Row Your Boat, Sailor.

Evans - CFO of a Corporation in Crisis
Marston - CEO of a Creative Marketing Agency

*The phone rings.

1. MMarston

   — Evans! To what do I owe you the honor?

2. EEvans

   — 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.

3. MMarston

   — 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.

4. EEvans

   — That's it? You are not going to push me an idea or pitch me an offer like you usually do?

5. MMarston

   — 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.

6. EEvans

   — 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.

7. MMarston

   — 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?

8. EEvans

   — 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.

9. MMarston

   — 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.

10. EEvans

    — 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.

11. MMarston

    — I see Evans. This feels like a farewell.

12. EEvans

    — 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.

13. MMarston

    — 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.

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.

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.

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.