Think about the last time you saw a company's marketing and actually felt something more than mild interest.

Chances are you're struggling to come up with one. And that's not an accident.

Vi Wickam has spent 30 years in digital marketing, helping companies fix this mistake. His premise is simple and kind of uncomfortable: honest marketing always wins, most companies aren't doing it, and AI is about to make the gap between the two a whole lot wider.

But this conversation goes deeper than marketing. Vi and Paul get into something most people don't want to sit with: your creative thinking might be slowly dying. You probably haven't noticed because your social media feed has been doing your thinking for you. Just one example from the episode: Paul Simon didn't stay creative by consuming more of the same thing. He listened to different music. That’s it. And if that sounds too simple to matter, that's exactly the problem.

You'll Learn:

• Why most companies don't actually have a brand, and the uncomfortable truth about what's missing
• The “10-80-10” framework for working with AI without letting it take over the parts that actually require a human
• How to uncover what your company genuinely stands for before you build a single word of marketing around it
• Why your one-star and three-star reviews are worth more than every five-star review combined
• The real reason your creative thinking has stalled (hint: it's not a lack of talent)
• What skills will still matter when AI has absorbed everything it can, and how to start building them now
• Why brand consistency isn't a marketing problem, it's a truth problem (and how to close that gap for good)

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Producer: David Grabowski | Theme Music: Aleksey Chistilin