Not if it should. Not whether it’s a good idea. Just how.

Among the highlights is that Meta discourages the AI from suggesting users break the law or give stock tips. But that lives on the same rule sheet as ‘it’s fine to tell an eight-year-old their youthful form is a masterpiece.’

Just. Ick.

Meanwhile — over in an alternate universe where the internet still feels vaguely magical — Taylor Swift is launching a new album like she’s opening the gates of Valhalla. A mysterious billboard in major cities, surprise Easter Eggs for fans, and a Spotify playlist to build anticipation before officially revealing the album on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast.

She doesn’t need AI to talk to the youth. She is the algorithm.

Anyway, speaking of reach and frequency that brings us to the problem most marketers are facing in 2025: We’re still playing a game that’s been rigged — optimizing for visibility in a system that’s now designed to erase us.

Let’s talk about it.

In this episode of LENS:

• Zoom Lens: Congrats, You’ve Played Yourself
• Wide Angle Lens: When You’re the Feed, Not Just in It
• Lens Flare: What I’m reading this month…
• Macro Lens: Influencing The Audience With Story, Not Frequency
• Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS:

Reach + Frequency Are Now a Marketing Mirage

For two decades, we’ve been ghostwriting Google’s profits — and now AI is remixing our work into traffic black holes. A couple of weeks ago, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince shared a statistic that should hit every marketer like a cold splash of water: In 2025, it takes 15 Google crawls to generate a single visitor, up from just 0.5 a decade ago.. OpenAI? 1,500 scraped pages for one lonely click.

Now, I don’t know if that math actually maths – but when you combine that with absolute decrease in organic traffic that we’re seeing across the board – the trend is super clear: we’re not being discovered. We’re being mined.

So why do we keep playing this rigged game? Because we’re stuck in the same Kubler:Ross grief model that we spent the last twenty years going through.

• Denial: In the early 2000s, we thought, “Search can’t hurt us. It’ll help.”
• Anger: Around 2005, we cried, “How dare they monetize our work?”
• Bargaining: In 2010, we asked, “What do we need to pay to stay visible?”
• Depression: In 2015, we questioned, “Are we just feeding the algorithm now?”
• Acceptance: By 2020, we figured, “Well, this is just how everything works now”

Now, in August of 2025, déjà vu — only this time, AI’s the one tempting us. And we’re real real mad…. So before we head right back into bargaining, let’s revisit reach and frequency with 2025’s realities in mind.

Reach and frequency revisited (but not retired)

Reach and Frequency is a simple equation: Reach (getting our message in front of people) is value, frequency (how many times we have to do it) is cost. You can tinker with either or both to optimize your marketing (better, more qualified reach, and smarter, more efficient ways to manage frequency).

In the golden age of mass media, this was a reasonably elegant system. A national TV buy or print placement delivered instant reach. A few airings across dayparts or issues, and you had frequency.

Now? We’ve gotten to a place where we are trying so hard to manage costs — and frequency is so expensive — that marketers have defaulted to going “viral” instead of frequency. The focus now: Win the moment — without regard to whether or not it actually provides any momentum.

It’s what explains efforts like American Eagle’s recent ad featuring Sydney Sweeney. Yes, that ad wins the week, and maybe the month. Yes, it got them a temporary boost in stock price. But did it set a foothold for the next step in building long-term brand value? Was it a solid brick in a long-term strategy of marketing value?

Nope.

I wrote a bit more on this if you want to see some of the nuances of the argument – but my feeling is that Reach and Frequency is an entirely new game now. And we marketers have to stop chasing the sugar high of visibility and virality, and have to get back to our roots of designing long-term momentum.

Today’s “Reach” isn’t “how many.” It’s how well you belong — in the real communities that are gathered – where your brand is as much a member as anyone else in that community. That’s certainly the Taylor way.

And today’s “Frequency” isn’t repetition. It’s narrative velocity — how can you move the story you want to tell forward, one idea at a time – but contextually. In other words – it’s not the same ad shown in multiple places. It’s setting one narrative shown once to your fans, another narrative shown a few times to those who are unaware, and yet another step in the story to the people who may be skeptics.

It’s about treating our content like a product. Create it for a job. Give it structure. Build context. Earn the right to show up again in your audience’s feed.

Because if you’re not intentional, AI will repurpose you into invisibility.

Put This Into Practice

• Audit your content like a product portfolio. What’s helping users progress? What’s just noise? Rethink campaigns as sequenced episodes — not standalone shouts.
• Spend time on design. Metadata, taxonomy, structure. Context is survival.
• Shift from everywhere to where-it-matters. Clarity over volume. Always.
• Your story deserves better than being buried in a crawl. As I like to say to all my clients “market the marketing”.Want to dive deeper? Let’s talk about building a content model that scrapes nothing and builds everything.

WIDE ANGLE LENS:

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

When You’re the Feed, Not Just in It”

You know you’re iconic when brands go viral just by being near your announcement. Taylor Swift teased The Life of a Showgirl, and suddenly:

• X changed its profile pic to a glittery orange X (5.5M views).
• Google built confetti and flaming heart animations into search.
• LASIK.com capitalized on a stray podcast mention (450K views).
• Add 11.7M YouTube views and 400M+ social impressions for her first-ever podcast, and it’s clear: she didn’t launch a campaign — she triggered a content chain reaction.This isn’t influencer marketing. It’s cultural gravity. That’s modern show business kid.

Read All About It at CBS News

The Brand Influencers Are Now Working With Influencing Brands – Wait What?

You thought brands partnered with influencers — until the brands became the influencers. Liquid Death isn’t just doing collabs. It’s running the show.

• Chainsawed sandwiches with Sheetz
• A guillotine fantasy football league with Yahoo Sports
• A moshpit-proof adult diaper with Depends

This isn’t product placement. It’s weird, brilliant chaos on demand. And apparently? Everyone wants in. Liquid Death’s SVP of marketing says his inbox has 73 brands waiting in line to work with them.

