Behaviours, knowledge, tools

Curiosity treated as a system, not a personality trait. The habit of pressing on the odd thing, following the thread nobody asked you to follow.

• chapterMy 8.30am research report
• chapterBoardy AI rang me on a Sunday
• chapterI chaired a meeting between two robots
• chapterMr Beast

AI produces confident output. Confident output feels finished. Finished output does not get questioned. This is the habit of asking where something came from before you build a plan on top of it.

• chapterStart with what
• chapter126 years of AIDA
• chapterThe one number you need to grow
• chapterInterview with two dead men
• chapterStrong opinions, weakly held

Judgment is built from doing the work, not reading about it. If you stop doing the reps, competence drains out of your fingers. AI makes this worse because it hands you a result that feels like you earned it.

• chapterGotta put in the reps
• chapterLook for the smell
• chapterStandards decide what stays
• chapterKeep the skill in your hands

The habit of making real things instead of describing real things. A page you can click is worth twenty slides about a page. The tools have made this available to marketers in a way it never was before.

• chapterBuild it in front of them
• chapterBuild the scaffolding once
• chapterYou don't need permission anymore
• chapterDon't help, ask me questions

Not a generalist who coordinates but cannot make anything. A marketer who can do enough adjacent things to ship without depending on a chain of other people. This is what you become if you do the first four long enough.

• chapterLearn enough to be dangerous
• chapterTikTok writer
• chapterWrestling with a stubborn AI writer
• chapterThe whole event in an evening

Byron Sharp's evidence on reach, mental availability, and physical availability. Why brands grow by reaching more people, not by deepening loyalty among existing ones.

• chapterThe fundamentals are the input

The long and the short of it. Brand building and activation work differently, on different timescales, and you need both. The ratio is not the point. The balance is.

• chapterThe fundamentals are the input

Consistent cues people recognise without needing to read the brand name. Colours, shapes, characters, sounds. More powerful with AI because AI can multiply them across formats without dilution, but only if you have them.

• chapterYour eyepatch moment
• chapterMarcel

Dashboards show what happened, not why. Platform metrics inflate themselves. The skill is knowing what to measure, when to trust the number, and when to override it with judgment.

• chapterDashboards lie
• chapterThe one number you need to grow

How people actually decide, not how funnels say they decide. Journeys compressed, algorithms shortlisting, decisions in minutes. The gap between what customers say and what they do.

• chapterThe listening habit
• chapterEverything, everywhere, all at once
• chapterKill bugs fast

The structural shift. Algorithms gate visibility, execution costs dropped to zero, average became invisible. Understanding what changed is the foundation for everything else.

• chapterThe marketing department autopsy report
• chapterThe algorithm will see you now
• chapterAverage is the new invisible

Positioning first, then messaging framework, then voice rules, then training data from real customer language. The prompt stays tiny because the strategic work is baked in. Tools do not fix vague thinking. They just make it faster.

• how toStep-by-step guide
• chapterTikTok writer
• chapterWrestling with a stubborn AI writer

Meta, Google, TikTok. How ad platforms work, what algorithms optimise for, and when to override them.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

Multi-touch attribution, reading across platforms, spotting when numbers lie. Five layers of truth from one campaign.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

High-volume production with AI while keeping a distinctive voice. The difference between scaling content and scaling mush.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

Custom audiences, lookalikes, retargeting. How AI finds audiences for you and when to override it.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

CRM, automation, tag management. The stack keeps growing. The skill is deciding what matters and simplifying.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

A/B tests, holdouts, geo tests. AI runs them faster. You form hypotheses worth testing and know when results are noise.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

Turning strategy into decisions with money attached. Tradeoffs, business cases, speaking finance language.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

Working with sales, product, finance, agencies. Influence without authority. Translating marketing into other functions' language.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills

Connecting marketing to revenue. CAC, LTV, payback period. Reading a P&L and defending budgets in language a CFO believes.

• toolsTools, platforms, and skills