Atypically Speaking

You know that feeling when you’re in the shower replaying a conversation from two days earlier and you now have the perfect response? This is one of those moments. I recently conducted a workshop on brand strategy and AI. I tried to make the big ideas stick with a few alliterative takeaways. Vibes Over Volume was the first one. As I began to move on to my next talking point a hand went up. A woman in the room, I think from either the legal or finance sector, said something l

I grew up in Utah. If you know Utah, you know that's about as far from the origins of hip hop as you can get. And yet somewhere in my teens rap found me and many others in our suburban town. Wu Tang Clan, Bone Thugs, Hov, and of course Tupac and Biggie. Somehow even lesser known stuff made its way to suburban Utah. Too $hort. Rappin' 4-Tay, Big L. It wasn't just the mainstream that got me. It was the specific, somewhat obscure stuff that only a few select friends knew about.

Here's a thought I can't quite shake. When digital marketing arrived, it changed everything about how we reach people. New channels, new formats, new metrics. The scramble was real. And somewhere in all of that, the actual point of marketing never really moved. Connect your thing to a person in a way that resonates with them. Same thing happened about ten years ago with account-based marketing. Suddenly everyone was scrambling to adopt it, building target account lists, buyin