Why? Because they’re not just a water brand.

They’re a content platform with 30+ billion earned media impressions and a creative POV loud enough to drown out TikTok.

Hmmmm… transforming your brand into a media company and having an audience… Who knew that might be the future of marketing?

Somebody should write a book

Read more at Marketing Brew

LENS FLARE:

What I’m Reading.

A few things that I’m discovering or revisiting and enjoying very much. FWIW no affiliate links here – just good stuff.

 Out of the Crisis – W Edwards Deming

Rereading Out of the Crisis right now feels almost prophetic. It’s 40+ years old but Deming’s focus on systems thinking, quality over quantity, and leadership grounded in purpose — not panic — hits especially hard in today’s chaotic marketing and AI-driven climate.

It’s not just a book about manufacturing. It’s a blueprint for long-term thinking in a short-term world. Still razor-sharp. Still maddeningly relevant.

Highly recommended.

MACRO LENS:

A Snapshot From A Recent Project

I was privileged to work with an amazingly cool boutique law firm that came to me convinced they needed more visibility. They were publishing constantly — but getting nowhere. I helped them pivot just a bit into a better narrative idea. So we….

• Rebuilt their message into a tiered story: why they matter, how they help, and what clients actually need. One big story – serving as the foundation.
• Focused on fewer, high-value audiences — referral partners and business owners — with tailored content.
• Replaced generic marketing and search campaigns (targeted to this group) with sequences driven by audience behavior.
• The result? +20% in qualified referrals over six months

It takes a bit – even to move a small ship. But now the marketing team has finally stopped asking “What should we post?” and started asking “What’s next in the story?”

If we can help you with a content or marketing strategy – let me know.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

Finishing Notes…

So, what did we learn this week?

AI is gonna try to babysit your kids. Maybe we should avoid it becoming a Cinemax movie. Taylor Swift is running brand strategy from the passenger seat of a podcast. And the most disruptive beverage brand in America is fielding influencer pitches from actual brands.

Meanwhile, marketers everywhere are still chasing metrics built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

Here’s the truth: I really do believe that attention for attention’s sake is becoming a fool’s errand. You can get it – but if you’re just getting a moment – who cares? Basically, it’s no longer about being seen. It’s about being remembered.

And that requires intention, context, and the courage to build momentum—not just moments.

Until next time: Be clear. Be relevant. And for the love of reach, stop feeding the algorithm empty calories.

It’s Your Story. Tell It Well.

The post Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around appeared first on Robert Rose.

It’s everything a 12-year-old hopped up on gummy worms could dream of.

We’re talking: melodramatic speeches about “being human,” rifts in the fabric of the universe, and a million monkey-bots flooding the internet with takes that make Elon’s shitposting look like a calm, curated museum exhibit.

Also? Superman gets his ass kicked more times than Linda Yaccarino failed at fixing Twitter.

It’s chaotic, shiny, and noisy enough to make you forget there used to be a pretty good story there. “But it was fun, fun, fun when we were drinking…”

No. Seriously. Get a few drinks before you see it. They certainly had a few as they made it.

Anyway, speaking of drunk content creation… I’ve been thinking a lot about AI and content – specifically how the things we published way back aren’t just resurfacing, they’re being reinterpreted. And not always in ways we’d want. What once felt like a throwaway post or a half-baked idea might now be training an algorithm to confidently misrepresent us.

I have….. well, thoughts…

So, let’s take a minute to make sure that if our old content’s going to keep talking, it’s still saying something we’re happy to stand by…. and not talking like it’s trying to get us kicked off The View.

In this episode of LENS (we have a new recommended reading section – woot!):

• Zoom Lens: Remembering What You Forgot to Remember
• Wide Angle Lens: Maybe the Problem Isn’t AI – It’s Us
• Lens Flare: What I’m reading this month…
• Macro Lens: Rewriting the Record Before AI Does It for You
• Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS:

Remembering What We Forgot To Remember

There was a time when your dusty old blog post from 2016 could hide in peace on page 12 of your sitemap. Maybe it aged poorly. Maybe it was a hot take that fizzled out. Maybe it was written in the golden age of keyword stuffing and whitepaper PDFs.

We’ve all written them – those blog posts with titles like “What Justin Bieber’s Haircut Teaches Us About Customer Experience”. Yeah, I’ve done it. I have plenty of cringe-worthy content out there. And, no, I will not link to it thank you very much.

Usually, you can just smile, and rest assured that Google safely obscured your ridiculousness to the bottom of page 78 on search engine results.

But in 2025? That post may be back. And it’s bringing receipts.

Welcome to the era of teaching the AI, where large language models are scraping your legacy content and remixing it into the next AI-search-powered customer interaction, search result, or thought leadership summary.

Here’s the insidious part. It’s not just what your content was. If it were just that, it might be okay.

It’s what your content teaches. In other words, what did AI LEARN from your content that it’s now going to confidently try and explain to your customers.

What are we teaching AI?

You see, GenAI isn’t just consuming your content – it’s absorbing it. It’s interpreting your brand’s worldview. And unlike humans, it doesn’t understand that, ha ha, you don’t reallllly mean that any more. It doesn’t care that your blog post about “customer loyalty in a post-pandemic world” was written before the pandemic. Or that your current CMO’s post in 2018 on how to do the Fortnite dance was when he was still a marketing coordinator at a gaming company, and isn’t really meant to be a pillar of your brand voice.

It will “learn”. And then speak. For you.

That’s not just a future potential branding risk — it’s a reputational liability.

Okay – so what’s the answer? Well, it comes back to one of the least sexy projects that have come back in a big way: Content Audits.

Content audits have now graduated from boring best practice to brand preservation protocol. You’re not just cleaning up broken links and outdated CTAs. You’re doing a narrative version control.

