Time to Adjust Course
Weekend Reading (December 20, 2025): It's time to reset for 2026 and think about which strategies and tactics will proper the marketing industry forward.
Bring Back Marketing Magic
Marketers do it all: Brand, Crisis, Events, Promotions, Product, Social, Content, Digital, Media, Pipeline, and more! This article hit exactly what I have been feeling lately, “And the result is a profession with less time than ever for the work only humans can do: to interpret, to wonder, to hypothesize, to imagine.” How can we get marketing back to the marketing purpose?
» Banking on Better: Did Marketing Lose Its Magic?
Avoid AI Slop
My college classmate and President at VGM Forbin, Cassi Price, recently penned a guest article about the “workslop” she is seeing due to AI. It is happening in colleges and now in the professional workplace: Laziness and AI production. She writes that one of the root causes of the proliferation of AI waste, “is when business leaders rush to adopt AI without providing adequate training on how to use it thoughtfully. Another is allowing AI use without clear guidelines for what’s acceptable, leaving too much room for inconsistent or low-quality output.”
2026 Resolution: Work Smarter
Yeah, it’s cliche, but one piece of advice for all marketers — young and old — is to work smarter, not harder. Seth Godin recently articulated the concept of the last 5%. Competitive racers and athletes of all kinds know that the race can be won or lost in the last 5%. But sometimes doing 5% more work in marketing just results in 5% more work.
» Seth Godin: The red zone, wasted
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