gains will be critical. Expect C-Suite leaders to be pushing back on lack of progress and ask what productivity gains are you experiencing - 😤😤😤😤

Rage Bait - Enragement = engagement across social media and advertising, expect more team members to want to create more content designed to provoke anger, cause frustration, or spark outrage. This year vanity metrics will have to be classified and be reconsidered - 😤😤😤

Rebrand - The topic that will cause mass debate, rebrands will be something that is either pushed by investors and the board or repelled, rebrands saw huge backlash in 2025 and expect 2026 to be a year full of opinion and unwanted feedback on rebrands - 😤😤😤😤

Reduce CAC - This is something most will hear constantly, reduce costs, reduce CAC, prove CAC etc - 😤😤😤

Retention - Rightly becoming an area Marketing & Growth leaders will want to own and manage and prove that you can retain users and engage them into more usage or purchases - 😤😤😤

ROAS - Like reducing CAC, ROAS will be the word that you will hear frequently in WhatsApp groups, across LinkedIn and in ELT meetings. Keep across ROAS and own it - 😤😤😤

Storytelling - Everyone wants storytelling not everyone is prepared to understand what it is in today’s new media market and feed driven lives. Storytelling is a number of different activities and actions, be prepared to understand, teach and preach it constantly through the next 12 months - 😤

Substack - The platform many are flocking in demand for audience and embracing a different culture to engage a newer breed of network, the newsletter + social network built on top. You will need to do more than just use Substack for a newsletter - 😤😤😤😤

Unhinged Content - The demand for more has led many company and Marketing leaders to embrace unhinged content and be part of the unhinged content creation movement. You will need to ultra confident that unhinged content won’t hurt your brand and won’t be used against you - 😤😤😤😤😤

Vibe Coded - Marketing & Product are always siblings, with vibe coding apps there will be more pressure to create prototypes not presentations. The shift from reporting problems and presentations to potentially building prototypes will be something that is embraced by the savviest Marketing & Growth departments and something that is loved or loathed by your Product and ENGG colleagues. Expect to see competitors vibe code microsites and landing pages while you could be left behind - 😤😤😤

Volume To Value - A phrase some have never heard, expect the volume of output to be quizzed on and asked about the value it is bringing to the business. With AI there is a tendency to create quantity not quality, 2026 is the year of proving more os signal not noise - 😤😤😤

Zero-Party Data - Brands will increasingly ask customers to voluntarily share data in exchange for value. Expect zero-party data to become a competitive advantage metric - 😤😤

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Did I miss any?
Or should I have scored some higher or lower, hit reply and let me know or tag me (or DM) on LinkedIn, i’m @dannydenhard.

Have a great first week of January and we will see you next Friday!

Danny Denhard

Thank you for the feedback and love on the last few weeks newsletters, Harry and I love to receive feedback especially such lovely comments recently.
You can hit reply at any point to the newsletter or send us a message below

Last Weeks MU: Finishing up this year & planning for 2026? Definitely check out Katie’s debut on MarketingUnfiltered.

& my Growth Guide for 2026

This week: I offer 3 tips to finish up before Christmas and It’s that time of the year so I reached out to our writers and contributors for quick fire predictions. They are deliberately digestible so have a read through and share with your team.

📝 For your best reading experience this post is best read online.

3 Quick Tips To End Up Pre Xmas Well

1. Take 30-60 minutes to run a recap session with yourself or your department, celebrate the highs, address the lows and end with looking forward to the future & pick up the energy for 2026. If you are a solo-operator run a review of 2025 and select highs, lows and areas you have to address.

2. Write a thank you note to the team, by hand shows you mean it (scan it in/take a photo and send on) If you are fractional or solo operator, write yourself a letter, call out personal highs, say thank you for the good points and where you want to attack in 26.

3. Kickstart your new years resolutions early, run a calendar audit and block out your time slots, the ones where you deep work, proactively work on problem solving and relationship building.

   ---

The 2026 Predictions

If you’d like to see these predictions as a deck flick through here or download here.

Simon Swan

→Connect On LinkedIn » Read Simon’s take on culture as the essential component to Marketing’s success

Time for Clarity - Marketers, companies, the industry is drowning in a fire hose of digital tactics and AI. Time for a reset by defining the business goals, the real problem and the role digital must play. Remove the noise and time for focus 🧘

The side hustle becomes more mainstream - 2025 was a year of restructuring and redundancies as well as downsizing. It seems it’s getting more risky to work as an employee for a company than it is to go out alone?

Squiggly Lines - there’s only so many jobs further up the corporate ladder and with the rampant restructuring happening, it’s time for orgs to embrace their employees who want to retrain or enhance their skills by working across a business, not necessarily the corporate ladder

Share

Sophie Collins

→ Connect On LinkedIn

2026 buzz words will be “brand moat”, “agentic workflows” and “human in the loop” as we figure out the role of AI in marketing teams whilst maintaining a competitive advantage.

The publisher landscape is going to have huge disruption thanks to… well, AI obvs. Proprietary or exclusive data moats will become a huge competitive advantage.

Sustainability will continue to slip back down the priority order for CMOs unless we take responsibility for the messages we deliver and the impact they have.

John Lyons

→ Connect On LinkedIn » Read John’s take on brand investment

AI assistants and search summaries will revitalise brand marketing before turning into an engineering arms race.

(I’m a big user of AI tools, but see it used poorly so often) - the misuse of AI in strategy and creative will lead to ever more homogenised and predictable competitive sets. Marketers who can grasp the true value of distinctiveness and differentiation will have a huge advantage.

Increasing opportunities for fractionals and interims, as businesses look for both less financial commitment and stage expertise.

