As we enter a new year, many of us feel the pull to set resolutions. The pattern is familiar. We make a list. We write down goals like eating better, exercising more, organizing our homes, or spending less time on our phones. These are fine intentions, but often they become just another layer of pressure. Another set of expectations stacked on top of the ones we already carry. The word “resolution” ends up feeling like a January version of a task list. But that is not what the word means. Not really.
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I’ve struggled with some form of ADD throughout different phases of my life. It hasn’t always been diagnosed, and it hasn’t always looked the same, but it’s been there. Some days it’s just a low-level fog. Other days, corralling my thoughts is like chasing 37 cats around the room.
Over time, I’ve tried a number of approaches to get things done. Some worked for a while. Others just added to the noise. But recently I’ve been trying something that’s surprisingly effective: pick three tasks. Only three.
Write them down. Do them. Then pick three more.
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While the changing leaves of October might dazzle tourists, for many Seattle residents, the tail end of the month marks the beginning of a mental health dip. A recent survey of 100 clinical psychologists and mental health researchers sheds light on why late October, in particular, tends to be a mood sinkhole in the Emerald City.
1. The Light Switch Effect
Dr. Maria Klein, a seasonal affective disorder (SAD) specialist, notes that around October 25, Seattle sees a sharp decline in sunlight, often losing 2–3 minutes of daylight per day. “It’s not just gradual darkness,” she explains. “It’s the suddenness that jolts the brain’s serotonin production.”
You know the future is strange when your best shot at a stable career is majoring in “Robot Psychology” or “Data Plumber.” Thanks to the AI revolution which, for those keeping track, promised to free us from work but instead retrained us to make ChatGPT write emails, we now face a curious inversion of the job market.
Here, then, are the top 10 college degrees predicted for the Class of 2035:
1. Prompt Engineering
Because writing good AI prompts is harder than writing haikus. Future students will spend four years studying the subtle difference between “generate an image” and “create a vibey aesthetic.”
I was asked an interesting question the other day by a senior marketer. She wantd my opinion on how to decide it’s time for a brand to start a new channel, as well as how I keep up on social trends.
It’s an interesting question, because here we are 20 years into this social media phenomenon, and there’s never been a perfect answer. If you rushed right into MySpace, or even Friendster, back in the day, you had to decide when to leave. Then came all the others, Shoot, remember when Google was trying to make everyone do Circles on Google+?
The good thing about social is that trends don’t go hide under a lot of research. They are literally blasting you in the face to the point you can’t ignore them.
So my opinion is that trends can be monitored constantly, but investment only happens when data shows audience fit, potential ROI, and brand alignment. And tofigure that out, we look at a few things:
Continue readingTitle: Burnout, Bots, and Brand Trust: The Year Marketing Tried to Be Human Again
Published: January 2023
In 2022, marketing stopped trying to win the internet and started trying to win people back.
After a two-year sprint through pandemic pivots, remote chaos, and digital everything, the mood shifted. Customers were burned out. Teams were burned out. And somewhere in the noise, a quiet message emerged:
“Don’t try to be everywhere. Try to be real.”
It was the year of rebuilding brand trust. Of cutting through automation sludge. Of rethinking the funnel. And for many of us—of remembering why we got into this work in the first place.
Here’s what actually happened.
Consumer Behavior Changed—And Got More Selective
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78% of consumers unfollowed brands in 2022 due to “inauthentic” messaging
(Source: Stackla, “Bridging the Gap” Report) -
Trust in social ads dropped for the third straight year—down to 43%, with Gen Z showing the sharpest decline
(Source: Edelman Trust Barometer) -
Email open rates held steady at 21.5%, but click-throughs declined by 5%
People opened out of habit, not curiosity. -
Reviews, UGC, and peer-led content outperformed branded ads in 73% of A/B tests
Trust shifted to real people, not stylized creatives.
We Over-Automated, Then Regretted It
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Martech stack bloat peaked: the average mid-sized marketing team used 91 tools
(Source: ChiefMartec 2022) -
Chatbots replaced contact forms on 62% of B2C websites—but customer satisfaction dropped by 11%
The human touch was missed more than expected. -
AI-generated content became trendy—but conversion rates were 37% lower when used without human editing
You can’t automate authenticity.
