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Tag: thought leadership

  • More Tools Than Ever. The Needle Still Isn’t Moving.

    More Tools Than Ever. The Needle Still Isn’t Moving.

    What happens when an industry’s quality gate disappears—and why the same thing is happening to marketing right now.

    The following is reprinted from our Substackour Substack, Bullhorns and Bullseyes Bullhorns and Bullseyes, written by my co-host Curtis Hays of Collideascope…

    Every marketer I talk to right now has more tools than they’ve ever had in their career. Websites you can stand up in an afternoon. Free reach to anyone on earth through social. Now AI sitting on top of all of it, writing the copy, building the images, answering in seconds what used to take a week.

    And the needle is not moving.

    Not because the tools are bad. Not because the team isn’t trying hard enough. It’s because tools amplify whatever’s underneath them, and most of the time what’s underneath isn’t solid enough to amplify.

    Watch Now: Why Are We Stuck?

    I’ve been circling this problem longer than I realized. In 1998 I was working nights at a bank, running mainframe jobs on a Unix box, balancing transactions while the system chewed through its batch. There was a lot of downtime in that job, and I filled it writing. Not marketing. Just sitting with a hard question long enough to actually get somewhere with it, instead of reaching for the first answer. I never finished college. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the first real practice I had at digging past the obvious answer to the true one.

    Tom Nixon, my co-host on Bullhorns & Bullseyes, has been circling the same instinct from a different direction for thirty years, across two novels and a career in advertising production. Neither of us invented this argument last week. We just finally said it out loud on air: we’re writing a book together. It’s called The Marketing Reformation.

    None of that is the point. The point is the argument underneath it. Every time an industry’s quality gate comes down, volume explodes and the average collapses. Record labels used to force a musician through years of proving they could actually play before anyone heard them. That gate came down, and there’s a line from Toto’s Steve Lukather that Tom’s heard attributed to him more than once: back then you needed real musicianship to make a world-class album, now all you need is a celebrity and a laptop. Advertising had the same gate. Mad Men-era agencies were full of their own sins, but at minimum they made someone do their homework before an idea reached a client. WordPress took the same kind of gate down for building a website. You don’t need a developer anymore, so you don’t get one, and now there are a hundred million websites that say nothing. AI is doing this to marketing right now, faster than any of the previous collapses.

    Tom put words to the distinction we keep circling back to on air: anyone can come up with an idea. The job was never coming up with it. The job is making the idea hold with the customer. Marketing’s default move is skipping straight to the coming-up-with part and calling it strategy.

    I wrote down a line from a Brian Clark newsletter a while back that’s stuck with me since: once you understand your wiring, you don’t choose your movement, you come to recognize it, because you understand which movements already resonate with who you actually are. That’s what this book is for me. Not a new idea. A recognition of one I’ve been circling since a bank mainframe in 1998.

    Tom’s friend Chuck Bean has a line he uses with clients constantly: you’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with the data. That’s the whole discipline in one sentence. Find the customer’s actual truth first. Then, and only then, turn the amplifier on.

    I was raised Lutheran, and the title isn’t an accident. The Reformation wasn’t Luther inventing a new belief. It was a correction back to what people already, authentically believed, once the gatekeeper standing between them and it got out of the way. That’s what Tom and I think marketing needs right now: a correction back to the truth the whole apparatus was supposed to serve, before anyone turns the amplifier on.

    The prologue is written. The outline is locked. We’ve already got three or four chapters down, passed back and forth between us. We said out loud on air that we’re aiming for this year. Now we can’t renege.

    We’ll be publishing the deeper cuts here as we write. If you want to watch this get built instead of just reading the finished book, this is where that happens.

  • Make Your Content Engine Purr

    Make Your Content Engine Purr

    A New Model for Content Marketing in 2026 and Beyond

    Two years ago, simply showing up was enough.

    If you published consistently, demonstrated expertise, and shared thoughtful perspectives over time, you separated yourself from most of the market. Content marketing worked because not everyone was doing it well — or doing it at all.

    Today, everyone is showing up.

    And most of them are using AI to do it.

    That doesn’t mean content marketing is dead. It means generic presence is dead. The problem isn’t volume. It’s believe-ability.

    We are no longer just competing with other professionals. We are competing with artificial voices, auto-generated expertise, and an endless stream of frictionless content. Even if your ideas are legitimate and human-generated, your audience may assume they aren’t. And if they believe they can prompt the same answer from ChatGPT in ten seconds, why should they read your blog post?

    That is the real shift.

    The End of Serial Publishing

    For years, the standard prescription looked like this: pick a topic, write a post, publish it, and repeat next week. Over time, that steady drumbeat built authority and brand preference. When someone eventually entered the market for your services, you were top of mind.

    In theory, that still works. In practice, it now produces something far less satisfying: invisibility.

    When every piece of content stands alone, when each post resets the clock, and when nothing builds toward a defined outcome, you are not creating momentum. You are maintaining motion. The difference matters.

    If 2026 demands anything of content marketers, it’s this: stop publishing serially and start building strategically.

    Instead of thinking in weekly posts, think in 90-day arcs. Instead of asking, “What should we write about this week?” ask, “What outcome are we driving toward this quarter?”

    Content without a defined destination is now just noise with grammar.

    The Four “Purrs”

    If your content strategy is going to cut through AI saturation and audience skepticism, it needs four deliberate characteristics. Together, they create what I call The Four “Purrs” — and ultimately, the fifth and most important result. (Spoiler alert: it also rhymes with purr.)

    1. Purposeful

    Content must be aimed. Not vaguely. Not aspirationally. Specifically.