Because your content – even the old, crusty stuff – is now a possible live input. It may shape what AI says about you, for you, and instead of you.

Think of it like this: If a stranger asked ChatGPT who you are, what would it say?

And are you OK with part of that answer being pulled from a forgotten microsite from 2017?

You can’t stop LLMs from learning. But, you can decide what they learn from.

So yeah, soon you will need to reboot your content. Not just for SEO or branding, but because AI is going to use it whether you like it or not.

This is where you can shift from defense to offense.

Put This Into Practice

So – here are a couple of practical tips on this:

• Reframe, don’t just republish. Do more than update the date and publish that 2019 article again. Add a timestamped preface. Call out what’s changed. Link to newer thinking. Show the evolution – make it clear this piece is part of an ongoing story, not a standalone statement frozen in time.
• Add context and structure. Don’t bank on machines inferring nuance – assume they need signals to follow. Use clear metadata, canonical tags, and internal links to help AI systems associate your old content with your current thinking.
• Audit for dissonance. If AI search summaries misrepresent your brand, assume there’s a vacuum you haven’t filled. Patch it with new content. Clarify what you stand for now and make that content easy to find, link to, and quote.

AI is going to start to speak for all of us. We just need to be much more careful about what we’re teaching it to say.

If I can help you with this – we’re performing this new kind of audit quite a bit. Or… Just check out my full post here – and let us know if we can help.

WIDE ANGLE LENS:

MAYBE THE PROBLEM ISN’T AI – IT’S US

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

The Most Protected Place in Marketing? Your Landline.

In a twist worthy of Black Mirror, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act – yes, the ‘90s robocall law – is now the sharpest legal tool for pushing back on AI-generated outreach. Synthetic voice calls, AI text bots, and auto-dialed spam? All potentially illegal without consent. Meanwhile, digital channels are still a free-for-all, where AI can spin up garbage content and slide into your inbox uninvited.

Maybe it’s time digital got rules, too. But this is really interesting for those of you who may use call centers for marketing purposes.

Read more at Reuters →

WPP’s Wake-Up Call: Can We Slow Down, Please?

WPP just dropped a rough profit warning, watched its stock dip, and declared that AI is its future. The message? Legacy brands must move faster or die.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

This isn’t about speed. It’s the continuing fantasy that AI is going to magically clean up disjointed messaging, broken content workflows, and marketing bloat. The real question isn’t “can we adapt fast enough?” It’s “can we slow down long enough to get strategic?”

AI isn’t a panacea. And racing toward it without clarity? That’s just automation at scale — not transformation.

Read the full piece at Business Insider →

LENS FLARE:

What I’m Reading.

A few things that I’m discovering or revisiting and enjoying very much. FWIW no affiliate links here – just good stuff.

 The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

I’m rereading this masterclass from the man behind Def Jam and Johnny Cash. Rubin strips creativity way back – no labels, no flash – just presence and practice

 Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal
I try and pick at least one book per month that I’m pretty sure I will disagree with – and this was the one this month. I missed this when it came out in 17… And, well, not sure about this one. There’s some really interesting points here on unlocking flow, and neurobiology. But the corporate microdosing regimens and clandestine neuro‑experiments feel a bit like Silicon Valley Tech-Bro biohacking bullshit hyped up on ketamine.

 The Practice by Seth Godin
This is another book I missed when it came out. I just finished this one as part of my research to my new book Valuable Friction. I love Seth’s point of view, but often find myself disagreeing with some of it. This is a lovely book on creativity, courage and creating rituals. I (have always) disagreed with Seth’s “publish before you’re ready” mantra – but otherwise The Practice is about consistency, shipping, and doing the work even when it isn’t magical. Less about “being creative,” more about showing up for your craft.

MACRO LENS:

A Snapshot From A Recent Project

A new VP at a mid-market SaaS company came to me for help modernizing their content strategy. But when we ran a content audit, what we found changed everything. As a company, they’ve been around in various incarnations for more than 15 years. Like many tech startups, their business model has changed, their value propositions have changed – basically everything has changed. And legacy blogs, old campaign pages, and an outdated vision whitepaper were being quoted – verbatim – by generative search tools. Worse? Those outdated assets were being surfaced more often than their current positioning.

Their brand wasn’t just buried under old content – it was being actively misrepresented by it.

We built an AI-first content audit process that didn’t just flag ROT – it mapped which outdated ideas were training LLMs. That insight led to a full messaging pivot: they tightened their POV, rebuilt their foundational content, and turned their audit into a strategic relaunch.

Way too early to see the full results yet – but we can see it’s already starting to have positive effects in search.

If we can help you with a content audit – let me know.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

Finishing Notes…

If there’s a takeaway from this week, it’s this:

The future of content isn’t just what we create next – it’s what we already created and forgot to manage. The archive is alive. The machines are reading. And in many cases, they’re quoting us back to ourselves, out of context, at scale.

Whether it’s an AI hallucination of your 2017 whitepaper or a chatbot remixing your pandemic-era hot takes – the risk isn’t just irrelevance. It’s confusion. Brand confusion. Message confusion. Strategic confusion.

And that doesn’t get fixed with more content. It gets fixed with better content – and smarter stewardship of what already exists.

So if your content is out there telling stories, make sure it’s telling the right ones. If your brand has evolved, make sure your old posts got the memo.

Audit with intention. Reframe what matters. And remember: AI is just a reflection of what we’ve fed it.

Until next time –

stay sharp, stay curious, and please, clean up your digital attic.

It’s Your Story. Tell It Well.

The post With Every Mistake We Must Surely Be Learning appeared first on Robert Rose.

I don’t know about you, but this week has me reflecting on America’s original content creators – the Founding Fathers. “Join, or Die”? Viral infographic. “We hold these truths”? Killer positioning statement.

