Thinking Between Briefs

Judgment calls on advertising, experience, and technology 

This is where I put the thinking that doesn’t always fit neatly into a brief or a deck. The moments between projects, pitches, and deadlines where patterns start to show and questions get more interesting.

These articles explore strategy as it’s actually practiced: messy, pressured, human, and consequential. From customer experience and cultural relevance to innovation, data, and decision-making, this is about clarifying what matters, cutting through noise, and making the work better before it ever becomes work.

If you’re looking for trends, you’ll find plenty elsewhere.
If you’re looking for judgment, you’re in the right place.

The Most Dangerous Thing About AI Isn’t That It’s Wrong 

February 28, 2026

It’s That It Sounds Right.

We’ve all seen this movie.

You upload a document.
You ask a question.
The AI answers with calm confidence.

It fills in gaps. Connects dots. Smooths over inconsistencies.

And you think:
“Well… that’s impressive.”

It is.

It’s also the problem.

“AI would rather guess than say ‘I don’t know.’”

That’s not incompetence.
That’s optimization.

These systems are trained to complete patterns. So when your document has a gap, they don’t pause. They patch. Smoothly. Confidently.

And that confidence is the trap.

The Real Risk Isn’t Error. It’s Fluency.

Most leaders testing AI are impressed by how articulate it sounds.

That’s the wrong metric.

Fluency is cheap.
Verification is expensive.

The protocol outlines three simple steps: select the right model, ground it in the document, and verify the output.

Notice what’s missing.

“Trust it.”

The Discipline Most Teams Skip

The 3-Rule Prompt is almost boring:

1. Base answers only on the uploaded document.

2. If something isn’t found, say “not found.” Don’t guess.

3. Provide citations for every claim.

That’s it.

No magic phrasing. No secret syntax.

Just forcing the model to behave like someone who knows you’ll check their work.

Most teams don’t do this. They want speed. They want output. They want something that “sounds right.”

We’ve all seen how that ends.

High Stakes? Reduce the Volume.

There’s a section on “High Stakes Mode” for contracts and financial analysis.

The instruction is blunt: only respond with information you are 100% confident came from the file.

You’ll get less back.

Good.

In decision-making, shorter and verified beats longer and plausible every time.

The Quiet Strategic Shift

The line that stuck with me:

“Trust is not a strategy.”

That’s the entire mindset shift.

AI is leverage. Extracting data from documents is real opportunity.
But leverage without guardrails is just acceleration toward risk.

The companies that get this right won’t be the ones who prompt better.

They’ll be the ones who design better decision systems around AI.

Less guessing.
More grounding.
Independent verification.

It’s not flashy.

It’s how you stay credible in a tough room.

And credibility is still the only currency that matters.

Stop Optimizing Keywords. Start Designing for Intent.

February 4, 2026

For a long time, paid search strategy was built around a comforting assumption:
people know what they want, they search for it, and ads respond.

That assumption no longer holds.

Today, Google Ads operates inside an AI system designed to interpret decisions in progress, not just queries typed into a box. The platform is less interested in the words someone uses and far more interested in what they’re trying to figure out.

If your Google Ads strategy still starts with keywords, you’re starting too late.

Search has shifted from intent expression to intent inference

Modern search behavior is messy. People don’t arrive fully formed with purchase intent. They arrive uncertain, exploring, troubleshooting, comparing, learning.

Google’s AI is built for that reality.

Rather than waiting for a perfect transactional query, the system analyzes conversational context, patterns, and problem signals to infer what someone might need next. Ads are then evaluated based on how well they support that inferred need.

This is why purely informational searches now trigger commercial outcomes. The system understands that problems lead to solutions, even when users haven’t articulated that step yet.

In this environment, ads aren’t responding to searches.
They’re responding to decision momentum.

Why keywords stopped being the strategy

Keywords still exist, but they no longer define structure or opportunity.

They function as inputs into a larger reasoning model that asks:

• What problem is unfolding here?

• How close is this person to action?

• What kind of information or reassurance would help them progress?

The same phrase can represent wildly different moments depending on context. A search for “best protein drink” could signal curiosity, comparison, or readiness. The system now distinguishes between those states automatically.

The implication is simple: organizing campaigns by match type or term lists is no longer enough. Strategy has to be built around intent states, not syntax.

