About
Hi. I’m Kyle. I’m a curious human in marketing.
If you push me on that, I’ll say something about combining strategy and data to help businesses build a brand they co-create with their fans by understanding how and where it fits in the broader context of the market, the culture, and the minds of consumers. Because brands aren’t something businesses build and own. They’re mushrooms. The roots (yeah, yeah, mycelium) are the people that love them.
If you ask how I got here, I might make a David Byrne reference. Or I’ll say I majored in economics (as all marketers do) and worked my way into marketing. Now I’m a marketer trying to reclaim the economist title by building a contextual frame of reference. Because, in the words of Tyler Cowen, “context is that which is scarce.”
🎶 It’s the circle of life. 🎶
My (new!) main project here is the Dead Reckoning System: an index and basket of indicators designed to measure what people are feeling each time they open their (digital) wallet. Not just what they say in a survey.
(Why “dead reckoning”? I like that it sounds precise but is really an archaic way of wayfinding — back when dragons were on maps. I don’t know that I love it, though I talk myself into it more and more by the day. And yes, I still use em-dashes. I refuse to relinquish them to the robots.)
Some things I believe:
- Marketing is everything these days, but it’s also not that serious.
- Good marketing is good customer service, done preemptively.
- The stuff we brag about and give awards for is just the last mile — important, but a lot had to work before you got there.
- Your marketing should turn some people off. They weren’t going to become part of your mushroom cult anyway.
- Overwrought strategy and planning processes are overrated.
The Hermetic Order of Curious Marketers
It’s the newsletter.
Ridiculous, right? I mean, wtf? That’s the point.
Because Hermes is the patron saint of marketing. The trickster, the messenger, the dude with wings on his sandals carrying messages hither and yon and souls to the afterlife (it’s called a “psychopomp,” which is a great word). Because marketing should make you curious. Because marketing should be fun. Because we should all be a little weirder.