Today, Ben Franklin would absolutely be running a Substack called Frankly Speaking, dishing enlightenment-era hot takes with a side of electricity puns. You know, the current stuff… <I’m sorry>…

George Washington definitely launches a podcast called “Crossing Streams”. And Jefferson? Let’s be honest – he’d be ghostwriting blogs for Silicon Valley tech bros. The latest gig? Drafting OpenAI’s ‘New Enlightenment Manifesto’ – now with 20% more hallucination.

Anyway….

So – speaking of marketing tech bros – it seems like there’s a ton of talk on my doom scroll about AI Search Optimization (AEO it’s called). It’s supposed to be the next frontier that we’re supposed to master.

I have….. thoughts…

So, let’s slow down and think about this like it’s the TV show The Bear: There might be value – but only if someone finally stops yelling long enough to taste the sauce.

In this episode of LENS:

• Zoom Lens: Congratulations! You’re An Answer. Now What?
• Wide Angle Lens: What Is Marketing Anyway?
• Lens Flare: Getting Ahold of Our Content
• Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: Congratulations, You’re An Answer. Now What?

Are We Really Doing This Again?

There was a time – about twenty years ago – when we all decided (not in a meeting, but somehow collectively) to hand all our content over to Google. At their suggestion, no less. And not just hand it over – we spent our own hard-earned pocket money to make it tidy: tagging, structuring, categorizing. We made it as easy as possible for them to take our ideas, index them, and store them in a nice, algorithm-friendly format. So convenient.

The promise? You’ll be found.

And for a while, we were. Until – well – we weren’t. Oops, panda, hummingbird, kangaroo or whatever other Farm Animal Google Search updates became just part of the territory. Slowly, the “being found” part got eroded to make room for “you can pay… to be found.”

Okay. Lesson learned.

But wait – nope – we did it again about ten years later.

There was another moment. Again, no formal meeting – or chicken dinner – but plenty of very passionate keynote speakers. We all decided to give it away again – this time to the social media platforms. They shouted, “Build our business model – ahem – we mean, your community!” They promised, “We’ll be your town square!”

That one went so far that we genuinely considered giving up our websites in favor of Facebook pages. Sounds absurd now, but at the time? It felt like progress. “Go where the audiences are,” they said.

The promise? Your customers, reached and engaged.

Until – yep – that stopped working too.

Okay. Now we’ve learned, right?

…Or have we?

Because here we are again. Only this time, the new promised land isn’t social. It’s generative AI. Specifically, it’s being the “answer” in AI search.

We’re told we need to optimize for Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews – anywhere a language model might (if we’re lucky) cite our content in its response. Citation dashboards, “prompt share,” “LLM visibility scores” – all the hallmarks of a fresh marketing gold rush. New tools, new metrics, same old promise: get there early and win big.

And yes, there’s no question AI is changing how people search for and interact with information. According to some reports, over 13% of desktop queries in the U.S. now generate AI summaries. Some publishers are seeing traffic cuts of 50% or more. This is happening.

But let’s pause before we assume we need to pour our content into yet another machine.

Because if this all feels familiar – it should.

To be clear, the question isn’t whether AI matters. It clearly does.

The question is: what are we optimizing for?

Are we trying to be cited by a machine – knowing full well that those citations are ephemeral, inconsistent, and largely unclicked? Are we helping LLMs become more accurate – while simultaneously undercutting our own ability to build audience, trust, and traction?

Or can we take a different path this time?

I definitely don’t have an answer for that yet. Purposely. Because this time, maybe we could just take a breath and think this through a bit.

I’ve been playing with a bit of a simple matrix (as one does LOL) that I’m calling the Brake Check:

Which questions truly matter to your business? How volatile are the AI-generated answers? If it’s high relevance and low volatility – great. That’s where you own the answer. Instrument your content accordingly. Make it easy to find, easy to update, and unmistakably yours.

If it’s high relevance but high volatility – don’t try to out-Google the internet. Instead, co-opt the ecosystem. Publish where AI already pulls from. Get cited by proxy. Partner with the sources that have gravity. Create content that lives within the stream, not just upstream from it.

And if the questions aren’t relevant to your goals? Learn from them. Observe. Watch what content LLMs prefer, who’s showing up often, and where you’re absent – by design.

Most importantly: invest in your owned experiences. Give people a reason to step past the velvet rope. Make your newsletter, your blog, your research – the place where answers don’t just show up, but make people stay. Spoiler alert: this is the part where I’m wrestling the hardest these days.

There’s no first-mover advantage here. No “land grab” to win.

The brands that thrive won’t be the ones who publish the fastest – they’ll be the ones who publish with purpose. The ones who know when to show up, when to speak up, and when to hold something back.

The best answers, after all, don’t come from machines.

WIDE ANGLE LENS: WHO’S LINE IS IT ANYWAY?

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

ICYMI: When a Brand Goes Quiet

Last week, Intel announced it’s outsourcing its entire marketing function—not just media buying or creative execution, but the whole function – to Accenture and AI.

No in-house brand team. No internal strategy group. Just consultants and code.

At first glance, this feels like a cost-cutting move and an awful idea. (It is. But it may not be). Layoffs are involved. Efficiency is cited. ROI spreadsheets are surely humming, and I would hazard a guess that there are more PowerPoint decks floating around now than there are people to read them. But there’s something deeper going on here – something worth pausing on.

Intel isn’t just trimming fat. It’s declaring a new identity.

And that identity isn’t built on differentiation. It’s built on survival.

Intel used to be one of the few tech brands regular people actually knew. It was a trusted name, a performance flex, a signal of quality in a sea of specs. Now? They’re effectively saying: “You don’t need to know who we are anymore. You just need to know we exist.”

And that’s the real story.

Intel is making a conscious strategic retreat from brand as advantage. They’re no longer trying to lead, inspire, or even stand out. They’re trying to optimize, scale, and last. This is the corporate equivalent of the “this is my life now” meme.

So – I don’t think this a bad strategy at all. It’s just a smart, sad one.

