Oakes currently writes the Substack Adverse Reactions. His recent piece, “If You Make $5 Billion a Year from Scam Ads, Is That a Feature or a Bug?”, landed with a jolt in advertising circles. The conversation — with MAC council members Moni Oloyede , Jay Mandel , and Jessica Smiley — covers platform economics, the collapse of advertiser confidence, and what it actually means to hold a system accountable when the system is working exactly as designed.

Scam ads aren’t a bug. They’re an output.

The episode opens with the piece’s central provocation, and Oakes doesn’t soften it.

“Scam ads aren’t a bug in Meta’s system. They’re an output of it,” he says. “A stat like $5 billion in scam revenue should be shocking. It’s actually the logical result of these platforms where they’ve been built on loose verification, monopoly power, and very low corporate governance.”

The answer to his own headline: it is a feature, not a bug.

The argument isn’t that bad actors are slipping through imperfect systems. It’s that the systems were never built to keep them out. These platforms started free, ad-free, frictionless — optimized for scale and network effects above everything else. Users weren’t verified. The algorithm was tuned to reward urgency, outrage, engagement. Then, at some point, advertising was switched on to an enormous, largely unvetted user base. The conditions for fraud weren’t an accident. They were the architecture.

Oakes points to the clearest proof: “The simplest proof that platforms endorse fraud ads is the fact that they never refund the money.”

The implication for every legitimate advertiser in the system is direct. “Every pound that a legitimate advertiser spends on a platform… they have to realize the fact that they’re partly funding a system that defrauds the consumers they’re trying to reach.”

The industry is celebrating the wrong number.

In his article, Oakes shared a graphic from a recent Credos poll, showing that public trust in advertising has been growing, but he thinks we’re celebrating on the wrong end of the number line.

“Its not high. That’s the thing. If you compare it to other industries… advertising is one of the least trusted professional industries there are.”

The figure in question — roughly 40% of people saying they trust advertising — is up on five years ago. The industry has treated this as progress. Oakes sees it differently. “If a majority of people still aren’t trusting your product, you think that’d be a cause for embarrassment, but actually they seem quite happy about it.”

The trust deficit, he argues, wasn’t built overnight. It was built incrementally, by volume.

“These online ads incrementally have brought an avalanche of new advertising into our lives in all sorts of ways. And think about it, if at least 5% of it is scammy — and that’s being generous — plus all the legitimate stuff, which is increasingly all this slop, this AI slop drowning out all the rest.”

The result is a signal-to-noise problem that no amount of award-winning creative can solve from the top down. “You can give out all the Cannes Lions you want. You can lord all the creative directors, modern day John Drapers all you want. That high-end stuff is being drowned out by all this sludge at the bottom.”

Moni presses on a related tension: the role marketers themselves play in keeping the machine running. The analytics deliver a dopamine hit. The numbers signal performance. The immediate result — the click, the conversion — becomes a proxy for confidence.

Oakes doesn’t dismiss this. He names what he sees underneath it: “This incredible lack of confidence in the principles of advertising… I think it’s fundamentally due to this mass financialization of corporations.”

The pressure to make numbers work in the short term hasn’t just changed how marketers measure. It’s changed what they believe. “For a lot of marketers, the advertising part isn’t such a big part of their day job… they just want the numbers to work. It’s just the whole vibe of everything.”

Brand building takes time. That has always been true. But the financial pressure, the quarterly lens, the CFO in the room — has made patience feel like a risk rather than a strategy.

Two different marketers. Two different problems.

The practical question gets put to Oakes directly: what are marketers supposed to do with this? He is precise.

“My advice would change depending on who Joe and Jane the marketers are.”

For the large advertiser — spending millions, working with agencies or managing in-house media teams — Oakes has little patience for learned helplessness. “If you’re working with an agency, don’t just, when you have an audit and you look at your media spend, just say, ‘oh, we can get a great deal on Instagram and Facebook advertising next year.’ Don’t just say, ‘oh yeah, that’s great, that’s great,’ because your CFO would like to hear that. What am I actually getting for this money? How am I measuring effectiveness? What value am I getting?”

The accountability is already within reach for these advertisers. The question is whether they’re actually using it.

But the conversation shifts entirely for the other marketer — the startup founder, the regional business, the small operator buying ads on Google or YouTube without an agency, without an audit, without access to any of this discourse. “She doesn’t know about all this stuff. She’s not involved in the conversation.”

This is where Oakes sharpens the critique. The accountability conversation in advertising reaches the people who already have the tools to act on it. It doesn’t reach the people who are most exposed. “The problem is we don’t talk enough to the people who are actually funding this system. And these are the small businesses who make up the majority of Meta and Google’s advertising.”

Jay notes that even a full boycott by the world’s biggest advertisers wouldn’t be fatal to Meta — they’d lose roughly 20% of revenue. The small business advertiser is the base that makes the economics work.

And they’re the furthest from this conversation.

Ask better questions.

Oakes is asked whether the journalistic instinct — the discipline of not accepting the first answer — helps him stay clear-headed in an environment designed to overwhelm.

“Of course I’m overwhelmed,” he says. Then: “The great thing about journalism… it’s all about the art and the science of asking questions.”

He describes it not as a professional habit but as a method. If you want to find out what’s actually happening, you need different tactics for asking questions than if you’re trying to confirm what you already believe. “My job here is to add value by asking questions that uncover something that nobody knew before. Or to put it in a way that makes people think about something a little bit differently.”

For MAC’s audience, this is not a point about journalism. It is a point about how practitioners should be interrogating their own media investments — not accepting the agency’s rate card, not nodding along to the platform’s pitch, not letting the dashboard tell the whole story. The question is the tool.

Advertising was part of culture. Now it’s in the dark corners.

The conversation closes on something larger than platform mechanics. Oakes draws a line between what advertising used to be and what it has become — not as nostalgia, but as diagnosis.

“In the before times… we celebrated great advertising. We recognized that advertising was part of culture.”

He uses Red Bull as the example — an ad that doesn’t make a literally true claim, that runs on TV in front of millions, that gets talked about, that lives in culture and becomes a thing. Then he places it next to what he actually sees now: “These nasty generated crypto bro things which seem to be targeted to me… only I see it in the privacy of my own phone, and it’s all kind of scurrilous.”

The contrast isn’t about production quality or creative ambition. It’s about visibility and accountability. Shared, public advertising can be scrutinized. It lives in the open. Private, algorithmically targeted advertising lives in the dark — seen only by its intended recipient, accountable to no one.

And the platforms that host it, Oakes argues, have never had any real reverence for what advertising makes possible. “They don’t think advertising is so important to media by subsidizing it and making sure that good media is accessible to all, not just the rich — they don’t think like that.”

He puts it plainly: “Elon Musk thinks advertising is for losers. He’s on record as telling advertisers to go f**k themselves if they don’t agree with his policies. There’s no sense of community. It’s my way or the highway.”

The tension the conversation surfaces — and leaves sitting — is the one that doesn’t resolve neatly: these platforms hate advertisers, and they cannot survive without them. That relationship — dependency dressed up as disdain — is the environment marketing practitioners are operating in.

Understanding it clearly is the first step toward not being defined by it.

This recap is drawn from the MAC Reality Check podcast. Follow Omar Oakes s and his Substack, Ad-Verse Reactions , at omaroaks.substack.com.

According to Paul Ruscoe, that belief is not just wrong. It’s actively harmful.

In a recent Marketing Accountability Council Reality Check conversation, Ruscoe—an advertising veteran with more than 20 years across agency and client-side roles—offered a bracing reminder: marketing does not work like a vending machine. And the harder we try to force it to, the worse our decisions become.

The Control Fallacy at the Heart of Modern Marketing

Nearly every major marketing mistake, Paul argues, traces back to a single misconception: the belief that we can control consumer behavior.

“The funnel, retargeting, performance media as a silver bullet—these are all expressions of the same desire,” says Paul. “Control over things we fundamentally don’t control.”

The funnel itself, often treated as gospel, was never designed as a scientific model of human behavior. It was a sales trope from the late 19th century—useful as metaphor, dangerous when mistaken for reality.

When marketers treat consumer behavior as a predictable process instead of a complex system, they start making decisions that look precise but are deeply flawed.

Marketing, Paul suggests, is much closer to running a national economy than managing a household budget. Too many variables, too many feedback loops, and far too much uncertainty for simple cause-and-effect thinking.

What Marketing Actually Does (And Why That Matters)

One of Paul’s most important reframes is this: advertising is primarily defensive.

Markets tend to be stable, not because marketing doesn’t work, but because everyone is spending roughly in line with their existing market share. Good advertising doesn’t magically create explosive growth. More often, it protects the share you already have.

Make bad decisions—over-allocate to short-term performance tactics, burn share of voice, chase immediate ROI—and you risk losing ground. Make better decisions, and you maintain equilibrium. Growth usually comes slowly, or when competitors make catastrophic mistakes.

This reframing matters because it forces a different kind of accountability. Instead of asking, “Did this campaign pay for itself in 90 days?” the better question becomes: “Are we protecting and increasing the probability of being chosen over time?”

Why AI Won’t Save Bad Thinking

AI agents and automated platforms promise speed, efficiency, and optimization. Paul isn’t anti-technology—but he is deeply skeptical of how it’s being deployed.

“If agents are trained on how we currently plan media,” he warns, “they’ll just help us make bad decisions faster.”

Performance Max, for example, can deliver impressive platform-level ROAS—often by targeting a tiny sliver of high-intent buyers who were already close to conversion. The result looks efficient but ignores the vast majority of future buyers who aren’t in-market yet.

Humans don’t suddenly change how they decide because better technology exists. Decision-making is slow, heuristic-driven, and shaped by memory. No algorithm can shortcut that reality.

Accountability Without Fantasy Metrics

So if ROAS isn’t the answer, what should marketers be accountable for?

Paul doesn’t argue for abandoning measurement—he argues for measuring the right things.

Short-term revenue effects often reflect investments made months or years earlier. Expecting clean causality inside tight reporting windows leads to false confidence and bad tradeoffs. Instead, marketers should look for behavioral signals that reflect real progress:

* Are more people searching for the brand?

* Are branded search costs declining as demand increases?

* Is share of voice holding steady relative to share of market?

* Are we easier to find and quicker to mind?

These aren’t soft metrics. They’re indicators that marketing is doing its real job: maintaining memory, availability, and future choice probability.

The Real Job of the CMO

Perhaps the most uncomfortable takeaway is this: marketers shouldn’t be trying to “speak the language of the CFO.”

That instinct, Paul argues, is backwards.

“When we mimic finance language, we become more short-term,” says Paul. “The onus is on marketing to educate finance—not the other way around.”

Advertising is a probabilistic function. It creates memory structures, refreshes them over time, and nudges likelihood—not certainty. True accountability comes from helping leadership understand those dynamics, not pretending marketing operates with the precision of capital expenditure.

Fewer Illusions, Better Decisions

At the end of the chat, Paul debuts a GTM tool he’s designing called “The Machine” which is trained on marketing effectiveness and real research.

While the demo is certainly intriguing, and we can’t wait to test out this tech, Paul isn’t offering a silver bullet—and that’s the point. Marketing works within guardrails, not guarantees. Growth has ceilings and floors shaped by category dynamics, budgets, and human behavior.

If you use technology or any tool within these parameters, you’ll have a better chance of real success.

The marketers who perform best aren’t the ones chasing the latest terminology or tools. They’re the ones willing to let go of comforting illusions, challenge bad assumptions, and operate honestly inside complexity.

In an industry obsessed with optimization, that might be the most accountable stance of all.

For decades now, demand generation has been framed as the responsible, revenue-aligned way to do B2B marketing. On paper, it looks logical. In practice, it’s become a mechanical system built on assumptions we rarely get the answers to.

And that’s the issue.

Demand gen assumes buyers are predictable, buying journeys are linear, and intent can be inferred from behavior. It treats marketing as a factory that produces leads and reporting as a scoreboard that tells us whether we “won” or “lost.”

What it does not do well is help buyers make decisions or help marketers learn whether their understanding of the buyer is actually correct.

But, this article isn’t just a b***h-fest about demand gen. The purpose here is to outline a complete alternative. A Buyer Progression–Led approach that replaces lead capture with relationship building, qualification with orientation, and performance reporting with hypothesis-driven learning.

Demand gen doesn’t work so let’s do something better. Something that is foundational based in marketing instead of sales framework from 1999.

My Biggest Gripe With Demand Gen

Demand gen optimizes for “MQLs”, not meaning.

Leads move forward because a score crossed a made-up threshold, not because a buyer is actually ready. Marketing is pushed to create volume while sales ends up distrusting the quality. The resulting reports show activity and volume but never provide context or insight.

As a result, we run into a major problem. Marketers are never able to answer this question: Were our assumptions about the buyer correct?

If a campaign fails, we adjust the tactic. If it succeeds, we assume we were right.

By failing to answer this question, traditional demand generation replaces accountability with confirmation bias.

From Lead Generation to Buyer Progression

The alternative starts with a different premise.

Marketing’s job is not here to generate demand, it’s true function it is to reduce buyer uncertainty.

That means helping people:

* Understand their problem

* Locate themselves in the buying process

* Decide what information they need next

* Move forward only when it makes sense for them

Instead of a pipeline, this model is based on the buying journey and uses buyer progression.

The Buyer Journey Frame

* Awareness

* Interest

* Consideration

* Decision

These are buyer states, not CRM stages. We have to identify where the buyer is at in the journey, not assume. The goal is to move them from their current stage to the next buy specify the next action that moves them to said stage.

For example, in the awareness stage we have a LinkedIn ad that drives the user to a landing page. The goal is to get them to sign up for the newsletter. Being a newsletter subscriber indicates that they have moved from awareness to interest stage.

Movement between these states is earned through genuine buyer intent, by asking questions. Instead of asking company name and title on the download form, we can ask things like “Is this an immediate need?”, “Is this a problem you’re actively dealing with?”

Orientation, Not Qualification

The strategic linchpin that makes this philosophy actionable is a human-centered layer called orientation.

While qualification seeks to judge a buyer’s readiness from the seller’s perspective, orientation focuses on helping buyers make sense of where they are and what they need to do next from their own perspective.

Orientation serves four purposes:

* Learn more about the buyer’s context

* Give the buyer a voice in the process

* Build relationship and trust

* Gauge readiness without pressure

This is the point where most demand generation models break. They rely on automation that is designed for “if/then” logic based on explicit data (IF download=true, THEN score+10), but orientation requires “why/how” logic based on implicit context and human nuance.

Orientation happens through:

* Smart, minimal forms that ask reflective questions

* Short surveys with a clear “why”

* Personal outreach that is curious, not salesy

* Invitations to smaller, more intentional engagements

It looks like a post download follow up email to gauge the most effective part of the content or poll to rate which next content piece would be most helpful. The goal is to identify the people who are ready to move forward and help them advance correctly.

Thanks for reading Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) ! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Campaigns as Narrative, Not a Collection of Tactics

Buyer progression doesn’t exist in isolation. It must be wrapped in a campaign strategy that tells a singular, cohesive story.

Great campaigns, B2C or B2B, do not change their message every time the channel changes. They identify a real emotional or psychological tension, take a clear point of view, and guide people toward a better way of thinking.

A progression-led campaign has:

* One core belief

* One cultural or emotional tension

* One point of view

* One transformation it promises

* One marketing goal (not a sales goal)

Marketing’s goal might be:

* Becoming the trusted authority on a problem

* Reframing how the market thinks about a category

* Creating preference before purchase

All the campaign assets, the ads, the emails, the webinars, the content, all lead to the same need, want or desire of the audience. The story stays the same across awareness, interest, commitment, and consideration. What changes is depth, not direction.

Human Interaction, Designed to Scale

A common executive objection of my approach is that this buyer led progression model “doesn’t scale.”

It does when human interaction is intentional, not universal. Automation doesn’t give you context or help build relationships.

Human touch is reserved for:

* Commitment moments (time investment)

* Evaluation signals (active comparison)

When someone does lower funnel activity, have a human intervene with a personal touch. This helps build affinity and trust.

Create tiers of engagement:

* Light touch: short personal notes, personalized recommendations, one-question check-ins

* Medium touch: small group sessions, exclusive invites, office hours

* High touch: diagnostic conversations for high-intent buyers

The rules are simple. Humans intervene where connection is required to move forward.

Post-Sale Is Part of the Model

If marketing stops at “deal won,” this approach collapses back into demand gen.

Buyer progression extends through:

* Adoption (value realization)

* Advocacy (story sharing, referrals)

Customers become proof of the belief. It makes marketing focus on transformation narratives, not just case studies and testimonials. We are not continuing the sale. We are staying top of mind and providing value so that when they sale request is made, they are happy to do so.

This could be exclusive customer offers or perks, community events, customer spotlights and shout outs.

Reporting is Completely Different: Marketing as Market Research

This is where the model becomes truly accountable. Instead of reporting outcomes like “leads generated,” reporting is structured as buyer research.

Every campaign, asset, or stage tests a hypothesis.

Example:

“We believe buyers want this white paper because it helps them solve their primary pain point.”

We’re not looking to report on success or failure. It is framed as validated, inconclusive, or disproven.

Every report includes:

* The assumption being tested

* The buyer signal chosen to test it

* A predefined threshold for validation

* The result

* Interpretation of what it means

* The next decision or hypothesis

This forces marketing to learn or admit when it doesn’t know. This allows marketing to focus on the MARKETING, not just how to get more leads. The result of every decision is to improve the campaign not just move to the next thing.

What Replaces MQLs and Dashboards

Instead of lead counts, marketing reports on readiness creation:

* Attention (message resonance)

* Permission (opt-ins, return engagement)

* Commitment (time investment)

* Evaluation (self-directed comparison)

* Preference (top-vendor consideration)

* Readiness (buyer-initiated conversations)

Sales still reports revenue. Marketing reports belief accuracy.

That’s accountability.

Why Executives Will Resist and Why They Shouldn’t

This approach will be challenged because it removes the illusion of certainty demand gen provides. But certainty based on untested assumptions is fragile.

This model:

* Reduces wasted pipeline

* Improves sales efficiency

* Builds brand preference earlier

* Creates a learning system instead of a guessing game

Most importantly, it treats buyers like thinking humans, not rows in a database.

What’s Next

Demand gen is optimized for a world that no longer exists.

Buyer progression marketing reflects how people actually buy:

* Non-linear

* Emotionally driven

* Self-directed

* And resistant to being pushed

Do you think this approach can work. Do you want to be a test model for it. Let us know and we can work on deploying this strategy with you.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Marc studied broadcast journalism at Newhouse and took that craft seriously. After graduating, he returned home to New England and built a real career in sports journalism, working his way from small local papers to the New Hampshire Union Leader. This was the early internet era, when you could still cover Little League one day and professional sports the next, when reporting felt tangible and connected to real communities. It was also obvious to Marc, even then, that journalism lived permanently at the bottom of the salary ladder. You also didn’t need to be a futurist to see what was happening to the industry. Loving the craft didn’t mean the economics made sense.

That realism eventually pushed Marc into marketing. In marketing, he didn’t abandon storytelling; he expanded it. He started on the corporate side, then moved into agency life, where he grew from content writer to creative director. And this is where something clicked for me: the best creative directors aren’t just designers. They’re strategists who understand language, structure, and intent. I’ve worked closely with content-first creative directors including TJ Bennett and Mat Z., people who understand that visuals without thinking are just decoration. Marc belongs in that category. His strength was in clarity and narrative. Why are we saying this? Who is it for? What’s the point? For a while, from the outside, it looked like things were going well. And then reality showed up.

Marc was laid off twice in 18 months.

That used to shock people. It doesn’t anymore. If you work in marketing, media, or tech, you’re inside a system where individual performance often has nothing to do with job security. Consolidation, cost-cutting, and short-term thinking rule the day. Replace the experience with someone cheaper. Hope they figure it out. Watch the system slowly degrade.