Harry Lang

→ Connect On LinkedIn » Watch me grill Harry in a 🆓 brand mini masterclass below or read the recap

We’ll see a consolidation/mini crash in AI tools as the ‘me too’s’ run out of money and the big cheeses land grab

We’ll see agentic AI roll out as BAU in marketing orgs rather than a new toy to play with

Job market will remain fractured in H1 as everyone tries to save money/ streamline

Nicola Anderson

→ Connect On LinkedIn » Find out more about Nicola’s CMO group

World Cup madness - brands jumping on the bandwagon with very dubious connections

Fractionals going back to full time

Much more of a focus on retention/increasing LTV

Brands trying to get into / build their own communities

Microevents - we had this in last year but think it still sticks. Less trade shows - more owned events with smaller, more curated content/experiences

Nick Bottai

→ Connect On LinkedIn

The shift from ‘Rented’ data to ‘Owned’ Intelligence. The AI models themselves (the ‘engines’) are becoming commodities; everyone has access to the same GPT/Claude/Gemini intelligence.So the competitive advantage shifts entirely to the unique proprietary data (the ‘fuel’) you feed them. If we just use public AI on public data, we get generic outputs. The winners will be the ones building unique data loops that competitors can’t copy

⁠The CMO role will evolve into a “Chief Capital Allocator”.

⁠Brand will come back, but in a very commercial way (pricing defence mechanism)

Oren Greenberg

→ Connect On LinkedIn » Here’s Oren take on Marketing & AI

Context engineering becomes the new moat: Everyone’s got access to the same AI models. So the differentiator isn’t the engine alone, it’s the fuel. Companies that build structured business context will outperform those that still copy-paste into ChatGPT.

GTM Engineering eats marketing ops: The fractional trend continues but the type changes. We’ll see less “strategic advisor,” more “person who can actually build the revenue system.” Technical marketers who ship workflows in Clay and n8n become more valuable than strategists who ship decks.

Authenticity gets commoditised, conviction doesn’t: Everyone will claim human-led content. The actual differentiator becomes having a point of view worth defending and the business context to back it up.

AI rate of improvement momentum will keep: Just like we’ve seen with ChatGPT 5.2, breaking new records, we’ll see additional advancements in AI’s ability to perform many specialists’ tasks.

Competitive proliferation will continue: I’m seeing so many clone variants of GTM systems in marketing/sales pop up now. Many folk out there with a Loveable/Bolt license think they’re building the next HubSpot.

Beth Gladstone

→ Connect On LinkedIn » Check out Beth’s new company GetTrendie

For freelancers - High demand for fractional services, BUT mainly for those who can own both strategy + execution. Goodbye to the strategy deck (which most of the time dies after initial delivery), and instead a focus on end-to-end strategy delivery and management with freelancers increasingly owning roadmap and implementation.

For Marketers - (I hope) realising that AI cannot, and will not, own either creativity or expertise, and instead learning how to bookend projects with both. What does that look like in reality? Marketers returning to coming up with their own creative campaigns, then using AI to execute them. Or using AI to write the base of a blog, before returning it to an internal expert to add nuance and anecdote.

For business owners - Owned awareness (followers) on social media will end, as many platforms move into a “flash content” model, basically emulating TikTok’s FYP where you see lots of content rather than seeing lots from the same creators. Meaning we’ll start to think about social media as broad brand awareness (like advertising on TV) rather than the past content > following > community model.

Carl Hendy

→ Connect On LinkedIn » Listen to Carl’s guide to the future of SEO & AI - this has actually aged really well!

Simplification of analytics and attribution: Website analytics will continue to become harder to interpret as privacy regulation, cookie restrictions, VPN usage, AI-driven search, and increasingly fragmented user journeys distort attribution models. This will drive a return to simpler measurement frameworks and a move beyond the Google Analytics-led performance marketing era towards alternative indicators of success.

Owning audience relationships: Brands will place greater emphasis on owning first-party audience data through community building. Reduced reliance on third-party tools and datasets will be required, alongside a broader definition of the user journey that extends beyond the website. Understanding where audiences actually spend their time and how they engage across platforms will help define marketing strategies.

SEO evolving into web visibility: SEO will continue its shift towards broader web visibility. This has been underway for some time, but growing interest and budget allocation will accelerate the transition. Success will be measured less by rankings alone and more by overall presence across search, platforms, and emerging discovery environments.

A correction to AI hype: As the initial hype around AI settles, AI-derived data is likely to become less central to decision-making. Brands will refocus on direct communication, qualitative insight, and genuine customer understanding rather than relying solely on abstracted or synthetic signals.

Rory Woodbridge

→ Connect On LinkedIn // » Listen to Rory’s great breakdown of Product Marketing & why the PMM role is so misunderstood

AI starting to deliver on its promise: “2025 was the year AI moved from interesting to actually useful. I’m hoping 2026 is when all these really cool concepts become truly usable.”

Complexity is a challenge, but we’ve faced this before: “AI products aren’t inherently harder to explain than any other technology. The real challenge is having the discipline to make strategic choices about what to communicate, when, and to whom.

Speed trumps perfect more than ever: “What took 6 months will need to happen in weeks, which doesn’t mean abandoning craft. It means condensing it and practicing the fundamentals at a higher tempo.”

Holding the quality bar: “AI makes it easy to produce polished-looking work that lacks substance, so marketers become the guardians who ensure work is exceptional and authentic, not just efficient.”

Jonathan Wagstaffe

→ Connect On LinkedIn // » Listen to Jonathan and I discuss how we run effective AI workshops

1. The Urgency of AI Skill Acquisition: There are four key things I see coming. The first is the massive opportunity in AI. Regardless of the long-term prospects for humanity and the job market, there is no doubt in my mind that acquiring AI skills quickly as an individual, and executing on AI experimentation as a business, is going to be essential in 2026. No matter what the future holds, you cannot go wrong right now by understanding AI to whatever level you’re comfortable with. You need to plan how to use it and start experimenting within your business immediately.

2. AI Transforms the Shopping Experience: I think 2026 is the year AI really impacts online shopping. Whether or not the AI platforms launch ad-supported versions remains to be seen, but we are already seeing “agentic” pieces from Google and OpenAI. These agents will go out and research the market, find the best prices, and identify the best matches for your specific needs. This is going to be significantly more advanced by next Christmas than it is this year.

