0. Row Your Boat, Sailor.
Newsletter Introduction - Short Story (Fiction)
Evans - CFO of a Corporation in Crisis
Marston - CEO of a Creative Marketing Agency
*The phone rings.
— Evans! To what do I owe you the honor?
— Listen, Marston, I have to be straightforward with you. I truly appreciate our friendship, and I know it's been years of a successful partnership but the economy is far from healthy right now and the company has been struggling hard with the numbers these past couple of months. We have to cut costs and the executive board has decided to cut our marketing budget entirely. We just can't keep you anymore.
— Evans, I was afraid this would happen. I'm sorry to hear that. I will notify the team and I will prepare the handoff of files and IP in the next week. Thank you so much for all these years, we accomplished great things together.
— That's it? You are not going to push me an idea or pitch me an offer like you usually do?
— Well, the economy is in fact going down through a roller coaster of chaotic screams and financial deficit, Evans. If things are tough for you guys, you can only imagine how it is for us. It is quite evident that marketing is the first budget to be cut in times of crisis and despair.
— I'm sorry Marston. The ROI isn't clear enough for us. The art from your creatives is beautiful, your campaigns feel fresh and the strategies you architect are always bold but if we can't measure the return with sharpshooter precision, we need to cut the investment.
— Well, 5 years ago when we started working together, the startup had 50 employees, now it has 550. Isn't that an ROI of 1000% growth in headcount?
— Don't come to me with an ROI in headcounts Marston, there is no such thing. If I can't show a clear growth of sales KPIs to the board, I will be the next one to be fired. Again, you had some great hits in the past but your latest campaigns don't seem to be working, otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Listen, the work from your team is beautiful as always but I can't measure their impact.
— Well, would there be any impact if they didn't even exist? If you are not creating, you are not communicating, Evans. Design and Marketing are the fuel of your engine. If your services and products hit a growth ceiling, or the market is in inertia, it is time to innovate and act, improve products, or make new ones. But you are firing your main partner for creative ideas in plain daylight.
— Listen, Marston, we are walking in circles here and I'm getting impatient. I know you really like what you do but some people have actual serious work to do, not all of us have the luxury of spending the day just playing around with coffee machines; fun brainstorms; diagrams on Miro; shapes and colors on Figma, or photos on photoshop.
— I see Evans. This feels like a farewell.
— Well, it is not me talking Marston, it's just the economy. I'm sorry but in times of crisis, we just need to act.
— Well, the sea is indeed agitating all the boats and there is a tsunami ready to swallow us on the horizon Evans. You don't recognize that yet but you are throwing your paddles away. I will be here if you need me in the future regardless. Farewell.
*Hang up the phone.
0.1 Marketing of Autonomy
New Paddles for the Boat - Article
Evans seems to be in trouble. Regardless if he made the right decision or not in firing his agency, the tsunami is still coming. It might very well have been a logical decision but maybe not entirely rational. (As he doesn’t have an internal marketing team)
If the milk has been spilled. Acknowledge it. Clean it.
There is a boat on the sea, a tsunami on the way, and paddles floating away, we need to talk about marketing, immediately, sailor.
Because marketing as we know doesn’t exist anymore. That concept turned into stardust at the exact moment that COVID-19 triggered the beginning of an economic recession back in 2020 and also sent a tsunami of new users to the digital world.
World Economy Is Headed for a Recession in 2023, Researcher Says
Bloomberg - December 25th, 2022.
I’m not here to talk about the economy though, I’m here to talk about the marketing that is meta. (Beyond/New/Adapted)
Because marketing as we know is gone. Forget Philip Kotler; Ryan Holiday; Seth Godin; Eric Ries; and Gary Vaynerchuck. Forget concepts like MVP, Lean Startup, 4Ps, Design Thinking, SWAT analysis… These are concepts written in the Post-modernism era, made for a pre-COVID-19 world. We are not there anymore. Welcome to metamodernism.
I’m not throwing these authors and schools into the fire nor I’m retiring them. They had their moment but if their concepts still worked, we wouldn’t be in crisis.
It is time for new marketing professionals to arise but that means only one thing: To relearn marketing from zero. To build new concepts from scratch. Because the new school of marketing has only one main foundation and that is: autonomy.
A boat without paddles lacks autonomy > a lack of autonomy translates into a lack of control > and a lack of control ends in a lack of action.
This is unacceptable in times of crisis, the tsunami is coming and we should acknowledge it together so that we can turn it into an opportunity.
Because together we will roam, once we make these new paddles.