Senior experience often gets cut because it costs more, not because it delivers less.

Marc didn’t spiral. He didn’t romanticize the grind. He understood what the system was and, more importantly, what it wasn’t going to give him. So he made a decision that many people talk about but never execute. He chose autonomy.

Marc moved into real estate with Coldwell Banker, joining the Jim Allen Group in North Carolina. He didn’t become a “sales guy.” He became exactly who he already was: a storyteller who understands people. If you’ve seen his videos, you know they don’t look like most real estate content.He brings a marketer’s discipline to a field flooded with noise. His work falls into three clear lanes:

* Virtual home tours that feel human, not scripted

* Real Estate 101 content that actually educates

* Personal insights that let people decide if they trust him

His content acts as a filter. Some people won’t like his tone. Good. You don’t want to work with people who don’t trust how you show up. When you’re helping someone make one of the biggest decisions of their life, trust isn’t optional.

Watching Marc make this shift hit close to home for me. I spent years helping people optimize LinkedIn profiles, chase roles, and navigate systems they ultimately had no control over. At a certain point, I couldn’t keep selling false hope. That’s why I shifted my own work toward building things I believe in Clean Data Alliance and Marketing Accountability Council (MAC); initiatives where the outcome matters to me, not just the paycheck. When the work matters, everything changes.

There’s a throughline here that goes beyond career moves. Last weekend, I watched my friend and MAC Co-founder Jacob Sanders, Big Daddy Kane’s saxophonist, walk on stage and be exactly who he is. No performance mask. No separation between “work Jake” and “real Jake.” That’s what I see in Marc now and am trying to build every day for myself.

As he steps into 2026, his focus is simple and serious: give people clarity, structure, and confidence as they make one of the biggest decisions of their lives.

Marc’s story is about recognizing when a system no longer fits and having the courage to climb another mountain when the old one stops leading anywhere worth going. If I were buying a house in North Carolina, I’d trust him without hesitation, not because he sells well, but because he shows up honestly. And after 30 years, I’ve learned that’s the only signal that actually lasts.

Big Daddy Kane doesn’t represent shortcuts; he represents craft. He came up when lyrics were earned, breath control mattered, and presence couldn’t be faked.

Kane has always carried himself with pride and positivity; sharp, joyful, disciplined. Kane’s music says: respect the culture, respect the work, respect yourself. That’s why his longevity means something.

Watching Jake on stage, sax in hand, you’re not watching someone “support” a legend. You’re watching a partner who understands timing, restraint, and when to step forward, and when not to. You’re watching someone who knows that mastery isn’t about stealing attention. It’s about elevating the whole room. His presence comes from consistency, preparation, and not needing to be the loudest voice to be indispensable.

The Jake on stage with Big Daddy Kane (with his Blamo! Notes Shirt on BTW) is the exact same Jake you see on stage at MAC. Same posture; same seriousness, same intolerance for fluff. Same refusal to perform a version of himself that isn’t real. There’s no “music Jake” and “marketing Jake.” There’s just Jake; fully present, fully committed, fully accountable.

I met Jake the day MAC was announced in Arizona two years ago. From that moment on, he became a steady, indispensable presence in my life.

But Jake’s impact reaches far beyond me. MAC is stronger because he is part of it. Marketing is stronger because voices like his remain principled, disciplined, and unwilling to compromise. Watching Jake in his element, with care and conviction, only confirms what time has already proven.

As Kane put it best: “ain’t no half-steppin’.”

I’m forever grateful for Jake.

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams describes what she witnessed inside Meta. Not vague dysfunction; specific choices made by specific leaders:A censorship tool built to satisfy the Chinese government.Sexual harassment by senior executives that was reported and ignored.Internal research proving Instagram’s harm to teen girls; then shows how that same data was quietly used to sell ads.Leadership decisions that consistently prioritized access, growth, and image over people.When Sarah raised concerns, Meta didn’t disprove her claims; they sued her.In the book Mark Zuckerberg comes across as small, insulated, and profoundly uncurious about the human cost of his decisions.Sheryl Sandberg, the public face of “Lean In,” is revealed as something else entirely: performative feminism, private cruelty, and a leadership style built on fear and denial.Together, they don’t look visionary; they look like dufuses with too much power and no adult supervision; people who mistook scale for wisdom and control for leadership.I didn’t live Sarah’s experience, but I recognize the pattern and I previously felt it at work and in my personal life. Stay quiet to stay safe.Name what’s broken, and you become the problem.Sarah testified before Congress anyway. And when I learned she survived a shark attack as a child, something clicked. Once you’ve faced real danger and lived, corporate intimidation loses its power.This book isn’t just about Meta; it’s about a system that elevates mediocre leaders, protects image over people, and erases anyone who refuses to play along.If you work in tech, media, or marketing, especially if you lead, read this book.

Inside, you’ll find four questions that defined the MAC’s final 2025 session:

* What needs to die?

* What must be built instead?

* Who do we want to be?

* What will we actually do next?

Let’s begin.

What Needs to Die?

Consentless CommunicationUnsolicited emails, platform-powered spam, and retargeting that follows you into your dreams… “It’s not communication if no one asked for it,” said Michael. It’s an intrusion, a theft, and needs to stop.

The Chief Growth Officer TitleAccording to Jay, “More is more is not a strategy.” The CGO role is a relic of the extractive era… Let it go.

Demand Generation Theater“Not a thing. Not real.” That’s Moni. And she’s right. This phrase props up entire departments built on chasing leads instead of creating aligned participation. Demand isn’t generated. It’s earned.

Always-On ExpectationJake says, “Being always on isn’t the same as being present.” We don’t need more content, we need more connection.

AI Hype SlopMoni says, “As soon as you scratch the surface… it’s complete horseshit.” No, putting a credit card into Meta’s ad machine and letting it “run it all” isn’t marketing. It’s abdication.

Meatloaf DataJake downloaded his personal data from brokers like Axiom. What he found? Garbage. Or in his words, “meatloaf” or “dog food.” If AI is built on that, guess what the output is? Fake insights, real harm.

2. What Needs to Be Built?

Clean Data & Data AgencyNot data ripped from people who never agreed to give it; data offered deliberately. Not surveillance dressed up as personalization; consent with teeth. In an industry propped up by “meatloaf data,” this isn’t innovation. It’s restitution.

Aligned Systems, Not Interruption MachinesMarketing that disrupts is dying; Marketing that resonates is rising.The next era isn’t about grabbing attention; it’s about deserving it. Systems of alignment create durable relationships. Interruption just burns budget.

3. Who Do We Want to Be?

From “always-on” to aware. From urgency to intention. Presence isn’t passive; it’s powerful.

Marketers Who Say: “Enough.”Jessica reframed her identity away from being a sales cosplayer to being a truth-teller. “Marketing isn’t growing your business or sales,” she said. It’s shaping belief and navigating nuance while holding space for stories people can trust.

Teachers, Guides, System BuildersMoni’s done dimming to survive. Now, she’s all about guiding others toward alignment.

“You can’t fix a broken system by pretending it isn’t broken. You can only start over—loudly.”

4. What Will We Do Next?

From Intellect to ImplementationJake said, “Behavior changes don’t happen through pure intellect. It’s action first.” He’s launched Blamo and Shame the Dog, tangible characters that externalize the internal junk that keeps us stuck. Weird? Yes. Brilliant? Also yes.

Codify, Don’t Just ConceptualizeJessica is finally tethering her IP so it doesn’t dissipate into LinkedIn comment threads. MAC isn’t about thought leadership. It’s about thought stewardship.

Immediate Actions for 2026

* Audit & Archive the Old WorldKill vanity metrics. Document what dies and why. Put a date on the tombstones.

* Establish Your Data FloorNo more murky opt-ins. Define what “clean” means. Make it non-negotiable. Join the Clean Data Alliance to learn how and why:

* Budget for Alignment, Not AttentionRedirect dollars from clickbait campaigns to affinity-based partnerships.

* Teach Out LoudMake your frameworks public. Let them be criticized, not calcified.

* Practice PresenceSay no more often. Choose rhythm over urgency. Agility over reactivity.

The MAC Vision

MAC is a shelter for those who woke up in 2025 and realized:

“The house is on fire. And the water’s in our own mouths.”

If you’re tired of pretending the game isn’t rigged, come build the next one with us.

In 2026, we don’t need better tactics. We need receipts.Let’s burn the playbook. And write a new one—with clean data, clear intention, and actual damn integrity.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And in the middle of that fog machine of bad faith and brand theater, Matthew Facciani, researcher, educator, and creator of Misguided on Substack, doesn’t flinch.

This wrap report breaks down Facciani’s insights and filters them through the MAC lens.

PART I: IDENTITY ISN’T A TARGET. IT’S A TRIGGER.

People believe what feels safe. And what feels safe is whatever aligns with their identity.

Challenge someone’s belief and you’re not starting a debate.You’re picking a fight with their sense of self.

And we, the marketers, built the playbook to exploit that exact wiring.

* We taught the algorithms which fears to poke.

* We tested copy that created just the right amount of panic.

* We optimized for tribalism. Then called it personalization.

It’s time to stop using identity to manipulate. Start using it to connect.

PART II: THE MISINFORMATION MACHINE IS BUILT LIKE A HAUNTED HOUSE

Every platform, funnel, and brand campaign that rewards attention over truth feeds the beast:

* The algorithm doesn’t care if it’s true, just if it’s engaging.

* Your brand voice isn’t “authentic” if it’s just echoing identity cues to drive conversions.

* And no, a “value-driven campaign” isn’t good work if it’s just mining people’s fear to juice your Q4.

You think you’re the homeowner?You’re the attraction. You’re the product. You’re the data being sold behind the curtain.

PART III: MARKETING LOVES TO REANIMATE BAD IDEAS

All of it is psychological necromancy; dragging behaviorist tricks from the 1950s into digital spaces to keep people hooked.

* Urgency countdowns: “Only 2 left!” (There are 2 million.)

* Loyalty cults: “You’re not a real fan unless you buy the drop.”

* Addiction loops: “Daily streaks! Daily check-ins! Don’t miss a reward!”

It works. But at what cost?

MAC doesn’t believe in zombie marketing.We believe in building campaigns people can walk away from with their dignity intact.

PART IV: WE’VE LOST THE PLOT — AND PEOPLE KNOW IT

The public isn’t fooled anymore. They’re exhausted.

You can feel it too, can’t you?

That little voice in your head when your boss says,

“Make it viral. I don’t care how.”

Or when you’re told,

“Lean into the outrage. It’s working.”

It’s working. Until it isn’t.Until the system collapses under the weight of its own deception.

And when it does, will you be able to say you built something better?Or will you still be in the costume?

PART V: WHAT MAC SAYS TO DO NEXT (NO WITCHCRAFT INVOLVED)

Most belief systems today aren’t intellectual positions. They’re emotional fortresses built for safety, not scrutiny.

What doesn’t work:

* Pointing to data

* Calling people irrational

* Posting infographics with smug captions

What might:

* Starting with shared identity, not ideology

* Speaking in values, not stats

* Asking, “What matters most to you about this?” instead of “Why don’t you get it?”

FINAL VERDICT: TRUTH DOESN’T NEED A COSTUME. BUT MARKETING STILL WANTS TO SELL YOU ONE.

This Halloween, we didn’t put on a mask. We took one off.We didn’t light a pumpkin. We lit a torch.

And what we saw?A marketing system addicted to fear, addicted to scale, addicted to control.And a public burnt out, tuned out, and starting to bite back.

You can’t fix that with a rebrand.You fix it by burning the script and writing a new one.

MAC is here for those who are ready to stop playing a role and start telling the truth.And maybe a full-sized candy bar, if you’ve got the guts to ask for it.

Lately, we’ve been asking a simple but necessary question:

What does marketing actually do, right now, in the real world?

Here’s the honest answer:

* It keeps brands visible.

* It reminds people we exist.

* It maintains mental availability.

* It holds market share more than it grows it.

In other words: Marketing is often about maintenance, not momentum.

The Growth Story You Were Told

For years, marketing has been framed as a growth engine:

“If you do it right, you’ll scale fast, capture share, and create exponential impact.”

The tension most marketers feel isn’t because they’re underperforming. It’s because they’ve been working under an assumption that doesn’t hold:

“If we market well enough, we’ll grow fast.”

Sometimes.

But more often, you’re working in systems where:

* The market is saturated

* Share of mind is harder to shift than share of voice

* And the best you can do is maintain memory and reinforce distinctiveness

And once you stop fighting that reality, you can actually focus.

Why It Feels So Frustrating

The real pressure is coming from people outside of marketing who want the benefits without understanding the mechanics.

They want breakthrough growth but not the patience to earn relevance.

They want “viral” but won’t invest in distinctiveness or consistency.

They want brand love but cut budgets the second conversions dip.

Without marketing literacy at the top, decision-makers start making unnatural asks:

* Chasing engagement for its own sake

* Treating awareness like a one-off campaign

* Using discounts as a brand strategy

* Expecting emotional connection from teams banned from telling real stories

These pressures distort you, the marketer, into focusing on optics rather than results. And when it doesn’t “work”? You’re the one who gets blamed.

What This Means for You (Day to Day)

Here’s what starts to make more sense once you stop buying into the “always-be-scaling” myth:

1. Flat metrics ≠ failure

Plateaus aren’t bad. They’re often what stability looks like.If your brand is still remembered and still chosen, you’re doing your job.

2. Awareness is rented, not owned

Every campaign is just a new invoice for staying relevant.There’s no final win. No permanent space in someone’s mind.Marketing is maintenance, not conquest.

3. Growth pressure distorts priorities

When the goal is exponential results, strategy gets replaced by spectacle.Knowing this helps you push back on bad bets.

4. Trust builds slowly, breaks quickly

If your strategy leans on urgency, scarcity, and FOMO, you may win in the short term and lose in the long term. Respecting attention pays off later, quietly.

If You’ve Felt Any of This…

* The pressure to “show impact” even when your gut says it’s noise

* The guilt of not hitting numbers that were based on fiction

* The urge to say yes to tactics that feel manipulative to stay in the game

You’re not the problem; the expectations might be.

A growing number of marketers are coming to the same conclusion:

It’s time to stop chasing marketing myths and start aligning with how people actually think, decide, and remember.

So What Do You Do Now?

You reframe success. You talk honestly about what marketing can (and can’t) do.You invest in systems that respect attention instead of just extracting it.

Good marketing is often quiet, repetitive, and unfashionably consistent.

There’s no shame in holding ground.In today’s landscape, holding ground is often the win.

So if you’re showing up, staying visible, and keeping your brand trusted, you’re already doing more than most.

You don’t need to feel behind.You need a new story, one that respects the work you’re actually doing.

If you want help reframing that story with your team or tools that reflect real human behavior instead of hype, they exist.

But the first step is simple:

Stop pretending marketing is magic.Start treating it like the essential, strategic discipline it actually is.

Dale Harrison, an ex-physicist turned marketer, was featured on the October 3rd, 2025, MAC Reality Check live, and laid out a case that directly challenges industry myths with scientific rigor and hard data.

1. We Don’t Even Agree on What “Growth” Means

The first problem is that marketers use the word “growth” as if it has a single, universal meaning. It doesn’t. According to Harrison, there are four distinct types of business growth. This confusion is the root cause of nearly every strategic marketing error.

* Market Share Growth: Increasing your percentage of total market sales relative to competitors. This, according to decades of data, essentially NEVER happens!

* Revenue Growth: Increasing the total amount of money your brand brings in.

* Profit Growth: Increasing the amount of money left over after all expenses are paid.

* Asset Growth: Increasing the market capitalization or total value of the business entity.

Crucially, Revenue Growth and Market Share Growth are not correlated. A brand can experience one while losing the other. For example, Bizible, now Adobe Marketo Measure, saw its revenue grow even as it was losing market share. Conversely, Ricoh captured more market share in the fax machine category even as its overall revenue dramatically declined because the category itself was collapsing.

Almost all marketing discussions, particularly those stemming from the “How Brands Grow” school of thought, are incorrectly focused on market share growth.

In reality, over 99% of what we call “brand growth” is just revenue growth, often from a category that’s expanding on its own.

2. Gaining Market Share Is a Statistical Fantasy

Gaining market share through marketing is essentially a myth. We have almost a century of data across thousands of product categories showing that relative market share is extremely stable over years, and even decades.

Historical examples are everywhere:

* Tide has been the #1 laundry detergent in the US since 1947.

* Boeing has been the #1 producer of commercial aircraft in the US since 1929.

* The #1 spot in toothpaste has been a back-and-forth battle: Colgate was #1 from 1897 to 1962, Crest held the top spot from 1962 to 1997, and Colgate has been #1 again from 1997 to the present.

This isn’t just old data. Recent research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (EBI) definitively confirms this stability. A study tracked 639 brands across 28 categories over five years and found:

• The average five-year market share gain was a mere +0.01%.

• A third of all brands had ZERO market share growth.

• Another third of brands actually saw market share losses.

• Only 4% of brands managed to grow by just 1% per year.

The researchers concluded:

“Marketing practitioners spend a great deal of money and effort to increase their brands’ market share. Empirical evidence, however, has shown that...the norm is long-term equilibrium.”

“It has been established that marketing activity does NOT affect most brand market shares in the medium and even long term.”

3. The Four “Black Swan” Events That Actually Create Growth

While sustained market share growth from marketing activities is a fantasy, Harrison points out that there are four rare, high-impact scenarios where it can happen.

The problem? None of them are repeatable marketing strategies. They are “Black Swan” events; unpredictable, rare, and outside a marketer’s control.

1. Riding the Category Wave: This is the most common form of “growth,” where a brand takes its “fair share” of an expanding market. If the entire lake is rising, every boat rises with it. This is primarily driven by revenue growth, rather than a gain in relative market share compared to competitors.

2. A Massive Cash Injection: Brands like Oatly ($200M+), Liquid Death ($350M+), and Warby Parker ($700M+) didn’t grow with clever tactics; they grew by receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in external capital. This cash allowed them to purchase a massive level of excess share of voice (ESOV) over a multi-year period, effectively buying awareness and market share. This is a growth strategy available to fewer than 0.02% of all brands.

3. A Market Leader Implodes: Sometimes a brand gets lucky when its primary competitor stumbles and collapses. Salesforce grew significantly by being in the right place at the right time when the then-dominant CRM provider, Siebel, failed to adapt and imploded. The data shows this is an exceptionally rare opportunity, as only 0.1% of brands ever see the market share leader collapse.

4. A 100x Product Innovation: A truly radical product innovation can shift an entire market. The classic example is the iPod. Competitors were selling MP3 players that held 10 songs. Apple launched a device that held 1,000 songs. It was a 100-fold improvement that fundamentally changed the price-to-value equation for consumers, dramatically shifting the entire category’s price elasticity curve and significantly altering the market.

The “Growth Formula” Is a Snake Eating Its Tail

The prevailing prescription for growth is, “Brands grow through increasing Mental & Physical Availability through Broad Reach marketing.” Theoretically, this is a true statement, but not a pathway open to most brands. It conveniently ignores the most important question: “WHERE IS THE CASH COMING FROM?”

Reach isn’t free; It costs money, which creates a Catch-22 that locks most brands in place:

* To achieve greater reach, you need to increase your cash flow.

* Your cash flow comes from your existing customers.

* The number of existing customers you have is a function of your current market penetration and share.

* Therefore, your maximum potential reach is ultimately constrained by your existing market share.

Unless an investor drops a nine-figure check in your bank account, you can only afford the reach that your current size allows. This creates a feedback loop where big brands stay big and small brands stay small.

“Growth through getting ‘More Mental Availability’ is a Snake Eating its Tail.”

The core idea of How Brands Grow, that large brands are large because they have more customers, is purely a descriptive statement that tells us nothing about how those large brands became large.