3. The Shift to In-House Marketing: I believe 2026 will be the year growing businesses realise they must take their marketing in-house. Marketing is increasingly about educating your customer, building trust, and maintaining authenticity. It requires high-quality content that answers every question a customer has, alongside transparency regarding how you work and how you price, even if you can’t put exact figures in the public domain. Businesses will look hard at their agency spend and ask: “Can we not do this ourselves? Can we not develop these skills and playbooks in-house to do this properly?”

4. The Rise of “Search Snake Oil”: Finally, 2026 will be another year of “snake oil” regarding AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation). The world of SEO has been completely disrupted by AI. SEO as we knew it a few years ago is dead. While search itself remains very healthy, the way people navigate it is changing. There are many people selling “snake oil” claiming they have the secret methodology to succeed in AI search. It’s all nonsense. The whole industry is currently up in the air; nobody has the definitive answer yet, but the false promises will continue to proliferate through 2026.

Your Core Takeaways

Thanks for reading & have a brilliant christmas period and happy holidays and Harry & I will see you in the new year!

Danny Denhard

Did you notice my little mistake in last week’s newsletter on Growth in 2026?

Onto This Week…

Unlocking AI & Marketing’s Potential For 2026

In today’s interview, I sat down with my friend and AI & Marketing leader, Katie McPhee, to uncover actionable insights for your journey into 2026. Katie is leading the charge in AI & PMM and as seasoned Product Marketing expert who has worked with major brands like Eventbrite, Gett, BBC and many more.

Connect With Katie

We explored the significant shifts occurring in the startup landscape. In the 2010s, Marketing was about breaking in and generating awareness; today, amidst a boom of over 100,000 AI companies, the challenge is communicating distinct value and differentiation.

We discussed how this saturation is driving a resurgence of community and “IRL” (in real life) connections, as authenticity becomes the only way to cut through the “AI slop” and noise.

Crucially, we delved into the rise of the “Super IC” (Individual Contributor) - senior leaders stepping away from management roles to go into a dedicated role delivering high-impact work directly.

Katie shared her personal “tech stack” that enables this hyper-productivity, creating a blueprint for how we can all leverage AI not just to do more, but to do better work.

Top 3 Quotes To Look Out For

• Katie McPhee: “Automating workflows only works when you’ve got clean workflows to begin with.”

• Katie McPhee: “I think it’s encouraging to see the resurgence of community and the resurgence of connection and IRL... actually it feels like a shift back to a slightly more authentic way of connecting instead of just, let’s spend six figures on paid search and spray and pray.”

• Katie McPhee: “The death of generic content and the rebirth of highly creative eye capturing content.”

🎧 You can listen/watch on Youtube or click listen above

The Key 10 Points Discussed

1. The Shift in Startup Marketing: The game has moved from simple awareness to deep differentiation. With everyone claiming “AI” capabilities, the winners will be those who clearly communicate specific product value.

2. Resurgence of Community: As LLMs scrape the open web, genuine community value like meaningful Reddit discussions—cannot be faked. There is a return to high-quality field marketing and events to foster real human connection.

3. The “Super IC” Model: We are seeing a trend of senior leaders preferring to “roll up their sleeves” and focus on execution rather than people management. AI empowers these experts to deliver outsized impact without large teams.

4. Lumpy AI Adoption: Adoption is incredibly inconsistent even within high-growth tech companies. You often have a few evangelists racing ahead while others haven’t started, creating a dangerous skills and performance gap.

5. The “Granola and Gemini” Stack: Katie revealed her workflow for meetings: using Granola to record and transcribe, and Gemini to instantly process those transcripts into briefs or next steps.

6. Strategic Deep Dives with NotebookLM: For complex strategy, we discussed using NotebookLM. By feeding it specific podcasts, YouTube videos, and internal decks, you can create a “mastermind” to interrogate your strategy in a way standard LLMs cannot.

7. Competitive Intelligence Evolution: Tools like Perplexity and Grok are outperforming traditional search and even ChatGPT for real-time competitive insights and differentiation analysis.

8. The Risks of Outsourcing AI: We agreed that outsourcing AI execution to agencies is a blind spot. It prevents internal teams from upskilling and building the “muscle” needed for the future.

9. Voice-First Productivity: We touched on the shift from typing to voice. Tools like WisprFlow allow for faster “shipping” of work, and resisting this shift might leave you behind as others become “voice pilled”.

10. Automating Broken Processes: A common mistake leaders make is trying to apply AI to messy, undefined workflows. You must fix the process before you can automate it.

Katie’s Recommended AI Tools Included:

• Google Gemini - use for work and assisting PMM

• Google NotebookLM - use to convert internal content into rich media (example of infographic below)

• Wisprflow - use for transcription

• Granola AI - use for note taking that doesn’t get in the way

• Grok - use for competitor analysis and real time information

• Perplexity - use for competitor analysis

• In previous stack below: Manus AI - use as an all in one AI tool to help collate competitor intel and convert into slides

10 Recommendations From Katie

1. Don’t Fake Community: You cannot fake it on platforms like Reddit. You must provide genuine value because that is where people and LLMs are looking for truth.

2. Empower Evangelists: Identify the AI evangelists on your team who are already experimenting. Incentivise them to share their workflows so the whole team can level up.

3. Use NotebookLM for Strategy: Don’t just rely on ChatGPT for strategy. Meaningful strategic work comes from curating your own sources (videos, docs) into NotebookLM to create a specific “strategic companion”.

4. Master Your Existing Suite: If you use Google Workspace, master Gemini within it. Being an expert in the tools you already have often beats chasing every new shiny app and makes you super effective inside of your organisation.

5. Love Delivering: Become a “Super IC”: If you love the work more than the management, consider the Super IC path. It is becoming a “super skill” to deliver high-level work solo.

6. Be Cross-Functional: Attend the meetings outside your immediate department (e.g., Product or Sales). Understanding their pain points makes you a far more effective marketer.

