Cautionary Tales

Last week, I called out a social media influencer who crossed the line.  She posted on LinkedIn about the a program she was selling. Below the post she added 10 comments. In each comment, she tagged 30 of her connections.  No commentary in the comments. Just tagged connections — 300 in all.  Why’d she do…

May I vent a little?  Last week, I got an email from a business coach (let’s call him “Pinocchio”) who pitched Sai Blackbyrn’s free course.  Sai is a well-established coach-for-coaches with a complex marketing machine.  Pinocchio wrote: “I have something very special for you, I just got off the phone with my friend, Forbes-featured, best-selling…

A cautionary tale about the wrong way to conduct email marketing… Last July, I met an executive coach and author who impressed me. So I bought his book and joined his email list.  That month, he emailed me a pitch to join his mastermind program. A month later, he sent another mastermind pitch.  Then silence…

A cautionary tale about TikTok, other social platforms, and online advertising channels. A marketer posted a cry for help on a public forum last week: “Engagement on TikTok went down significantly … HELP!”  He used to get 10,000+ views and “lots of engagement” with each TikTok post. All of a sudden, views and engagement plummeted.…

My AI copywriting robot is full of feces   Before I explain with a story, two things you must know:  1) This is IMPORTANT for anyone who uses ChatGPT or other AI-powered content-generators. Yes, this email is long. But I encourage you to read it top-to-bottom. I don’t use all-caps often. When I say IMPORTANT, I mean…

Here’s a sad but predictable story about the perils of robot-generated writing. A business owner in Maryland was hiring for a tech position. One applicant rose to the top after exchanging several well-written emails with the owner. Then came the interview. The applicant could barely spit out a complete sentence. It was so bad, the…

I watched the Chiefs-Eagles game while in Mexico on Sunday so I didn’t see most of the US television ads…  …until this week when I saw the endless parade of “Best Ad” lists and “Lessons Learned…” analyses.  This Squarespace ad, starring Adam Driver, made some of the lists.  Here it is… And what does this…

I bumped into a business owner this week who refuses to market with email… …because she doesn’t like getting email.  “I have 74 million marketing emails in my inbox,” she said. “I can’t stand it.”  Yeah, I get lots of emails I can’t stand, too. But I still send emails — lots of them… …because…

Here’s a story oozing with irony… …about robotic marketing gone wrong.  In December, I hosted a LinkedIn event called “Human vs. Machine Marketing.” One of the lessons we promised in the event description:  “Why set-it-and-forget it robotic marketing backfires.”  Fast forward to yesterday when – two months after the event ended – a LinkedIn member…