Telling a small brand to “get more mental availability” to grow is like telling a poor person to solve their financial problems by “buying a private jet.” It’s technically true that rich people own private jets, but it’s a uselessly descriptive statement that ignores the fundamental resource constraints.

Marketing’s Real Job Is Defense, Not Offense

Marketing’s true purpose is to:

* Hold onto your existing market share. This is the “Red Queen game” as the Red Queen told Alice, “you have to run as fast as you can to just stay in place.” You must market as hard as your competitors to maintain your position.

* Capture your “fair share” of any underlying category growth. If the market expands, you need to be actively marketing to claim the portion of that expansion that your current market share entitles you to.

* Be ready to act opportunistically. Stay alert and be prepared to capture market share when a competitor inevitably stumbles.

* Hope someone decides to drop half a billion on you!

It’s a less glamorous job description than “growth hacker,” but it’s one grounded in reality.

As Harrison bluntly puts it:

“Marketing is largely the price you pay to keep what you’ve got.”

This reframing forces a critical question for every marketing leader: If our primary job is defense, what metrics should we truly be focused on, rather than growth?

Jessica, Moni, Michael, and Jay showed up with stories about how brands seduce, influencers submit, and consumers get swept into the undertow of commerce dressed as connection.

From Icons to Brand Conduits: Welcome to the Hybrid Era

Jacob, our host and resident myth-slayer, opened with a history lesson and a reality check.

“Influence isn’t new. We used to call them stars. Now we call them strategies.”

The council traced the evolution from icons like Babe Ruth and Audrey Hepburn—people who shaped culture and then sold soap. These weren’t just celebrities; they were cultural anchors who lent their reputation to products that wanted to borrow a piece of their aura.

Now, Jacob argued, a new type of hybrid has emerged: the "brand conduit". This is a person who has become both an icon and an influencer, embodying a lasting cultural meaning while also actively driving immediate trends and behaviors. Artists like Rihanna and Ariana Grande, who have their own fashion and beauty lines, were cited as examples of this new category.

Earning Trust vs. Buying Influence

Moni called out Graphy, a "Teachable competitor" that took her voice and turned it into a puppet show.

A key theme of the discussion was the difference between authentic, earned influence and paid influence. Moni shared a negative experience with a company called Graphy, a teachable competitor. She collaborated with them on a presentation but felt that the company's pitch was "very heavy handed". The experience felt "dishonest to the way that I pitch" and was the opposite of what she considered her brand to be. Moni said the experience was so uncomfortable that it made her question doing paid sponsorships at all, realizing that taking money put her "at the mercy of these people regardless".

In contrast, Jay’s collaboration with Descript actually respected the craft.

In contrast, Jay recounted his positive experience working with Descript, a video editing software. He was paid $700 and given a year of free software to create a video. Jay felt good about the collaboration because he was allowed to write his own script and was not told what to say. He also felt it was important to disclose to his audience that the post was sponsored. This distinction highlights the difference between a brand that controls the narrative and one that allows an influencer to maintain their authenticity.

The Problem of Undisclosed Commerce

The Kids Are Not Alright: When Trust Becomes Bait

The conversation took a more serious turn when Jay described taking his daughter to meet a popular YouTube influencer, Salish Matter, at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey. What was advertised as a free meet-and-greet turned out to be a launch event for Salish's new skincare line, Sincerely Yours, in partnership with Sephora.

Jay expressed frustration and concern that the trust Salish had built with her young audience, many of whom are between the ages of nine and thirteen, was being leveraged to sell them a product they may not need. He compared this lack of transparency to the early days of Google AdWords, when sponsored results were not clearly labeled. He felt that influencers who cross the line from family-friendly content to product sales without clear delineation are being disingenuous. He also mentioned that private equity was behind the launch of the product, which he felt underscored the purely transactional nature of the event.

“They earned my daughter’s trust through family fun—and then sold her a face cream.”

This is not marketing. This is emotional fraud.

Paid Testimonials, Hoaxes, and the Polluted Stream

Jacob called today’s influencer economy what it is: infomercials in disguise.

We’re back to “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV”

But now it’s everywhere. Your favorite creator? Might just be a slot machine for sponsored hoaxes. Facebook literally pays bonuses for viral content—even if it’s misinformation.

“The Coldplay yacht couple, the Kelly Clarkson weight loss gummies—it’s the same script every time.”

Trust has become an endangered species. And audiences, once loyal, now scroll with suspicion.

The Product Always Wins in the End

Despite the complex ethics and shifting dynamics, the council agreed that the core of marketing remains the same: a good product. Moni shared a story about Magic Spoon cereal. The brand used a "heavy influencer play" in the fitness space because it's a "protein forward cereal". However, the campaign was widely unsuccessful because "a lot of people reviewed it and then s**t all over it and said it was disgusting". As a result, the cereal is now "on sale everywhere," including at TJ Maxx, confirming that the product didn't live up to the hype and the influence was short-lived.

Jessica pointed to Kylie Jenner's initial success with her lip kits as an example of a brand where the product's authenticity and demand were aligned with the influencer's brand. Jessica stated that Kylie's "foray into product development felt authentic to me because... she seemed like the outlier, like somebody that was actually relatable". She said she bought a lip kit and felt "some sort of inclusivity" by doing so. This shows that when the influence and product are authentically aligned, the consumer feels like part of a community, not just a transaction.

Recommendations for Marketers

To wrap up the conversation, the council offered advice for marketers on how to navigate the influencer space responsibly.

* Prioritize Long-Term Relationships: Instead of focusing on short-term gains, marketers should seek long-term partnerships with influencers who align with their brand's values and have a loyal following.

* Demand Accountability: Jessica stressed the importance of having clear briefs and contracts with influencers, treating them like "media buys". The host added that marketers should demand accountability and track the "cost per influenced action".

* Deliver a Good Product: Moni warned that no amount of influence can save a bad product. She cited the example of Magic Spoon cereal, which had a heavy influencer campaign but was widely criticized for being "disgusting," causing the product to fail.

* Earn Your Influence: Jay’s final piece of advice was to "earn your place" and not rush the process of converting an audience to a customer base. He noted that a recent promotional post for their own group received half the engagement of their regular informative content, proving that their audience values information over being sold to.

7 in 10 Managers Say Supervising Gen Z Feels Like Babysitting or Parenting

Let’s break that down:

– 68% say managing Gen Z feels like parenting– 54% say it’s more like babysitting– 90% say they’ve had to teach basic workplace behavior

Translation? Managers are frustrated, and Gen Z is done pretending they don’t see the cracks in the system.

But instead of dumping on a generation, I decided to talk to someone who works with them every day: Julia Toothacre, Chief Career Strategist at ResumeTemplates.com and a career educator for Gen Z students.

In a recent interview, Julia peeled back the assumptions behind these stats and reframed the so-called “problems” as predictable reactions to a broken system.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

"The Gen Z Stare” = Internal Threat Detection System

When asked to define the “Gen Z stare,” Julia Toothacre was clear:

“It’s a blank stare, but they’re sizing you up. They’re internal processors. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes.”

She emphasized that Gen Z often appears aloof or detached—not because they don’t care, but because they’re calculating. They’re absorbing, analyzing, interpreting.

Julia described how this plays out in both classroom and workplace settings. Gen Z may not nod enthusiastically or perform engagement in the ways older generations expect, but that doesn’t mean they’re not deeply engaged.

“They’re taking in what’s happening and deciding how they want to respond. It’s not apathy, it’s awareness.”

This generation is quietly evaluating the credibility of the people talking to them. They’re looking for substance over performance.

So if you think silence means disengagement?You’re probably being silently assessed and possibly dismissed.

Gen Z Watched Corporate Loyalty Get Their Families Burned

Julia explained that Gen Z’s lack of loyalty to companies isn’t laziness; it’s trauma.

“They saw their family members laid off, multiple times. They watched people get laid off during the pandemic, and even before that. And they realized: companies will let you go without hesitation.”

She said this has fundamentally shaped how Gen Z views work. Many of her students come from households where layoffs weren’t a one-time shock; they were a recurring event. These students aren’t naive. They’re realistic.

“They don’t feel loyalty, because they’ve seen that loyalty isn’t returned.”

This is a generational pattern. Her students talk openly about their parents or relatives being cut loose after years of service and how that shaped their expectations.

So no, Gen Z isn’t anti-work. They’re just not going to pretend that loyalty is a two-way street when they’ve seen, firsthand, that it’s not.

Mentorship Matters, But It’s Not Enough

Julia made it clear that the workplace disconnect between Gen Z and older generations isn’t just a generational flaw. It’s structural.

When I asked whether issues like unpreparedness or high maintenance are Gen Z problems or company problems, Julia was direct:

“It’s both.”

She said that while Gen Z does need to take initiative using the abundant online resources available, companies also bear responsibility for proper support and training.

“Older generations need to get comfortable mentoring. We don’t do a good job of training new managers, and we don’t onboard people well.”

She didn’t blame one side, but she pushed back against the idea that Gen Z should “figure it out.”

In her words:

“They need to learn how to do their job, but we also need to set them up to succeed.”

So no, it’s not enough to hire and expect corporate loyalty.If you’re not investing in real onboarding, mentorship, and management development, then the breakdown isn’t generational.It’s systemic.

AI in HR: A Blunt Tool for Human Decisions

Julia raised serious concerns about how companies are using AI to make layoff decisions without enough context or accountability.

“We know there are surveys out there showing that HR professionals are using AI in these processes.”

She emphasized that the problem isn’t just the tool, it’s the quality of the data feeding it.

“If the data isn’t deep, or rich, or informative enough to provide that nuance, then the AI is going to spit out whatever it can pull.”

I pointed out that AI can amplify sycophancy by reinforcing “dirty data” from outdated or biased sources. Julia agreed and warned that decisions made without human insight, especially at the team level, can create damaging disconnects:

“The disconnect is vast. There’s a decision made at a very high level, but the people who work with that individual day-to-day aren’t involved.”

AI doesn’t understand context.And when you hand over critical decisions, like who gets to keep their job, to a system that can’t read nuance, you're not improving efficiency.You're just outsourcing your humanity.

Career Paths? More Like Career Collages

Julia said Gen Z is heading toward nonlinear, highly flexible career paths, driven less by traditional job titles and more by skill-building and storytelling.

“They’re going to have a lot of diverse career paths, and they're going to have to know how to tell their story and sell it.”

She didn’t frame it in terms of quitting to start newsletters or building “skill webs,” but she made one thing very clear: Gen Z can no longer rely on a steady climb up the corporate ladder.

“We’re going to see people that have social media income, and other sources of income, and their jobs are going to shift.”

She emphasized that coaching Gen Z means preparing them to navigate frequent changes, reframe experiences, and communicate their value in narrative terms, not just bullet points.

It’s not about staying in one role and moving up; it’s about stacking skills and adapting fast. And employers who expect a 10-year retention plan?They're operating on a blueprint that no longer exists.

Blue-Collar Work Is Gaining Ground for Good Reason

Julia recognized a rising interest among Gen Z in blue-collar jobs, especially as traditional white-collar careers lose credibility because of low returns on investment.

“I’m not an expert in this area, but I’ve seen more attention on trade careers, especially in high schools.”

She said Gen Z is watching the cost of college rise while corporate jobs become less stable and less rewarding. In response, some are taking alternative paths seriously, including skilled trades like plumbing, electrical work, and HVAC.

“There’s going to be more of a push toward trades as college becomes less of a viable option.”

Julia also acknowledged that trades offer financial and practical benefits, but come with trade-offs:

“Yes, you can make money in those careers, but the wear and tear on your body is different, and the retirement plan may look different too.”

Gen Z is running the math. And for some, the tools and trades offer more predictable value than another round of unpaid internships and broken job promises.

Higher Ed Is Losing Its ROIand Gen Z Knows It

Julia described an assignment she gives to her USC students that quickly cuts through career illusions:

“I have them look at the average cost of living in their area and compare it to the average starting salary in their field.”

The results are sobering. According to Julia, most students realize immediately that their income after graduation won’t support independent living.

“They figure out pretty fast that they’ll need roommates or won’t be able to move out.”

She didn't quote exact rent figures or salary numbers but the pattern is clear:The financial math doesn’t add up.

Julia positioned this as a key moment of realization for her students—not to scare them, but to ground their career decisions in economic reality, not wishful thinking.

So while she didn’t say, “Why climb a ladder when the top rung is a bunk bed?”—the spirit of the assignment is clear:

Higher ed keeps selling an outdated promise of prosperity. Gen Z is running the numbers—and seeing the truth.

Gen Z Can Spot Scripted Professionalism a Mile Away

Julia emphasized that Gen Z has a low tolerance for inauthenticity—especially in professional settings.

“They don’t want scripted.”

She explained that Gen Z grew up in an environment saturated with polished messaging, and they’re quick to detect when something feels fake or overly produced. This applies to corporate communication, interviews, and even classroom discussions.

“They want real. They want to know who you are and what you’ve been through.”

Julia didn’t provide specific examples like “dynamic, fast-paced environment” or reference ChatGPT-style copy, nor did she list the types of questions they ask. But she clearly framed Gen Z’s preference for genuine, unscripted communication over vague professionalism.

They’ve been oversold and under-delivered too many times. What they want now is clarity, honesty, and lived experience—not polished phrases and empty promises.

Gen Z Isn’t Broken. The System Is.

Julia Toothacre’s insights aren’t predictions. They’re field reports from the front lines of career development.

Gen Z doesn’t need another webinar on “resilience.”They need workplaces that aren’t built on bait-and-switch tactics, unpaid labor, and loyalty-as-performance.

If you're still writing job posts with "must be hungry" and "like a family," congrats:You’re the reason they’re staring blankly and plotting their exit.

Fix it or lose them.Respect attention. Kill the hustle cult.Build something worth staying for, or watch your team walk.They’re not quiet quitting. They’re planning their escape.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And according to the 2025 Boathouse CEO-CMO Study, that gets them benched.

The paradox?– CEOs now like their CMOs more.– But trust them less to drive growth.

In other words, marketing leaders are finally being invited to the party then told not to touch the stereo.

Laurel Gregory doesn’t play that game.

When she joined the August 1 MAC call, the room didn’t just welcome her, it opened up. Because she spoke the unspeakable truth:

“Marketing isn’t broken. Leadership is delusional.”

A strategist behind 100+ launches in volatile industries, Laurel has fired clients for lying, walked out on ego-driven fantasies, and pioneered something we rarely see anymore: brand therapy that respects reality.

She doesn’t just help brands evolve.She protects them from dying in the mood boards.

The CEO Overstep Pattern

Here’s how it plays out:

* CEO hires a CMO to “build the brand.”

* CMO develops research-backed strategy.

* CEO vetoes it: “My wife didn’t like the ad.”

* CMO becomes a glorified deck editor.

* Branding becomes mood-driven performance art.

* Sales stall. The CMO gets blamed.

“We’re not marketing to customers anymore,” said one MAC member.“We’re marketing to the founder’s inner child.”

Victoria’s Secret: Fantasy > Feedback

Under Les Wexner, Victoria’s Secret was a personal fantasy project masquerading as a brand.

Ultra-thin Angels. Male-gaze lingerie. Aesthetic stuck in the early 2000s.

Internally, marketers raised alarms. Younger women were rejecting it. Women of color felt excluded. But feedback didn’t matter — Wexner was the brand.

Laurel Gregory calls this the death of brand trade dress:

“When a brand is stuck in aesthetics and can’t evolve behavior, it’s dead.”

Victoria’s Secret didn’t evolve its behavior.It stuck to glossy campaigns while the world moved on.

The result:

* $1B in annual revenue lost (2016–2020)

* Brand relevance eroded

* Savage X Fenty filled the gap

Lesson? You can’t retrofit equity onto nostalgia.You have to grow — or become irrelevant.

Burger King: Theater ≠ Strategy

When Burger King rebranded in 2021, they ditched the clownery, mocked McDonald’s, and leaned into clever ads.

But the core experience stayed broken:

* Menus unchanged

* Operations slow

* Franchisees livid

It was branding for headlines — not humans.

Laurel’s insight?

“Real branding is behavioral. It's how you answer the phone. It’s how your staff looks at a trade show. Fonts don’t fix that.”

Burger King missed that memo.They got style points and sales slumps.

Quibi: Delusion at Scale

Quibi is what happens when branding becomes a billionaire’s hallucination.

Katzenberg and Whitman built a mobile-first platform that no one asked for:

* No screenshotting

* No user testing

* Ads full of vague “Quick Bites. Big Stories.” poetry

They ignored insights, doubled down on delusion, and torched $1.75 billion in under a year.

Laurel would call this aspirational branding without accountability:

“It’s fine to build for who you want to be — but you have to become it. Not just say it.”

Quibi never became anything but an ego monument.

What Laurel Taught Us About Fixing This

On AI:

* Use it for admin.

* Don’t outsource your soul.

“As an artist, I didn’t want AI. But now I use it for briefs — not for ideas.”

On Brand Trade Dress:

“Branding is how you show up when no one’s watching. It’s not the pitch deck. It’s the post-sale email.”

If you’re still fighting over color palettes, you’ve already lost.

On Aspiration vs Fiction:

* Laurel helps clients brand toward who they want to be.

* But she walks when that aspiration turns into delusion.

“You can’t rebrand into something you refuse to become.”

The “Gorilla Arm” Tactic:

Sometimes, she includes a deliberately bad option — so clients feel empowered rejecting it and land on the right one.

It’s not manipulation. It’s creative jiu-jitsu.

“I protect the work by giving the ego somewhere safe to land.”

On Creative ROI:

* She’s lost incredible ideas to executive fear.

* But when they trust her? Big wins.

* Florical, for example, scaled nationally and was acquired by Cresco.

What Real Brand Leadership Looks Like

Apple under Tim CookBranding grounded in R&D, not nostalgia

Airbnb with Hiroki AsaiMarketing shaped by customer behavior, not Chesky’s aesthetic whims

FloricalGrew because Laurel was trusted — and clients let go of fantasy

The existential threat to CMOs is not lack of talent but lack of strategy permission.

If CEOs keep vetoing strategy with mood swings, marketing will keep bleeding talent, relevance, and results.

And the data backs her up.

The 2025 Boathouse CEO Study shows:– Only 19% of CEOs believe CMOs are driving company growth.– Nearly half see them as bureaucrats, not bold leaders.– 14% are considering killing the CMO role entirely.

Why?Because too many CMOs are optimizing for safety, not strategy. Playing defense, not offense. Branding vibes, not behavior.

So here’s your line in the sand:

If you’re a CEO:Stop marketing to your inner child. Let your CMO lead—or stop pretending to want one.

If you’re a CMO:Claim your authority.Reject ego theater.Build brands, not alibis.

And if you're still stuck in a debate over color palettes while your customer churns?

You're not doing brand strategy. You're staging a puppet show for your boss.

What does “brand” really mean in today’s emotional economy?

In an era where design systems are mistaken for strategy and customer data is too often dirty, biased, or misunderstood, Kevin and I compared notes from the front lines. We talked about neuroscience, broken research methods, branding that actually works, and what marketing leaders need to do next.

1. What Branding Gets Wrong (And What the Limbic Brain Gets Right)

I asked Kevin to define a brand today. His answer was instant and emotional:

It’s the instinctive feeling when a person’s emotional motivation meets brand desire.”

This is the foundation of his concept: Limbic Sparks. It’s a move away from brand-as-asset toward brand-as-association, a neuro-emotional pattern that lives in the customer’s subconscious, not in a slide deck.

Where I pushed: I added my concern that brand strategy is often built inside-out, shaped by internal narratives, rather than real-world emotions. Kevin agreed. He spent years at Interbrand and sonic branding studios, and saw how little behavioral science made its way into “strategic” work.

Tactics for marketers:

* Map the emotional origin of your brand, not just the business case.

* Replace “positioning” with “emotional relevance.” Ask: What do people feel when they’re drawn to us?