What intent-first thinking changes for brands and agencies

When intent becomes the foundation, paid search stops being a media execution problem and becomes a strategic design challenge.

Eligibility
Visibility increasingly depends on whether your ads and pages align with the problem the system believes the user is solving. Control still matters, but relevance matters more.

Creative
Ad copy and assets need to speak to motivations and concerns, not just restate queries. Messaging that explains, reassures, or guides often outperforms messaging that pushes.

Landing experiences
Pages that help people understand why a product fits their situation perform better than pages that simply list features. The system favors alignment with the reasoning path, not just product description.

Data signals
Every asset, feed, and audience input teaches the system who your brand is for. First-party data doesn’t just target, it trains.

This is why paid search can no longer live in isolation from content, UX, or CRM thinking.

The reality check most teams need

Intent-driven systems aren’t magic.

They require:

• Enough data to learn

• A tolerance for higher-funnel exploration

• A broader definition of success than last-click conversion

Brands that expect instant efficiency from exploratory intent will struggle. Brands that plan for learning, sequencing, and progression will compound advantage over time.

The risk isn’t losing control.
The risk is clinging to a model that assumes people behave more cleanly than they do.

How to move forward without blowing everything up

You don’t need to abandon keywords or rebuild accounts from scratch.

Start by asking better questions:

• What decisions are our customers actually working through?

• What signals suggest where they are in that process?

• Does our messaging help them move forward, or just try to close?

From there, keywords become tools again. Not the blueprint.

Google Ads hasn’t become less strategic.
It’s become more honest about how people make decisions.

The teams that adapt won’t just perform better.
They’ll be designing for how discovery actually works now.

AEO and GEO Are Very Neccessary

January 27, 2026

They’re the New Gatekeepers of Visibility

SEO used to be about being found.

Today, it’s about being chosen.
And increasingly, it’s about being understood.

That shift has introduced two new terms into the marketing conversation: AEO and GEO. Most brands are hearing them. Very few are acting on them correctly.

What AEO Actually Means

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is about optimizing for answers, not clicks.

Search is no longer just a list of links. It’s a response. AI-driven systems now decide which source best explains a question and surface that explanation directly to the user.

If your content:

• Clearly answers real questions

• Is specific, credible, and structured

• Demonstrates expertise rather than promotion

You get selected.

If it doesn’t, you don’t lose rankings.
You lose relevance.

AEO rewards brands that explain things well, not brands that shout the loudest.

What GEO Changes Entirely

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) raises the stakes.

In generative environments, AI doesn’t just point to sources. It interprets them. It synthesizes information across multiple inputs to create new responses.

That means your brand may influence the answer without being mentioned at all.

Or worse, be excluded entirely because your positioning is unclear, inconsistent, or shallow.

In GEO, you are no longer just indexed.
You are translated.

And vague thinking doesn’t translate well.

Why This Is a Bigger Marketing Shift Than It Looks

This isn’t a new channel. It’s a new decision layer.

Customers are forming opinions, preferences, and shortlists before they ever visit a website. Visibility is moving upstream, into AI-generated answers, summaries, and recommendations.

Brands that aren’t legible at this stage don’t get considered later.

The danger isn’t an immediate drop in traffic.
It’s a slow disappearance from the moments that matter most.

What Brands Should Be Rethinking Right Now

This shift forces a change in mindset.

From optimizing pages
to structuring thinking.

From publishing content
to teaching clearly.

From “What do we want to say?”
to “What are people actually asking?”

Brands that perform well in AEO and GEO environments tend to:

• Have clear, differentiated positioning

• Answer pricing, comparison, and use-case questions directly

• Show depth, not surface-level marketing language

• Align messaging across channels instead of fragmenting it

AI doesn’t reward polish.
It rewards coherence.

What to Start Doing (and Stop Doing)

Start:

• Writing content that explains, not teases

• Making your value proposition unmistakably clear

• Treating your website as a source of authority, not just conversion

Stop:

• Chasing keywords without context

• Publishing thin content for volume’s sake

• Assuming SEO performance equals visibility

If an AI system can’t clearly explain what you do and why it matters, neither can your customers.

The Strategic Reality

AEO and GEO don’t replace SEO.
They expose whether your strategy was ever clear to begin with.

This isn’t about beating algorithms.
It’s about being understandable in a world where answers form instantly.

The brands that win won’t just be found.
They’ll be referenced.