What Did Work? Anything That Felt Human
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Influencer marketing spend rose 42% year over year
Especially micro-creators (under 100K followers), who delivered better ROI and engagement. -
SMS campaigns saw a 35% click-through rate—with 98% open rates
Text isn’t dead. It’s just underused. -
Podcast ad revenue jumped to $2 billion, and listener trust remained higher than any digital format
People still like voices more than headlines. -
Brands that publicly admitted mistakes saw an 8% brand trust lift
Honesty scaled.
So What Do We Do With This?
The lesson of 2022 wasn’t “be everywhere.” It was:
Be somewhere real. With something worth saying. To people who might actually care.
We learned (again) that automation should support communication—not replace it. That being human still scales when done right. That trust still matters more than targeting.
And that the brands who won last year weren’t louder. They were clearer.
Five Takeaways From 2022
For CMOs, marketing leads, and teams who want to make smarter moves in 2023:
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Cut your stack. Most teams don’t need 90 tools.
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Edit your AI. Machine content is only as good as the human who sharpens it.
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Trust is the new KPI. If your customers don’t believe you, your reach is meaningless.
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Get personal again. SMS, podcasts, micro-creators—small formats built real engagement.
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Real is rare. That’s why it still works.
Let’s get this out of the way: I like AI. I use it. I even talk to it more than some of my friends. But let’s not pretend it’s Don Draper.
What AI is great at? Vomiting out a rough idea so you can sharpen it. Rewriting headlines until one of them doesn’t suck. Spitting out 20 variations of something you weren’t even sure how to start.
But it doesn’t know timing. Or tone. Or how to write a line that makes you pause, not scroll.
A lot of brands are skipping the human part. They’re posting AI-generated sludge and calling it “content.” That’s not innovation. That’s
laziness dressed up in automation.
The good news? If you still have a voice, your own. You can make AI your assistant, not your replacement. But it starts with knowing who you are before you press “generate.”
For a long time, I thought I was a decent writer. But I learned more about writing today from Amanda Gorman than I have in 20 years of practice. I’ll find a full transcript at some point, but the San Diego Union Tribune has some of the prose. What a writer.
What a year. Like 1929, 1941, and 2000, this was one that will take up extra space in the history books of the future.
So what did we learn? I polled a few people and here were some responses.
- I used to proclaim, “If there was just one more hour in every day, I’d finally be able to write a book.” Well, we all cut an hour of commuting out of our lives every day, along with about 3 hours of meetings. And I did not finish that book.
- There is such a thing as “too much screen time.”
- Some people we work with have WAY nicer houses than we could have imagined. And some people don’t.
- There are a lot more incredibly gullible, stupid, and obstinate Americans than I would have thought.
- The shift schedules for John, Alice, Margarite, Jane, and the other checkout clerks at my neighborhood grocery store.
- For the last four years, we may not have actually had anyone running the country on a daily basis.
- Many, many, many jokes and gags from movies made in the 1980’s and 1990’s that seemed hilarious at the time… did not age well into the 2020’s.
- The single greatest thing you could have done with your stimulus check in March would have been to stick it in the stock market and spend it now.
- There are still people who believe in the Bill of Rights. As in, my right to not wear a mask is more important than your right to not get sick from me not wearing a mask.
- Cats religiously follow their own daily schedule in the house, and we were completely unaware of it when we went to the office.
- The taste of a Starbucks cold brew from the $5 bottle that can be bought at the grocery store and lasts more than a week, is exactly the same as the taste of the cold brew we spent $5 a day on from the store by our office.
- We own way too many clothes.
- In retrospect, having to wait an extra 10 minutes to order food at a cool restaurant because the place was too busy and understaffed… really wasn’t that big of a deal.
- Whether we like our neighbors or not.
- “Urban hiking” is a real thing.
- You really can fool some of the people all of the time.
I’m sure there are more lessons that we learned. Add yours below!
I cannot claim to be the world’s most charitable person. But if you are considering spending $133 on a DNA test for your dog while unemployment is still at a near all-time high due to COVID, may I suggest donating that $133 to a food bank instead. Or make a donation to an animal shelter or any organization providing needy pet owners with free pet food. Thank you.