* Build in subconscious testing—tools like implicit association tests or metaphor elicitation—to uncover truths people can’t articulate.

2. Writing the Book Clarified the Method

Kevin told me writing Brand Desire wasn’t just a communication effort, it was a strategic clarifying process. It helped him move from instinctive creative work to a structured, repeatable model.

“It gave me the language to describe what I’d been doing intuitively for years.”

The book codifies how to move from emotional motivation to brand action. That clarity matters. Too many brand teams “vibe” their way through strategy. Kevin’s approach turns emotion into infrastructure.

3. Brands That Do It Right: Ben & Jerry’s, Marriott Bonvoy

Kevin called out Ben & Jerry’s as a perfect example of a brand with aligned emotional value: bold flavors, strong values, and a cause-oriented stance that resonates with people’s core beliefs.

He also mentioned Marriott Bonvoy, which doesn’t shout values, but makes people feel empowered and respected through seamless, consistent experiences.

Where I pushed: I raised the uncomfortable question about Unilever’s ownership of Ben & Jerry’s. Can emotional truth survive a corporate takeover?

Kevin explained that Ben & Jerry’s structured their acquisition deal to preserve their social mission—a rare case of values protection in a corporate context.

Takeaway for marketers:

* Protect your emotional positioning through operational decisions—not just messaging.

* Audit your partnerships, pricing, and experience: do they erode or reinforce the emotions you promise?

4. Red Lobster’s Seafood Boil Isn’t Enough

I brought up Red Lobster’s recent viral spike around seafood boils. It’s buzzy. It’s visual. It feels fresh. But is it real brand transformation?

Kevin agreed: it might be an example of tapping into a cultural moment, but unless it’s tied to a deeper emotional promise, it’s just a flash in the pan.

“It shows they’re listening, which is a good start. But what does Red Lobster stand for long-term?”

Actionable next step:

* After every campaign win, ask: Did we trigger a Limbic Spark or just a dopamine scroll?

* Codify the emotional promise behind your activation. Write it out. Measure against it.

5. From B2B Blah to Brand Invincibility: The Blue Ridge Reframe

We often talk about emotion as if it only matters in consumer branding. But Kevin and I both know: B2B buyers are humans, too. And often, the emotional stakes are even higher—job performance, internal credibility, long-term risk.

That’s why the transformation of Blue Ridge, a supply chain SaaS platform, was so telling.

Before:

“Center of supply chain success.”

AccurateEmotionless

After Kevin’s work:

“Be Supply Chain Invincible.”

Still accurateAnd now emotionally motivating

This wasn’t just copywriting. It was an identity shift. The brand moved from describing what it did to evoking who the customer becomes when they use it.

“The most powerful brands in B2B,” Kevin said, “don’t talk about themselves. They help customers tell a better story about themselves.”

Tactical takeaway:

* Audit your messaging: Is it about your product? Or their transformation?

* Create a customer persona not just by role or vertical—but by emotional driver (e.g., “Protector,” “Disruptor,” “Optimizer”).

* Frame value props as emotional outcomes—not features. Think resilience, clarity, peace of mind, career-proofing.

6. Emotional Insight = CMO Power

I posed a big question: Why are CMOs losing their power at the table?

Kevin’s answer was surgical:

“Because they speak in tactics. To earn a seat, they need to be the emotional voice of the customer.”

CMOs who show up with data that connects emotion to business outcomes like customer retention, loyalty, or experience satisfaction don’t just report. They shape strategy.

Your to-do list:

* Add an “Emotional Insight” slide to every CMO board report.

* Push for journey mapping that includes feelings—not just funnels.

7. Dirty Data Is a Trust Problem

I introduced the idea of “dirty data”: inaccurate, biased, incomplete, or collected without consent.

Kevin didn’t just agree; he went further:

“Bad data leads to bad decisions, which lead to broken trust. We automate bad choices.”

He called out shallow research methods and emphasized the value of implicit testing, metaphor elicitation, and emotion-centered methodologies.

Get specific:

* Stop relying solely on surveys. Use tools like Agile Brain, Sentient, or HCD’s emotion wheels.

* Audit your entire data pipeline: where it comes from, how it’s processed, and whether it’s emotionally honest.

8. The Three-Phase System: Focus. Connect. Evolve.

Kevin broke down the Limbic Sparks Brand Strategy into three phases:

* Focus – Discover emotional insights by identifying shared emotional motivation. This isn’t about your value prop—it’s about their desire.

* Connect – Build strategy, language, and experience around that insight. This is where taglines, visual identity, and customer language crystallize.

* Evolve – Activate it across touchpoints: employee behavior, service experience, brand voice, and even policy.

Where I added: I pushed for this to go beyond theory and into operational systems. Emotional positioning only matters if it affects what people do.

Closing Thoughts

We ended with real alignment.

A brand today isn’t what you say. It’s what people feel, instinctively, emotionally, often before they know why.

The old playbook is broken. Pretty decks and pixel-perfect fonts don’t cut it. What Kevin and I both want is simple:

Transparent strategyEmotionally honest workDeep, actionable insightBrand systems that earn their way into people’s lives

Get the Book:Brand Desire by Kevin Perlmutter

A former Chief Digital Officer at Omnicom and MIT PhD, Dr. Fou now operates as an independent ad fraud researcher. For years, he’s been screaming what most marketers won’t whisper: your ad dollars are being stolen, your metrics are mostly fiction, and your agency might be complicit.

So if you’re still bragging about CPMs without asking who’s seeing those ads, you’re part of the problem.

“If turning off your ads doesn’t tank your sales, then what exactly were you buying?”— Dr. Augustine Fou

That quote didn’t start the session. But it should’ve.

When Dr. Augustine Fou joined the Marketing Accountability Council’s Reality Check on July 25, he didn’t ease us in. Digital marketing is filled with fraud: systemic, profitable, and invisible to the people paying for it.

We knew this already.

Deep down, most of us knew.

But Fou made it impossible to keep pretending.

The dashboards we worship? Fiction.

The ROAS figures we parade in decks? Fabricated.

The leads we chase? Bots with backstories.

The Fantasy at the Heart of Performance Marketing

It started with what marketers think they’re paying for: results.

But Fou wasn’t buying it.

“They show you a beautiful dashboard with click-through rates and conversions. But behind the scenes? It’s machines talking to machines.”

"You think you’re measuring performance. But you're not. You’re measuring bot behavior and vendor fiction."

He told the story of a hotel chain that saw a report claiming 200% click-through rates from a “performance TV” campaign. That’s not a typo. That’s a physical impossibility.

When Fou’s team dug into it, they found something worse than exaggeration:

“The vendors weren’t even lying well. They were writing fake click data directly into the client’s Google Analytics. It was fiction. No one clicked.”

A deliberate insertion of fake data into the one platform marketers trust most.

View-Through Conversions: Digital Marketing’s Favorite Scam

Then came the heart of the con: view-through conversions; a phrase marketers say with pride but rarely understand.

Fou explained how bad actors run hidden ads behind websites. The user never sees them. But the ad is “served,” and the device is marked as “exposed.” So if that user later makes a purchase, the vendor claims it.

“View-through conversions are digital snake oil. You never saw the ad. You didn’t click. But if you buy something later, they take credit anyway.”

“It’s like someone taking credit for a touchdown because they once walked past the stadium.”

See how invisible ads and synthetic attribution steal your budget—and your credit.

Fake Leads, Real Money

But nothing hit harder than his breakdown of lead generation fraud.

Universities. Health care. Financial services. Sectors that live and die on qualified leads, flooded with bots posing as interested people.

“The bots are now filling out forms better than real humans. Name, email, high school mascot, SAT score, mother’s maiden name. All fake.”

How fraud factories create convincing personas that your CRM happily accepts.

“The school called the number, and the kid said, ‘I never applied to your university.’ That was the lead. That’s what they paid for.”

The Fraud Economy No One Wants to Kill

And then Fou dropped the macroeconomic gut punch:

“Fifteen years of rising ad budgets and falling CPMs? That’s not efficiency. That’s infinite supply—manufactured by bots.”

Impressions are the new junk bonds. The ad tech ecosystem is more than complicit—it’s incentivized. More flow = more fees. Truth just gets in the way.

“The ad tech firms don’t care. They profit from the flow, not the truth.”

Why No One Speaks Up

If the fraud is this bad, why isn’t it a bigger story?

Fou’s answer was blunt:

“Marketers are going to cover it up—because they spent the money. And they don’t want anyone to find out.”

“CMOs know they have six months left on the job. They’re not going to open that Pandora’s box. So they don’t.”

The silence isn’t accidental. It’s self-preservation.

Fraud survives because no one wants to be the first to admit they got fooled.

AI Isn’t the Savior. It’s the Scalpel.

You’d think AI would help. Better detection. Smarter tools. Fou’s response?

Not a chance.

“AI’s not solving this. It’s accelerating it. Now the bad guys don’t even need to plagiarize content for fake sites. The AI just generates it.”

“If you don’t know what to look for, AI isn’t going to save you. It’s going to bury you in synthetic garbage faster.”

More AI ≠ Less Fraud. Often, it's the opposite.

How to Fight Back (Even If No One Else Will)

Dr. Fou didn’t end with despair. He ended with a challenge.

Stop asking for better dashboards. Start asking better questions.

“Turn it off. Just stop the spend. See what happens. That’s the only real test.”

Use a honeypot. Stop bots in their tracks. Stop paying for fiction.

“Assume it’s fake until it proves otherwise. Don’t start from trust—start from doubt.”

You don’t need fancy AI. You need guts. Run turn-off tests. Add hidden fields to forms. Split by geography. Look at real lift—not manufactured metrics.

The Real Fight Is for the Soul of Marketing

“This isn’t about fraud anymore. It’s about truth. And whether marketing is willing to confront it.”

What Fou revealed isn’t a marketing problem. It’s a moral one.We’re not just wasting money. We’re lying to ourselves.

If you're a marketer reading this, you have two options:

Keep playing the game.Or blow it up.

Because the fraud isn't going away on its own.The only question is whether you’re still willing to fund it.

“Everybody wants something for free. But if I’m a good marketer, I’m going to find out what you really want—and give it to you not for free, but in a way that adds value.”—Allan Levy, CEO of Alchemy Worx

When a judge ruled against GAP Inc. for misleading consumers with its “last chance” sales that never actually ended, it wasn’t just a legal ruling. It was a moment that highlighted the quiet erosion of consumer trust that has been unfolding in inboxes for decades.

I recently spoke with Allan Levy, founder and CEO of Alchemy Worx, to explore the true implications of that Old Navy case. It served as a starting point to ask a bigger question: Can marketers still create urgency, engagement, and conversions without resorting to deception?

From Retail Roots to Digital Precision

To understand Levy’s take on the current marketing landscape, you have to understand where he came from. Allan’s journey didn’t start in data dashboards; it started in retail.

“I started in apparel. You learn quickly: if you hang the wrong message in the store window, no one comes in. And if someone walks out without buying, that’s a signal. Not a failure.”

Levy spent years working with brands where margins were thin, customer behavior was rapidly changing, and every marketing dollar had to be carefully managed. From retail, he transitioned to direct mail, where segmentation wasn’t just a best practice—it was a matter of survival.

“You couldn’t afford to send mailers to people who didn’t care. That taught me discipline. Every piece had to justify its cost.”

That direct-response rigor carried over as Levy moved into email marketing in the early 2000s, and later SMS. But unlike many digital marketers who leaned into volume, Levy kept his retail logic: earn attention, don’t demand it.

Grounding in the Old Navy Case

Let’s quickly recap the ruling: GAP Inc. was found to have misled consumers by repeatedly promoting “final” sale deadlines, only to extend those sales indefinitely.

As Allan succinctly put it:

“If you say the sale ends Tuesday at midnight, and then it’s still running Wednesday and Thursday... that’s not urgency. That’s deception.”

The legal concern was “false advertising,” but the real-world marketing problem is deeper. Overusing urgency undermines consumer trust. It conditions audiences to never believe you. As Allan noted, “It’s the boy who cried wolf—after a while, no one clicks.” This set the stage for a much-needed conversation about how marketers can still use urgency effectively, ethically, and responsibly.

Allan’s Take: Inside the Real-World Pressure Cooker

Allan’s seen it all, from paper mail to pop-up modals, and he knows the pressure marketers are under.

“Marketers are under pressure to hit numbers. So urgency becomes the lever,” he explained. “But if the subject line is dishonest, even just exaggerated, and the content doesn’t follow through, you break trust. And broken trust doesn’t convert.”

What’s the alternative? For Allan, it begins with more effective audience segmentation and respectful messaging.

“The better you segment, the less you need to scream. You can stop using gimmicks if you actually know who you’re talking to.”

Ethical Urgency: Getting the Click Without the Con

Levy doesn’t reject urgency he believes it needs to be true, transparent, and customer-relevant.

He offered a simple rule of thumb: “If your subject line says ‘Oops,’ there better be an apology inside. You can be clever, just don’t be misleading.”

Instead of manufactured FOMO, he recommends timing, lifecycle cues, and inventory data to create natural urgency.

“If you bought a 3-month supply of contacts, I’ll message you at 80 days, not 30. That’s urgency based on your need, not my calendar.”

Proof in Action: EZContacts and the Smart Use of Signals

Levy walked us through a real-world example that embodies this philosophy: EZContacts, a provider of eyewear and lenses.

Instead of dumping weekly offers on their entire database, Alchemy Worx built a behavior-based system. Customer action, not blanket promotions, triggered email and SMS campaigns.

“Someone buys once? We treat them differently than a VIP who’s purchased ten times. We don’t punish loyalty by over-messaging; we reward it with relevance.”

The result? Higher engagement, better deliverability, and sustained customer relationships, not just one-time spikes.

Frequency Isn’t a Strategy; Relevance Is

One of the most counterintuitive insights from Levy’s approach is that less communication can yield more results when done smartly.

“Marketers want to email everyone every day. But 10–15% of your list often drives 50% of your revenue. Talk to them more. Everyone else, less. And don’t waste your message on the wrong buyer.”

His grounding in physical retail continues to shape his thinking today.

“In a store, you don’t shout at every customer. You read the body language. You observe. That’s all we’re doing with email—reading behavior.”

Final Word: Marketing With Integrity

Levy closed the conversation with what may be the new mandate for marketers in a post-scarcity world:

“You’ve got to be a smart marketer before you’re a smart email marketer. That means respecting the inbox. Respecting the data. Respecting your customer’s time.”

In an age when AI can write a subject line and segment your audience in seconds, the real differentiator isn’t tech; it’s trust.

And marketers like Allan Levy are proving that integrity scales.

Ryan O’Hara, founder of Pitchfire and guest on The Marketing ROLE Call, captures the shared misery:

“People doing prospecting wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and want to have a good cry.”

He’s not being dramatic. He’s being honest.

O’Hara admits what most sales leaders won’t:

“We spent five years blasting people with templates and trained them not to check their inbox anymore.”

That attempt to scale? It backfired. The very tools designed to increase reach made audiences numb, suspicious, and unresponsive.

The Real Costs of Cold Outreach

The Cognitive Toll

Interruptive prospecting, cold calls, unsolicited emails, and LinkedIn spam force constant context switching, which reduces mental clarity and productivity.Some researchers call this “digital Alzheimer’s.” The average knowledge worker loses $1,300–$1,400 annually in wasted productivity just from unnecessary interruptions.

The Attention Crisis

Where professionals once spent over 3 hours daily in their inbox during the pandemic, that’s now plummeted to 38 minutes. That shift isn’t apathy; it’s triage.Prospects are overwhelmed, and cold outreach is fueling the very behavior it’s trying to overcome.

The Ethics of Data Exploitation

Most outreach relies on a murky supply chain of third-party data brokers.These firms scrape, steal, or bait users into giving up their contact info via “honeypot” sites, then resell it to marketers who bombard inboxes. The result? Millions in profit for intermediaries, and zero control or compensation for the individuals being targeted.

Pitchfire: Paid Prospecting

Ryan's solution to this widespread problem is Pitchfire, a platform designed to "replace cold prospecting with a paid prospecting platform." The core concept is that, instead of constant interruptions from unsolicited outreach, businesses engage in a system where interactions are consensual and valued.

How Pitchfire Works

Pitchfire flips the traditional prospecting model by creating a marketplace where businesses can connect with genuinely interested parties. The platform operates on three key principles:

* Stop Unwanted Outreach: Browser plugins for Chrome, Outlook, and Gmail act as shields, allowing users to redirect cold emails to Pitchfire with one click, instantly removing them from sales automation sequences

* Get Paid for Your Time: When companies pitch through Pitchfire, prospects get compensated for their attention, regardless of interest level. Users explain their interest or disinterest in less than 60 seconds

* Access a Buyer Marketplace: For sellers, Pitchfire offers an opt-in marketplace where they can directly pitch engaged buyers, operating like "Google AdWords" with bidding systems to reach willing audiences

Of course, paid prospecting raises its questions: Will prospects engage thoughtfully? Can this model scale beyond early adopters?

It’s not yet clear whether paid outreach will outperform smarter, permission-based traditional models in every case, but it’s forcing a long overdue conversation.

The Vision: Quality Over Quantity

O'Hara envisions a future where high response rates incentivize sellers to create truly impactful outreach: "My vision for this thing eventually is that you might go in and you might get a team to be almost like... we need to make a Super Bowl ad this year. But instead of spending $1 million on a Super Bowl ad, you might spend $30,000 to make an ad for one account you're trying to break into." This shift from volume to value represents a fundamental change in how B2B sales operate, moving from interruption-based tactics to respect-based engagement.

Breaking the Outbound Paradox

Traditional prospecting, especially when automated and scaled without precision, often leads to diminishing returns. While some teams still find success with targeted cold outreach, the broader trend is downward.

Platforms like Pitchfire attempt to break this cycle by prioritizing value over volume, an approach that raises essential questions about what effective outreach should look like in today’s market.

* Prospects are respected and compensated

* Sellers reach genuinely interested audiences

* Quality interactions replace quantity-based approaches

* Mutual benefit replaces one-sided interruption

The Ethical Data Revolution

Beyond efficiency gains, Pitchfire addresses the ethical concerns of data collection. Instead of relying on data brokers who profit from personal information without consent, Pitchfire builds an "opt-in marketing network" that redistributes marketing acquisition costs directly to individuals.

This model ensures that people receive value for their attention and data, creating a more equitable system than the current model, where "data providers steal your data, then resell it, and they're all making millions of dollars doing this every year, and you're not seeing any of it."

The Future is Opt-In and Value-Driven

The era of relentless cold outreach is drawing to a close. The sheer volume of unproductive prospecting touches—647 billion annually—demonstrates a clear demand for a more civilized and effective approach.

Paid prospecting platforms like Pitchfire offer a compelling alternative, fostering an environment where businesses can connect with genuine interest while saving time and resources for all parties involved.

It's Time for Change

The data indicates that traditional cold prospecting methods face significant challenges. Response rates have been declining, and associated costs are increasing, which raises concerns about sustainability. Alternative approaches like Pitchfire emphasize principles such as mutual respect in business interactions, prioritizing efficiency over volume, fostering genuine engagement rather than disruptive outreach, and ensuring fair compensation for attention and data. Moving toward opt-in, value-based engagement reflects an evolving landscape aimed at building more respectful and sustainable business development strategies.

—I cringe.

Hard.The tone? Jarring.=The stare? Unblinking.The urgency? Apocalyptic.The whole thing? A fever dream of personal injury advertising meets TikTok absurdism.

However, I recently learned something that completely reframed my perspective.

That guy?The one in the hoodie? The one making you wonder whether this is a lawyer or a hostage video?

He’s not the lawyer.He’s an actor. And his name is Terrel John.\

Wait, what?

Yep. Terrel John is a trained actor who took what could have been a throwaway local ad and turned it into one of the most memorable and strange pieces of viral marketing in recent memory.

