Dave Kellogg’s Post

Learn to say no, but not all the time. Wise tips for marketers from Dave Kellogg - also relevant for communicators.

Most CMOs overestimate what strategy is. And underestimate what discipline is. Everyone has a marketing strategy deck. But here’s what really kills growth: → Campaigns that never get finished. → Messages that shift every quarter. → Sales and marketing running two different plays. The best marketing teams don’t just set a strategy. They execute it with ruthless consistency. 👉 Same positioning, repeated until the market finally gets it. 👉 Same ICP, even when it’s tempting to “expand.” 👉 Same story across ads, emails, LinkedIn, and sales calls. It might feel boring internally. But to the outside world, it looks like clarity. And clarity wins. If you feel like your team is “bored” of your message, your market probably just started hearing it. Question for you: what’s one message your company should repeat 10x more?

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Ever heard that one tossed around in a marketing meeting? Same… And every time, I cringe just a little bit. Because here’s the truth ➡️ In marketing, bad publicity is still publicity but that doesn’t make it strategic. It doesn’t make it valuable and it definitely doesn’t make it on brand. Can it spark attention? Sure. Can it drive clicks? Absolutely. But attention without trust is just noise. You might win headlines… and lose customers. You might go viral… and tank your credibility. So is there ever a time where “bad” publicity works? In some cases (if you're a shock-value brand, a startup disrupting the status quo, or a public figure who thrives on controversy) stirring the pot might fuel your brand. But for most of us? Reputation > Reach. Our job isn’t just to get noticed. It’s to build loyalty. To build trust. To build alignment between how we show up and who we say we are. If you’re leading a brand that’s trying to grow with intention, the real question isn’t “How many people saw it?” It should be “How did it make them feel about us?” I’m curious about what everyone else's take is. Have you ever seen bad publicity turn into good marketing? Or did it backfire? #MarketingStrategy #BrandReputation #TrustOverTraffic #Publicity #BrandLoyalty #MarketingLeadership #RockwayReacts #B2BMarketing #PRInsights

Most founders get this backwards. They spend months building in silence. Then launch with a tweet. Radio silence. Then wonder why no one cares. Here’s the truth: attention isn’t something you ask for when you’re ready. It’s something you earn while you build. The fastest way to stand out? Ship your thinking in public — not just your product. Write about the problem you’re solving like you’re teaching someone else to fix it. Share the ugly experiments. Call out the assumptions. Expose the real cost of failure. You don’t need an audience to start. You need a point of view. The market rewards insight, not announcements. If your marketing feels like shouting into a void, you’re probably talking about your product too soon. Instead, talk about the worldview behind it. This one shift — from selling to sharing insight — is how you pull people in before you even ask them to buy. It’s not content. It’s credibility. And it compounds. I break this down in ATTENTION: The Anti-BS Marketing Playbook. No fluff. No vanity metrics. Just what actually works to get seen, heard, and remembered in a noisy world. If you're tired of playing marketing whack-a-mole, go to https://www.theantibs.com #AttentionEconomy #NoBSMarketing #FounderLife

Marketers are terrified of failure. We love to post the case study with the hockey-stick growth chart. But we rarely talk about the campaigns that fell flat, the messaging that missed, or the risks that didn’t pay off. I’ve launched plenty of things that didn’t work as planned. But I don't view that as failure. That’s R&D, baby. 😎 The role of a CMO isn’t to be right 100% of the time. It’s to build a system that can test, learn and iterate faster than the competition. Marketing isn’t deterministic ... it’s probabilistic. You’re placing calculated bets, not flipping switches. In a world that changes by the week (not the decade!), avoiding risk is the fastest way to irrelevance. The real challenge isn’t the miss itself. It’s helping your organization understand that a portfolio of bold bets (including some wins AND some losses) is the only way to build a brand that endures. In other words: the house always wins when marketing has the courage to play. 🎲