7. Build Your Own “Expert” Niche: Carve out a specific area of AI expertise (e.g., automation, a specific tool) and teach it to others. This builds your internal value and credibility.

8. Don’t Outsource Your Learning: Avoid letting agencies do all the AI work. You need to build that knowledge internally to remain competitive.

9. Start with First Principles: Do not ask an LLM to “write a 2026 plan.” Start with your own insights and even use pen-and-paper ideas, then use AI to expand and critique them.

10. Experiment with Voice Tools: Try tools like Wispr Flow. Even if you prefer typing, the speed advantage of voice for certain tasks is undeniable.
    

Points To Share With Your Team

1. The “Super IC” is the future of senior talent

Senior careers don’t always have to end in management. The combination of deep expertise and AI fluency allows for the rise of the “Super Individual Contributor”—someone who delivers entire functions of value single-handedly.
Action: Share this with senior team members who feel stuck in management but miss the craft.

2. Stop outsourcing your AI learning & development

If you hire an agency to do your “AI content” or “AI workflows,” you are robbing your team of the essential learning curve they need for 2026. You cannot buy this capability; you have to build it. Experience is critically important in this more with less market.
Action: Forward to leadership teams considering their 2026 budgets.

3. The “Mastermind” workflow.

Stop using generic chatbots for complex strategies. Use NotebookLM to upload your specific meeting transcripts, competitor decks, and relevant podcasts or infographic to create a “closed” expert system that knows your context.
Action: Share with your Strategy and Product Marketing teams immediately.

🚀 If you enjoyed today’s newsletter hit share below and share to your team or in your favourite Marketing group

Share

If you want more on Product Marketing enjoy my previous chat with Rory Woodridge

Have a great week and next week we have a powerful predictions post to help you think and shape 2026.

Thanks,

Danny Denhard

Harry’s letter to his younger self really struck a few chords last week, thanks for the lovely feedback!

This week I wanted to inspire you on how Marketing & Growth Leaders can rethink how you’ve always done and it and then guide their departments towards deeper connection to win in 2026.

2026 is going to be the year of Growth & Brand Resilience: by training for AI, scaling community, and measuring new activities.

Let me know how you think I got on hit reply, DM me on LinkedIn, or message me below

Let’s have a proper talk about how we could win next year…

The next year or so is going to be defined by two massive, non-negotiable forces: the total, quiet integration of AI into most workflows, and the growing, urgent demand for genuine human connection amidst all the digital noise and the digital disconnect that many are feeling.

As a CMO/CGO, your challenge isn’t merely to optimise the current budget or tweak what you did in 2025; it’s about strategically divesting from those tired, outdated channels and pivoting resources towards environments where intimacy, trust, and real value are the primary currencies to create business success.

The era of Broadcast Marketing is fundamentally over. Despite how some operate spray and pray, this is not an option anymore.

The future (potentially) belongs to savvy brands that successfully navigate the shift from the polished, public broadcast model to the smaller, often private, personalised networks, creating a feeling of 1-2-1 relationships and a brand that knows and gets you.

As a Marketing executive: you have to be honest, you’re not just managing a Department; you’re a company executive leading the charge and having to act as a cartographer for your business, sketching out entirely new territories of growth while showing the direction of travel.

This means you must place the guardrail early, audit your presence in the most critical, non-traditional engagement zones and create new missions for teams to complete on for business success.

Metrics Of Success Update: Success will look very different in Q1 2026, you will have to look at tracked shareable asset uptake, consider how you track codes or unique content-assisted revenue, introduce smart tracking like UTM in chat-sourced links and imagery, review branded search lift post-share and consider how you track NPS in a world of agentic feedback.

So whether your core KPI’s are chasing growth, doubling down on retention, or having to optimise towards CAC efficiency or CLV this should help you shape your plan.

Here are 4 areas to inspire you to reconsider 2026 plans, drive growth and build brand resilience for 2026 and beyond.

1/ The AI Agent Economy and Group Chat Integration

• Priority: High - Create: 90 Day roadmap with Product.

• Requires Brand safety standards for agents and bots. creators and group chat agents. Look at data privacy for AI, update consent, storage, usage data.

AI is no longer primarily a content generation tool; it is rapidly becoming a decisive intermediary layer between your brand and the consumer. In early 2026, many purchasing decisions will be heavily influenced and executed by AI agents (via shopping assistants, GenAI searches and agentic browser actions) operating on the customer’s behalf.

Group chats will either be assisted by AI or take place in AI, this is a core behaviour change you could skip ahead of your competitors with…

• Actionable AEO (aka GEO, AIEO…): I’m going to call it - we have to move away from ignoring SEO and just considering discovery in LLMs through more content creation, we have to start thinking: Are you offering custom or unique offerings that ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and co will have to reward you? Is it a set of free downloads, an new way of interacting or a customised approach to Q&A not just answering a load of questions for LLMs but moving towards becoming a destination to interact with your brand and products?

• ChatGPT Apps: Although early on their journey, there is a huge opportunity to build into the ChatGPT ecosystem and become the default app they work with inside of ChatGPT. Be inspired by how Canva and HubSpot are considering being the primary apps and the default tools within LLMs - can you be the first or only in your space?

• Establish Richer Presence in “Dark Social”: Platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage are where real, trusted conversations are taking place. Word of mouth is vital in B2C, DTC and B2B and with the rise of the iMessage, WhatsApp and Discord industry communities, we can gain valuable feedback within minutes and not rely heavily on search engines and hopeful LinkedIn post. A way to move forward is to develop modular, human-verified content (e.g., highly accurate pricing sheets, clear value propositions, our hand selected products etc) that users can easily copy, paste, and share privately within these trusted circles, ensuring your message is shared accurately when your community chats about you and can be backed up and validated by community members.