And in a landscape where answers come before clicks, being referenced is the only visibility that matters.

Customer Experience Is the Real AI Strategy

January 11, 2026

Everyone is racing to adopt AI.
Very few are redesigning the experience.

That’s the problem.

According to MIT Technology Review, 96% of companies believe their customer experience is good or excellent. Only 55% of customers agree.
A 40% perception gap isn’t a technology failure.
It’s an experience failure.

AI doesn’t close that gap by being smarter.
It closes it by being more considerate.

The future of CX isn’t about automation.
It’s about removing effort.

Here are four AI trends every CX leader must act on — not as tech upgrades, but as experience strategy.

AI-First CX Means Faster Answers, Not Fewer Humans

Customers don’t wake up hoping to talk to a chatbot.
They wake up hoping not to need help at all.

AI-first CX puts the simplest path front and center:

• Track an order

• Change a detail

• Solve a small problem instantly

But when the issue becomes emotional, confusing, or complex, a human must be close and accessible.

Great CX isn’t choosing between AI or people.
It’s orchestrating both.

AI handles speed.
Humans handle trust.

From Conversations to Completion

Customer experience breaks when effort multiplies.

Agentic AI shifts CX from answering questions to completing tasks:

• Rebooking flights

• Updating accounts

• Resolving issues in one flow

The magic isn’t the technology.
It’s the absence of friction.

When AI handles routine tasks, human agents focus on what machines can’t:
judgment, empathy, and problem-solving.

That’s how efficiency becomes experience.

Memory Is the New Personalization Engine

Most brands treat every interaction like the first one.

Customers feel that.

AI-powered experience memory allows brands to recognize:

• Who the customer is

• What they’ve done

• What they need next

“Welcome back.”
“I see your last order had an issue.”
“Let’s pick up where you left off.”

This isn’t personalization.
It’s continuity.

And continuity is the foundation of loyalty.

CX Moves From Activity to Impact

For years, companies measured effort instead of outcomes:

• Calls handled

• Tickets closed

• Chat volume

AI changes that.

Now CX leaders can track:

• Time saved

• Problems resolved

• Customer frustration reduced

• Retention increased

Experience becomes visible.
And what becomes visible becomes strategic.

If you can’t prove your CX impact, you don’t have a CX strategy.
You have a dashboard.

The Principle That Ties It All Together

AI is not the strategy.
Customer experience is.

The brands that win won’t use AI to replace humans.
They’ll use it to remove friction, shorten time, and respect attention.

The best customer experiences won’t feel “AI-powered.”
They’ll feel thoughtful.
Predictable.
Easy.

Because customers don’t want smarter technology.
They want fewer obstacles.

And the future of CX belongs to the brands that design for one thing above all:

Less effort. More humanity.

WHY BRANDS ARE CREATING PEOPLE WHO DON’T EXIST

September 22, 2025

Synthetic influencers and virtual brand ambassadors aren’t a gimmick.
They’re a strategy.

Brands are experimenting with AI personas not to replace humans, but to remove risk, friction, and inconsistency.

A virtual ambassador never ages.
Never goes off-brand.
Never misses a post.
And can appear everywhere at once.

That’s control. And control scales.

Lil Miquela worked with Prada and Samsung.
Noonoouri partnered with Dior and Versace.
KFC turned Colonel Sanders into a virtual lifestyle influencer in China.

These aren’t stunts.
They’re systems.

AI personas can live across websites, apps, retail screens, and social feeds. They guide, recommend, and sell with one consistent voice.

They don’t just market.
They interface.

But there’s a tension.

Trust comes from humanity.
And AI is not human.

The strongest examples don’t pretend otherwise.

Duolingo’s owl is a character.
Balmain’s virtual army is symbolic.
Ralph Lauren’s digital models are clearly digital.

They don’t fake reality.
They design it.

This isn’t about eliminating people.
It’s about extending brands into culture with less friction.

Human creators bring emotion.
AI personas bring scale.

The future is hybrid.

Because the real question isn’t whether a brand ambassador is real.
It’s whether the experience feels intentional, useful, and honest.

Synthetic influencers aren’t the end of trust.
They’re a test of it.

And how brands use them will define the next era of connection.

INSIGHT IS NOT A STATISTIC. IT’S A HUMAN TENSION.

