Nike shows the risk of speaking to your “ideal customer” instead of your real audience
Most messaging decisions feel small when you make them. You make a headline tweak, add a sharper line, and generally try to make your audience feel more specific and defined. But those small decisions add up and sometimes they narrow your audience more than you realize. That’s what made Nike’s Boston Marathon campaign worth paying attention to. One ad in a broader brand…
Read MoreThe problem with viral marketing (and what Duolingo is doing next)
For the last few years, Duolingo has been one of the most recognizable brands on the internet. It’s “unhinged” marketing strategy—built on absurd humor, Tik Tok trends, and a chaotic brand voice—helped it stand out in a crowded market and rack up millions of followers. But now, it’s pulling back. The strategy didn’t fail. It worked, maybe too well. But shock-driven marketing…
Read MoreAmazon and LinkedIn just made it easier to reach B2B buyers on CTV
Amazon Ads and LinkedIn have announced a new collaboration that lets advertisers use LinkedIn’s first-party audience data inside Amazon’s demand-side platform to run connected TV campaigns. In plain terms: you can now layer LinkedIn’s professional targeting—job title, industry, seniority—onto streaming TV inventory, all from within Amazon DSP. For B2B marketers who have been managing fragmented ad buys…
Read More70% of CMOs say AI is their top priority in 2026, but most lack the budget to deliver on it
Seventy percent of CMOs say becoming a leader in AI is a key goal for 2026. Only 30% believe their organization have the budget or infrastructure to get there. The gap between ambition and readiness is the defining tension in marketing leadership right now, and new data from Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey puts the numbers behind it. The…
Read MoreWhat Expedia gets right about creator-led marketing
B2B marketers are hearing a lot about “meeting the audience where they are” and leaning into the possibility of creator-led marketing tactics. Creator led-marketing, traditionally a B2C staple, is gaining traction in B2B as brands look to build trust and reach audiences in an era of growing skepticism, especially with the rise of AI. Instead of relying solely…
Read MoreWhat Aerie’s anti-AI campaign reveals about where marketing is headed
In a world of increasing inability to discern what’s real and what’s not, sometimes the most powerful thing we can be as marketers is more human. That’s exactly what Aerie is leaning into. But what does that actually mean? The brand’s latest “100% Aerie Real” campaign, featuring Pamela Anderson, reflects a growing shift in how people are reacting to content—especially as AI-generated visuals and…
Read More“Bet on Kendall” shows a smarter starting point for marketing
One of the biggest challenges in B2B marketing right now is relevance. With the rise of AI, teams are creating more content than ever, but much of it struggles to connect because it’s built from internal assumptions instead of real audience signals. Playbooks that most marketers are used to—brainstorm, create, distribute—is starting to break down. Not because…
Read MoreWhat’s next in content marketing? Marketers have thoughts.
Content marketing isn’t dead—but it’s definitely not working the way it used to. A lot of what used to work, like keyword driven blogs, high-volume publishing, and SEO-first strategies, now feels saturated. Not because the tactics disappeared, but because everyone is doing them. In a recent Reddit thread, one marketer asks a simple question: keyword-driven blogs aren’t working anymore… so…
Read MoreThe rise of the “marketing engineer” and what it might be costing us
Marketing is getting more technical and not everyone is convinced that’s a good thing. A recent Reddit post captured that tension perfectly. The author wasn’t rejecting systems, data, or automation. In fact, they were clear: systems are good. Process is good. Measurement is good. But something about the direction marketing is heading isn’t sitting right. “Marketing is slowly turning into engineering…and I’m not sure how…
Read MoreWhy does every B2B brand video feel the same?
You’re probably feeling it too, so many B2B brand videos are feeling super interchangeable right now. It’s not that teams don’t have stories to tell. It’s not a budget issue and it’s not even because every company is doing the same thing. A recent Reddit post from a creative director summed it up perfectly: after reviewing dozens of B2B brand videos, everything started to blur together. The…
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