Let’s talk about the most overhyped and under-leveraged growth strategy in business today: Customer Experience (CX) paired with Word of Mouth (WOM).

You’ve read the headlines. You’ve skimmed the McKinsey decks. You’ve nodded politely at a thousand LinkedIn influencers saying “the customer is everything.” And hey, they’re not wrong.

We’ve officially entered the era of Marketing Musical Chairs, except the music stops every 12 to 16 months, and it’s always the CMO left standing.

Why? Because the CMO role has become a lame duck gig. Disposable. Decorated. But damned. The title still sounds powerful, but it now often means: “You’re the first to go when growth stalls, vibes are off, or someone in the boardroom starts reading too much Martech Today.”nestly, who has that kind of time?

Here’s the thing: I absolutely, 100%, without hesitation, hate everything about what’s happening with AI clones of creatives. This isn’t innovation. It’s creative extinction dressed up as "progress."

People ask me all the time why I share so much.

Why I talk publicly about my creative process. Why I walk people through strategies that others would lock in a vault. Why do I give away what many would consider “proprietary” or “the secret sauce”

One of the questions I get asked most is: “How do you come up with your ideas?”

The honest answer? We ask better questions than everyone else.

As I wrote yesterday, At The Idea Integration Co., we use a CIA-inspired framework called WoMBAT, short for What Might Be All The… It’s my secret weapon. It forces us (and our clients) to explore wide, weird, wonderful thinking before we narrow in on a final concept. It stops us from jumping at the first idea, and pushes us toward the right one.

People often ask me, “Saul, How do you come up with your ideas?” or “Saul, How do you think the way you do?” It’s not magic, and it’s not luck. It’s a process. A way of approaching problems that I’ve honed over years of experience in marketing, branding, and creating campaigns that grab attention and spark conversations. And the secret sauce?

It all comes down to WoMBAT.

You can have the fanciest CRM, the prettiest dashboards, and a 52-step drip sequence, but if you don’t understand how to actually get someone to stop scrolling, lean in, and care? You’re not doing marketing. You’re doing admin.

Let’s get back to basics, the human brain.

Marketing is about understanding how attention works. And more importantly, how desire is manufactured.

Let’s talk about a trend that’s managed to be both hilarious and deeply revealing at the same time: the ChatGPT action figure.

At first, it was clever. An unexpected and playful way to anthropomorphize AI, something that lives entirely in the ether, by giving it a tangible, toy-like form. It was commentary. It was pop art. It was a joke that worked on multiple levels.

Let’s stop pretending a points program is going to make anyone love your brand.

Most so-called “loyalty” programs aren’t loyalty programs at all, they’re thinly veiled discount traps. Marketers bribe people with rebates, cash-back, and useless points in exchange for repeat purchases, social shares, and reviews.

It’s a transactional mess. A race to the bottom. And it commodifies your brand in the worst possible way.

The world is chaos right now.

Tesla dealerships are getting vandalized. Memes and podcasts are shaping political outcomes more than billion-dollar campaigns. The platforms that brands used to rely on, Facebook ads, Google search, even traditional PR is tried and true but you need something great for them to get excited about. People are choosing their own sources of truth, and in most cases, those sources aren’t mainstream media or conventional advertising.

It isn't just you, most marketing sucks right now.

That’s not just my opinion. According to Gartner, 87% of brands said their marketing campaigns underperformed last year. And nearly half (45%) had to pull the plug on campaigns early because they were so bad they weren’t worth keeping alive.

I have been on this internet a long time...like 4800 and 9600 baud modems speeds long time. I have seen every evolution of content and blogging and it wasnt too long ago when something like a Super Bowl halftime show or Elon Musk doing Elon Musk things would instantly trigger blog posts with the titles...5 things I learned from The Super Bowl etc.

I have a confession: I hate selling and I don't even know if I'm particularly good at it.

But here’s the paradox if I can get a meeting, our close rate is incredibly high. The challenge is getting the meeting in the first place. Our cold emails? They’re strange and direct because I want people to know exactly what to expect from us from the jump. No fluff, no pleasantries just straight talk about what we do and how we can help.

SuperBowl ads are the ultimate brand and agency vanity play, and we need to talk about it. Yeah, I said it. And before anyone gets all riled up about the “cultural moment” or “brand exposure,” let’s break down the reality here.

Brands are forking over $7 million for 30 seconds of airtime. Factor in production costs, celebrity talent fees, and the hype machine that kicks into gear weeks before kickoff, and we’re looking at a $15-20 million spend. For one ad. One.

I’m writing this from a hospital room while my dad is dying. It sucks. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years—after spending 50+ days in this situation when I lost my mom five years ago and after being on a breathing machine for 17 days three years ago when I got Covid, and now several weeks with my dad in and out of hospitals for months—it’s that life doesn’t pause, and neither does business.

Some people use work as a distraction from life. Sometimes, life is the distraction from work. And sometimes, like right now, the two overlap in a very weird, emotional, and deeply exhausting Venn diagram.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who asked me, "So, what are you up to these days?" It was a simple, casual question, but it got me thinking—people seem genuinely unclear about what I do for a living.

This isn’t a new phenomenon for me. I’ve always been a bit of an enigma, partly by design and partly because what I do doesn’t fit neatly into a single job title or industry box. Over the years, I’ve built businesses, created marketing campaigns that made headlines, orchestrated brand experiences that changed the way companies engage with their customers, and helped businesses stand out in ways they never thought possible.

When I first pitched the idea for the #IMAKEALIVING powered by FreshBooks event series, the goal was simple: bring business owners together to share what was really keeping them up at night. There were hundreds—if not thousands—of resources on starting a business, but very few places to turn when things got tough. What happens when your friends can’t refer you business anymore? When you feel like you’re all alone?

I’ve been watching The West Wing a lot lately. I watched it when it first aired, but aside from the occasional YouTube clip, this is my first full rewatch. And let me tell you, I'm appreciating it in a whole new way.

Back then, I enjoyed it, sure, but I didn’t fully grasp the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin’s writing like I do now. The dialogue, the pacing, the depth, it’s next-level. The way Sorkin crafts conversations that are both razor-sharp and deeply human is something I completely overlooked the first time around. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right headspace back then, or maybe I’ve evolved, who knows.

Let’s get real for a second, when it comes to knowing what’s best for their customers, many brands are flying blind. They think they know. They have assumptions, gut feelings, and internal discussions that reinforce their own biases. But the truth? Some of them don’t have the slightest clue who their customers actually are, what they really want, or how to effectively connect with them.

Let’s talk about the fun stuff. The bold, creative ideas. The ones that make people laugh, cry, share, and talk. The ideas that go viral, break the mold, or make brands unforgettable. It’s the work we live for at The Idea Integration Co. It’s also, unsurprisingly, the work everyone wants to do.

But here’s the catch: not everyone can.