Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post

Don’t call it a comeback… but did you miss me?

We took a few weeks off to focus on other things (more on that soon…) but your friendly neighbourhood postman is back, ready to deliver.

And I’m picking up where I left off, ruminating on the rapid reshaping of the marketing landscape at the hands of our old adversary, AI.

Let’s get to it…

AI and digital, in three conversations 💬

Are you bored of conversations about AI?

I kind of am. 🫠

It feels like everything that needs to be said has been said.

So rather than the same boring chat, let me share 3 recent conversations that gave me a really clear view of where we’re at.

Those conversations are:

1. “The Sloppening” ⚰️
2. The competitive advantage 🏆
3. The now and not yet 🔮

The first conversation was sparked when someone sent me this post – titled “The Sloppening”.

It warns of the overwhelming spread of low-quality, AI-generated content.

(You should read the whole thing)

It’s fairly damning: “We’ve sloptimised ourselves into oblivion”

But it’s also clear: “AI didn’t break things, we did.”

We’re the pilot, AI is the plane.

Applying marketing expertise and strategy is crucial.

As a digital agency, we’re developing an approach that gets the most out of AI content generation without losing authenticity and authority.

It’s a framework designed to safeguard your brand from the pitfalls of AI-generated content, while keeping innovation and creativity at the core of your strategy.

Spoiler; more often than not it points towards original creativity over AI slop.

Which leads me to the second conversation…

Someone asked me (in a half-polite way):

“Anyone can use AI to create a social media strategy, a monthly schedule, and a month’s worth of graphics and captions in 5 minutes. So why shouldn’t I?”

My answer was easy.

“You shouldn’t, because everyone can.”

When it comes to digital marketing, people wrongly position AI as the clear competitive advantage.

But if everyone has access to the competitive advantage, it’s not really an advantage, is it? In fact it’s the exact opposite – the competitive disadvantage.

In a world of slop, you gain ground by pursuing what AI hasn’t nailed yet;

100% connection, 100% creativity, 100% authenticity.

Supplement it with AI, but start with the human.

It sounds like I’m a skeptic in complete denial.

But that’s where the third conversation comes in:

“One day AI will take all of our jobs, no one will work and the government will have to fund universal salaries for everyone.”

It’s true. AI will take 80% of all jobs that don’t require manual labour (those are for the robots to take.)

When that happens is less clear.

Probably not before 2050, but who knows?

At the moment we’re living in the now and not yet.

We know the way things are going, and I’m not naive enough to think that very soon AI won’t be producing slop, but content that is 100% creative and 100% authentic.

But that moment is not today, and we shouldn’t pretend it is just because we can all turn ourselves into Disney Pixar characters at the drop of a prompt.

Here’s ours btw (sorry Matt and Mark):

We’re prioritising how to get the most out of AI now, and also preparing for future developments.

If you want to do the same, it looks like two things:

• Become an AI-Augmented Marketer – Learn AI tools like ChatGPT, MidJourney, and AI-driven analytics.
• Stay ahead of AI developments, ethics & regulation – know what’s here, what’s coming and what won’t stay.

That’s all for today.

What do you think, more AI or less AI in future newsletters? I wouldn’t be offended either way:

See you next week.

✌️

Promotion alone won’t cut it 👀

In 2010 I studies for a diploma in marketing.

Every Tuesday and Thursday I drove to Stoke-on-Trent in my 1986 Nissan Micra for evening classes with the Charted Institute of Marketing.

I’m feeling nostalgic just thinking about it. Look at her:

To be honest, a lot of the diploma felt irrelevant.

It was about supply chains and international markets, in a time where marketing was in purgatory – digital was emerging but not a viable or understood channel.

It was helpful to a point.

It taught me a few things – most surprisingly that there’s a university in Stoke-on-Trent.

The one thing I remember above everything else is the Four P’s of Marketing.

But before I get into that, let me tell you a familiar story:

When fundraising, sales or revenue aren’t going to plan, the CEO tends to be straight at the door of the marketing department. A “what can we do to move the needle” chat. A request to see the analytics. A demotivating tone that the latest campaign has seen disappointing numbers.

We all know the scenario, right.

But don’t worry, you’re in a safe space here in this marketers’ community, and I’m pleased to tell you that it’s not all your fault.

Back to the Four P’s of Marketing: The four essential elements, with equal weighting, that contribute to your success:

• Product: Is what you’re ‘selling’ any good? Can it be improved?
• Price: Is the price point representing value? Is it affordable and reasonable?
• Place: Is the place people buy it easily navigable? Is your marketing where people are?
• Promotion: Is your marketing message effective?

All four are elements of marketing, and as marketers we have to take responsibility for all four, even though two of them are hard for us to influence.

Promotion is only 25% responsible for your performance.

So when campaigns, products and sales flop and it’s time to do a post-mortem, why do we put a disproportionate amount of attention on promotion? If you think back to your last failure, can you analyse the whole, taking into account all four P’s not just one?

In my experience, the main culprit for underperformance is the Product itself.

We often think our product/service/charity has a right to exist.

Or that there’s an audience desperately waiting for it.

That’s just not true, and a lot of commercially successful start ups that get profile for having great marketing campaigns actually understand that it’s a combination of promotion, product, price and place.

If you were to improve your product, price and place, what steps would you take?

That’s all for today.

 What even is

 marketing? 🤔

Sometimes I wish I worked in the golden era of advertising.

You know the one; skyscrapers in Manhattan, trilby hats, client dinners.

Whiskies at 9am 🥃

Inspiration at all hours ⚡️🕰️

Storm into a boardroom to deliver the headline that’s been alluding everybody.

Walk out triumphant. 🤴

Don’t worry, it’s not the whisky, cigars and party lifestyle that attracts me.

It’s the approach they had to selling stuff.

We live in a different world now.

As channels multiplied and attention evaporated, advertising morphed into marketing and we lost something.

Take a look at this:

It’s bold, it’s clever and it reads easy.

It breaks every rule in the book, but it sells you a vision. It makes you feel something. You’re ready to roll up your sleeves for the underdog. 💪

I recently saw a quote from the golden era:

I wish we approached marketing the same way.

There’s no such thing as a good ad, only good content that gets read/watched.

People connect with a vision and are prompted by emotion.

Digital is different to print, but the concept still stands 65 years later.

We have to create content that interests people.

We know that deep down, but we talk-the-talk more than we walk-the-walk.

We applaud Apple and Nike’s campaigns, we quote Simon Sinek, we share the John Lewis Christmas ad and we watch the Pespi halftime show at the Superbowl.

As marketers, we recognise what makes great advertising.

So why don’t we do more of it?

Answer: We are drawn to the easy sell.

The quick, lukewarm headlines.

The endless URLs and CTAs.

Why do we care more about hashtags than the craft of good copy?

Consider this a call to arms to the heyday of advertising. 📢

Let’s unite at the skyscraper at 9am, whisky-less but grasping our oat milk flat whites, ready to inject some creativity into our marketing.

And if you need some external perspective and a huge dose of creativity, get in touch and work with us.

Because this is an ad, after all.

See you next week ✌️