LENS FLARE: Nobody wants to collaborate – until they do.

A recent lesson learned from one of our latest client engagements:

Not long ago, we worked with a legacy organization where something quietly dangerous was happening: the 20-year veterans – the deep subject matter experts – were leaving, and the next generation of marketers, product managers, and media leads were stepping in… without a roadmap.

No institutional learning. No content libraries. No internal knowledge sharing. The veterans thought the newbies weren’t curious. The newbies thought the veterans weren’t accessible. Everyone kept working, but the smart stuff – the stuff that made this company great – was quietly leaking out the back.

We built an internally focused content strategy: one that prioritized collaboration, structured knowledge sharing, and made “building the next generation of experts” a strategic priority.

The funny thing? People say they want to collaborate – but they don’t really want to collaborate. Not until you give them a structure that quietly demands it. Then they do. Then they start learning. Then the work gets smarter.

Sometimes, you have to force collaboration… just long enough for people to realize they actually want it.

If we can help you force a little collaboration – let us know.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

Finishing Notes…

So this weekend as you munch on a hot dog, sip something cold, and watch the fireworks paint the sky – take a breath.

Think about where you’re placing your bets. Are you chasing AI and Answer Engine Optimization because it’s strategic… or because it’s loud? If you’re being pressured to rush it…. ask… Why what’s the rush?

Maybe next week – start a conversation with someone in your org you haven’t collaborated with in a while. Or ever. See if you can’t force a little brilliance into the room.

And when it comes to your brand – ask yourself: Are you trying to show you’re different, or just hoping that people know you exist?

Neither is the wrong choice. But if you haven’t made the first one on purpose, well – you’ve already made the second by default.

Happy Independence Day. Whatever you do – just always make it seem you meant to.

It’s Your Story. Tell It Well.

The post You Better Start Swimming, Or You’ll Sink Like A Stone appeared first on Robert Rose.

It’s a weird time in the world of AI and marketing.

One camp says: “If you’re not using AI for everything – blogs, decks, ads, social – you’re already behind.”

The other? “I only use it for summaries. Or, okay, maybe a first draft… but never final work.”

Meanwhile, there are:

• Execs banning AI until copyright lawyers finish their coffee.
• People paying $997 for prompt templates to “unlock the real magic.”
• And the artisanal crowd proudly posting “No AI used” badges for handcrafted, grass-fed, non-GMO social media posts

Regardless of which group you’re in, everyone’s obsessed with the same thing: speed. Faster content. More throughput. Less cost.

But maybe we’ve missed the point.

Wait a sec… before we dig in, a quick word from… well, me.

<Stefon from Saturday Night Life enters…>
If your current content strategy is “just keep publishing and hope for the best,” congratulations: you need the hottest new workshop in the US..

This workshop has everything: outdated frameworks in Helvetica Neue, a case study from 2019 that still kind of works, three people who swear by different definitions of “thought leadership,” a proprietary model named after a forest animal, something called the Measurement Pyramid, which may actually be a gameshow from the 1970s.

At one point, someone says “snackable content,” and no one flinches. That’s how you know it’s working. Led by us strategy nerds with just enough optimism to keep going and just enough bitterness to make it honest.

Need a fresh perspective on what’s working (and what’s not) – let’s talk.

<this ends the part where I ask you to buy something>

Okay… Quickly – let’s get back to it before the show Andor makes us feel dumb for not understanding a whisper-fight about logistics.

In this episode of LENS:

• Zoom Lens: Maybe let’s look at the real opportunity of Generative AI
• Wide Angle Lens: The Onion is opening a creative shop
• Lens Flare: Faster Isn’t Smarter – It’s Just Faster
• Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: THESE AREN’T THE DROIDS WE’RE LOOKING FOR

If you know your Star Wars lore, you’ll remember that droids are often treated with suspicion. In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan Kenobi sits in a greasy-spoon diner with his friend Dexter Jettster, who explains why droids can’t be fully trusted: “They have no wisdom.”

Obi-Wan agrees: “If droids could think, there’d be none of us here.”

The subtext is clear: Droids have data but not discernment. They can execute, but they can’t judge. They can act, but they can’t choose.

That sounds a lot like the debates we’re having about AI in Marketing today. AI-as-Droid is a comforting metaphor that makes technology feel manageable. You get to hand off the tedious stuff (summarizing research, repurposing webinars, outlining presentation decks) so that you can get back to the “real” creative work. But isn’t it funny that no one can then actually pinpoint what that “real” creative work is?

And it’s precisely how many generative AI tools are marketed today. The pitch is simple: Dump your data into our enterprise-grade AI blender, and – voilà – you get hyper-personalized content, frictionless creative. We are, quite literally, Uncle Owen and Luke buying droids. We have no use for a protocol droid who can be an ambassador. We just need one that can speak the language of “moisture vaporators”.

Which is why most of us are still playing safe – delegating at the edges, tinkering in the sandbox, pretending the future isn’t barreling at us like a freight train.

But Maybe the Point Isn’t Speed

What if AI isn’t here to help us move faster? What if it’s here to help us finally unwind ourselves from the axle of speed as the foundational value in marketing and business?

What if AI doesn’t replace our judgment, but instead requires it. In other words, what if we saw Generative AI not as something that helps with speeding our output and lubricating throughput, but rather something that helps us slow down our input and purposely add friction to our flow.

• Instead of churning out subject lines, we might use it analyze the emotional tone of your best ones and make us think of others.
• Instead of summarizing reports, ask it to uncover patterns you’ve missed so that we might rewrite it four more times instead of twice.
• Instead of drafting copy faster, ask it to challenge your assumptions so that we get to a better, or bigger, idea.

In each case, the AI output is the least interesting part. The value lies in the spark that helps you wrestle with ideas more deeply and reach beyond what you already know.

In this model, AI doesn’t think for you. It challenges you think more.