September 22, 2025

A statistic tells you what happened.
An insight explains why it mattered.

Too much “insight” in marketing is just observation dressed up as wisdom. “People want convenience.” “People value authenticity.” “People are on their phones.”

Groundbreaking stuff.

Real insight has friction. It reveals contradiction. It explains why people behave in ways that don’t always align with what they say.

People want control but avoid commitment.
They crave simplicity but make complex choices.
They want brands to stand for something, just not at the cost of their own comfort.

Insight lives in those gaps.

Finding it requires empathy, not just research. It means understanding context, pressure, emotion, and trade-offs. It means resisting the urge to simplify people into personas that behave predictably.

The strategist’s role is to surface those tensions and translate them into opportunity. Not to smooth them out, but to work with them.

Because when creative work is built on real human tension, it doesn’t need to shout. It resonates.

Insight isn’t something you “find.” It’s something you earn by paying attention.

RARE BEAUTY DIDN’T LAUNCH A FRAGRANCE. THEY LAUNCHED AN EXPERIENCE.

September 3, 2025

Most fragrance campaigns try to describe a scent.
Rare Beauty let people discover it.

With scratch-and-sniff billboards across New York City, Selena Gomez’s beauty brand turned out-of-home advertising into something it rarely is anymore: useful.

Not as spectacle.
As sampling.

The idea was simple.
Smell it.
Scan it.
Get it.

By partnering with Shopify’s Shop app, the campaign used geogated QR technology to let passersby claim a free rollerball sample directly from the street. No store visit. No searching. No friction.

A billboard became a product trial.
A moment became a transaction.
Curiosity became action.

This is what happens when physical and digital stop competing and start cooperating.

Out-of-home advertising has always been about reach.
Rare Beauty made it about experience.

They removed the biggest barrier in fragrance marketing: uncertainty.
You can’t trust a description of a scent.
You have to feel it.

So instead of shouting louder, they made trying easier.

The result?
Millions of views in days.
Not because it was loud.
But because it was smart.

This campaign didn’t rely on celebrity.
It relied on respect for the user’s time and curiosity.

No long funnel.
No heavy explanation.
No brand theatre.

Just a clear promise:
“If you’re here, you can try it now.”

That’s the shift.
Advertising is no longer just a message.
It’s a service.

When a billboard becomes a sampling channel, the medium changes meaning.
It’s no longer interruption.
It’s invitation.

Rare Beauty didn’t add technology for novelty.
They used it to remove friction.

And that’s the lesson.

Innovation doesn’t mean more features.
It means fewer steps.

The future of campaigns isn’t about creating moments people remember.
It’s about creating experiences people can enter instantly.

Because the brands that win won’t be the ones that tell the best stories.
They’ll be the ones that make the next action effortless.

Rare Beauty understood that.

And in doing so, they didn’t just launch a fragrance.
They redefined what a billboard can do.

REMOVING FRICTION IS THE MOST UNDERRATED EXPERIENCE STRATEGY.

June 11, 2025

Attention is expensive.
Time is irreplaceable.

Yet most brand experiences still ask people to work too hard.

Every extra click.
Every unclear instruction.
Every unnecessary login.

These aren’t minor issues. They’re friction. And friction is a tax customers feel even when they can’t name it.

People rarely leave because something breaks.
They leave because it takes too much effort.

Ease Is the Experience

The best experiences don’t feel impressive.
They feel easy.

They anticipate needs.
They make the next step obvious.
They remove obstacles instead of adding features.

Nowhere does this matter more than mobile checkout.

What Removing Friction Looks Like

Everlane’s mobile checkout is a masterclass in restraint.

It works because it respects how people actually use their phones:

• Large, touch-friendly fields and buttons

• A clean, uncluttered layout that’s easy to scan

• Primary actions placed within natural thumb reach

• Prominent Apple Pay and Google Pay options to minimize effort

Nothing flashy. Nothing unnecessary. Just momentum.

Everlane isn’t trying to impress users at checkout.
They’re trying to get out of the way.

Friction Is a Decision Problem

Most friction exists because no one was willing to say no.

No to one more step.
No to one more message.
No to one more feature that “might help.”

Removing friction requires discipline. It means fewer tools, fewer decisions, and fewer chances to hesitate. It means designing for momentum, not novelty.

Respect Wins

Experience strategy isn’t about delight.
It’s about respect.