    It’s no longer enough to say, “Over time, this will build trust.” The strategy should define a measurable objective inside a defined window — typically 90 days.

    For example: one clear purpose is to enroll as many members of your addressable market as possible into a live webinar, workshop, or in-person event. That singular objective changes how you create content. Each post becomes runway. Each video becomes reinforcement. Each email becomes part of a sequence.

    You begin to see your audience more clearly as well. There are learners who consume quietly. There are lurkers you cannot measure but know are there. And there are hand-raisers — the persuadable segment who are willing to take the next step.

    Your content must give them something to raise their hand to. Purpose creates direction. Direction creates momentum.

    2. Persistent

    Consistency used to be enough. Now it must be consistency with intention. Persistence is different: it’s consistency with purpose.

    Persistence means narrowing your focus over that 90-day arc. Instead of writing about a dozen disconnected topics, you select one core tension: one problem, one theme, one drumbeat …and you’re going to approach it persistently from multiple angles.

    You explore it through stories, analysis, examples, frameworks, and commentary. You repeat the central idea without repeating yourself. By the time your culminating event arrives, your audience should not wonder what it will cover. They should be expecting it.

    Persistence builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust. Trust makes persuasion possible.

    3. Persuasive

    Education is valuable, but information alone is no longer scarce. Transformation is.

    Professional services are typically purchased at a moment of inflection — when someone decides they can no longer tolerate the status quo or they finally choose to pursue an aspiration. Effective content moves people closer to that decision.

    This does not require manipulation or aggressive selling. It requires clarity. Your content should demonstrate that the current path has limitations, that an alternative exists, and that you understand the emotional and practical tension your audience is experiencing.

    If your strategy is purposeful and persistent, persuasion becomes a natural byproduct. You are not pitching constantly; you are preparing thoughtfully. Over time, the persuadable segment of your audience begins to consider change.

    4. Personal

    This is where the human advantage becomes unmistakable.

    Written content alone now competes directly with AI. Machines will always win on speed and scale. Humans win on presence.

    Video. Live webinars. Unscripted commentary. Podcasts. Real conversations. When people see you think in real time, when they hear your cadence and observe nuance in your delivery, your expertise becomes authenticated. You signal authorship. You signal authenticity.

    In an era of synthetic content, visible humanity becomes a differentiator.

    Personal content does not replace written content. It validates it.

    The Fifth “Purr” → Permanence

    When content is purposeful, persistent, persuasive, and personal, something powerful happens: it gains permanence.

    Instead of disappearing into the feed after 24 hours, your ideas stay in the market for 90 days. They build anticipation toward a defined moment — a live event, a webinar, a workshop, or a briefing.

    That event then becomes fuel for the next 90 days.

    You record it. You gate the replay. You extract short-form video clips. You generate companion blog posts. You develop follow-up emails. You create derivative assets that extend the lifecycle of a single idea.

    Your strategy compounds rather than resets.

    You are no longer producing isolated posts. You are programming reputation over time.

    The New Discipline

    The truth is, AI did not kill content marketing. It exposed outdated strategy.

    The brands that will win in 2026 and beyond will not be the ones producing the most content. They will be the ones building structured, human, outcome-driven arcs that culminate in meaningful engagement.

    The question is no longer, “What should we publish this week?”

    It is, “What are we building toward over the next 90 days?”

    Answer that well, and your content engine won’t sputter.

    It will purr.

    .

  • Ideas, Not Words

    Ideas, Not Words

    People Don’t Need More Words; They Need Better Ideas


    Your job as a thought leader is not to create content; it’s to deal in intellectual property.

    So says Jay Acunzo, author of Break the Wheel and a brand messaging strategist.

    People can get words anywhere they look these days. Thanks in part to AI, we are at no shortage for content. But what the world will continue to seek out is expertise. Fresh ideas. New approaches to solving problems.

    And if the content you’re publishing isn’t delivering on those needs, it might as well just be words on a page. In fact, it is. Or maybe worse.

    That’s Not How This Works. That’s Not How Any of This Works.

    Companies continue to increasingly report, “Our website isn’t performing in search the way it used to.” That comes as no surprise. As my colleague Curtis Hays continues to demonstrate, search engines aren’t indexing content and returning search engine result pages (SERPs) the way they did just months ago.

    • For one, 60% of searches or more result in zero-click results, meaning the user is getting the answer to their query before they even click on a link.

    • Secondly, Google is now actively working to sniff out AI-generated content and instead “prioritize original, high-quality content that satisfies user intent and provides value, moving away from content primarily optimized for search engines.”

    So if you’re relying on AI to word-stuff a blog post without providing any unique perspective, analysis, insights, or procriptive strategy, you’re just putting words on a page.

    And next to no one will notice. Not even Google.

    Said Nobody Ever:

    Few among us make a concerted effort to seek out words. Nobody thinks to oneself, “I’m going to consume some content this morning.”

    Instead, what we seek to do is become educated and informed. Solve a problem. Eliminate a pain. Identify a better way.

    That’s what thought leadership provides, properly executed. It brings the expert’s best ideas to light to deliver on a promise to inform, to enlighten, or to entertain, even.

    Yes, AI can make content generation easier and quicker. But so can an untrained intern. The deed you really need to accomplish is to demonstrate expertise. Differentiate. Endear trust.

    That’s what creates thought leaders in the first place. Better ideas, not an abundance of words.

    And if you think AI word slop is putting your brand in the best possible position to compete in the marketplace of ideas, well, I might want to have a word or two with you.