This Isn’t the End of People

Reframing your lens on generative AI in this way changes how we use it and why.

The question isn’t, “What can AI help us execute?” And it’s not, “What can AI do that we can’t?” It’s: “What might we explore now that we couldn’t see before?”

If we bought into this model, then contrary to the headlines, AI isn’t a cost-cutting tool. It’s a new capability – a thought-expanding one. It suggests that we don’t need fewer marketers. It means you need more, better ones – and more diverse perspectives, sharper judgment, and teams built for collaboration, not just content throughput.

This is where brands trade automation for articulation. Where we stop asking “What can AI do?” and start asking “What can we see differently because of it?”

A recent study found that AI saved companies, on average, only 2.8% of work time – about an hour per week. In some cases, workloads even increased as teams spent more time refining, validating, and reasoning through what AI produced.

Most of the media covering this research positioned it as a failure to deliver on AI’s promise. But I see something else. I don’t see failure. I see valuable friction. Maybe companies are finally getting it right. They’re not automating people’s thinking. They’re investing in it.

Hmmm… you’ll excuse me while I go reflect a little longer on what I actually believe.

Because that? That’s the real opportunity.

If you’re interested in digging into the nuance a bit more, you can read the full piece here.

Let’s Zoom out bit…

WIDE ANGLE LENS: INVESTING IN FUNNY

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

ICYMI: No Joke – The Onion Is A New Creative Agency

In a move that’s equal parts brilliant and overdue, The Onion has officially launched its own creative agency: America’s Finest Creative Agency. Led by CMO Leila Brillson, the team is offering brands everything from stunt marketing to email copy to social-first vertical video – all crafted by writers who’ve honed their skills crafting headlines that make you laugh, wince, and question your life choices.

This isn’t The Onion’s first foray into brand work (remember Onion Labs?), but this iteration is leaner, sharper, and well… just awesome. While other agencies are busy feeding prompts to AI and calling it strategy, The Onion is betting on something radical: actual writers. As Brillson puts it, “AI is not set up for those nuances. It’s set up to flatten something into the broadest and most middle-ground content it can.”

As a marketing fanboy, I’m here for it. Because in a world where everyone’s trying to be everything, The Onion is staying true to its roots – and inviting brands to get smarter (and funnier) in the process.

LENS FLARE: MOVE SLOW AND FIX THINGS

A recent lesson-learned from one of our latest client engagements:

A client came to us at the beginning of this year – mid-sprint. The ask: “We need to move faster. We need AI. We need scale.” I asked: “How fast is fast enough?”

Silence.

Their team was churning out more content than ever – and getting less from it. Automation had amplified inefficiencies. Everyone was busy, but no one was sure why. And, more importantly, the pressure to go faster was like that scene in Amadeus when the Emperor tells Mozart – “it’s just too many notes, just remove a few and it will be good.” And Mozart says, “which notes shall I remove?”

We offered something radical: maybe use automation technology and AI as tacit permission to slow down. So, what did that mean? We helped them do it: we paused the publishing calendar (no not stopping the presses all the way, but yes reducing the quantity), mapped their actual content lifecycle, clarified roles, and aligned the work to real business goals.

Two months later, they were producing less — and getting better results. Now – they’re not working any less hard, but they’re also feeling less pressure, getting better results, and…

The lesson:

Speed only works if you know where you’re going.

Otherwise, it’s just burnout in motion.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

Finishing Notes…

So, if we let go of the AI as output assistant metaphor (and the marketing replacement nightmare), what’s left?

Maybe AI is your analyst. Your fog light. Your tilted mirror. Maybe it’s the second brain in the room – unbound by your assumptions – but relying on your judgment to make meaning.

Or maybe it’s just a tool built not to automate creativity but to provoke it. A tool that helps marketers step out of the default drive for speed and gives them a reason to finally slow down.

It’s Your Story. Write it at Your Pace. Then Tell It Well.

The post What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been appeared first on Robert Rose.

And while world leaders are busy turning diplomacy into performance art, the rest of us are left navigating shifting markets, shrinking attention spans, and algorithms that ghost you harder than a recruiter after saying “you’re a perfect fit for this marketing role.”

Which brings us to today’s topic: as marketing reach collapses, gravity wins. Let’s talk about building “pull” in a world where the rules keep changing.

Juicy stuff, right? But hold up – before we dig in, a quick word from… well, me.

<this is the part where I ask you to buy something>
Let’s Stop Calling Chaos A Strategy!

Sure, chaos can be creative. But also, no? Especially when Q2 hits and your content engine now sounds like it’s held together with duct tape, good intentions, and a single Notion doc titled “2025 Plan – Final_Final_FINAL(1).

At Seventh Bear, we help teams pause the frantic publishing and actually think about what they’re doing – strategically, operationally, and with just enough existential dread to be productive.

Our Content Strategy Consulting helps you step back, take stock, and finally make your content make sense again. No jargon. No 80-slide decks (well okay it’s just under 40). Just clarity – the kind that aligns what you say with what you do.

Need a fresh perspective on what’s working (and what’s not) – let’s talk.

<this ends the part where I ask you to buy something>
<oh one other thing – I’ll eat the Tariff on our services.>

Okay… Quickly – let’s dive back in before global trade turns into an actual WWE cage match.

In this episode of LENS:

• Zoom Lens: In a world where reach is rented, pull is owned.
• Wide Angle Lens: Shopify CEO issues a Memo about AI Usage
• Lens Flare: Clarity Beats Consensus: A Recent Lesson From Our Work
• Lens Cap: Episode One of our New On-Demand Show Is Up….

Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: REACH IS RENTED, PULL IS OWNED

“The algorithm is broken.”

“Nobody sees anything unless it’s viral or unhinged.”

“Zero-click search is going to kill discovery.”

Blah blah blah. We’ve seen it. We’ve heart it.