Respect for attention.
Respect for cognitive load.
Respect for context.

If an experience needs to be explained, it’s already too complex. If it requires effort to understand, it’s already losing trust.

The brands that win don’t just capture attention.
They give time back.

And in an economy defined by overload, ease isn’t a feature.
It’s the clearest signal of respect a brand can send.

CX ISN’T A JOURNEY MAP. IT’S A COMMITMENT.

May 22, 2025

Let’s get this out of the way.

If customer experience were solved by journey maps, every brand would be beloved by now. We’ve mapped the hell out of customers. We’ve workshopped them. Printed them. Laminated them. Hung them on walls like motivational posters.

And yet somehow… the experience is still broken.

That’s because CX isn’t a deliverable. It’s a decision. Actually, it’s a series of uncomfortable decisions that most organizations politely avoid.

Real CX doesn’t happen in workshops. It happens when someone finally says, “This is confusing, and it’s our fault,” and then actually fixes it.

Here’s the truth most brands don’t love hearing:
You don’t have a marketing problem.
You have an experience debt problem.

You promise ease and deliver effort.
You promise care and deliver automation.
You promise premium and deliver instructions written by legal.

And then you ask marketing to “smooth it over.”

Customers don’t experience brands in silos. They experience them as a continuous emotional thread. Every delay, unclear message, forced login, policy workaround, and “please contact support” chips away at trust. Not dramatically. Quietly. Which is worse.

Great CX work is boring in the best possible way.

It removes steps instead of adding features.
It clarifies instead of explains.
It anticipates questions instead of reacting to complaints.

When CX works, nobody says, “Wow, great CX.” They say, “That was easy.” And then they move on with their lives. That’s the goal.

The most effective CX strategies start with a few brave commitments:

• We will design for how people actually behave, not how we wish they did.

• We will stop hiding friction behind branding.

• We will optimize for clarity, not cleverness.

• We will fix the things that don’t show up in campaigns but absolutely show up in churn.

And yes, this requires leadership. Because CX forces trade-offs. You can’t be amazing everywhere. You have to choose the moments that matter most and be ruthless about making those excellent.

CX isn’t a journey map. It’s the ongoing willingness to prioritize the customer even when it’s inconvenient, unsexy, or doesn’t come with a Cannes case study.

And ironically, that’s exactly what makes brands memorable.

WHY STRATEGY IS STILL THE MOST UNDERRATED DISCIPLINE IN ADVERTISING

April 12, 2025

Advertising loves the visible part of the work. The film. The launch. The headline. The debate about whether the idea “breaks through.” Strategy is rarely the star, and that’s exactly why it’s so often misunderstood.

Most organizations don’t have a creativity problem. They have a clarity problem.

They are drowning in inputs, data, deck cycles, stakeholder opinions, and channel demands. They are making “content” because content calendars exist, not because the work is necessary. They are measuring everything and learning almost nothing. And when performance doesn’t show up, the reflex is to ask for more executions, more variations, more spend, more urgency. Rarely do they pause long enough to ask the question that should come first: are we solving the right problem?

This is what strategy actually does. It protects the work from busy thinking.

Good strategy is not a deck. It is a series of decisions: what matters most, who we’re really trying to move, what truth we’re willing to commit to, and what we’re willing to stop doing. Strategy is where you trade breadth for focus. It’s where you decide what the brand will stand for in this moment and what it will ignore.

That’s why it’s underrated. Because it forces a level of accountability most teams would rather avoid. It demands that you choose a lane. It demands you admit what isn’t working. It asks you to say no, not just to bad ideas, but to easy ideas.

The best strategists do something deceptively simple: they turn complexity into creative opportunity.

They take a messy business problem and translate it into something human. Something that a creative team can feel, debate, and build. They move the conversation from “what should the ad say” to “what must the audience believe.” They don’t just chase insight, they create alignment. And alignment is what makes brave ideas possible.

If you want to see whether an organization respects strategy, watch what happens when the strategist asks one uncomfortable question: “What if we’re wrong about the problem?”

If the room gets defensive, you’re looking at a culture that values certainty over truth. If the room leans in, you’re looking at a culture that values clarity over comfort. That difference is everything.

Strategy is not a deliverable. It’s leadership. And it remains underrated because most people would rather ship work than decide what the work is actually for.

AEO and GEO Are Very Neccessary