Writing
Notes from the data side
Customer data, measurement, and the gap between what the deck promises and what actually ships. Opinions are mine, sharpened in public.
DAU Is a Retention Metric Wearing a Growth Costume
You don't acquire a daily user. You acquire an installer. The daily part is retention, misfiled as growth.
The Seat, the Budget, and the Scoreboard
The CMO seat is vanishing and brand budgets are losing the room. One law explains all of it: an unmeasured line item always loses to a measured one.
New Middleman, Same as the Old Middleman
Headless CRM turns your system of record into a wall socket. The relationship moves upstream to the agent.
The Permission Dividend
When AI replaces the search box, the customer sends a proxy. The thing that still points true is the one most companies file under legal.
The Layoff A(I)libi
The layoffs are real. AI is the alibi. Gartner’s data shows the cuts don’t even pay off.
The Org Chart Is the Demo
Two weeks after a record quarter, Salesforce cut jobs around its fastest-growing product. The most honest demo a vendor ever gives is what it does to its own org chart.
Everyone Preaches Retention. The Budget Says Otherwise.
Gartner says loyalty spend fell 29% while budgets chased AI-tunable channels. Then Wednesday's inflation print landed.
Salesforce Just Paid a Billion Dollars for the Boring Part
A billion-dollar receipt for a content platform tells you where the value really sits: the boring, structured substrate under the agents.
Don't Let a Robot Be Your New Greeter and Ambassador
Your first point of contact is your greeter and ambassador. Do not make it a cheap bot.
You Use a Third of Your Martech. Adding AI Will Not Fix That.
Marketers use a third of the martech they own. The 2026 plan is to buy AI on top.
When the Buyer Is a Bot, Your Brand Magic Never Loads
The shopping is moving to agents. They can not see your hero film, only your data.
Nobody Got Fired for Blaming AI
Why AI literacy will decide which CMOs survive 2027.
Growth Dies at the Hands of Greed
The affordability crisis and the in-car data grab are not two stories. They are one.
Your Big ROI Number Is Lying, and the Smart People Already Know It
Why most CRM attribution does not survive contact with a skeptic, and how to stop getting caught.
Capabilities and Trustworthiness Are Two Different Things
Every AI vendor demo is a magic trick. The interesting part is off-camera.
In the queue
Drafts I am sharpening: the vendor-side analyst lane nobody talks about; why the CDP, CRM, and messaging-hub category lines are drawn in the wrong place; and PRM is dead, long live PERM.
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