Let’s be honest: algorithms aren’t the enemy. They’re a mirror. A finely-tuned, data-hungry dopamine machine reflecting our worst clicks and deepest doomscrolls back at us.

We aren’t stuck in the algorithm. We are the algorithm.

And so are our audiences.

Audiences used to be diverse, open to new things. They gathered around the collective media campfire. They watched the same 20 TV shows, they read the same 4 newspapers, they attended the same 10 events. And they could be introduced to new concepts. Challenged. When something (or someone) came in and inserted themselves into this broadcast world, brand awareness was built – even if it did require these audiences to think a bit differently.

But today, audiences are no longer waiting around to be discovered by a brand. They’re self-sorting (or being sorted) into hyper-specific echo chambers of curated interests, vibes, values, and memes. It doesn’t matter if it’s a TV Network, a Reddit Thread, a Google Search, or a Social Media Platform. Audiences are self-sorting into identity-focused groups. As a result, they’re choosing who gets seen – not just what they see.

That’s not a bug (well it is, but that’s for different beverages). That’s the new normal.

But, hold on, brand discovery hasn’t died – it’s just gone hyper local. Jazz club over stadium tour.

Old-school reach math doesn’t work here. You can’t just show up on a network, or search, or on a social channel with your brand, and play your Greatest Hits across these mass channels. You have to show up in the right rooms, with the right energy, and get invited to jam.

What happens when you do that well? A thing I’m calling Audience Gravity.

Audience Gravity is the magnetic pull that happens when your brand consistently shows up with contextual value – not clickbait. Not self-promo. Not “join our newsletter.” Just value.

Whether you call this Zero-Click Marketing, or just “dealing with the algos” – we are now better off if we can deliver value then and there. Hopefully, over time, that makes people want to be in the same room as your brand. If we do it well gravity builds – and more of those identity-based audiences will seek you out, outside of the room you’re playing in. You’ll pull more audiences, more creators, more communities into your orbit.

So, when it comes to Brand Awareness we’re not “building an audience.” We’re infiltrating many. One room at a time.

This “bottom-up” approach isn’t just about attracting diverse audiences with different messaging. You also need to build connective tissue between the pockets of trust you’ve earned: a unifying story, a shared identity, something greater than the sum of its parts. So that, ultimately, your room – is one of many that connects audiences to each other.

That’s the real art of brand discovery and the antidote to Zero-click marketing: creating a narrative strong enough to carry across rooms and create pull without flattening your uniqueness.

If you’re interested in digging into the nuance a bit more, you can read my full piece here.

Let’s open it up a bit…

WIDE ANGLE LENS: HOW DID YOU USE AI LAST WEEK

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

ICYMI: Shopify’s CEO Issued a “Use AI or Else” Memo

Because nothing says “innovation culture” like threatening to replace your team with a chatbot unless they prove their humanity in a spreadsheet.

In a memo to employees, Shopify’s, employees were told that to get new headcount approved, they’d need to prove AI can’t do the job. You know, just casually ask your team to disprove a negative, on demand, with existential implications.

Here’s the thing: encouraging AI fluency? Great. Demanding that humans continue to rationalize their continued employment against hypothetical machines? Not so great. Also deeply weird. Also completely misses the point of what people do best – creative thinking, connection, context, judgment – all the things that make teams, well… teams.

We don’t build great orgs by treating people like inefficient software. We build them by helping smart humans do smarter things – with tools that augment their strengths, not threaten their relevance.

Anyway. Cool memo, bro.

LENS FLARE: FROM SPRAY AND PRAY TO SIGNAL AND STITCH

A recent lesson-learned from a colleague that I was talking with last week:

One of my older clients is a mid-sized SaaS technology company, the Director of Marketing there decided to hit pause on the endless blog post treadmill and did something interesting: they chose one high-value story worth telling – then partnered with a trusted voice inside a key community to shape it.

But they didn’t stop there.

Together, they tailored that same core idea for different communities – turning it into a podcast episode, a guest newsletter, a conference talk, and a set of social posts, all delivered through channels where they had earned the position to share content in an educational fashion.

What he shared with me was that in six months, inbound traffic from these disparate community sources doubled. That was nice – but it was really their resonance in these communities that they could see improvement. Much higher engagement, and attraction – rather than the assumption that they were “selling stuff”. The team wasn’t just showing up – they were invited. And the brand was better for it.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

Finishing Notes…

In a world where links get throttled, attention is fragmented, and AI chews up your SEO game, the real flex is showing up in the moment with complete value where the audience already is. That’s Zero-Click Marketing in a nutshell. What does that look like? It’s the whole post on LinkedIn – without a link to the website. It’s the super valuable video on YouTube – not just a teaser to visit your resource center.

We may be bummed that this doesn’t revolve around our owned media any longer. But it’s what we have, and where we’re going. Post, speak, write, share – not to extract attention, but to earn your spot. You’re not building one audience. You’re stitching together many.

The cool thing is that when you earn enough rooms, you start to build your own gravitational field. That’s when audiences start coming to you, not because you’re loud – but because you belong.

Forget audience growth. Build audience gravity.

This isn’t about shouting your brand from the rooftops.

It’s about playing something worth hearing in every quiet room – and being asked to keep playing.

It’s Your Jam. Start Improvising. Then Play It Well.

The post You Can’t Always Get What You Want appeared first on Robert Rose.

Quick question for ya’ll: has anyone else looked at their 2024 marketing strategy lately and thought, ‘Did I write this while concussed at a WeWork?’ Because honestly, same.

We mapped everything down to the last channel strategy – and now it’s been flipped like a Monopoly board like my little sister used to do when she hit my Park Place and muttered, ‘This game is so dumb…”

How do you find your bearings when the ground won’t stop moving? Because spoiler alert: your GPS isn’t broken – it’s just calibrated for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

So crack your knuckles, update your coordinates, and let’s figure out which way is north – before our CMS becomes sentient, refuses to publish, and asks you to define ‘value”

Okay… Quickly – let’s see if we can’t find true North before the TV show The Pitt finds a new orifice to dislocate something from…

In this episode of LENS:

• Zoom Lens: You Are Here! But Should You Be?
• Wide Angle Lens: The Creators Have The Keys To The Car
• Lens Flare: Stop Yelling Into The Void
• Let’s roll….