• Create Sharable Knowledge Kits: I challenge you to create more value for customers, you could create customer toolkits, comparison sheets, quick tutorial GIFs and short form video designed to appear on AI search and prompts and appear in Q&A queries Social is moving away from posts for post sakes into highlighting topics you are showing interest in, social feeds are rewarding accounts creating unique and episodic content - to entice brands back they might need to switch to rewarding brands who provide value to their customers…

• Lean Into AI Group Chats: Group chats are the natural next step in AI’s evolution, single player mode only gets you so far, multi player is where the tools want to be and where adds most value to groups and families. We were flirted with by OpenAI over the last three weeks and is likely something team members, family members and friends use to book trips, organise events, select restaurants all by validating what they have seen on social media and recommending places that can serve everyone’s dietary requests, taking out the stress and strain for individuals and enabling AI to serve complex requirements is the next evolution

• Group Discounts: There are opportunities to revisit previous successful tools and services and explore AI-powered group buying experiences, imagine “friendsourcing” decisions within chats, assisted by embedded brand agents and offering exclusive pricing and discounting for x number of bookings…

• Social Search: Social is maturing from just post and like to new “search engines” for product/brand discovery and chatter. Indexability in these channels (e.g. making content snippet-able, link-ready, and easy for AI to parse) is a potential growth frontier

• Expect A Meta AI Comeback? Meta have been slow to make Meta AI useful in WhatsApp, next year will be the year Meta comes out swinging, consider how WhatsApp search will become an important play for your brand.

AI agents won’t just surface recommendations, they’ll own more of the customer journey (like Aisha’s new journey from MU 47 & shown below), from research to purchase. Brands must train their data for AI and agentic “co-purchasing”, configuring feeds and APIs so agents can transact smoothly, answer nuanced questions, and cross-check info in chats and make in AI feed recommendations and offer to complete purchases on your behalf.

2/ The Creator Economy & Substack Ecosystem

• Priority: Medium High - Create: 180 Day roadmap with Influencer & Product Marketing Teams.

• Requires Brand safety measures for creators and community members. Review data ownership on third party ESP’s. Review data privacy for AI, update consent, storage, usage data.

The trust gap between consumers and traditional advertising is widening. People trust creators, KOL (key opinion leaders), ITK (in the know) accounts, niche experts, and community leaders much more than polished brand feeds. This signals a mandatory shift from short-term transactional influencer campaigns to longer-term “Creator Collaborator Programmes”.

Think of yourself as a Gardener; your job is to nurture the niche ecosystem where trust grows best, rather than scatter seeds everywhere and hope for the best.

• Fund Niche: Invest in long-term partnerships with “Substack authors” and Beehiiv writers, audience driven podcasters, and specialised micro-creators who build communities around shared values. Understand that EIE (education, inspiration and entertainment) are the core areas we want covered by niche creators - it’s why we follow and engage with them, create long term relationships and consider employed roles to represent your business. These channels allow you to bypass media fragmentation, algorithmic filtering and speak directly to an engaged, subscription-loyal audience.

• Early Access: Something Google did well recently with Gemini 3.0 is provide early access to KOLs and AI experts to share their early takes and showcase how they used the new tools. Sneak peeks and behind the scenes will also work well if you have ECG (employee generated content creators)

• Go Deeper With Fans: Fans are more deeply connected than ever before, subscriptions are more than just email or just a social post, they now have “high-touch” benefits like regular live Q&As, AMAs session, invite only Discords and Slacks, or quarterly physical meetups, embedded brands are now part of the community, and act as a layer of trust enabling meet ups and paying for meals and entertainment. Can you offer a deeper level of connection between creators and their superfans?

• Long Term Investment Engines: Many brands are investing in private creator communities; helping to facilitate off-platform interactions, could you be inspired to create a book club or run club, offer a mentorship programs, create creator-in-residence role, or be part of empowering community members with unique content libraries?

• Prioritise Ownership: Use platforms like Substack or proprietary newsletter tools to build connections and first-party data loyalty. Substack is building a community where subscribers want to engage and feel safe to engage with newsletters, notes and audio posts.

» Need inspiration? Check the Acquired podcast and their approach to community with slack and IRL events

WATCH: A few months ago, Chris Hutchings did a great job breaking down how to leverage content and (internal or external) influencers to get results.

3/ Social Product and Community-Led Product Feedback

• Priority: High - Create: 180 Day roadmap with Product & Customer Support.
  Requires Brand safety measures for customers and and community members.

• Review data ownership on third party tools. Review data privacy for AI, update consent, storage, usage data.

Community is a buzzword many use but its rare to actually build. Not only a deeper way to connect and integrate with your customers but a way across B2B, B2C & DTC to have feedback loops that work for both you and your customers.

• Community Roadmaps: Product roadmaps are increasingly co-developed in closed community spaces (across Slack, Discord servers and private forums), blurring the line between Marketing and Product - this will help to test, learn and iterate far quicker and more effectively. Private communities are becoming gold mines for social clips, longer form video and audio content and spaces where case studies will feel normal to develop out

• Rewarding Community Roles: There will be many brands who will want to leverage the power of niche community admins, who can act as Product Leads and community leads empowered to engage with and reward customers for their help and continued support. That human touch will be felt

• “Feedback as a service” is rising: brands can offer micro-incentives for testing and providing feedback pre launch and offer exclusive previews for actionable product feedback, accelerating feedback loop times and reducing launch risk while rewards advocates and superfans. Feedback will become an opportunity to gain customer insights and Market more effectively

• Creators As Product Collaborators: Can you collaborate with creators and create new product features and drops, working with them on co-design, codevelopment, and launch narration, forging real product-market “fit by community.”

• Daily Show? Could you be the destination for your industry by going live every day? Could it be a live podcast where important industry thought leaders and CEOs join you?

» Need Inspiration? Check out what TBPN are doing with live shows with industry leaders, here is a good breakdown.

4/ The Unmissable Power of In-Real-Life (IRL) Events

• Priority: Medium - Create: 180 Day roadmap with Events, Social, Community & Product Marketing.

• Requires Brand safety measures for customers and community members. Review data ownership with new third party tools. Review data privacy for AI, update consent, storage, usage data.

