1/ Your brand is much more than a headline away from exit.

“Testing” as the highest value of marketing behavior is deteriorating “brands” down to a series of headlines and image variations.

At its worst it removes the “tester” of obligation to do deep, quality work up front.

2/ It (testing as the highest value) precludes any activity (like community development) that doesn’t fit neatly into a pseudo scientific measurement system or has a more latent value capture.

3/ It also favors “incrementality” over truly innovative thinking. The kind of thinking that isn’t rooted in an extrapolation of past results.

4/ iteration and testing should be the bottom of the funnel of the “idea” journey, but far too often it lives at the top.

5/ I get why this has happened. Speed, volume, data, testing, iteration are all the tools of the arbitrager. We have been living in their world. But that is changing.

6/ The democratization of access to launching a brand has flooded the market and your feeds with stuff. Just seeing the stuff isn’t enough, no matter how quippy or clever the text, or how punchy the video.

7/ Don’t get me wrong. It still works, for a while. Brands can often reach 7 figures or more simply by focusing all their efforts on trying each day to make a better ad.

But a day will come when the CTRs decline, the CVR softens and margin disappears so quickly.

8/ So what’s the solution. Annoyingly it’s the same as it has always been.

It’s great marketing, rooted in great story, with awesome product, distributed with great intention to a customer you genuinely care for and are looking to serve.

9/ @andrewjfaris and I went deep in this topic in the most recent episode of his podcast:

“Where did the marketing campaigns go?”

I’d love for you to listen and share your thoughts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ecommerce-playbook-numbers-struggles-growth/id1087933109?i=1000490762611

10/ and to be really clear I am complicit in the creation of this problem.

I have trumpeted volume testing and iteration as fundamental principles.

And they still have a place in the story.

I just want to move them out of the leading role.