ZOOM LENS: Recalculating: Finding Your Marketing North in a Zero-Click World

Here’s a fun, mildly unsettling fact: GPS systems don’t need updates because the satellites move – they need updates because the Earth does.

Tectonic plates shift at about the same rate your fingernails grow (that’s a weird reference I know). It means, slowly but surely, the coordinates you rely on become… wrong. In 2017, Australia had to nudge itself two meters closer to reality just to keep showing up in the right place.

What I love about that metaphor is that it means our maps are always wrong. It’s only a question of degree.

Welcome to marketing in 2025.

Everything looks like it’s where you left it: social feeds, search rankings, your trusty blog strategy. But the ground beneath them has shifted. Audiences didn’t vanish – they’ve just moved. Discovery hasn’t died – it’s been rerouted. Content didn’t stop working – it’s just begun to flow in new directions.

If your strategy feels off lately, like your compass is spinning, you’re not broken. You’re just navigating with a map that no longer matches the terrain.

So what changed? Everything. Slowly. Then all at once.

Search isn’t about clicks anymore. AI overviews and zero-click results are hoarding attention like dragons on gold. Organic traffic is down, and “being the answer” isn’t always the win it sounds like.

Social forgot the ‘social’ part. Feeds now answer to the algorithm, not your follower count. Virality is unpredictable. Distribution is no longer democratic – it’s an attention auction.

Trust moved into the crowd. Influence has shifted from institutions to individuals. Real reach now lives inside networks, communities, and credible humans who actually show up.

Experience became the medium. It’s not enough to “tell your story” anymore — you have to design moments people want to participate in, remember, and share.

Owned channels didn’t die – they’ve evolved. Your website isn’t a brochure or blog anymore. It’s a product. A tool. A destination that has to earn the visit.

So yes, the ground has moved. But that’s not a reason to panic. It’s a reason to recalibrate. We just have to update our coordinates. Relearn the terrain. Pay attention to how content actually moves today – not how it used to.

And here’s the good news: the new terrain isn’t unknowable – it’s just uncharted. You don’t need to rebuild your strategy from scratch. You need to rethink how your content travels. That starts with a few new orientation points:

1. Treat paid media like propulsion, not permanence. It gets you seen, but only for as long as you’re paying. Spend wisely, and plan for what comes after the click (or lack thereof).
2. Design for discovery inside the feed. Think “before the scroll”, not “after the CTA.” Algorithms are the new editors, so build content that earns its place on the all the stages where it is found. Make it so good that people seek you out before they scroll to the next one.
3. Invest in networks of trust. Your reach is only as strong as your relationships – with communities, creators, and subject-matter humans. Focus on building an asymmetry of relationships (your partners, your customers, your colleagues). That will define leadership in the coming months and years.
4. Make your owned media useful. If someone visits your site, they should leave smarter, more prepared, or more inspired – not just tracked. Create experiences worth returning to. From podcasts to pop-ups to portals, prioritize repeatable value over one-time splash.

Wherever you build, realize that the goal isn’t to build a lighthouse and hope people see it. It’s to better light the path where people already walk.

And then? Tell a damn good story when they get there.

If you’re interested in digging into the nuance a bit more, you can read the full piece here.

Let’s Zoom out bit…

WIDE ANGLE LENS: WHO’S LINE IS IT ANYWAY?

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

ICYMI: The Creators Have The Keys Now

Sorry, CNN. The influencers won.

This month, three stories made it official: creators aren’t just part of the media ecosystem — they are the media ecosystem. WPP now projects that creators will pull in more ad revenue this year than traditional media. Nieman Lab reports that social media just leapfrogged TV as Americans’ top source for news. And at Cannes, agencies are scrambling to become creators themselves – or at least sit closer to the ones holding the ring light.

It’s not just that the lines are blurring. It’s that the creators are the strategy now.

LENS FLARE: Stop Yelling Into The Void

A recent lesson-learned from one of our latest client engagements:

“We had the strategy. We just didn’t have the map.” I heard that recently from a CMO at a mid-size B2B tech company.

“We were producing great content – thought leadership, webinars, SEO blogs – but nothing was moving. Traffic stalled. Engagement flatlined. My team kept asking, ‘Are we broken?’

They decided to reorient. Their efforts (not the story – where it was told). They shifted budget from search to paid placements inside creator newsletters. Turned the blog into an interactive resource hub, not just a thought leadership index for AI search to scrape. They gave their subject-matter experts – and their employees – permission to be actual people on LinkedIn.

It wasn’t magic – but it’s starting to work. They’ve seen better leads, stronger community response, and actual momentum. The content didn’t need to change – the delivery did.”

The lesson:

The strategy didn’t fail – it just needed a new direction.

If we can help you re-orient – let us know.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

Finishing Notes…

And here we are. Solstice sun at its peak. Algorithms spinning. Creators rising. Strategies mutating mid-slide deck.

It’s tempting to chase clarity like it’s a destination. But maybe what we need is orientation – the kind that helps us make sense of the moment, even when the map keeps shifting.

This season isn’t about locking in a five-year plan. It’s about learning how to read the wind. To know when to hold course, when to reroute, and when to drop the tired playbook in favor of something that feels more human, more useful, more true.

So take this longest day of the year and have a breath (or two you know). Adjust your angle.

And if all else fails, find someone you trust and ask:

“Hey… do you know which way is north?”

It’s Your Story. Make sure to adjust your map. Then Tell It Well.

The post I’m Learning To Fly – But I Ain’t Got Wings appeared first on Robert Rose.