In a world saturated with synthetic content and digital noise, the physical, tactile experience of an IRL event is the ultimate differentiator for building brand trust and memory.

• Treat IRL As Acquisition: Move events beyond vague “brand building” and position them as a critical, measurable step in the customer journey. Design experiences (whether small executive roundtables or large activations) that allow for immediate, deep, and unscripted human engagement.

• Capture Experiential Data: Use every IRL touchpoint to gather first-party data with consent. The quality of insight gained from a 15-minute face-to-face conversation dwarfs the volume of data from a thousand clicks. Make sure this data feeds straight back into your personalisation engine.

• Authentic Touchpoints: As synthetic (aka AI slop) content soars, IRL touchpoints drive “believability.” Hybrid event formats, blending immersive physical with exclusive digital elements are slowly becoming table stakes for customer focused brands. B2B brands can create more and richer experiences at events and reimagine the traditional bland brand events…

• Personalisation Is Essential: from personalised event reminders based on what customers have brought and interacted with (your behavioural data), to live surprise-and-delight experiences at events for high-value customers, every customer could become a VIP

• Measureable IRL: IRL is becoming measurable end to end: from providing low cost new wearables and micro apps in-event nudges can capture attendee sentiment, dwell time, and micro-interactions to enrich post-event personalisation and potentially reward with unique and personalised offers

• Micro To Macro: With so many new tools and opportunity to vibe code your own tools, Marketers can now run micro-events for insight rich loops, test messaging or concepts in person, apply live feedback to digital campaigns, and foster ongoing digital-physical engagement cycles.

» Need inspiration? check out ’s community first approach to FeedMe and her influence on Substack.

December → January Is Your Phase To Shine

• Priority: Medium High - Create: 30 Day reorg roadmap with Heads Of Departments

Our Marketing Departments are now having to blend rich data, creativity (let’s call it gut), taste and operational agility with real rigour to have any impact.

Product and Marketing need to co-own retention and CLV metrics while having the opportunity to build for deeper relationships.

AI isn’t always the answer, use AI to automate the mundane, unlocking teams to focus on moments of genuine human connection, embracing customer surprise, empathy, and delight.

The secret to success in 2026 isn’t a single or new piece of tech; it’s creating the harmony between your people and the platform(s).

Your strategy must integrate creativity and technology to humanise the brand. Its likely time to stop organising your team by outdated channels and restructure around the (shown below) (i) Brand (ii) Performance (iii) Amplification & (iv) Distribution or could it be around the multi-touch multi-step customer journey and connected strategic business outcomes to new user behaviours.

This is where you could become the Orchestra Conductor, ensuring every channel instrument plays in sync to produce a resonant customer experience. This agility, paired with intentional investments in trust-building, will be the true competitive advantage when AI handles speed and scale. Go talk to your teams about what that new map looks like.

Focusing growth efforts across the new funnel will help brands not just adapt but thrive in the 2026 landscape by being both more machine-intelligent and customer-intimate, driving real connection and creating lasting trust.

My 5 Recommended Ways To Reshape Your 2026

Winning 2026 isn’t about one big bet; it’s about deliberate, human-centered moves that work with AI, not against it, and build trust where attention truly lives. How we as Marketing & Growth leaders have always won, using our guts and taste to build something that connects with our audience.

1. Train for AI agents, not just SEO: Structure data, feeds, and APIs so assistants can answer, compare, and transact on your site. Balance: optimising for LLM discovery without turning content into generic AI slop (many have been penalised already), make your offers genuinely unique so agents must surface you. Here’s the OpenAI’s direction.

2. Build “Group Chat” shareability: Create modular, human-verified assets (pricing, comparisons, GIF how-tos) that travel in WhatsApp, iMessage, and Discord. Balance is key: keep source-of-truth pages current and updated to avoid outdated snippets roaming private chats.

3. Invest in creator ecosystems, long term: Partner with niche writers, podcasters, KOLs and community leads; co-create education, inspiration, and entertainment over quarters, not just one and done campaigns. Diversify to avoid over-reliance on any single influencer or channel; use owned channels like Substack for resilience.

4. Make community your product lab: Run closed betas in Slack/Discord, reward roles, and treat “feedback-as-a-service” as a growth loop. Protect roadmap integrity, publish guardrails so co-creation sharpens your focus rather than derails priorities. Roadmaps are going to be battlegrounds for Product, Sales & Marketing departments, especially with smart team members vibe coding.

5. Turn IRL into measurable acquisition: Design small, high-touch events that capture consented first‑party insights and feed personalisation. Brands who build for connection and experience will win bigger than those concentrating on just typical URL transactions. Measure what matters (whether thats dwell, sentiment, customer or bot intent), not just vanity; blend hybrid elements to scale trust beyond the room.

If your structure still mirrors old channels, consider how org redesign will make your team more focused and think collaboration first, consider how you could build around brand, performance, amplification, and distribution, or map to multi‑touch journeys with crystal clear outcomes. Here is my previous MU take on Restructuring approach.

Thanks and have a great weekend and we will see you again next Friday morning!

Danny Denhard

PS If you’re struggling with AI, here’s my workshop approach broken down with my co-host

AI Moment Podcast

AI Moment Longer #1 - How To Build An Effective AI Workshop

Good morning, Jonathan and I decided we should dive into how to build AI workshops that work for the first AI Moment Longer pod…

Listen now

4 months ago · AI Moment Podcast

The Marketing Unfiltered Newsletter is curated by Danny Denhard & Harry Lang

Danny Denhard » If you need help 🚨: I coach leaders, consult with startups, marketplaces and challenger brands and advise companies looking to grow. Get in touch for help!
I also have an AI podcast for leaders 2x pods per week in under 10 minutes per pod.

Harry Lang » Harry is a CMO and performance marketing/ brand strategy consultant who grows digital B2C businesses for fun. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at Harry@BrandArchitects.co.uk

Thanks for your feedback/ jolity/ anger about my newsletter on whether we’ve lost the art (or the purpose) of making a great Christmas ad (TL;DR - we haven’t).