How do you balance taking a big bet when you have no baseline to compare it to? Just because an idea is challenging to measure does not mean you cannot measure it. Yes, some argue you have to trust your gut and not focus too much on measurement. But hear me out... Start with incrementality. Start with a hypothesis. What is the MVP version of what you are trying to prove? How can you test it in a small way that still gives meaningful insight? Even directional signals, small wins that show you are moving in the right direction, can be enough to justify learning and iterating further. As a marketer, you have to strike a balance. Make swings big enough to create material impact while being mindful of resources and fiscal responsibility. You also need to altitude shift, looking at the effort from multiple perspectives and being able to articulate impact in different ways. Always consider the narrative and the why. How does this initiative ladder up to the overall company goals? How does it connect to the bigger story you are trying to tell? Big bets are hard, but with a structured approach, you can take them confidently and still learn throughout the process. At the end of the day, marketing is about having the courage to bet big and the discipline to prove why it mattered. #marketingstrategy #marketing

Shifting to a growth mindset from a media buyer mindset is one of the most impactful things you can do as a marketer. Where a media buyer mindset leads to getting to get deep in the weeds, toggling and tweaking, and testing every new feature, a growth marketing mindset allows for zooming out, knowing which levers to pull for impact, and balancing immediate wins with long-term, sustainable strategy. This shift is something that comes somewhat naturally as you gain more experience and ownership, but here are two quick reframes you can try: ✳️ If you think: “My job is to drive the best performance on paid channels.” → Try thinking: “My job is to grow the business using paid marketing as one lever.” ✳️ If you think: “I want to test this new platform feature to see if it improves performance.” → Try thinking: “Knowing what we know about our customers, will this feature will help us better achieve our KPI?” Full post from this week’s edition of the Growth Therapy newsletter in the comments. 

When you’re new to marketing, the goal feels simple: ✨ “If it goes viral, we’ve won.” But experience teaches you otherwise. Over time, you realize that: A million views mean little if no one buys. Engagement doesn’t automatically create revenue. Hype without conversions is just background noise. That’s when your mindset shifts. You stop chasing attention and start focusing on outcomes. Because true marketing is not about vanity metrics— It’s about understanding people, solving their problems, and driving real business growth. At the end of the day, no brand wants “viral.” They want sustainable results. 💡 Smart marketers know: impressions fade, but impact lasts. #MarketingStrategy #DigitalMarketing #GrowthMindset #BrandBuilding #BusinessGrowth #ContentStrategy #MarketingInsights #B2BMarketing

The Human Brain Is Wired Against You! Your prospect’s brain is rigged to ignore you. Every day, they scroll past hundreds of ads, posts, and headlines. To survive the flood, their brain has built-in filters. And the second your business sounds like everyone else... you’re ignored almost automatically. Because the brain is looking for shortcuts, novelty, and clear patterns. That’s why vague promises like “we help businesses grow” or “we improve efficiency” fail. They’re not wrong. They’re just useless. They don’t break the pattern. Here’s how you do: 1️⃣ Lead with outcomes, not activity. Nobody cares what you “do.” They care about what changes after. 2️⃣ Make your claims time-bound. Results with a timeframe feel real. 3️⃣ Anchor with contrast. Show the pain without you vs. the clarity with you. 4️⃣ Ditch the buzzwords. “Solutions” and “growth” = white noise to the brain. 5️⃣ Borrow credibility. Numbers, categories, proof points. They cut through skepticism. 👉 This is why most marketing fails: It ignores how humans actually process information. Your job isn’t to be louder. It’s to be instantly understood by the right people. Do that, and you stop competing for scraps… You start owning mindshare. #sajmarketing #strategicplanning #marketing

The market doesn’t reward the best product. It rewards the best marketer. History is full of brilliant products that never took off, not because they didn’t work, but because no one knew about them. Meanwhile, you’ll see average or even inferior products dominate entire industries… simply because their creators knew how to capture attention, tell a story, and sell. In business, visibility beats perfection. You can have the greatest solution in the world, but if you can’t communicate its value, you’ll lose to someone who can. The lesson? Stop obsessing only about making your product better. Start obsessing about how to market it better. Because the best marketer always wins.