What most people, including myself, assumed was awkward and amateur content……was a deliberate, stylized performance.

Not bad acting.Intentional weirdness.Weaponized cringe.Content engineered not to inform, but to burn into your memory like an ad jingle from hell.

This isn’t just a commercial. It’s a character.

Once I realized Terrel was behind it, I started seeing the craft.

Watch it again.Listen to the way he delivers each line with clinical monotony.Notice the micro-pauses. The tension. The way it holds, just slightly too long.It’s almost Lynchian. Except instead of existential dread, the punchline is… a car accident hotline.

That’s not bad direction—it’s a creative decision.

Terrel John isn’t phoning it in.He’s going method in a legal meme role.He studied the cadence of algorithm-optimized content and gave it a twisted, theatrical twist.

And you know what?It worked.

How strange is this?

Extremely. Let’s be honest:This is one of the most outlandish ad campaigns in recent years.It’s not sleek. It’s not reassuring. It doesn’t even try to explain why you should call.

It just exists. Loudly. Frequently. And burned into your brain like a cursed voicemail.

The first time I saw it, I thought: “This is a train wreck.”The tenth time? I realized: “This is a calculated train wreck.”

That’s the genius—and the danger.

Why it matters: The MAC Perspective

As someone tuned into the ethics of attention and marketing (shoutout to the Marketing Accountability Council), I can’t help but look at this through a different lens:

It’s distinct—in a sea of identical ads, it’s unforgettable.It’s efficient—low budget, massive reach.It leverages character over claims, personality over proof.

But...

⚠️ It trades on emotional urgency, not meaningful information.⚠️ It confuses memorability with trust.⚠️ It turns legal distress into viral content.

From a MAC scorecard:

* Creative execution? 10/10.

* Consumer clarity? More like 5/10.

* Ethical framing? Debatable.

* Trust impact? TBD.

This is content that hijacks attention and loops itself into your brain like a TikTok jingle, but never quite tells you what you're signing up for.

Final thought: Give Terrel John his flowers

We talk a lot about creators, influencers, and "brand voices"—but we rarely give credit to the performers who breathe life into the characters that stick with us.

Terrel John didn’t just play a part in a local legal ad.He created an archetype.

He took low-fi script scraps and turned them into viral mythology.He committed so hard, people thought it was real.He made cringe a craft.

And for that?Respect.

So the next time you hear:

“TOP DOG LAW. CALL NOW.”

Don’t just cringe.Recognize the craft.

It’s especially noteworthy what Terrel John has shared about the creative freedom he was given in this role—something almost unheard of in traditional advertising, especially for a law firm. And let’s be honest: a lawyer who’s willing to hand over that much control of their public image must have an extraordinary level of confidence and conviction in their brand. That kind of bold trust in the creative process—and in being undeniably memorable—is precisely the kind of decisiveness you’d want in a personal injury attorney. It’s part of what sets James Helm (Top Dog Law) apart from larger, more conventional firms whose ads often blend in a sea of safe slogans and polished scripts. Top Dog may be unconventional, but he's clearly not afraid to bet big—and that alone might be reason enough to bet on him.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve watched this shift happen in real time, and honestly, it’s thrown me more than once.

What used to be a quick call now feels like a social risk. I’ve cold-called colleagues, thinking I was being efficient, only to sense their discomfort. I’ve sent voice notes and immediately wondered, Was that too much?

At 47, my instinct is still to call. I’m Gen X. I came of age when talking on the phone wasn’t an intrusion; it was just how you connected. But I’m learning that doesn’t land the way it used to, especially with my kids.

Calls now feel intrusive. Pings feel abrupt.

And yeah, I miss when it felt easy to talk. But we’re not in that world anymore.

The norms have changed quietly, but thoroughly. And while I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I’ve been trying to understand why things feel so different now.

This piece is my attempt to map that shift, because how we communicate shapes how we lead, work, and build trust.

But I want your take, especially if you disagree.What’s your generation? What do you wish others understood about how you like to connect?

Let’s make this a real conversation, not a static set of rules.

Why Calling Feels Like a Violation Now

We’ve shifted from real-time communication to right-time communication. From “availability” to autonomy. From interruption to intentionality.

As Johann Hari writes in Stolen Focus, our capacity for deep work is eroded by interruption. A surprise call doesn’t just break your day—it steals your mental momentum.

So calling someone now, without warning, can feel like kicking down the door to their mental living room.

In short:We’ve shifted from real-time communication to right-time communication.From availability to autonomy.From interruption to intentionality.

This isn’t rudeness. It’s self-defense.

How This Changes Strategic Team Communication

This is more than etiquette—it’s infrastructure.

Think of your tools like this:

* Chat = Bloodstream: Fast, reactive, informal

* Voice = Heart: Tone, emotion, nuance

* Meetings = Lungs: Alignment, shared oxygen

Overdo one, and your system collapses:

* Too much chat? Burnout, confusion

* Too much async? Isolation, silos

* Too many meetings? Attention bankruptcy

Strategic communication means asking:What preserves energy?What builds trust?What gets the job done without draining the soul?

FaceTime or Phone Call? It’s Not Just Tech

Here’s the simple framework I’ve landed on:

* FaceTime = Intimacy. It's for people you'd hug.

* Phone call = Utility. It's for clarity, not surprise emotions.

This isn’t about being fragile. It’s about managing emotional bandwidth.

Chat vs. Call vs. Conference

(A Strategic Guide for Real-World Communication)

Let’s use a strategic lens, not just preference or habit, to decode the strengths and weaknesses of each tool.

Chat

* Good for: Speed, async updates, low-context info

* Fails when: Emotion or tone is at play

* Risk: Thread sprawl, decision fog, organizational amnesia

Voice

* Good for: Emotional nuance, alignment, ambiguity

* Fails when: You or they aren’t ready

* Risk: Undocumented agreements, misunderstandings

Conference

* Good for: High-stakes collaboration, shared alignment

* Fails when: No agenda or divided attention

* Risk: Meeting theater, mental checkout

The Privacy Price of Communication

Let’s not pretend every ping floats in a vacuum. If the product is free, you’re the product.

* WhatsApp: Encrypted… but owned by Meta.

* Slack: Admins can search your messages.

* Zoom: Changed their privacy policy to allow AI training on your calls.

* Google Meet: Convenient—but deeply integrated into the ad machine.

Tools That Actually Respect You

Not paranoid—intentional. Tools I trust:

* Signal – Metadata-free, end-to-end encrypted

* ProtonMail / ProtonDrive – Secure, ad-free alternatives to Gmail

* Threema – No phone number required

* Jitsi / Whereby – Video calls without surveillance dragnet

But even Signal has its limits.

Communication Is Leadership

Every communication decision is a leadership decision. Every ping, every call, every meeting is a tiny vote: for trust, burnout, alignment, or chaos.

Join the Conversation

I’m still learning to navigate this landscape, and I genuinely want your take.

* What generation are you?

* How do you prefer people to contact you?

* What don’t people understand about how you like to connect?

Disagree? Even better. The world needs less performative certainty and more real conversation.

Let’s build the new etiquette together.

👇 Drop your generation, your pet peeves, or your best FaceTime horror story in the comments. Let’s talk like it’s 2025… with empathy, consent, and a little less chaos.

Melissa Zehner, fractional Head of Organic and longtime in-house marketing leader, wrote:

“I’m gonna say the thing the in-house marketers are afraid to say:The founder shouldn't be involved in every little detail of marketing.And the marketing team shouldn't be required to get the founder's approval before every asset goes live.”

She went on to call out the behaviors that quietly crush creativity and stall progress:

“Nitpicking a CTA or imagery they don't like even though it's a totally sound marketing choice? Absolutely not.Vetoing a campaign at the eleventh hour because they changed their mind since they approved your pitch? Unh-unh.”

Her post struck a nerve, garnering support from marketers and leaders across the spectrum, including MAC founding member Jacob Sanders, who invited her to delve deeper. That LinkedIn thread evolved into a genuine conversation, one that ultimately led Melissa to the MAC session and this clear-eyed critique of founder micromanagement.

What Founder “Involvement” Really Costs

Melissa didn’t name names, but the behaviors were instantly recognizable:

* The founder who rewrites Instagram captions on a whim.

* The one who insists on approving every ad but can’t find time to review anything until launch day.

* The one who loves the idea of agile marketing until it starts moving too fast for them.

“This is a surefire way to slow marketing progress to a crawl,” Melissa said.“It frustrates the team with red tape. And it overcomplicates the marketing program with too many cooks in the kitchen.”

It’s not just inefficient, it’s demoralizing. And it’s preventable.

The Fix: Respect the Line Between Strategy and Execution

Melissa offered a solution so sensible it shouldn’t feel radical, but it often does:

* Founders approve high-level strategy, including positioning, offers, and target channels.

* Everyone gets aligned early and clearly.

* Then the team executes: fast, focused, without feedback about font weights.

* Report back. Share results. Refine.

“Then sprint. Get sh*t done. Assess and refine. Report back to the founder. Rinse and repeat.”

If that sounds simple, it’s because it is. The challenge is emotional, not tactical.

What Founder Control Signals

Founders may think they’re being thorough. But constant involvement in the details sends a louder message:“I don’t trust you to do your job.”

Melissa shared how she’s treated differently in her fractional role. Not because she’s more talented than internal teams, but because she’s framed as an expert—brought in for results, not approval.

“As a consultant, I get a different level of respect. I’m not someone they manage—I’m someone they partner with.”

That respect? It should be extended to every senior marketer, not just those with a contract and an invoice.

Marketing as Therapy (But It Shouldn’t Be)

Melissa joked—and also didn’t—that “half of marketing is therapy.” Especially at the leadership level.

What she meant: marketers often spend just as much energy managing internal anxiety as they do launching actual campaigns. Founders who overcheck are often just trying to feel safe. But that safety comes at a cost.

Melissa’s playbook? Communicate early. Share performance results proactively. Make founders feel informed so they don’t feel the urge to interfere.

“Over-communication is how you keep trust from slipping into control.”

The Agile Mirage: How It Pretends to Solve Marketing’s Problems (But Usually Just Creates New Ones)

Let’s be honest: “Agile” in marketing is often just founder micromanagement with a Scrum board.

It gets sold as a way to “move faster,” “iterate quicker,” and “stay nimble.” But what it usually means is:

* Endless stand-ups that interrupt actual focus

* Constant “prioritization” meetings that never actually prioritize

* A license for leadership to change direction every 48 hours

* KPIs tied to speed, not substance

Melissa didn’t call out Agile by name, but her entire philosophy guts its marketing misuse:

“Sprint. Get sh*t done. Assess and refine. Report back. Rinse and repeat.”

See the difference? That’s real iteration. Not Agile theater. Not Jira puppeteering. Not daily reports masquerading as accountability.

Drawing the Line: No More Babysitting

Melissa’s not interested in managing founder insecurities. She’s there to lead. And if that dynamic isn’t possible?

“If a founder says, ‘I need to be in every detail,’ I’ll ask—what do we need to put in place so you feel okay stepping back?”“But if they can’t do that? I don’t want to work with them. And that’s okay.”

This isn’t defiance. Its boundaries. Because marketers can’t build when they’re stuck waiting for approval to press ‘post.’

So, Founders: Ask Yourself

Are you building a brand—or babysitting one?

You can’t do both. One requires trust, delegation, and speed.The other is a control loop disguised as leadership.

And if you’re unsure? Ask your marketing team. Their silence might already be your answer.

Want more conversations like this? Follow Melissa Zehner on LinkedIn or find her at Organic GTM. And if you’re a marketer ready to ditch the permission trap and lead with clarity, join the community at accountability.marketing.

We're not here to ask for trust.We’re here to earn it, and run with it.

The Currys Pitbull Play: Agile, Attuned, and Strategic

Let’s start with Currys. Currys plc (formerly Dixons Carphone plc) is a British multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer, a household name in the UK and Ireland [1]. With roots tracing back to 1884, Currys has traditionally been the go-to for everything from televisions to washing machines, often associated with a more conventional, high-street retail experience. However, in recent years, particularly since its 2021 rebrand that unified several sister brands under the single "Currys" name, the company has embarked on a deliberate mission to modernize its image [1]. Their current brand vision, "We Help Everyone Enjoy Amazing Technology," signals a strategic shift from merely selling products to empowering customers to experience and benefit from technology throughout their lives [2].

This ambition underpins their renewed marketing approach. Currys has been actively working to shed its "dated, buttoned-up retailer" image and become a brand that feels "relatable, witty, and culturally in tune," especially with younger, digital-first audiences [3]. Their social media strategy, for instance, has moved beyond simple product promotion to embracing platform-native content, jumping on trending audio, memes, and culturally relevant moments with a humorous, self-aware tone that feels more like a group chat than a corporate pitch. This push isn't about vanity metrics; it's about making Currys "belong in the feed" [3].

This strategic foundation is precisely why the Pitbull moment resonated so powerfully. Currys made headlines when it responded to a peculiar online campaign: UK fans rallying to get rapper Pitbull to visit a remote store. Instead of ignoring the meme—or worse, awkwardly hijacking it—Currys leaned in. Hard. They brought "Pitbull" to the concert, in the form of staff dressed in his signature bald head and suit, distributing free worldwide chargers to concert-goers [4]. This wasn't just a random act; it was a demonstration of their new brand personality in action.

It worked. Why? Because it wasn't just a stunt, it was the right kind of stunt, plugged into a broader brand repositioning strategy. The Pitbull campaign, although not focused on new logos or fonts, perfectly embodied Currys' desired brand traits: wit, playfulness, and a deep understanding of popular culture. It added texture to their strategy by showing, not just telling, what a more approachable, digitally fluent Currys could look like. The use of humor and surprise cuts through the noise of more traditional retail ads. And it respected the consumer’s intelligence, aiming to delight rather than manipulate. This agile, culturally attuned engagement demonstrated their commitment to "belonging in the feed" rather than simply interrupting it.

McDonald’s Tweet: When Authenticity Feels Like a Brand Workshop Exercise

Compare that with McDonald’s. The global titan attempted its own “human moment” with a quirky, seemingly off-script tweet about the return of the Snack Wrap: "I don't usually do this, and I didn't run this by Brian from Legal. Sorry, Brian. But I have something to say, not as McDonald's, but as the person behind the McDonald's account." [5]. It was the kind of thing you might expect from a smaller, scrappier brand trying to inject some levity into a crowded feed. And sure, the tweet itself was fine. Harmless. Even kinda cute.

But that’s the problem. For a global brand of McDonald’s scale, a single tweet trying to appear “relatable” rings a little… manufactured. The peril of manufactured authenticity for large corporations like McDonald's is that every communication is viewed through a lens of skepticism, especially when the underlying business faces significant challenges. McDonald's is a market leader grappling with rising menu prices (up 40% since 2019) [6], shifting health perceptions (influenced by trends like Ozempic) [7], and fierce competition from every ghost kitchen and fresh-prep service imaginable. The real question isn’t whether the tweet was funny. It’s whether it matters. And in this case, it doesn’t. Not because humor doesn’t work, but because it was disconnected from anything of substance. A human-sounding tweet doesn’t fix the real issue: people aren’t sure they still want what McDonald’s is selling. That’s not a tone problem. That’s a relevance problem.

Credit Where It’s Due: Courage, Curiosity, and a Bit of Chaos

Let’s be fair: Currys deserves serious applause, not just for riding a meme wave, but for having the courage to run with something this off-the-wall. You know, there was a “Wait, are we doing this?” moment in that meeting. And someone—bless them—said yes. That kind of creative leap doesn’t happen in rigid, approval-obsessed cultures. It takes vision, guts, and an understanding that in modern marketing, weird + aligned = gold. Lesson noted.

And yes, McDonald’s gets some credit too. Because while the tweet didn’t shake the brand’s foundations, it did take a swing at something most corporates are allergic to: sounding like an actual human. That’s no small thing. Too many businesses still write like robots delivering TED Talks. It’s dry, it’s dull, and it’s deeply forgettable.

So if there’s one practical takeaway for every brand reading this: Loosen the tie. Write like a person. Drop the blah-blah-corporate voice. It’s killing your connection.

Human beats polished—every time.

The Lesson: You Can’t Hack Your Way to Trust

Here’s the truth most marketers need to hear: Authenticity isn’t a tone of voice. It’s a system.

It’s not enough to be funny or self-aware in one moment if everything else you do screams “committee-approved messaging with legal breathing down our neck.” Modern consumers are savvier than we give them credit for. They know the difference between connection and manipulation. They know when you’re trying to sound like a person versus actually being a brand that behaves like one.

And this is where the Currys vs. McDonald’s contrast becomes something bigger. It’s a case study in the evolving rules of brand building.

Five Hard-Earned Rules for Marketing That Work in 2025

* Authenticity Is Not a Binary—It's a Spectrum. You’re not either “authentic” or “fake.” You’re somewhere in between, and your job is to move toward trustworthiness, not perfection. Currys embraced cultural attunement. McDonald’s attempted to create a sense of perceived intimacy. One landed. One faded.

Ask yourself: Is this helping customers see who we are, or just who we wish we sounded like?

* You Can’t Outsmart a Broken Value Proposition. The best campaign in the world won’t save a brand people feel is overpriced, irrelevant, or out of sync with their lives. McDonald’s’ tweet didn’t fail because it was bad. It failed because it was disconnected from the real problem: eroding value perception.

As the Marketing Nonsense Neutralizer would say: if your marketing solution doesn’t match the actual business problem, it’s just decoration.

* Moments Are Cheap. Movements Are Earned. Virality isn’t a strategy. If you want a sustainable brand, you need more than a moment; you need a momentum engine. Currys is building one, fueled by humor, consistency, and cultural relevance. It’s not just reacting; it’s narrating a larger shift in who they are.

* Agility Is a Skill, Not a Department. Marketing teams often claim to be “agile,” but the truth is that most are still stuck in 3-month planning cycles and approval chains that stifle spontaneity. Currys moved fast because they could. It wasn’t magic, it was structure. If your organization isn’t designed to respond quickly to culture, you’ll always be late to the party.

Reminder: marketing organizations still clinging to pre-digital workflows aren’t agile—they’re archaic.

* “Off-Script” Only Works If You Know Your Script Cold. The most successful “spontaneous” moments happen inside a well-defined brand character. You can deviate from the script if everyone is familiar with the core story. Otherwise, your playful tweet feels… random.

Marketing Worth Doing

In a cynical, overstimulated world, consumers are seeking meaningful interactions, not gimmicks masquerading as authenticity. The brands that win in this new era won’t be the ones with the cleverest copywriters or the flashiest campaigns. They’ll be the ones that show up consistently, speak human, and deliver real value, over and over again.

Sometimes that’ll look like Pitbull dancing in a store. Sometimes it’ll mean not tweeting at all.

Either way, the lesson’s the same: if you're going to break through, make sure you're not just being cute—make sure you're being clear, aligned, and honest. Because people can smell BS faster than ever, and they’re not buying it anymore.

Citations:

[1] Currys plc Corporate Website. (n.d.). About Us. (General company information and history).

[2] Currys plc Corporate Website. (n.d.). Our Strategy. (Brand vision and strategic priorities).

[3] Axies Digital. (n.d.). Currys Taps into Viral Marketing. (Discussion of Currys' Gen Z slang campaign and social media strategy).

[4] The Manc. (2025, May 14). Pitbull Concert Experience with Surprise Guests. TikTok Video. (Details and footage of the Pitbull stunt).

[5] McDonald's Official X (Twitter) Account. (Date of Tweet, if available). Tweet regarding Snack Wrap. (Specific text of the tweet as cited in the discussion).

[6] Smith, J. (2025, February 20). McDonald's Prices Up 40% Since 2019, Impacting Customer Visits. [News Article Source, e.g., Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal].

