Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. The research mistake that kills good messaging On a podcast recently, someone asked me: What’s the biggest mistake product marketers make when researching for messaging? It’s tempting to point to obvious traps—confirmation bias, talking to the wrong users, skipping research altogether. But the deeper issue is simpler: Teams confuse collecting data with doing...
2 days ago • 2 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. The hidden "architecture" rules that decide if prospects say yes Last week I ended up in a YouTube rabbit hole. The video featured Steven Harris, a New York based architect known for blending modernist design with livable comfort. He walked through the five non negotiables he uses when designing his own home. On the surface, it had nothing to do with messaging. But...
9 days ago • 3 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. What craft means (and why you should care) When I first started learning copywriting, my “practice” looked pretty old school: I’d sit down with a notebook and hand copy sales letters word for word. Page after page, until my wrist ached. It was boring, sure, but it drilled into me the rhythm and flow of persuasion in a way no shortcut ever could. Today, you can ask AI...
16 days ago • 3 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. When AI learns to empathize… what’s left for us? The last couple of years, marketers have reassured themselves with the same line: "AI can crunch data, but it can't empathize. It can't truly understand what makes people tick." I'm not buying it anymore. I recently interviewed Sam Woods for my podcast (episode dropping soon), and he told me about AI agents that...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. How to make saying “yes” effortless for your reader I watched the new Naked Gun reboot last night and remembered how good “dumb” can be. The kind of dumb that’s actually smart. It didn’t wink at the audience or over-explain the joke. It set the scene, trusted us to follow, and let the punchline land. And it reminded me how often we ruin that same simplicity in copy....
30 days ago • 2 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. The uncomfortable truth about messaging 'experts' "The difference between having a process and knowing your process is the difference between insecurity and confidence." — Dan Nelken AI has become the great revealer in our industry. Not of who's "good at AI" or who's "anti-technology," but of something far more fundamental: who actually understands their own process....
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. Prototype the message, not just the product Most teams treat copy like a finished product. Write it. Approve it. Ship it. But what if we treated it like a prototype instead? In product development, that'd be a no-brainer. You test early. You prototype fast. You pressure-test assumptions before committing resources. In marketing? Not so much. We still write landing...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. Saw this tagline on a poster today, and it hit harder than it should’ve. “Results you can see. Braces you can’t.” You know you work in messaging when orthodontic ads start feeling profound. I just wrapped up my Invisalign treatment. 18 months. Quietly working in the background. And honestly? I barely thought about it. That’s the point. After the first couple of weeks...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. Your buyer might never read your homepage, but their AI agent will. And that AI agent is building a shortlist that could make or break your deal. The B2B SaaS buying process is quietly changing. Procurement teams deploy AI agents to research vendors and compare features. Sales teams use AI to qualify prospects and gather competitive intelligence. Decision-makers let...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. Three weeks ago, two cofounders launched Dia—a new AI-first browser (I'm loving it). They also move away from Arc, a beloved browser with millions of users and a passionate tech community. And it wasn't failing. So why kill it? The answer starts with a Sunday afternoon in January 2024. Miller was living in Paris, about to board a flight, when he casually tweeted...
2 months ago • 5 min read