This week, I revisit a concept I first delved into over 10 years ago - a letter to my younger self, in which I unpack some of the great, good and awful mistakes I wouldn’t have made in my marketing career if I’d had access to a modicum of good sense (or a time machine).

Have a great weekend and let us know what you think below.

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Harry & Danny

A Letter To My Younger Self

When does middle age officially start? Is 50 the new 30? Are millennials really fast-tracking towards knitting and cozy Snuggies, bypassing the joyous indiscretions of youth in favour of gluten-free, spinning-class, Guardian-tutting, ‘lights out by 9pm’ sensibility – all fuelled by probiotic, Bullet-blended, curly kale smoothies and a thousand scoops of Huel per week?

As I tiptoe towards my 49th birthday, it’s getting increasingly hard to tell what colour-coded stage of life I’ve actually reached. I have no certainty on when I can finally sign out of Zoom and Slack for good, but 25 years into a career in marketing, I reckon I’ve at least earned the benefit of hindsight. I can make a (somewhat) informed assessment as to whether the decisions of my formative years were ultimately for the best, or whether youthful exuberance and naivety did, in fact, lead me into some avoidable fox holes.

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If I could WhatsApp (or more likely SMS) myself as I strutted confidently towards Golden Square in the summer of 1999, here’s what I’d have to say.

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Post university and nestled in my first role in advertising, I was convinced I’d be learning on the job, and to an extent that was true. Long hours, demanding clients and multiple projects – most of what I learned was either from senior team members showing me first or, as often happened, from cataclysmic mistakes, the shame of which made me want to avoid messing up ever again.

The problem was that the agencies I worked at rarely invested in formal training, and I certainly wasn’t open to spending my few spare lucid hours a week bettering myself, so I didn’t start actively learning until well into my late twenties. Now, with the proliferation of free training on YouTube, communities and learning platforms, anyone can learn a language, skill or discipline at any time, and I dearly wish I’d had the same tools available back then.

In the age of AI, it’s even more vital.

Don’t burn your bridges

We’ve all been there – a few times at least. The leaving drinks, the final client meeting, the last email before handing back the BlackBerry. You’ve written a parting shot to all staff and luckily had the presence of mind to employ ‘the 12-hour rule’ and park it in drafts overnight. But what about now? You’re leaving and it would feel so damn good to empty an Uzi of colourful language into their rapidly deflating egos.

But wait - once the ‘Send’ button is pressed, how good will you actually feel?

Let me save you the time and ensuing trouble: - no good comes of it – ever, in my opinion.

I only lit the touchpaper once – an early client, total asshat, not qualified to manipulate Play-Doh let alone multiple drinks brands. I emailed him on my final day in an agency role pointing out his (many and varied) flaws. I spoke of burning bridges and how, if I ever had the misfortune to work with him again my career was already over and I’d have to become a fisherman in Iceland instead.

He never replied (probably couldn’t work out how to send an email) but that didn’t matter. I felt no better – in fact I felt pretty sordid. I’d been paid to do a job, which included managing tough clients, and by sending that one single email I’d fallen at the last fence. I ambled home that night feeling hollow, and very much like I’d let myself down, which I had.

Balance

I was an ‘all or nothing’ kind of 21 year old, so when I got into a job, that became everything. My social life, fitness, friends and family were strewn by the wayside like unwieldy baggage as I laser focused on one thing, and one thing only – career.

Did anyone thank me for such single minded determination?

Nope.

I remember one MD at Bates 141 (a big agency where I was managing BAT and Allied Domecq accounts) pulling me into his office at the end of the fiscal year to have a chat about team bonuses. My small, young team of seven (I was the oldest at 25) had smashed it that year. BAT was the agency’s most profitable account, Allied Domecq was coming up fast.

“We aren’t doing bonuses this year Harry. Difficult trading conditions globally, other offices are struggling. I hope you understand?’.

Now, I was the highest paid member of the team, the Senior Account Manager , and I was on around £28k a year. A pittance by the standards of 2002, a joke now. We’d billed over £3 million that year across the two accounts, so the conversation was a real slap in the face.

I left soon after, in haste and to a lesser agency, just to claw more money and get that hallowed ‘Account Director’ job title. That was a mistake, as was the lack of work/ life balance I took with me.

Be who you want to be - find an impressive, enthusiastic mentor

A number of the most successful people I know across the marketing and gaming worlds, and beyond, have a couple of things in common – they’re extremely bright and incredibly hardworking. They’ve also often had various doses of good fortune sprinkled over their career along the way. If I were to define an element of how this luck is consistently manifested, it would be the presence of a mentor figure in their early careers.

In most cases it was a boss who guided their development and decision making – and in some cases their first progression to a new firm – whilst embedding solid behaviours that take the rest of us a number of jobs and numerous mistakes to embrace. Find that mentor and follow their lead.

Ask More Questions

My big bug-bears were contact reports and budgets. Contact reports were skull crushingly boring and apparently pointless tasks that required me to take notes rather than engage with the meetings themselves. As for budgets, well, numbers as a whole just left me cold.

As far as Achilles heels go, it’s quite a big one if you want to move up the marketing ladder.

However I was lucky in that I faced up to my initial gremlins, removed my crumbling ego from the equation and asked for help from my boss. She not only facilitated my practical development but also, in a piece of Schadenfreude yet to be bested, gave me a leaving present I still use to this day – process management skills in the form of ISO9001 auditor training.

The cream rises (and trash gravitates towards its natural habitat near the bottom)

I wish I could forewarn the younger me about the absolutely dreadful people I would come across over a career spanning 13 companies, 10 job titles, six countries and four industries. However the bright side is that the darkness was ultimately outshone by the light emitting from many terrific, talented, fun and engaging people.

The truth is, dickheads are like coffee stains – every company has them and they’re a nightmare to get rid of – but they eventually fade away to nothing.