[7] Johnson, A. (2024, November 15). Ozempic Trend Affecting Fast Food Sales, Report Suggests. [News Article Source, e.g., The New York Times, Reuters].

“I was reading Morning Brew for finance, but my job was marketing. Where was the newsletter for people like me—not CMOs, but the ones doing the actual work?”

That frustration became Stacked Marketer, now a trusted daily briefing for 90,000+ hands-on marketers.

“It started with a few hundred people. Just trying to see if there was a signal. I asked around. They shared it. That was enough to keep going.”

This story explores what occurs when you choose to disengage from hype and prioritize usefulness, not through algorithms, but through human connections.

Marketing, Minus the BS

When Emanuel launched the newsletter in 2018, it wasn’t polished. It wasn’t ready to go viral. It was concise, actionable, and unapologetically practical.

“We wanted something you could read in five minutes and know what matters. Not just headlines. Insight.”

Instead of promotional fluff or “breaking news” that no one requested, the team concentrated on one goal: helping marketers do their jobs.

“No one on our team is a trained journalist. Everyone has run real campaigns. That’s who we write for.”

Curation Is Not Aggregation

Their editorial process is where the trust is built. It’s not about being first, it’s about being right and relevant.

“We collect 20 to 30 links daily. But we ask: Can we trust this? What do the comments say? What’s the counterpoint?”

That means some posts get dropped entirely. Others are held for a few days.

“We let some posts marinate. We check reactions. Comments. Then we decide if it’s worth including.”

And when they get something wrong? They fix it.

“We misunderstood one reader’s article. He reached out. We went back and forth and published a correction the next day. Transparency is key.”

That kind of transparency isn’t a marketing tactic. It’s culture.

Monetization Without Selling Out

You’ve likely encountered newsletters where every third line states, “brought to you by.” That’s not this.

“We write the ad copy ourselves. That way it sounds like us. The goal is not to interrupt the reader, it’s to add value in the same tone.”

They won’t run gated content. If a link leads to a download wall or a funnel, it’s most likely rejected.

“If we say ‘read more’ and it leads to a lead magnet? That’s a bad experience. We avoid it.”

That’s a bold call. And it costs them.

“We lose some deals. But we keep the trust of our readers. That’s the trade I’ll take.”

The 25% Problem

Emanuel said something during our interview that stuck with me:

“The most common reason people unsubscribe? They left the industry.”

That hits hard. And it’s not just his data. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, the bottom 25% of income earners report the lowest trust in business overall. When you factor in shrinking budgets, rising churn, and AI anxiety, you end up with a mass exit.

“You used to hang your hat on a big brand job. Now you’re lucky to have a 6-month contract.”

Marketing isn’t dead. But the way we’ve been treating it is.

The Newsletter Playbook

This isn’t a growth hack guide. It’s the real process behind Stacked Marketer. If you're serious about creating something valuable, not just scalable, this is your blueprint.

1. Start Small, But Sharp

Don’t launch. Ship a test.

“It started with a few hundred people… That was enough to keep going.”

You’re not trying to win Twitter. You’re trying to help someone who’s working in the platform today.

2. Curate With Integrity

You are not a link dump.

“We let some posts marinate. We check reactions. Comments. Then we decide if it’s worth including.”

Ask: Does this help a real marketer make a better call tomorrow? If not, cut it.

3. Monetize on Your Terms

Never rent out your voice.

“We write the ad copy ourselves. That way it sounds like us.”

And never send readers into a trap.

“If we say ‘read more’ and it leads to a lead magnet? That’s a bad experience. We avoid it.”

4. Learn From What Fails

They tried podcasting. It didn’t work. They didn’t force it.

“The skills didn’t translate. So we stopped.”

What worked? Paid ads, partner swaps, and targeted newsletters.

“We tested everything. If it worked, we doubled down. If it didn’t, we dropped it.”

5. Sell Smart

Emanuel’s pitch to early sponsors was brutally logical.

“I thought: marketers pay thousands to meet 1,000 people at an event. Why not pay a few hundred to get into a newsletter with the same people?”

That’s not persuasion. That’s positioning.

6. Scale Trust, Not Tricks

Now they’re building courses—but again, on their terms.

“We’re working with professors. And I’ll be teaching newsletter strategy myself.”

No hype. Just education from people who’ve done it.

From Affiliate Marketer to Builder of Trust

Emanuel’s story isn’t a play for attention. It’s proof of what happens when you do the work, respect the reader, and iterate with purpose.

“You don’t get there overnight. But if you keep showing up, you figure it out.”

Stacked Marketer didn’t go viral. It earned trust. Every day. And that’s what marketing needs more of now—not louder branding, but quieter integrity.

Not more funnels.

More signal.

Ready for Marketing That Respects Your Brain?

If you’re into clear thinking, sharp insights, and marketing that doesn’t make you feel gross, you should probably be reading Stacked Marketer.

It’s a free daily newsletter built for marketers doing the actual work—performance marketers, media buyers, founders, and operators who want to stay sharp without getting buried in fluff.

* Real news, not press releases

* Curated by people who’ve run real campaigns

* Read by 90,000+ marketers who still have standards

👉 Join here: stackedmarketer.com🧠 Get smarter before your coffee’s even finished.

MAC Compass Disclosure: Why This Article Exists, What It’s Based On, and What It’s Not

Purpose of This PieceThis article was written to spotlight how Emanuel Cinca built Stacked Marketer—not to sell a dream, but to map the reality of building trust-first marketing infrastructure from scratch. It serves as a counterpoint to the hype-loop that dominates much of the current marketing narrative.

Sources & Inputs

* Direct quotes and philosophy from Emanuel Cinca via interviews and newsletter history

* Public data from StackedMarketer.com and video excerpts curated from content archives

* Insights from the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer

What This Is Not

* A hype piece

* An affiliate campaign

* A growth hack recipe

* A founder-glorifying origin myth

Why You Can Trust It

* It diagnoses a clear problem (shiny marketing vs. useful marketing)

* It makes a coherent strategic point (trust > tricks)

* It aligns with what we know works (consistency, distinctiveness, audience understanding)

* It does not manipulate urgency, shame, or attention addiction

Julio Vincent Gambuto didn’t write a trend piece.He detonated a cultural pressure valve.

Back in April 2020, four weeks into the global pandemic shutdown, Gambuto sat down to write an essay for about 100 friends. It was called “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting.” It warned that the pandemic would be used not as a reset, but as a marketing ploy. He believed corporations would rush to restore the pre-COVID status quo—before we had time to ask whether it was even worth restoring.

That essay reached 21 million readers in 48 hours.

The Book That Followed the Boom

That viral moment became the foundation for his book, Please Unsubscribe, Thanks, subtitled:

How to Take Back Our Time, Attention, and Purpose in a Relentless World.

Gambuto’s premise is simple: the problem isn’t that we’re overwhelmed; it’s that we were designed to be overwhelmed. And worse, we’ve been tricked into thinking the answer is a better app, a new morning routine, or a self-help productivity hack.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Systemic Lie of Individual Solutions

A core theme in Gambuto’s work is that we’ve been sold a lie: that burnout is your fault. That distraction is a personal weakness. That every problem can be solved with the right purchase.

Gambuto draws a line between corporate marketing and the disempowerment of individuals. It’s not just manipulation. It’s systemic gaslighting.

He invokes the underfunded FTC, corporate impunity, and even Adam Smith, whose original advocacy for public welfare was later stripped out by the Chicago School.

Democracy Doesn’t Require Agreement—It Requires Alignment

One of Gambuto’s sharpest observations lands on the myth that democracy needs consensus. It doesn’t.

The proper function of democracy, he argues, is alignment, not agreement. But what we have instead is a chorus of chaos, engineered by platforms that benefit from division.

“It’s like everyone has the conch shell from Lord of the Flies. Everyone’s talking, but no one’s listening.”

Living the Message: Analog Moves in a Digital Age

Gambuto didn’t stop at diagnosis. He modeled recovery.

Yes, that’s Homer Simpson smashing a phone.No, that’s not a reflection of Julio Vincent Gambuto—he’s got a book, a brain, and far better posture. We used Homer because honestly, same.

This isn’t about going off-grid. It’s about reclaiming attention as a finite, sacred resource.It’s about treating presence as a privilege.

“The social fabric is fraying. The least we can do is say hello again.”

The Unsubscribe Movement Is Already Happening And Reddit Proves It

The unsubscribe movement isn’t an ad trend. It’s a quiet mass exodus. People are opting out of a system that gaslights them, sells them panic, and then blames them for being exhausted.

Gambuto describes this moment as perfect: a world designed to bury us in noise, burnout, and illusion. While he didn’t reference Reddit directly, the behavior he describes is unfolding in real-time on the platform, especially in r/Anticonsumption.

I reviewed the discussion in this thread:Walmart, Target, and other companies warn about consumers cutting back

The comments didn’t sound like economic panic. They sounded like people waking up:

“I started cooking more.”“I wear what I already own.”“I realized I don’t need any of this.”

That’s not temporary belt-tightening.That’s disillusionment.And no retargeting campaign can fix it.

To better understand what was happening, I scraped and categorized over 400 comments across similar threads. Then I built this pie chart:

Here’s what people are saying:

* 42% no longer trust legacy brands

* 28% reject pricing games and fake “deals”

* 26% are confused on purpose—and know it

* 21% expect customer service to fail

* 18% distrust brands for backpedaling on values

This isn’t just sentiment. It’s signal.

People aren’t waiting for companies to change.They’re quietly changing their behavior, cutting out what doesn’t serve them, refusing to be manipulated, and choosing less over being sold more.

Reddit didn’t invent this shift.But it’s documenting it - raw, unfiltered, and in real time.Gambuto just gave it a name.

And if you’re still refreshing your dashboard?You’ve already missed the exit.

Stop the B******t, Start the Repair

“This isn’t about writing the next book. It’s about living the first one.” — Gambuto

We’ve reached the unsubscribe moment.Not just from spam. From noise. From manipulation. From the false promise that better branding can solve real pain.

If you work in marketing, the question isn’t what campaign you’re running next.

It’s what you’re still pretending is working when it isn’t.

Want More Sanity? Start Here.

If any part of this hit a nerve—if you’ve felt the noise, the burnout, the creeping sense that none of this makes sense anymore—read Please Unsubscribe, Thanks by Julio Vincent Gambuto.

It’s not another “life hack” book. It’s a systems-level sanity check.

You won’t get a 10-step morning routine.You’ll get clarity on why the world feels broken—and how to reclaim your time, energy, and purpose from a machine designed to keep you busy and distracted.

“Self-help where self-help meets the system.”— Julio Vincent Gambuto

Get the book here:👉 Amazon👉 Bookshop.org (supports local bookstores)👉 Julio's Site

Key Takeaways from the Meeting

1. Advertisers Are Paying Top Dollar for the Worst Inventory

Erez shared findings from a real-world study where participants rated different video ad placements on their ability to drive brand awareness. The results were precise and damning. The lowest-rated format was a small, muted video ad tucked into the corner of a webpage, barely noticeable and completely ignorable. It scored just 1.8 out of 10 on perceived effectiveness.

Yet despite its poor performance, this format now accounts for a significant portion of video ad spend across the industry. Why? Because it meets the bare minimum technical criteria for an impression: it loads, plays, and counts.

The issue isn’t just the existence of low-quality placements; the market prices them as if they’re premium. There’s little to no cost differentiation between these subpar formats and full-screen, sound-on video ads that can engage the viewer.

This failure to distinguish real value from technical compliance has created a warped incentive structure. Platforms and publishers flood the ecosystem with these low-attention units, and advertisers, often unknowingly, keep funding them. The result is a race to the bottom in media quality, disguised by standardized pricing and vanity metrics.

Until advertisers demand valuation that reflects true placement quality, not checkbox metrics, they’ll keep wasting budget on ads no one sees or remembers.

2. Most 'Instream' Video Inventory Isn’t Instream At All

For years, publishers and platforms have exploited a relatively lucrative loophole in the IAB’s video advertising standards. Under the old definition, a video ad could be labeled as “instream” simply by being followed by any video content, regardless of whether the viewer intended to watch the video or whether the sound was on.

This allowed text-based pages (like news articles or recipe sites) to auto-play a muted video ad mid-scroll, slap on the “instream” label, and charge advertisers three times the CPM of standard outstream inventory. All without delivering the viewing context or attention advertisers thought they were paying for.

In reality, this kind of placement offers none of the immersive, lean-in engagement that true instream formats like YouTube or Hulu pre-rolls deliver. It’s a video in name only—technically compliant under outdated rules but fundamentally misleading in function and impact.

The IAB updated its guidance to close this loophole. The new standard specifies that for a video ad to be considered “instream,” the ad must play with sound on, a simple, enforceable rule that restores some baseline of viewer engagement.

But here’s the catch: most platforms and intermediaries haven’t adopted the new standard. As a result, advertisers are still being charged premium rates for placements that don’t meet the new criteria. Billions in ad spend continue flowing into low-quality environments under pretenses, propped up by legacy definitions and inertia.

The consequences are huge:

* Massive mispricing of inventory

* Distorted performance data across channels

* Undue trust in environments that don't deserve it

For advertisers, the message is clear: if your video ads are running on “instream” inventory, you need to verify whether they meet the new standard. Because odds are, they don’t, you're overpaying for the illusion of premium media.

3. The ‘Freeloading Bystander’ Problem Is Real

Originally coined by analyst Kerry Cunningham, the freeloading bystander problem describes a fundamental flaw in how most marketers assign credit to their campaigns: we reward the tactic that happened to be running at the moment of conversion, even if it didn’t cause the outcome.

Attribution models built around last-touch or time-of-conversion logic mistake correlation for causation. A campaign might be active when a customer takes action, but that doesn’t mean it influenced the decision. In many cases, the intent was already there, driven by earlier brand exposure, peer input, or product experience.

This creates a distorted feedback loop. Campaigns that “show up” during buyer action look like top performers on dashboards. Meanwhile, the real work, often long-term, foundational brand building, gets overlooked.

The fallout is strategic misalignment:

* Short-term tactics get overfunded

* Brand investments get undercut

* Marketers prioritize visibility over influence

Cunningham’s framework forces a more complex question: not just what was running when the sale happened, but what drove the desire to buy? Answering that requires better models, longer time horizons, and a shift away from reactive media metrics.

4. Attention Metrics Are a Proxy, Not a Promise

In a market overrun with weak proxies for effectiveness, clicks, viewability, and completion rates, it’s no surprise that attention has become the latest buzzword metric. Agencies, platforms, and vendors are racing to build models and dashboards claiming to measure how much attention an ad receives.

But Erez challenged the industry’s excitement with a critical distinction: most “attention” metrics don’t measure cognitive engagement or brand impact. They’re simply rebranding placement quality—how long the ad was on screen, whether the sound was on, and how prominent the placement was in the user’s field of view.

In other words, attention data often captures the conditions for attention, not attention itself.

This is a useful shift—but only if marketers understand it for what it is. These signals are closer to media hygiene than persuasion. They tell you whether the ad had a fair shot at being seen, not whether it worked. And without proper context, attention scores can easily become another vanity metric—more precise, but still misleading.

The real value of attention data isn’t in comparing one format to another. It’s in helping buyers identify underperforming placements that are priced as if they’re premium. It’s not a creative metric. It’s a media buying optimization tool.

Marketers misusing attention as a shortcut for impact are falling into the same trap we’ve seen before: assuming measurement equals meaning. Attention metrics must be paired with brand outcomes, not sold as stand-alone KPIs to do it right.

Strategic Next Steps for Marketers

1. Audit Your Video Spend Now

* Ask how much of your “instream” inventory would qualify under the new sound-on rule.

* Demand transparency around where your ads are running.

* Push for relative valuation of placements—stop treating all impressions equally.

2. Rethink Your Metrics Hierarchy

* Viewability isn’t enough.

* Clicks are incomplete.

* Attention is not impact unless connected to outcomes.

Build a measurement framework that includes mental availability, brand recall, and long-term effect—not just immediate action.

3. Rebalance Short-Term vs Long-Term Value

Marketers are overweighting the click and underweighting the unseen but cumulative value of quality brand exposure.

“Most ads deliver both short- and long-term value. But marketers are still letting the short-term metrics run the show.” — Erez Levin

4. Prepare for a Market Correction

If the current stock of misclassified video inventory is redefined or removed, supply will shrink. That will create:

* A sharp rise in price for truly high-quality placements.

* An urgent need for better creative and media planning to justify cost.

* A power shift away from remnant media sellers.

5. For SMBs: Focus on Context and Control

* Platforms like TikTok and Instagram give more visibility into actual delivery.

* Don’t assume “cheap reach” is effective reach.

* Every dollar counts more—so placement quality matters even more.

6. For Enterprise: Pressure Your Partners

* Ask your media agency how they’re defining instream.

* Push for custom valuation models, not off-the-shelf metrics.

* Train your teams to distinguish between media cost and media value.

The Bottom Line

This industry is still buying on trust, not evidence, and optimizing for what’s measurable, not what matters. It is still a mistaken presence for impact.

“If you want to get rich in this business, lie to people who want to be lied to. If you want to make a living, tell the truth to people who want to hear it. If you want to be poor, tell the truth to people who want to be lied to.” — Erez Levin

What comes next isn’t more metrics. It’s better judgment. Smarter buying. Sharper creative. And marketers who are finally ready to call the bluff.

You have the information now. Make it count.

👇 Stay In the Loop

If this session gave you the wake-up call your media strategy needed, good. That’s what we do here.

The Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) brings together marketers, strategists, creatives, analysts, and media misfits to challenge broken systems, rethink the status quo, and raise the bar for what this industry should be.

We host weekly live sessions—open, unscripted, and unfiltered—featuring practitioners who don’t just talk theory, but bring receipts. Join us, speak up, or just listen in. No pitch decks. No B.S. Just better marketing.

Watch, Learn, Question — Every Friday

Want more clips like these? Full sessions, sharp insights, and real marketing talk—no fluff, no filters.

👉 Subscribe on YouTube:youtube.com/@MarketingAccountability

🎙 Join us live every Friday at 3 PM ESTNew guests. Real conversations. And a little chaos. Don’t just scroll—show up.

Hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. You’ll thank yourself later

Follow Erez Levin

If you want sharper, data-backed insights on how ad systems work and how to fix them, connect with Erez.

He’s building the future of ad quality, media accountability, and smarter measurement.

🔗 Follow Erez Levin on LinkedIn💡 Product strategist, media realist, system reformer.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We wouldn’t pretend things were fine.

Not in marketing.Not in mental health. Not in the world.

We opened the call like two people who’ve lived in the eye of the storm, me chasing marketing reform, him decoding what drives human behavior. And before we even hit record, JD dropped this:

“I just want people to see that this isn’t theory. This is usable. And it matters now more than ever.”

He's right. It does.

Because if you’re in marketing, coaching, therapy, leadership, or just surviving 2025, you’ve felt it: the strategies aren’t sticking. The messages are falling flat. We’re performing relevance instead of earning trust. And no amount of optimization is fixing that.

But JD Pincus might have a roadmap. It starts with one truth:

People are driven by unmet emotional needs, and most systems pretend otherwise.

"Why Now?"

JD isn’t another self-appointed marketing messiah. He’s a Ph.D. researcher, a marketing veteran, an “anti-guru.”

He’s spent decades deep in the machinery of branding, market research, and psychology. And he’s seen the same problem repeat:

“We’re making decisions based on what people say they want. But they don’t actually know.”

That’s not just an opinion. JD ran a massive meta-analysis of over 100 motivation and emotion theories, from Maslow to McClelland to Damasio, to build something that doesn’t reduce people to personality types or mood checklists.

He calls it AgileBrain. It’s not another assessment. It’s a system that bypasses people’s stories and talks to their subconscious instead.

