Observations on creativity, strategy, taste, culture, persuasion, and the future of brand storytelling.
How I built a life settlement marketplace.
For 23 years I marketed one business to three audiences at once: people selling their life insurance policies, the agents who referred them, and investors in Germany, Latin America and Taiwan. The answer was one brand each could believe for its own reasons.
AI can make anything. It can’t make anyone believe it.
Persuasion is cheap now. AI made every brand more persuasive and none of them more believable. Trust is a record, AI needs direction, and the machines now read your record too. Sometimes the strongest thing a brand says is what it doesn’t.
Which Hollywood icons still have selling power?
An influencer is someone your niece can name. An icon is someone your niece, your mother and you can all name. Fourteen of them are still here, still recognized on sight, and still have a public record of selling. Almost nobody is calling.
What must a founder decide before commissioning a rebrand?
Most rebrands are commissioned in a moment of frustration, and a new identity will not fix an offer, a price, or a sales process — it will only make them more visible. Seven decisions come before the design, and none of them are visual.
Spectacle isn’t decoration. It’s a forcing function.
In 1994 a billboard went up over a Fort Lauderdale sports bar, came down in six days, and went back up in one. A billboard can’t be skipped, can’t be optimized, and forces a public argument — and the argument is better distribution than the location.
They shot at the room in April. In July the reporters came back.
In April, a gunman ended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In July the reporters came back, put on black tie, and gave out awards for the stories that made powerful people angry. A free press was never built to be popular — it was built to be inconvenient.
When AI recommends a brand, is it recommending yours?
For twenty-five years, the question every brand asked was “Where do we rank?” That question is quietly dying. When a buyer asks an AI what to buy, the only thing that matters is whether it says your name — and that is a branding problem, not an SEO one.
How Betty White became the trusted face of the life settlement industry — and who built the marketing behind it.
A financial product can exist for years and still be invisible. Moving life settlements from a misunderstood transaction into a mainstream industry was marketing work. The single most important decision was bringing in Betty White — the most trusted face in America — as the public face of the category.
In a world where execution is everywhere, taste is what will set you apart.
There was a time when access separated creatives. Access to cameras. Access to editing suites. Access to designers, photographers, studios, production teams. Now almost anyone can generate something impressive in seconds. The barrier to execution has collapsed.
AI isn't replacing creative directors. It's elevating the ones who evolve.
We are entering a new era. An era where imagination and intelligence collide at scale. AI is not a trend. It's a new creative partner. The question isn't if it will change our industry — it already has.
Speed, sameness, and safe creative are making brands forgettable.
Turn on any feed and you'll see it. The same tones. The same fonts. The same angles. The same campaigns. Different logos. Same soul. Brands aren't becoming more creative. They're becoming more algorithmic.