Topic Archive

Marketing After the Machine

The rules of marketing were written for a different era. Alex Cheeseman examines which orthodoxies are breaking down, why they persist, and what organisations need to build in their place.

Work, AI & Judgement →Systems, Culture & Human Nature →

The Last AnimalGood9 min

The Model Doesn't Know You're Good

Brand equity, pricing power, and what gets lost when a machine decides who deserves to be recommended

9 min read→

The Last AnimalC-Words8 min

Marketing After the Machine

C-words in marketing: culture, community, and cult

Every industry has words it reaches for when it wants to sound like it's doing something important. Marketing has three that get passed around boardrooms like a flask at a football match: culture, community, cult.

8 min read→

The Last AnimalKIDNAPPED7 min

Marketing After the Machine

The $68 Billion SEO Murder: How Google Kidnapped Your Customers

In an era of zero-click journeys, your website is no longer a storefront, it is a silent defendant in a trial where you are not allowed to speak.

7 min read→

The Last AnimalSUICIDE7 min

Marketing After the Machine

The D-Day Delusion: Why Your Five-Year Strategic Plan is a Financial Suicide Pact

In a volatile market, the ultimate competitive moat is not your strategic position, it is the velocity of your feedback loops.

7 min read→

The Last AnimalARBITRAGE7 min

Marketing After the Machine

The Ghost of Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner Ad: Why Your 2016 Marketing Playbook Is Driving You Off a Cliff

In an era of infinite, cheap AI-generated noise, the marginal cost of human trust has become infinite.

7 min read→

The Last Animalgolden age7 min

Marketing After the Machine

The golden age of DTC is over

The Post-Arbitrage Era: Why Your 2016 Marketing Strategy Is Driving You Off a Cliff In 2016, digital marketing felt like magic.

7 min read→

The Last AnimalOpinion

Marketing After the Machine

The Machine Already Has an Opinion

On why agentic shopping will not free us from brand value. It will only move where the value gets decided.

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The Last AnimalIntelligence

Marketing After the Machine

The Customer Journey Is Dead. The Customer Intelligence System Has Replaced It.

Fifty years of decision science saw this coming. We just didn't expect the machine to arrive so fast.

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The Last AnimalIsn't

Marketing After the Machine

Small Until It Isn't

On why the smartest people in the room will dismiss the biggest shift of their lives, and feel responsible doing it.

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The Last AnimalCosts

Marketing After the Machine

What the Answer Actually Costs

Building with AI has become easy enough that nearly everyone can do it, so it no longer separates anyone. This is an argument for the thing that does separate them now, which is cost: how many tokens a result actually took, and whether you can afford to keep getting it.

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The Last Animalfunnel

Marketing After the Machine

Where did the funnel go?

LLMs have not made the customer journey faster. They have moved it somewhere else entirely. Understanding where it went is the most important question in marketing right now.

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The Last AnimalDecides

Marketing After the Machine

Who Decides When the Agent Decides?

The AI agent doesn't have a childhood memory of drinking Coke at the beach.

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The Last AnimalBreakdown

Marketing After the Machine

The New Order Always Begins as a Breakdown

Systems improve because intelligent people notice what is broken, gather evidence, debate the alternatives, and eventually design something better.

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The Last AnimalBehave8 min

Marketing After the Machine

The Procrustean Bed: What Happens When We Force Living Systems to Behave Like Machines

Nassim Taleb’s Procrustean bed warns against forcing markets, audiences, and organisations into rigid frameworks. A sharp look at why artificial stability creates fragility.

8 min read→

The Last AnimalKilling4 min

Marketing After the Machine