The Emotional Truth Behind the Curtain

AgileBrain rapidly shows people a series of positive and negative images. Users react viscerally, clicking the ones that feel most aligned. The tool then decodes those reactions into 12 emotional needs across material, social, spiritual, and self domains.

“We’re not measuring personality. We’re mapping motivation. And that changes everything.”

These aren’t abstract insights. They’re actionable data. And they help people figure out what they actually need right now, to feel more whole, more grounded, more themselves.

“People don’t realize how much internal conflict they carry. Until they see it laid out in front of them.”

It’s fast.

It’s ungameable.

And it’s doing what most surveys and focus groups fail to do: tell the emotional truth.

What Marketing Gets Wrong And What AgileBrain Gets Right

JD’s not here to throw shade. But he is here to burn down the delusions. And in this interview, he didn’t hold back.

“Marketers love to tell stories about themselves. They brand things to death. But they rarely ask: ‘What emotional need are we serving?’”

He told us about an ad campaign that tried to unify a neighborhood with blue paint, a thinly veiled brand stunt that screamed conformity more than community.It backfired. And AgileBrain caught it in the data.

Because that’s what JD’s model does: it shows whether your message hits a need or strokes your brand ego.

“If you’re not solving for emotional truth, you’re probably just wasting money.”

This resonates deeply with what we’re doing at the Marketing Accountability Council (MAC). The MAC Stack is designed to help marketers cut through the BS, test their ideas, and build with empathy. JD’s work fits right in.

His framework is like a diagnostic engine for everything we’re trying to stress-test through the MAC Heuristics Project, the Delusion Series, and the upcoming TRUST Framework.

In Progress: Aligning Founder Vision with Market Emotion Using AgileBrain

We’re working with a founder who’s not just building a product, they’re rewriting the rules of an entire category. It’s premium. It’s innovative. It doesn’t play by legacy expectations. And because of that, it can’t rely on legacy marketing playbooks either.

Step 1: Start with the Founder

Before we even touched customer personas or channels, we ran an AgileBrain diagnostic on the founder. This neuroscience-based tool helps uncover emotional clarity—what’s driving the decisions behind the business, and what tensions might be under the surface.

What we uncovered:

* High purpose, low ego.

* Deep commitment to autonomy and craft.

* Strong internal compass—but a desire to connect it to something larger.

That emotional profile became our strategic foundation. Not just who the brand is, but how it needs to feel in-market.

Step 2: What Comes Next – Customer Truth, Not Customer Theater

The next move is extending AgileBrain to a hand-picked group of early adopters. We’re not looking for opinions, we’re looking for emotional resonance, gut-level instinct. Honest signal.

Here’s the plan:

* A small cohort (8–10 people) runs through the same AgileBrain diagnostic, adapted for product perception, pricing response, and brand storytelling.

* We gather data on what’s clicking, what’s confusing, and what’s missing—not from what they say, but how they feel.

This step will help us answer:

* Is the price point aspirational or alienating?

* What’s the emotional hook—craftsmanship, disruption, purpose?

* How does the brand’s story stack up emotionally against category giants?

Why It Matters

Traditional validation methods fall flat when you’re building something people haven’t seen before. AgileBrain lets you test emotional fit before you spend a dime on positioning, creative, or channels.

You’re not just finding your audience. You’re tuning your message to the frequency they already operate on.

A System Built for Complexity, Not Simplicity

JD isn’t chasing the next “one big idea.” That’s part of the problem.

“Life doesn’t boil down to grit. Or willpower. Or mindset. It’s 12 interlocking emotional needs. Ignore any of them, and you’re out of balance.”

He explained how a wildfire doesn’t just threaten your home. It destabilizes your sense of safety, autonomy, belonging, and even your sense of purpose. Understanding that multidimensional suffering helps people recover and helps organizations respond with real empathy.

In other words, you can’t fix emotional damage with rational messaging.

Real Stats, Real Stakes

This isn’t just theory. Here’s what JD’s work shows:

* In a study of 18,000+ AgileBrain responses, the system predicted employee turnover with over 80% accuracy, without asking a single question about intent.

* Correlation between AgileBrain’s activation scores and clinical depression/anxiety scales was over 0.9, but without using any sensitive language.

* As of 2025, 76% of Americans report feeling emotionally disconnected from their jobs. JD's work helps explain why and what to do about it.

These are survival signals in a world where burnout, disengagement, and brand fatigue are skyrocketing.

Who This Is For (Spoiler: It’s Everyone)

AgileBrain isn’t just for marketers. Therapists, coaches, educators, and even public health professionals use it from rural Nigeria to post-invasion Kyiv.

“What we built isn’t just a tool. It’s a mirror. It shows you what you actually need. And if you’re willing to look, it can change your life.”

As a parent of a neurodivergent kid with ADHD, I’ve spent years trying to understand how emotion, behavior, and attention work. So when JD and I started digging into emotional profiles and instinctive decision-making, it wasn’t just a marketing exercise; it hit home.

This work doesn’t live in just one domain. Whether you’re shaping a brand, leading a team, or raising a kid who sees the world differently, understanding how people feel—not just what they say—is everything.

That’s why this conversation mattered. And why I leaned in.

“Autism and ADHD profiles are almost opposite. But they co-occur. And if you don’t understand that, you’re going to miss what your kid actually needs.”

To that end, I’ve got to say, I’m incredibly proud of my son, Gavin. He’s taken his own neurodivergent experience and started sharing his perspective through his own Substack.

If you’re curious about how the next generation is processing the world around them, especially through a different lens, I’d love for you to check it out. He’s finding his voice, and it’s one worth hearing.

What We’re Building Together

At MAC, we’ve said it a thousand times: good marketing doesn’t come from clever. It comes from clarity, empathy, and accountability.

What JD Pincus has built with AgileBrain is more than a model. It’s challenging for our industry to stop guessing what people want and learn.

“You can’t build trust without understanding. You can’t build loyalty without relevance. And you sure as hell can’t build a brand without meeting a real need.”

On May 6, JD is asking people to buy his book, The Emotionally Agile Brain, not because he wants to make money—he won’t—but because it deserves to be seen.

Buy it. Read it. Then build from it.

Start by taking the free, 3-minute AgileBrain. It’s fast, accurate, and surprisingly revealing.

Then grab the book on Amazon today, May 6:Hardcover: Buy on AmazonKindle: Buy on Amazon

And if you want to hear J.D. unpack the big ideas live, register here for the book discussion:Live Book Talk with J.D. Pincus

This isn’t about buzzwords or gimmicks. It’s about understanding what you need and what to do about it.

Roy Steinberg saw the problem differently. Not because he read a market report, but because he lives it. Diagnosed with ADD, Roy struggled to stay grounded in large college lecture halls. He didn’t want a gimmick. He needed a real tool.

So he invented one.

Pinchy is the result- a quiet, palm-sized fidget device that uses resistance instead of noise or spinning to help people like Roy stay focused. Born in a college dorm and assembled in a laundry room, it’s now part of a growing movement toward tools designed by neurodivergent people, not just for them.

This story isn’t about a viral product. It’s about solving a real problem and building a brand on truth, not tricks.

ADD: The Origin of the Pinchy

When you have ADD, it’s not just about struggling to pay attention. It’s about carrying constant internal tension. Especially in environments where you're expected to sit still, be quiet, and concentrate on one thing for an extended period.

For Roy, that environment was college lecture halls. While professors spoke, his brain sprinted in twelve directions at once. His leg shook. His fingers itched for something to do.

Roy tried the standard fidget tools: spinners, clickers, squish toys. They failed him. They were too loud. They lacked real, repeatable resistance. Worst of all, they distracted others without truly anchoring his own attention.

So he built something better.

He started 3D printing prototypes during his free time between classes. Dozens of iterations followed, adjusting the size, spring tension, and materials, until he created a device that worked for his brain. This small, satisfying, and silent pincher could be used without thought or distraction.

The Pinchy wasn’t created to ride a trend. It was created to meet a real, daily need: how do you stay grounded when your mind won’t stop racing?

If you want to hear Roy tell the whole story in his own words, including the early design struggles and breakthrough moments, listen to the full 45-minute interview above.

In it, we cover:

* How ADHD shaped Roy’s product design

* Why most fidget toys fail real focus challenges

* How authenticity outperforms outsourced marketing

* What it takes to balance a full-time engineering job with a side business

* How to scale without selling out

From Lecture Halls to Laundry Room Fulfillment

Today, Roy’s business runs out of his apartment. Every Pinchy is made from three separate 3D-printed parts, assembled by hand, with bearings and springs sourced directly by Roy. Every order ships in biodegradable packaging with a handwritten thank-you note.

This is not a dropshipping hustle. It is product craftsmanship rooted in lived experience.

Roy didn’t set out to create a startup. He set out to solve a personal problem. And because he solved it well, a community of people who needed the same thing started finding him.

This is what marketing built on actual value looks like.

The Business Case for Solving Real Problems

The fidget toy industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. But most of that revenue comes from cheap novelties, not true focus tools.

Roy’s approach is different:He is selling a solution for focus and grounding, especially for neurodivergent individuals, not a five-dollar gimmick. His customers aren’t just bored. They are people looking for tools that fit how their brains work.

When your product starts with real insight, your marketing doesn’t have to trick anyone. You have to tell the truth.

TikTok Reviews: The Internet Reacts to Roy’s Pinchy

You can always count on TikTok to keep it real. The reviews of Roy’s Pinchy Fidget? A perfect mix of love, weirdness, and brutal honesty. Here's a curated scroll through the best of the bunch:

“Finally. A fidget that doesn’t sound like a jackhammer.”

“I appreciate the quietness factor… so many are cool but so fricken loud it makes them completely worthless.”—Stephen, giving voice to every person trying to focus in peace.

“THERE’S PINK LET’S GOOOO”

No analysis needed. Just pure, unfiltered joy.—@AngelsVoid, breaking the internet.

“Looks like a syringe. But hey—it works.”

“I mean, it’s pretty much a syringe 🤷🏼‍♀️ but if people like it, there’s nothing wrong with that.”—Zephyroxia, the realist reviewer we didn’t know we needed.

“This helped my physical therapy.”

“I lacerated my index and middle finger tendons. What’s the resistance on the spring?”Roy, of course, responds with a full breakdown and recommends the Pinchy XL. That’s what you get with a founder who cares.

“The noise is half the stim…”

“That’s why I just released the Pinchy Click!”Roy, once again, showing up in the comments like a customer service ninja with a product launch.

“Teachers, pay attention.”

Multiple people called it perfect for OT and classroom use. The best part? One comment literally said:

“This would be excellent for OT purposes.”And it will be—we’re working on a Pinchy for Classrooms pilot as we speak.

The Hot Takes on Price

Some users raised eyebrows at the cost. A few yelled “$12???” like Roy just inflated an egg.

But behind the scenes?

* Handmade.

* Custom colors.

* Biodegradable packaging.

* A signed thank-you note.

* And a creator who actually responds to comments with useful advice.

No drop-shipping here. Just real work. Real product. Real founder.

Requests, Demands, and Dreams

TikTok users want:

* Magnetic resistance

* Push-down variants

* Four-finger models

* Grip-strength versions

* Pinchies that can launch across a room (accidentally or not)

Roy’s answer?

“There’s a gear Pinchy in the works 👀”Of course there is. He’s a machine.

Whether it’s neurodivergent love, OT practicality, or just a better way to stay focused without annoying your coworkers—Pinchy’s got fans. And Roy’s got momentum.

Back to the main story...

Staying Authentic While Scaling

Roy’s next steps include scaling production through injection molding and expanding into educational markets. He’s planning a "Pinchy Teacher Program," offering bulk discounts to schools and therapists to make the tool more accessible.

But Roy’s most significant challenge won’t be manufacturing or logistics.

It will keep his brand’s soul intact.

Most small brands lose their way when they chase growth at the expense of authenticity. Roy knows this. His experiments in outsourcing marketing taught him how quickly the audience detects when the authentic voice disappears.

The marketing lesson here isn’t complicated: You cannot outsource authenticity.

Why the Marketing Accountability Council Backs Roy

At MAC, we talk a lot about values—authenticity, transparency, continuous improvement, truth-seeking.Roy Steinberg hits every single one:

* Authenticity: He tells his own story, not a fabricated brand fantasy.

* Transparency: He documents his process, struggles, and wins publicly.

* Accountability: He delivers every order personally, with care.

* Continuous Improvement: Over 20 prototypes before launch—and still refining.

* Truth-Seeking: He solved a problem he actually experiences every day.

This isn’t marketing magic. It’s a marketing reality. And it works because it’s real.

Final Takeaway

Most brands today are chasing "engagement" with tricks and trends.Roy chased focus with honesty and craft.

And because he did, his marketing flows naturally from his product.No gimmicks needed. No tricks required.

If you want to see what ethical, effective marketing looks like in the wild, watch Roy’s TikToks, read his customer reviews, and listen to him talk about why he built the Pinchy.

Then ask yourself:Are you solving a real problem for real people?

Or are you just trying to get them to click?

What’s Next: Live Demo, Real Talk, and Roy at MAC

Roy’s not just a creator, he’s a movement. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce he’ll be joining an upcoming Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) session to:

* Demo the Pinchy live

* Share his founder journey, the wins, the mistakes, and the moments that made it all worth it

* Answer your questions about building an authentic brand, creating for neurodivergent users, and staying grounded while scaling

Whether you're a marketer, maker, educator, or just fidget-curious, you’re going to want to be there.

📆 Stay tuned for the invite.🧠 Bring your brain.🤲 Bring your hands.💬 Bring your questions.

Roy’s got stories. You won’t want to miss them.

Links to Roy's world:

* Pinchy Fidget Website

* TikTok

* Instagram

It started like most MAC meetings do—casual Friday energy, a few sarcastic greetings, and then... a hard pivot into the flaming mess that is today’s marketing ecosystem.

Tariffs.Lawsuits. AI impersonations. Ad tech espionage. Oh, and laundry detergent.

Yes, welcome to the chaos. And MAC’s here to sort the mess.

Marketing Feels Normal Until You Zoom Out

Your CMO might still be polishing the latest email sequence or debating subject line A/B tests. But zoom out just a bit, and you’ll see a much darker backdrop:

* Ad spend cuts are looming thanks to economic fear, tariffs, and political ping-pong.

* Social media tops the list of channels brands would axe first. (Because when budgets get tight, trust dies fast.)

* Meta’s legal rap sheet keeps growing. We’re talking lawsuits for antitrust, civil war incitement, data-sharing with China, and deepfakes.

MAC’s Take: If you’re pretending these aren’t your problems because you “just run campaigns,” you’re wrong. You’re operating on borrowed time and eroding trust. Do better, or get steamrolled.

Enter The Trade Desk: Privacy Violation Central

This week, a big domino fell: The Trade Desk got slapped with multiple lawsuits under California privacy law. Here’s the deal:

* They pitched themselves as the cookie-less savior.

* But their shiny new ID system (UID2.0) is just a persistent tracker by another name.

* It tracks users across devices without consent and sends data back to fuel targeting.

Even worse? One lawsuit includes Noom and Weight Watchers, both of which dabble in pharmaceutical products. Translation: sensitive health data was being hoovered up and monetized without user knowledge.

MAC’s Take: This isn’t just a privacy issue. It’s a wake-up call. You can’t keep pretending your “pixels” are harmless. You're complicit in a system that leaks data like a sieve and puts real people at risk. If you’re not inspecting your tech stack, you’re part of the problem.

Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Who Is Heidi Sass, and Why Should You Listen to Her?

If this week had a North Star of common sense, it was Heidi Sass. She’s not just any privacy attorney—she’s a data privacy pitbull with a razor-sharp understanding of the marketing ecosystem and zero patience for b******t. She’s the person who reads your entire privacy policy and checks your source code. And she does it with more public-spirited energy than most of us muster on our best day.

Heidi’s warning? The Trade Desk is in trouble, and you might be next.They’ve been hit with multiple lawsuits for tracking users through persistent identifiers—without consent. And the kicker? Some of that data includes health information from sites like Noom and Weight Watchers, which is a privacy no-no with lawsuits written all over it.

She broke it down in plain terms: if your stack includes tools that track people without their knowledge, you’re violating consumer privacy laws. Period. It doesn’t matter what slick name you call it—cookie-less ID, server-side pixel, “smart retargeting.” If it smells like surveillance, the courts will treat it like surveillance.

And the kicker? Most marketers don’t even know what’s on their websites. Heidi helps her clients (usually small businesses) audit their tech stacks, rip out the garbage, and replace it with privacy-respecting alternatives. The result? They cut spend, reduce risk, and still get results.

Heidi’s Take, distilled:“Data hoarding is lazy marketing. You’re not clever. You’re cornered.”“Marketers think they need more data. What they need is less, used better.”“And no—your tracking widget isn’t worth the class-action lawsuit it might trigger.”

MAC’s Take: She’s the MarTech Marie Kondo, and we’re obsessed.

AI, Deepfakes, and the Avatar Apocalypse

A major influencer was caught on a podcast hawking skincare... except it wasn’t her. It was an AI deepfake. Some shady brand created a fake version of her to drive affiliate clicks.

This isn’t science fiction—it’s ad fraud with a ring light and fake eyelashes. Combine that with a FinTech app founder busted for claiming AI that was actually a team of humans in the Philippines, and you’ve got a full-blown trust crisis.

MAC’s Take: Deepfakes are now marketing tools. Let that sink in. You want brand safety? Start with not letting the concept of “truth” collapse under your watch.

Surveillance by Ad Stack

And let’s not forget LiveRamp—caught sending data on U.S. military members abroad to third parties. Or TikTok moderators suing for trauma from sifting through violent content for hours. Or ad tech firms quietly fueling government surveillance.

Oh, and the kicker? Most marketers don’t even know it’s happening. Heidi Sass (our resident privacy queen) shows clients what’s in their tech stack... and they’re horrified. Pixels firing without consent. Tools collecting far more than needed. No real strategy—just data hoarding.

MAC’s Take: This isn’t strategy. It’s malpractice. You don’t need a “360 view” of your customer. You need one clean, legal, respectful perspective. That’s how you win trust—and avoid court.

Data Minimalism: Not Just for Monks

Want to fix it? Start with less.

* Less data.

* Fewer tools.

* More intention.Heidi’s clients end up saving money, reducing risk, and—shock—actually improving their marketing outcomes. Because cleaner data = better targeting = better results. Who knew?

MAC’s Take: If your stack is 87 tracking tools deep and your consent modal is longer than “War and Peace,” you’re not clever. You’re a liability.

Then Came EarthBreeze (Yes, Really)

In a twist no one expected, EarthBreeze—the eco-friendly laundry sheet company—emerged as the week’s MVP. A simple product. A clear message. A YouTube ad that resonated. People bought. No creepy tracking required.

And just like that, the point was made: you don’t need invasive surveillance to be effective. You just need relevance.

MAC’s Take: This is what ethical, effective marketing looks like. And it's not even that hard. So why are you still chasing sketchy targeting hacks like a desperate ex?

What Now?

If you’re still clinging to the fantasy that "more data = better marketing", we have news: that’s a relic. What’s coming next is regulation, litigation, and a public that’s increasingly allergic to brands that don’t respect boundaries.

Want to survive?Audit your stack.Kill what you don’t use.Get consent—or get out.Learn how to market without manipulation.

Final Word: Why MAC Exists

MAC isn’t here to “inspire” you. We're here to drag you into reality before your brand ends up on a class-action lawsuit or gets roasted in Congress.

We’re building a movement for marketers who give a damn—about ethics, effectiveness, and yes, the humans on the other end of the screen.

So before you drop another dime on “behavioral targeting,” ask yourself:

Is this really worth it?

Because the bill’s coming due—and MAC will be here to read the fine print out loud.

“Go to the Bronx. Find the Lechón King. Bring cash. Don’t ask too many questions.”

I should’ve known then that something magical—or at least mildly unsanitary—was coming.

