Notes on
showing up clearly
in the market.
Essays on marketing strategy, brand positioning, and the gap between what companies promise and what they actually deliver.
Subscribe · RSSMost brand damage
doesn't happen
in the advertising.
It happens in the gap.
The space between what a company promises and what its operations actually deliver. The box that won't open. The loyalty program that can't recognize loyalty. The support line that understands your frustration and fixes nothing.
Closing that gap is the work. Gary writes about it, with a laugh track, every other week.
Marketing writes checks that operations can't cash.
This week I bought a twelve-pack of Coke Zero. Eight cans rolled out of the bottom of the fridge onto the floor. On the counter sits a torn Starbucks box. This is what a dull knife looks like at brand scale.
Wrap rage has an official name. That should tell you something.
Sealed plastic. Heat-welded. Capable of defeating a determined adult with kitchen scissors. Consumer Reports has covered it. There are injury statistics. For packaging.
You can't market a business that is operationally unsound. That used to be true.
That used to be true. Bill Bernbach said it as plainly as anyone ever has. Then large companies discovered they could just budget for the gap.
"Your call is important to us."
It's not, though. The automated phone system wasn't designed to help you. It was designed to help the company manage the cost of helping you.
Cancel anytime. (Terms and conditions apply.)
"Cancel anytime" is technically true in the same way that "some assembly required" is technically true for flat-pack furniture that takes four hours.
CX became a religion. The pews are full. The building is still on fire.
Customer experience became a measurement function instead of an operational one. You can measure your way to a diagnosis. You cannot measure your way to a cure.
Engineering. Precision. Three taps to defrost your windshield.
The knob never asked for any of this. The knob had a position that corresponded to an outcome. The touchscreen is solving a different problem: how to make the interior look like the bridge of a spacecraft.
The loyalty program that rewards everyone except loyal customers.
A data collection mechanism wearing a thank-you note as a costume. The welcome discount is the actual function. The data collection is the actual product.
One company that got it right. It's worth noting when it happens.
Trader Joe's has that reputation. The story hasn't changed in a decade, which is itself the point. Closing the gap isn't a messaging challenge. It's an operational design challenge.
AI hasn't made marketing cheaper. It's made bad strategy faster.
Volume was never the constraint. What AI has actually done is reduce the cost of executing a bad strategy to nearly zero.