Happy Friday Friends! Happy Solstice! I don’t know about you but doesn’t this whole year feel like it’s the longest ever?
Quick question for ya’ll: has anyone else looked at their 2024 marketing strategy lately and thought, ‘Did I write this while concussed at a WeWork?’ Because honestly, same.
We mapped everything down to the last channel strategy – and now it’s been flipped like a Monopoly board like my little sister used to do when she hit my Park Place and muttered, ‘This game is so dumb…”
How do you find your bearings when the ground won’t stop moving? Because spoiler alert: your GPS isn’t broken – it’s just calibrated for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
So crack your knuckles, update your coordinates, and let’s figure out which way is north – before our CMS becomes sentient, refuses to publish, and asks you to define ‘value”
Okay… Quickly – let’s see if we can’t find true North before the TV show The Pitt finds a new orifice to dislocate something from…
In this episode of LENS:
- Zoom Lens: You Are Here! But Should You Be?
- Wide Angle Lens: The Creators Have The Keys To The Car
- Lens Flare: Stop Yelling Into The Void
- Let’s roll….
ZOOM LENS: Recalculating: Finding Your Marketing North in a Zero-Click World
Here’s a fun, mildly unsettling fact: GPS systems don’t need updates because the satellites move – they need updates because the Earth does.
Tectonic plates shift at about the same rate your fingernails grow (that’s a weird reference I know). It means, slowly but surely, the coordinates you rely on become… wrong. In 2017, Australia had to nudge itself two meters closer to reality just to keep showing up in the right place.
What I love about that metaphor is that it means our maps are always wrong. It’s only a question of degree.
Welcome to marketing in 2025.
Everything looks like it’s where you left it: social feeds, search rankings, your trusty blog strategy. But the ground beneath them has shifted. Audiences didn’t vanish – they’ve just moved. Discovery hasn’t died – it’s been rerouted. Content didn’t stop working – it’s just begun to flow in new directions.
If your strategy feels off lately, like your compass is spinning, you’re not broken. You’re just navigating with a map that no longer matches the terrain.
So what changed? Everything. Slowly. Then all at once.
Search isn’t about clicks anymore. AI overviews and zero-click results are hoarding attention like dragons on gold. Organic traffic is down, and “being the answer” isn’t always the win it sounds like.
Social forgot the ‘social’ part. Feeds now answer to the algorithm, not your follower count. Virality is unpredictable. Distribution is no longer democratic – it’s an attention auction.
Trust moved into the crowd. Influence has shifted from institutions to individuals. Real reach now lives inside networks, communities, and credible humans who actually show up.
Experience became the medium. It’s not enough to “tell your story” anymore — you have to design moments people want to participate in, remember, and share.
Owned channels didn’t die – they’ve evolved. Your website isn’t a brochure or blog anymore. It’s a product. A tool. A destination that has to earn the visit.
So yes, the ground has moved. But that’s not a reason to panic. It’s a reason to recalibrate. We just have to update our coordinates. Relearn the terrain. Pay attention to how content actually moves today – not how it used to.
And here’s the good news: the new terrain isn’t unknowable – it’s just uncharted. You don’t need to rebuild your strategy from scratch. You need to rethink how your content travels. That starts with a few new orientation points:
- Treat paid media like propulsion, not permanence. It gets you seen, but only for as long as you’re paying. Spend wisely, and plan for what comes after the click (or lack thereof).
- Design for discovery inside the feed. Think “before the scroll”, not “after the CTA.” Algorithms are the new editors, so build content that earns its place on the all the stages where it is found. Make it so good that people seek you out before they scroll to the next one.
- Invest in networks of trust. Your reach is only as strong as your relationships – with communities, creators, and subject-matter humans. Focus on building an asymmetry of relationships (your partners, your customers, your colleagues). That will define leadership in the coming months and years.
- Make your owned media useful. If someone visits your site, they should leave smarter, more prepared, or more inspired – not just tracked. Create experiences worth returning to. From podcasts to pop-ups to portals, prioritize repeatable value over one-time splash.
Wherever you build, realize that the goal isn’t to build a lighthouse and hope people see it. It’s to better light the path where people already walk.
And then? Tell a damn good story when they get there.
If you’re interested in digging into the nuance a bit more, you can read the full piece here.
Let’s Zoom out bit…
WIDE ANGLE LENS: WHO’S LINE IS IT ANYWAY?
Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?
🤖 ICYMI: The Creators Have The Keys Now
Sorry, CNN. The influencers won.
This month, three stories made it official: creators aren’t just part of the media ecosystem — they are the media ecosystem. WPP now projects that creators will pull in more ad revenue this year than traditional media. Nieman Lab reports that social media just leapfrogged TV as Americans’ top source for news. And at Cannes, agencies are scrambling to become creators themselves – or at least sit closer to the ones holding the ring light.
It’s not just that the lines are blurring. It’s that the creators are the strategy now.
🤖 LENS FLARE: Stop Yelling Into The Void
A recent lesson-learned from one of our latest client engagements:
“We had the strategy. We just didn’t have the map.” I heard that recently from a CMO at a mid-size B2B tech company.
“We were producing great content – thought leadership, webinars, SEO blogs – but nothing was moving. Traffic stalled. Engagement flatlined. My team kept asking, ‘Are we broken?’
They decided to reorient. Their efforts (not the story – where it was told). They shifted budget from search to paid placements inside creator newsletters. Turned the blog into an interactive resource hub, not just a thought leadership index for AI search to scrape. They gave their subject-matter experts – and their employees – permission to be actual people on LinkedIn.
It wasn’t magic – but it’s starting to work. They’ve seen better leads, stronger community response, and actual momentum. The content didn’t need to change – the delivery did.”
The lesson:
The strategy didn’t fail – it just needed a new direction.
If we can help you re-orient – let us know.
LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH
🍷 Finishing Notes…
And here we are. Solstice sun at its peak. Algorithms spinning. Creators rising. Strategies mutating mid-slide deck.
It’s tempting to chase clarity like it’s a destination. But maybe what we need is orientation – the kind that helps us make sense of the moment, even when the map keeps shifting.
This season isn’t about locking in a five-year plan. It’s about learning how to read the wind. To know when to hold course, when to reroute, and when to drop the tired playbook in favor of something that feels more human, more useful, more true.
So take this longest day of the year and have a breath (or two you know). Adjust your angle.
And if all else fails, find someone you trust and ask:
“Hey… do you know which way is north?”
It’s Your Story. Make sure to adjust your map. Then Tell It Well.