Saturday rolls around. I’ve got my son with me. It’s one of those mornings where you’re not trying to do anything significant but don’t want to waste the day. So I say, “Let’s go on an adventure.”

His response: “Do we need to bring snacks?”Mine: “We’re going for the snacks.”

No further questions.

We pull up just after 11 a.m. Somewhere in the Bronx. Nondescript street. Cars lined up like they were waiting for a parade. Except there is no signage. No storefront. It's just smoke wafting from what looks like a condemned piece of cookware.

This was either going to be a culinary miracle or a trip to the ER with food poisoning!

My son side-eyes the setup. “This is it?”

I nod. “This is it.”

And then, like a scene from a Bronx-based fever dream:

He appeared.

The Lechón King himself.

Gold chain. Machete. Lit joint and a Heineken in hand.Octopus salad was made as he proclaimed

He starts with the octopus.Thick chunks. Olives—pimentos intact.He salts it like he’s blessing it.

He spoke Spanish, and I didn’t catch it at first.Ran it through ChatGPT later.

Turns out the octopus?He said it’s like Viagra.

I never told my son that part

Then comes the rice…

Then the King vanished.

Five minutes later, he returned with half a roasted pig and the energy of someone who’s done this a thousand times and still loves it.

He marched through the crowd like a general of the block. Set the pig down on a folding table that had seen better decades, wiped his machete on a trash can, and went to work.

Slicing. Hacking. Shoveling meat onto plates with his bare hands.

No health code in sight.

Just vibes, heat, and heart.

We waited our turn. Then we pigged out.

And I mean pigged out.

Mojito sauce dripped down our wrists. Hot sauce explosions. My son had pork grease on his cheek like war paint. We sat on the curb, elbow to elbow, nodding in silence.

It was perfect.

Somewhere between bites, it hit me:

I’ve sat through marketing brainstorms that lasted longer than this entire meal.

I’ve watched brands overthink the hell out of what The Lechón King just is—authentic, consistent, unforgettable.

No marketing plan.No segmentation strategy.No campaign calendar.

Just food. Soul. And the type of street-level storytelling that builds real, lasting loyalty.

I’ve worked in this field long enough to know:Most brands would kill for this kind of community.

But instead of showing up with value, they show up with gimmicks.Instead of consistency, they give performance theater.Instead of heart, they give hollow promises wrapped in “tone-of-voice guidelines.”

Meanwhile, The Lechón King shows up, feeds people, and leaves them better than he found them.

As a marketer, I admired the clarity.

As a dad, I was just proud.

My son got to see what real passion looks like. Not polished. Not curated. Just real.

He got to feel what community feels like when it isn’t manufactured.

And I got to teach him—without needing a single slide deck—that this is what connection looks like. This is what earned attention feels like.

So here’s what I took away from that smoky sidewalk:

* If your brand has to tell people it’s authentic, it’s probably not.

* If your customer experience doesn’t leave people talking, you’re forgettable.

* And if you’re chasing loyalty but not giving love? You’ve already lost.

Flor didn’t just send me for pork—She sent me to see something most people miss.She always sees the bigger picture.Helps me notice what matters.I came back thinking about marketing.My son came back with a memory he’ll never forget.

We pigged out.We laughed.And we left full—body, heart, and brain.

If your strategy can’t hold up next to a folding table and a man with a machete, maybe it’s time to rethink the recipe.

Thanks, King.

And thank you, Flor—for sending me straight into the belly of the brand truth.

P.S.Yeah—he was reviewed by The New York Times.They found him, wrote him up, gave him the credit he’s earned. And here’s the thing:He knows. He knows exactly how good he is.But nothing’s changed. No merch. No Instagram strategy. No “Lechón King™” franchise in Miami.Just pork. On a Saturday. From a man with a machete, a busted oven, and a crowd that shows up hungry every week.And somehow, that’s enough. Enough to feed his nine kids. Enough to hold the block down.Enough to remind the rest of us that sometimes, staying small is the real flex.

You can hear it in the frustrated people's voices.

Rising prices

Deceptive fees

Layoffs that make no sense

There’s a growing feeling that businesses are squeezing every last dollar out of consumers while giving less in return.

And here’s the truth: they are.

But what’s worse?

They’re about to get away with even more.

The corporations driving these practices aren’t just counting on consumer apathy; they’re actively dismantling the institutions that keep them in check.

Two of the most significant regulators standing between businesses and unchecked corporate greed are the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which are under attack.

If the CFPB is dissolved, corporations won’t just be free to raise prices and exploit consumers; they’ll be able to do it without breaking a single law.

And if the FTC is weakened, no one will be left to stop monopolies from tightening their economic grip.

This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a corporate power grab. And most people won’t see the consequences until it’s too late.

What Happens If the CFPB Disappears?

The CFPB was created after the 2008 financial crisis to prevent banks and lenders from exploiting consumers. It was a direct response to a system that had become too reckless, predatory, and powerful.

The CFPB forces banks and lenders to:

* Disclose hidden fees and unfair loan terms

* Stop misleading marketing for financial products

* Limit abusive overdraft fees and credit card penalties

* Hold major institutions accountable for fraud and deception

It has issued billions in refunds and penalties, forcing companies like Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and Bank of America to pay for misconduct.

If it’s eliminated, that accountability vanishes overnight.

* Expect higher overdraft charges, credit card penalties, and hidden fees.

* Lenders will have free rein to offer deceptive loans that trap people in endless debt cycles.

* Errors in credit and background checks will skyrocket, making it harder for people to rent homes, get jobs, or access fair loan rates.

* Consumer complaints will go unanswered because no agency will investigate claims or issue refunds.

While the CFPB focuses on financial institutions, the FTC stands between consumers and unchecked corporate dominance.

Under Lina Khan’s leadership, the FTC has cracked down on:

* Amazon for monopolistic practices that crush small businesses

* Big Tech for deceptive data collection and privacy violations

* Retailers for false advertising and pricing manipulation

* Pharmaceutical companies for price gouging essential drugs

If the FTC is weakened:

* Amazon, Walmart, and Big Tech will further cement their monopolies. Small businesses won’t survive.

* False advertising and manipulative pricing will explode because there will be no fear of legal consequences.

* Companies will control pricing without oversight, driving up everyday costs.

Think prices are bad now? Imagine what happens when monopolies control everything, and there’s no one left to challenge them.

Connecting the Dots

Without the CFPB to regulate financial abuses and the FTC to stop monopolies from eliminating competition, we’ll see:

* Higher prices, fewer options, and no meaningful protections against deceptive business practices.

* Workers are being squeezed even more complexly as corporations seek new ways to cut costs.

* Consumers are locked into financial systems they can’t escape, with predatory lending and unchecked banking fees becoming the norm.

This is not an accident.

Corporations have spent years lobbying for deregulation, waiting for the moment when they could operate with no restrictions.

That moment is here.

Why Marketing Matters in All of This

Marketing is what shapes public perception.

It’s what allows companies to:

* Justify price hikes as “inflation adjustments” when they’re profit grabs

* Position higher fees as “improvements” to customer experience

* Make deceptive business practices seem normal, even inevitable

If we don’t fix how marketing operates, consumers won’t realize they’re being exploited.

That’s why we created the Marketing Accountability Council (MAC).

We saw this coming when we launched the MAC one year ago at the B2B Marketing Exchange conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.

We knew that marketing isn’t just about selling products—it’s about shaping people's thinking about business, pricing, and corporate ethics.

We’ve spent the last year building a movement to change how marketing functions—because when marketing is honest, consumers are informed. And when consumers are informed, they make different choices.

Marketing is what lets corporations get away with bad behavior. Fixing marketing is how we start holding them accountable.

The Year in Review: The Marketing Accountability Council’s Impact & The Fight Ahead

What We Built: A Movement That Can’t Be Ignored

* 100+ articles exposing marketing’s biggest myths, failures, and rare victories.

* A growing movement: Our audience tripled this year, with marketers and industry leaders joining the fight for real accountability.

* More than talk: We’re actively dismantling the narratives that have justified corporate deception for decades.

* Weekly Meetings Every Friday at 3 PM Eastern — Our meetings allow marketers to speak their minds, debate, and define solutions together. Many call it the highlight of their week.

The MAC Agenda: Taking on the Lies at the Core of the System

Marketing today is built on delusions that serve corporations—not consumers. That’s why we’re rallying behind The Delusion Series, led by MAC Founding Member Jacob Sanders exposing the biggest marketing myths:

The Digital Ad Delusion: Vanity metrics mean nothing. Companies waste billions on ads no one actually sees—then use those numbers to justify price hikes and bloated marketing budgets.

The Product Delusion: Great products don’t sell themselves. Companies manipulate demand by controlling supply chains, limiting access, and creating artificial scarcity.

The Growth Delusion: Infinite growth is a lie. Marketing’s obsession with nonstop expansion burns out businesses, crushes employees, and forces companies to engage in deceptive practices to sustain an illusion.

The Branding Delusion: Brand love is overrated. Consumers don’t buy from brands they “love” if the product is inconvenient, overpriced, or unnecessary.

The MAC isn’t just talking about better marketing—we’re actively dismantling the narratives that have justified corporate deception for decades.

What Comes Next: Action, Not Just Words

Step 1: Exposing Deceptive Marketing Practices

If corporations are going to lie, they’ll use marketing to do it.We’re launching a consumer education initiative to expose:🔎 How companies use false advertising to justify price hikes🔎 The hidden tactics businesses use to manipulate public opinion🔎 The ways corporations twist narratives to make unethical behavior seem normalWe are going to name names and hold the biggest players accountable.

Step 2: Training a New Generation of Ethical Marketers

If we want businesses to act differently, we need marketers who know how to sell with integrity—not deception.We’re launching an Ethical Marketing Certification to train marketers on:✔ Developing real, honest strategies that serve both businesses and consumers✔ Fighting against deceptive advertising and manipulative pricing tactics✔ Shifting the industry toward transparency and sustainability

Step 3: Defending Consumer Protections Before They’re Gone

If the CFPB and FTC are dismantled, corporations won’t just bend the rules—they’ll rewrite them.We are going to:📢 Push for consumer protection laws that prevent corporations from manipulating pricing, fees, and advertising📢 Expose lawmakers and lobbyists working to dismantle regulatory protections📢 Apply economic pressure on businesses that refuse to support ethical policies

Step 4: Building a Consumer Movement That Can’t Be Ignored

Consumers have far more power than they realize—but only if they know how to use it.We’re bringing together:✔ Marketers who want to rebuild the industry with integrity✔ Consumers who want to stop being manipulated✔ Businesses that believe transparency and accountability are long-term strategies for success

This Is the Moment We’ve Been Preparing For

If marketing doesn’t change, corporations will use it to justify every shady practice in the book.

And if we don’t act now, we will lose the last meaningful barriers to unchecked corporate power.

The Marketing Accountability Council was built for this moment.We are the only organization connecting the dots between marketing, corporate power, and consumer rights.

📢 Join us.📢 Push for real accountability.📢 Demand better—if we don’t, no one else will.

Stay accountable. Stay loud. We’re just getting started.

Netflix now has an ad-supported tier. In Q1 2024, 22% of U.S. subscribers watched ads—a 65% jump in just one quarter. By 2027, 60% of Netflix viewers will be watching commercials again. The cycle is complete. The same platforms that conditioned audiences to expect uninterrupted, ad-free content are slowly reintroducing the very thing they swore they’d never have: commercials.

And it’s not just Netflix.

* Disney+ has ads. The same company that promised high-quality, premium storytelling is now making its revenue model look suspiciously like linear TV.

* HBO Max, now just ‘Max,’ is a shell of its former self. The prestige brand that defined premium, ad-free content has stripped away its identity, chasing mainstream appeal.

* Peacock, Paramount+, and Discovery+ exist in name, but they’re really just cable networks in disguise. The same content, the same players, just behind different digital paywalls and with a lousy user experience.

* YouTube, once the home of independent creators, is now aggressively pushing ads to make non-premium users watch longer, unskippable interruptions.

Audiences aren’t choosing ads. They’re tolerating them. Subscription fatigue is real. The average household now pays for 4-5 streaming services—often costing more than cable ever did. So what happens when prices rise? People opt for ad-supported plans. Not because they want to, but because they have to.

For now, the ad load is lighter than traditional TV. But as financial pressures increase, expect more breaks, longer interruptions, and a shift back to the intrusive advertising experience we thought we left behind.

Who Controls What You See?

The shift isn’t just about ads. It’s about control. Legacy media once dictated what content we consumed. That power has shifted—but not to audiences. Instead, algorithms have replaced the gatekeepers.

* Netflix, Disney+, and YouTube decide what you see through data-driven recommendations—not your preferences, but what they want you to watch.

* TikTok determines virality in seconds, pushing content that serves its engagement model, not necessarily what’s most relevant or important.

* Even independent creators—who were supposed to be free from the constraints of traditional media—are now at the mercy of shifting platform priorities and revenue structures.

At the same time, we are seeing a lot of success on these rented platforms for talented creators who are not beholden to legacy media. Chris Cuomo left CNN and built a digital empire on Newsnation.

Don Lemon owns his show, but his reach is dictated by the same algorithm that can decide tomorrow that his content no longer fits.

Aaron Parnas bypassed the traditional news industry, but his influence is only as strong as the engagement he generates.

For marketers, the lesson is clear: you don’t own your audience. You never have. You rent access, whether it’s from NBC, Netflix, TikTok, or Substack. The difference now is that the platforms can change the rules instantly, and you can do nothing about it.

What This Means for Marketing and Communication

Understanding media shifts isn’t just about keeping up with entertainment trends—it’s about understanding how audiences consume information, engage with brands, and what that means for communication strategies.

* Short-form grabs attention. TikTok is where trends start, and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are following suit.

* Long-form builds loyalty. YouTube and podcasts keep audiences engaged and deepen relationships.

* Ad tolerance is growing, but patience is shrinking. People will accept interruptions, but they expect relevance and value. Lazy, disruptive ads won’t cut it.

* Authenticity is the new production value. Traditional, polished ad formats are losing ground to content that feels real, personal, and unfiltered.

The media landscape is evolving, and with it, so must marketing. Marketers who cling to old playbooks will get left behind. Those who understand where attention is shifting and why will shape the next era of brand communication.

Streaming didn’t kill TV—it brought it back under new management. And if we’re paying attention, there’s a lot to learn.

Let’s be real—marketing is in shambles.

* Brands are pushing low-quality products at premium prices.

* Algorithms are dictating human behavior instead of just reflecting it.

* AI is spitting out garbage content that people instinctively recognize as soulless.

* Consumers are exhausted, skeptical, and disengaged—because marketers have trained them to be.

So how did we get here? And more importantly—how do we fix this mess?

In a raw, unfiltered conversation, Michael Munson (author of Sponsorship Stories), Jay Mandel, and Jacob Sanders tackled some of the biggest challenges facing marketing today:

* The rise of "sh*tification"—why everything from jeans to streaming services is getting worse

* How AI is warping consumer behavior and influencing language itself

* Why modern marketing is obsessed with performance over substance

* The myth of “endless growth” and the corporate accountability crisis

* How marketers can rebuild trust, respect, and honesty in the industry

If you care about the future of marketing—or want to understand why everything around you feels like it’s slowly falling apart—this conversation is for you.

📺 Watch the full discussion and explore the key insights throughout this article.

How Did We Get Here? The Rise of "Sh*tification"

Q: What Inspired the Article on MAC and the Concept of “Shtification”?*

Michael Munson: “I wanted to capture the moment we’re in—where everything seems to be getting worse, but no one is sure why. The MAC is playing an important role in calling this out. People are frustrated—whether it’s their chocolate chips shrinking from 12 ounces to 10 or their favorite jeans falling apart in months. It’s not just the products; it’s a symptom of a deeper issue.”

Jacob Sanders: “People have been conditioned to not care. Marketers pushed nonsense for years, and now consumers have become nihilistic. They expect manipulation, accept declining quality, and don’t bother questioning it anymore.”

Shtification*—a term popularized to describe how once-great products and services are declining in quality—has become a universal experience. Whether it’s fast fashion, food portions, or digital services, consumers are noticing the slow but deliberate erosion of value. Yet, instead of fighting back, most have resigned themselves to it.

Michael Munson: “If you’re not pushing back, you’re accepting it. And if you’re accepting it, you’re embracing it.”

AI, Ethics, and the Illusion of Intelligence

Q: Can Ethical Marketing Save Democracy?

Michael Munson: “I asked an AI chatbot, ‘Can ethical marketing save democracy?’ It responded, ‘Save is a strong word, but it can strengthen it.’ That was a moment of validation—because marketing isn’t just selling things, it shapes how people think and interact.”

Jacob Sanders: “Most people aren’t using AI to challenge their assumptions. They’re using it to find shortcuts. They’re avoiding the hard questions and using AI to ‘win’ rather than to reflect.”

Jay Mandel: “AI isn’t just a neutral tool—it’s trained on biased data. If it tells us that ethical marketing is important, it’s because the collective knowledge already knows it’s true. But are marketers paying attention?”

AI isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s a reflection of the information it’s trained on. The problem? Marketers are using AI to justify and optimize the same broken tactics rather than question them.

The Death of Skills, the Rise of Performative Values

Jacob Sanders: “We’ve replaced real skills with what we think are values—but they’re not values, they’re just vibes. People are managing expectations and perceptions rather than actually doing anything.”

Marketing used to be about understanding people, creating real value, and fostering trust. Now, it’s a race to manipulate data, automate engagement, and seem innovative without actually being innovative.

Michael Munson: “Companies used to be built on tangible skills. Now, success is based on managing expectations. People don’t need to be competent, they just need to perform well on LinkedIn.”

This shift from doing to appearing to do has eroded not just marketing, but the entire business ecosystem.

The Corporate Accountability Crisis

Jacob Sanders: “We’ve reached a point where marketers don’t even think they need to talk to people anymore. They don’t think about sales, about business fundamentals, or about how their actions impact democracy. They’re just running ads, chasing clicks, and moving on.”

Michael Munson: “Most companies refuse to admit failure. They chase ‘exceptionalism’ instead of ‘excellence.’ But real excellence comes from confronting brutal facts, being transparent, and working to improve.”

Jay Mandel: “Consumers see through this. They know when brands are lying. But because so many companies are doing it, they feel powerless to change it.”

The MAC argues that businesses must own their mistakes, address consumer frustration, and rebuild trust. Companies like Starbucks, which admitted they had lost their way, are rare—but they’re proving that honesty can be profitable.

What Can Be Done? The Power of Consumer Action

Q: Can Consumers Push Back Against Shtification?*

Michael Munson: “At some point, people will push back. If you raise the price of chocolate chips by 20% in a month, someone will stop buying them. That’s how markets work—if people say ‘no,’ companies have to adjust. But consumers have to be aware enough to take action.”

Jacob Sanders: “We don’t need everyone to start a revolution. We just need people to stop accepting every price hike, every shrinkflation scam, and every dishonest ad as ‘just the way things are.’”

While it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of corporate deception, history shows that consumer action can drive change. The MAC is calling on marketers and consumers alike to start demanding better.

Final Thought: Why the MAC Exists

Jacob Sanders: “The MAC isn’t here to sugarcoat things. If you’re a marketer and you don’t see the connection between your work and democracy, you’re part of the problem. Start asking, ‘Does this make sense?’ If it doesn’t, push back. Otherwise, don’t complain when the world keeps getting shttier.”*

Jay Mandel: “We’re building something different. Slow, intentional growth. Real conversations. No fluff. Because marketing doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom.”

Michael Munson: “At the rate we’re going, ‘shtification’ will be a college major. But if we do this right, maybe we can prevent that from happening.”*

Join the Movement

The Marketing Accountability Council (MAC) is challenging marketers to be better.

📖 Read Michael Munson’s full article:It’s Time for Sustainable Marketing

📺 Watch the full conversation above and decide for yourself: Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?