Don’t knee-jerk: if your heart tells you to leave, wait three months before you jump

In your early career especially, the temptation to run back to university and take an eight-year master’s degree in kite flying can sometimes feel like a no-brainer. The endless dreary meetings, pitiful salary, late nights working on unwinnable pitches and absurd rent bill to live within an hour of the office simply don’t add up. But then you get a glimmer.

The rat race is very much a marathon, so a steady pace with occasional bursts of speed will serve you well.

I remember one low ebb in particular: in my late agency days and inherently unhappy at work I managed to pitch, win and deliver a tiny viral project for Sony with the help of a couple of creatives and a developer, all working after hours. There was a general fug of negativity around the pitch and on a couple of occasions one of the senior agency figures tried to get me to cease work entirely, on the suggestion that I was soon to be canned anyway, but I persevered.

The beer we shared the day of the win was the sweetest validation and an immensely enjoyable (if ultimately hollow) ‘screw you’ against the agency. I was paid-off and farmed out soon after, but left feeling that at least I’d taken the chance to lead something myself and exit, if not on my own terms, at least with my head held a little higher.

If you can see the bandwagon, you’ve probably missed it

So. Many. Ideas. One of the most fun things in a marketing career is the opportunity to open the creative gun cabinet and start taking pot shots. I’ve got a few gigabytes of hard drive storage with everything from dotcom startup ideas to app concepts, culminating in a fair number of business plans. I even tried to get a few of them off the ground, but if there was one poison arrow that killed more of them than anything else (even more than the stagnating fear of failure) it was that I was replicating – even if subconsciously – ideas, campaigns or businesses that had already been brought to life in another earlier, better-funded guise.

Originality is an elusive maiden but those ideas that stand the inevitable self-doubt and criticism are the ones worth pouring your heart, soul (and most likely savings account) into.

They’re as rare as hen’s teeth but totally worth the wait.

Managing people well will be your highest priority

When I took on my first account manager role at 25 my father, proud though I’m sure he was at the time, did ask with a certain amount of trepidation whether I’d ever been trained to manage actual people.

In fact I believe he was more expressive than that.

Back then in agency land, you learned on the hoof – by emulating your boss (if they were decent), collaborating, and trial and error. Mistakes were made – many, many quite cringe-worthy mistakes if memory serves.

Things might have changed – training in management skills may now come as marketing industry standards alongside pointy shoes and a snazzy haircut – but what’s certain is your ability to nurture direct reports only gets more important as you progress in seniority. The ever-useful Google, Chat GOPT and YouTube are start points, as are the plethora of books and online courses. I’d add to that a recommendation to constantly ask questions of managers you respect (remember the mentor); the ones who always seem to get the best from their team and run a tight yet motivated ship.

A product of personal development is that the job you chose as a graduate becomes less about the practical work and more about how you brief, advise, cajole, rein in and ultimately motivate those who work for you. It pays to take the time required to get it right.

If the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is

Sometimes opportunity smacks you round the head when you least expect it – a piece of professional good fortune like a bolt of lightning from the depths of LinkedIn. It might be a random startup offer with a chunk of equity which they swear is worth half a mil already. Or it could be the promotion with a flashy job title that will make colleagues seethe and women swoon.

Hold fire, champ – time to pause for thought.

Has anything that’s been offered to you been guaranteed? Will it be in the contract? Even if so, will the company be around long enough to honour said contract (I can name three examples of firms going belly up around me just as I was due to be paid out).

Sadly, real ‘golden ticket’ moments are few and far between. What tends to breed ongoing success are the pillars of solid marketing skills twinned with a strong work ethic and a ‘get on with everyone’ personality. Focus on those and you’ll find you’ll start to make your own luck.

Measure twice, cut once

It’s highly recommended to apply the ‘more haste, less speed’ axiom to almost anything you meddle in. From Powerpoint to public speaking, take your time and focus on quality over quantity; it’s a sure fire way to appear more professional, competent and able than your peers.

The rat race is very much a marathon, so a steady pace with occasional bursts of speed will serve you well.

The grass certainly looks greener – but isn’t always, so be thankful

No matter how difficult your working life becomes at times, if you have a job in any area of marketing or professional services it’s likely you’re considerably better off than the majority. Statistically speaking, you’ve probably got a university degree, you’re able to cover rent (perhaps even a mortgage after a while if you’re lucky) and you work among the young and the beautiful in an ever-changing, lively industry.

Be grateful for what you’ve got and what you’ve achieved. It doesn’t get any easier as you earn greater responsibility, but it does pay better.

Work in what you love – and if you can’t afford to do that, do it on the side

There’s a utopian dream that we can all achieve nirvana by simply doing what we love for a career. But what if you love painting? Or writing? Or baking? And then you find you lack the talent, determination, confidence, drive, bankroll or pure luck to make it pay enough of a living wage while you find your feet? If that’s the case, then never fear – as that’s what evenings and weekends are for.

Time management comes more naturally to some than others but once you have a passion project it’s amazing how easy it is to get up that little bit earlier, to ignore the TV or go out less. You can shave time off pretty much everything else in order to reclaim those lost hours and commit them to something that brings you genuine joy.

It’s no surprise or secret than many of those that ‘make it’ claim that work doesn’t feel like work – its recreational fun that can have the added benefit of payment. Investing time in a beloved hobby outside work is hugely rewarding and a balance to the stresses and strains of your career, so invest in yourself, recapture your passion and see what amazing things could come of it. It’s free to try, and totally in your capacity to have a go.

I wish I’d done it sooner myself.

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The Marketing Unfiltered Newsletter is curated by Danny Denhard & Harry Lang. If you have an idea for an article you’d like to share with our 2,500 subscribers, just get in touch via the links below.

Danny Denhard » If you need help 🚨: I coach leaders, consult with startups, marketplaces and challenger brands and advise companies looking to grow.
I also have a 2x a week AI leadership podcast both under 10 mins, so get in touch.

Harry Lang » Harry is a CMO and performance marketing/ brand strategy consultant who grows digital B2C businesses for fun. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at Harry@BrandArchitects.co.uk