The internet never forgets.

That famous meme dates to at least the early 2000s. The digital internet acts as a more permanent version of what philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs deemed as the “collective memory” in his book of the same name almost 100 years ago. He concludes societies have a collective memory that depends on the framework within which they exist.Continue Reading

We all think we have great taste.

In the movie When Harry Met Sally, Marie (Carrie Fisher) and Jess (Bruno Kirby) move in together and argue over keeping his wagon-wheel coffee table. Jess insists, “I have good taste!” And Marie responds, “Look, everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor, but they couldn’t possibly all have good taste.”Continue Reading

How much did you spend on content last year? How much should you spend on content this year?

You can’t know.

Outside of the most abstract of estimates, you can’t know the answers to both questions.

As I’ve shared, “content” is a big word. I describe it as the operating system of a business and the water you swim in. It’s everything that encompasses communication.Continue Reading

The chatter about ChatGPT in marketing and content doesn’t slow down. Generative AI and content creation have garnered attention as one of the most disruptive technologies since the advent of social media.

Passionate debates go around the benefits, threats, and abuses that AI-created content provides to marketing departments. But a more common thought I hear lately is that not today but soon, ChatGPT (or something like it) will reproduce “our voice” and create content every bit as well as you can.Continue Reading

I just pressed send on the manuscript for my book to be released in September. It’s called Content Marketing Strategy (snappy, eh?), and Kogan Page will publish it.

Last week, marketing professor Philip Kotler wrote the foreword. I won’t spoil it, but he mentioned the need for a strategic approach to owned media.Continue Reading

In The End of Competitive Advantage, Rita Gunther McGrath illustrates all competitive advantages are transient. She contends everybody understands that. So why hasn’t basic strategy practice changed?

As Rita writes:

Most executives, even when they realize that competitive advantages are going to be ephemeral, are still using strategy frameworks and tools designed for achieving a sustainable competitive advantage, not for quickly exploiting and moving in and out of advantages.

That last part resonates after working with hundreds of enterprise brands over the last 10 years. Most businesses think about how they can change content to fit marketing’s purpose, not how they might change marketing to fit content’s purpose.Continue Reading

Sound the alarm a little.

Marketers at product and services companies fail with first-party data, yet it could be their biggest contributor to growth in the coming year.

Do you know who doesn’t fail at first-party data? Media companies. But I’ll come back to that.

It’s coming on five years since the EU’s GDPR privacy legislation put the proverbial content, marketing, and first-party data soup on the heated stove. Next month is the third anniversary of Google announcing, and subsequently punting many times, the death of the third-party cookie. (It’s currently set to die in 2024.)Continue Reading

Picture a time when a new technology angered many because of the copyright infringement risk to creators, yet people considered technology and media company leaders heroic.

A new technology protocol prompted an entire version number upgrade to the web. A new technology challenged Google for search supremacy. And every startup name contained fewer and fewer vowels.Continue Reading