THINKING
Point-of-view articles, practical playbooks, and video for senior marketers navigating AI, data, and the operations that sit between strategy and growth.
CRM & Data
10 April 2026
AI ROI is decided before the contract is signed. Most enterprises run vendor demos without knowing whether their data environment can support the promised value. The audit is the actual evaluation — and skipping it doesn't save time.
Read →Marketing Operations
10 April 2026
AI accelerates marketing execution. It also amplifies whatever already exists — a strong brief gets sharper, a weak diagnosis gets executed faster and more expensively. The diagnostic phase is where AI earns its keep.
Read →CRM & Data
30 March 2026
Subscriptions surface something true across all of marketing: AI and data only work if the foundation underneath them is solid. What the subscription economy reveals about the relationship between data infrastructure, customer insight, and retention-led growth.
Read →CRM & Data
16 March 2026
Sky didn't discover new loyalty insights. They finally actioned signals buried in their data for years. The real problem wasn't what they didn't know — it was how long it took to act on what they already did.
Read →Marketing Operations
9 March 2026
AI isn't failing marketers. The starting point is. A clear map of the four stages of AI maturity — and what it actually takes to move from running experiments to deploying agents that deliver commercial results.
Read →GEO & Search
20 February 2026
AI discovery is reshaping search faster than most channel strategies have caught up with. Why SEO is no longer sufficient — and what a Generative Engine Optimisation strategy actually requires from your team.
Read →GEO & Search
9 February 2026
Most brands are approaching GEO monitoring the way they approached social in 2012 — asking vendors for dashboards before defining what decisions those dashboards need to support. GEO sits across content, social, PR, paid media, and brand strategy.
Read →Marketing Operations
2 February 2026
Why most AI marketing initiatives fail to scale. The four structural foundations required to achieve real AI maturity — and why ambition without them is just a more expensive version of the same problem.
Read →Marketing Operations
12 December 2025
In 2026, AI won't be the bottleneck for marketing teams — organisational design will. How to restructure for speed, where the new roles sit, and what skills the winning marketing orgs are building now.
Read →Marketing Operations
28 November 2025
A practical AI playbook for CMOs. How to shift from tool adoption to a full AI-powered operating model — covering speed, scale, and ROI — without losing strategic control of the transformation.
Read →GEO & Search
18 November 2025
AI search engines don't rank pages — they read, parse, and cite them. How to structure your brand's content so that generative engines can find it, understand it, and use it as a source.
Read →AI Agents
17 November 2025
Sense. Decide. Act. Learn. The four-verb loop that defines how agentic marketing works — and why the difference between an automation and an agent is not a technical detail. It determines whether the system gets smarter or just faster.
Read →AI Agents
31 October 2025
Ten proven AI agent use cases in performance marketing — drawn from real deployments at brands including LVMH, Expedia, and Klarna. Measurable ROI, specific outcomes, no vendor-demo theatrics.
Read →Marketing Operations
22 October 2025
Campaign-first. Siloed. Built for a world that no longer exists. AI doesn't fix an outdated marketing operation — it exposes it. What a 2026-ready marketing org actually looks like, and how to get there.
Read →GEO & Search
19 September 2025
If AI tools are now the front door to your brand, your content needs to be written for machines as much as for humans. What AI-friendly, citable content actually looks like in practice — with specific structural guidance.
Read →AI Agents
9 September 2025
Five hard-won lessons from designing and deploying real AI agents inside marketing teams. What works. What doesn't. What every CMO or Head of Digital should know before committing budget.
Read →GEO & Search
8 September 2025
Most marketers aren't behind on content — they're behind on technical clarity. AI search engines need structure to cite your brand. A practical guide to making your digital footprint machine-readable.
Read →Marketing Operations
26 August 2025
AI won't fix broken marketing workflows. It will run them faster. Operational maturity — not technology — is the real unlock for AI impact in marketing. What that means for how you sequence the work.
Read →GEO & Search
18 August 2025
Search is changing in ways that make ranking in the top ten blue links insufficient. Why AI-generated answers have become the new front page — and what it takes to be the source they cite.
Read →AI Agents
17 July 2025
Sentiment Monitor Agents detect shifts in customer perception before they show up in sales data. How real-time brand sentiment analysis works in practice — and why it changes how fast marketing teams can respond.
Read →Compliance
8 July 2025
The EU AI Act applies to all AI systems — not just generative. What marketers need to understand about their compliance obligations now, and what needs to change in how AI tools are selected, documented, and governed.
Read →AI Agents
5 July 2025
Agentic AI doesn't just respond to prompts — it takes action. How the shift from generative to agentic AI is changing what marketing teams can execute, at what speed, and with what level of human oversight required.
Read →AI Agents
5 July 2025
Legacy agencies are built to sell effort, not impact. Their economics are tied to headcount, not outcomes. Why that model is broken for modern marketing — and why expert-directed AI agents replace what it was supposed to deliver.
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WATCH
Simon Spyer on AI agents, modern marketing operations, and the gap between where the industry is heading and where most teams are today.
Speed without a strong brief is just a more efficient way to get the wrong answer. The real opportunity is upstream — in diagnosis, research, and strategy.
The best AI applications are upstream — in the diagnostic phase, for rapid research and data collation. Not in execution. That sequencing matters more than the tools.
Traditional marketing measurement is fundamentally reactive. By the time the numbers move, the customers and revenue are already lost.
AI's true value in marketing isn't replacing human thinking about customer relationships — it's amplifying the insights that come from understanding what customers actually need.
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Practical tools and playbooks. Take them into your next planning session.
Free online assessment — 5 minutes
Find out where you actually stand. Not where you think you stand. This five-minute assessment benchmarks your team across data, people, process, and technology — and shows you what it takes to move to the next stage. No fluff. Clear diagnosis.
Playbook — free PDF download
Generative AI has rewritten the rules of search. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are cutting organic traffic by up to 64% in some sectors. This playbook gives you five core strategies, a four-phase execution framework, and the metrics that now matter most for visibility in AI-powered search.
Whitepaper — free PDF download
AI won't fix broken workflows. It exposes them. This whitepaper is for insurance marketing leaders navigating the shift from AI experimentation to operational orchestration — covering what needs to change in how marketing teams are structured, how data is used, and how AI is deployed as a catalyst rather than a crutch.
