What happened to creative marketing?

No, creativity isn’t dead. But, in advertising and marketing, it has been evicted.

It’s been shoved out to the edges, crowded off the table by consolidation decks, metric dashboards, automation pipelines, KPIs with more decimals than soul, and the cult of “efficiency” that believes faster is automatically better. Creativity didn’t disappear. It just got buried under a landslide of well-intentioned optimization.

But here’s the thing no spreadsheet, no matter how color-coded or cleverly pivot-tabled, can keep underground:

Ideas still matter.
Taste still matters.
Craft still matters.
Human judgment (messy, instinctive, gloriously unquantifiable) still matters.

We don’t create great work by worshipping the frictionless. We create it by wrestling with the unpredictable, the subjective, the inconvenient spark that refuses to be reduced to a metric.

Efficiency can ship a product. But only creativity can make someone care that it exists.

And that’s something no dashboard can automate, consolidate, or KPI its way around.

Buckle Up

 

AI isn’t killing copywriting … but it is dismantling the old rules at speed.

We’re in the uncomfortable middle of a major shift. The tools are powerful, accessible, and moving faster than most people can think through their implications. As a result, confusion is everywhere. Copywriters are experimenting, overusing, underusing, or misunderstanding AI. Clients are doing the same … sometimes replacing judgment with automation, sometimes expecting “AI magic” without strategy.

Mistakes are inevitable. Some copy will get cheaper. A lot of it will get worse. And a smaller slice will get noticeably better … not because AI wrote it, but because someone knew what to ask, what to edit, and what to ignore.

This is how change always looks from the inside: messy, uneven, and uncomfortable. Entire categories of work will be devalued. New ones will emerge slowly and without clear labels. People who equate copywriting with typing words will struggle. People who understand positioning, persuasion, and context will still be needed. Maybe more than ever.

The future of copywriting isn’t clear yet. Anyone claiming certainty is selling something. But one thing is clear: the road there will be tough for many.

An Aging Warhorse Takes Stock

Seventy years old. Let that rattle around a minute. 

For a lot of businesses, that’s long past the expiration date they stamp on your forehead. Thanks for your service, now shuffle off to the golf course, maybe buy a recliner, fade politely into irrelevance.

Not me. Not yet.

I’m still here, still raising hell, still stringing words together like they owe me rent. Still laughing at the wrong jokes while also knowing when to button it up in a client meeting. Still learning, still cussing, still showing up.

And here’s the kicker: I like it better now. The pressure’s gone. I don’t have to pretend to be twenty-five with a full head of hair and a bulletproof plan. I get to be seventy, scars and all, and keep creating without asking permission. That’s freedom.

So if you think there’s an expiration date on relevance, think again. Age doesn’t close the door ... it blows it wide open.

Long live the ones who stay engaged. Long live the ones who keep swinging long after the crowd thinks they should’ve sat down.

I’m seventy. Get the fuck out of my way.

Stop Throwing the Map at Them

 

There’s a certain kind of pitch that feels like being chased through the woods by a very aggressive slide deck.

     Slide one: You are lost.
     Slide two: Very lost.
     Slide three: Shockingly, almost impressively lost.
     Slide four: Good news. We sell compasses.

It’s dramatic. It’s urgent. It can be effective ... and also exhausting.

Because the truth is almost always this: your prospect knows what to do. It just isn’t translating into steps.

Think of strategy like a beautifully drawn trail map. It has contour lines. Landmarks.

Execution, on the other hand, is the muddy incline with the loose rocks and the bug that won’t leave your ear alone.

Most pitches confuse the two. They point at the map and say, “See? You’re failing to follow it.” As if the hikers haven’t noticed.

Consider instead saying something like:

“You already know where you’re going. The issue isn’t intelligence. It’s traction. Let’s talk about where your boots are slipping.”

That changes everything.

When you soften the pitch, you stop positioning yourself as the all-knowing cartographer and start acting like a good trail partner. The kind who says, “Yeah, that hill is brutal. Let’s zigzag it instead of charging straight up.”

This allows you to reframe the pitch: “You already know what to do. The problem isn’t insight. It’s translation. Let’s build the bridge between knowing and doing.”

Now you’re not the hero with the helicopter. You’re the steady hiking partner. The one who says, “Let’s take this in switchbacks. Ten clear steps. We’ll adjust as we go.” Because most leaders don’t need another map, they need someone to help them walk it.

Your presentation should acknowledge autonomy, assume competence, and treat the client like a capable adult who hit a patch of mud, not a lost child in the forest. No humiliation. No theatrics. No 87-slide autopsy.

Because underneath the theatrics of most consulting decks is a quieter truth: people don’t need more insight. They need support in acting on the insight they already have.

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Executive Summary: Replace your 87-slide pitch deck with a simpler offer: "You already know what to do. Here's why that isn't translating into results yet, and here's how we actually get it done together."