Welcome to Agency.
0.2 News, Culture & Utilities
A Fresh Digest on my Latest Discoveries
0.2.1 AI Technology
ChatGPT will soon be everywhere! OpenAI announces official public API.
Business Today - March 2nd.
This is huge. Not only because it will fast-forward the implementation of AI into different segments but also because we will start to see a lot of white-labeled versions of ChatGPT. In addition, companies will be able to make new and improved versions of the chat interface with more functionalities. Have you tried ChatGPT yet?
If not, you should immediately. The sooner your practice with its capacities, the sooner you will have ideas on how to implement it in your workflow. As a language model, ChatGPT is not a technology that just searches for information, it is much more than that. It interprets the syntaxes and languages in your input and is able to deliver deeply personalized outputs. It thinks for you so that you can use your much-valued time in other efforts.
Some prompts for you to try:
Make me a financial model template with a $5.000 budget // add an extra $1.000 for cash flow // add a [insert number] for [position] // add a [insert percentage] cost for taxes // put content into a table for me.
Generate 10 newsletter headlines for a marketing newsletter
Generate a Pitch Deck template structure // Write an introduction slide about a company that does [insert your context]
Generate me a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) contract template // add more clauses.
Explain metamodernism to me like I'm 5 years old
Explain transhumanism to me like I'm 5 years old
How I have been using it:
To search for rare synonyms for words
To research any topic that is deeply specific or cultural
“Chat, what is freedom of speech? // “What does Socrates say about truth” // “Create a new term for freedom of speech that takes into consideration the harms of fake news”
“Can you please explain to me the hume's law like I am 5?”
Translation and Grammar
Other AI Tools
Midjourney - Illustrate your own artwork!
Kaiber.ai - Transform images into a video.
Diagram.ai - ChatGPT meets Figma.
0.2.2 Corporate America
How would you feel if you were the heir of one of the biggest media corporations in the USA? If you had all the money in the world and could control what was said in the biggest news outlets? If even the president was on your payroll? This is the summary for the HBO series “Succession”. A profoundly ironic comedy show with valuable lessons about corporativism but also painful truths about the pursuit of power.
0.2.3 Embrace Sadness
What is it about a story that makes you feel so sad, such sadness, that at the end you actually feel glad for your own life? I recently watched The Whale (2022). It perfectly proves the point of why people need art and cathartic experiences to push the struggles of life toward their goals.
It is a brilliant piece of art directed by Darren Aronofsky (One of the boldest movie directors of our era) and Timelessly performed by Brendan Fraser.
This is the type of cinematic experience you only get once a year. It’s not for the faint-hearted because you will feel a lot of negative emotions, but at the end of it, especially if some tears are shed, you will see life with new eyes and find an unexplainable motivation to go after what you want.
0.2.4 In the Lenses of Thi.
I thought of featuring this picture I took in 2021 in the first newsletter because I’m deeply proud of it. Not because I took it by taking the risk of exploring a dangerous neighborhood in the city center of Asunción, Paraguay. But because it represents the style of my photography. Photojournalism!
Soy, soy lo que dejaron
Soy toda la sobra de lo que se robaron
Un pueblo escondido en la cima
Mi piel es de cuero, por eso aguanta cualquier clima
Soy una fábrica de humo
Mano de obra campesina para tu consumo
Frente de frío en el medio del verano
El amor en los tiempos del cólera
El sol que nace y el día que muere
Con los mejores atardeceres
Soy el desarrollo en carne viva
Un discurso político sin saliva.
Latinoamérica - Calle 13
0.3 The Future
Where do we go from here?
I appreciate you sticking around! I hope this was useful. When we need to take action, we first need awareness and references so that we can have the capacity to generate ideas. This is the main goal of the Agency newsletter, to share marketing tips and fresh information about the world with my readers so that you can take effective action toward the success of your ventures.
There’s a saying that goes: “Underpromise, over-deliver.”
So I will be publishing a minimum of 1 issue per week but if there is a cool engagement or acceptance, I will publish more often for sure. So please share the newsletter with friends and assure the ideas will keep coming!
I felt I needed a voice, thus, I decided to start sharing my ideas with Agency. Not because I want to pitch my services, but because I want people around me informed and ready to act.
Let’s roam this boat together.
About the Author
Thiago Patriota
Made in 1996. Born & Raised Brazillian. Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising and Communication. Adept to autodidactism. Curious Soul. Published Author. Founder of Sentient.
That’s me in a nutshell but you can learn more about Agency and myself on the About page!