Funnel Reboot

Up to the 18th century, making and trading things was harder than it needed to be. You had to deal with a bewildering patchwork of local constants and norms. It was actually the French Revolution & administrators who came out of it that started to codify how we measure things. The standards they adopted were ultimately formalized in 1875 at a Convention  whose name you may recognize, the Metre - o...

For any professional, life often presents unexpected challenges that test our resilience and strength. The Ottawa-based marketer we'll hear from today, has had an extraordinary journey,  For those born with congenital heart defects like Danny Covey's, surgery isn't an if, it's not even a when, it a HOW MANY. Without undergoing them, they have no hope of living to adulthood, Danny has had eight of...

One of the best known events in the modern Olympics is the High jump. Since its dawn in 1896 all jumpers used the same technique. They would run towards the bar, then begin their vault by putting one leg over, or trying to go head-first over the bar. But someone came to the 1968 Mexico City games, who couldn't win on physicality, but who did have a hack no one had thought of.    That person was 21...

Artificial General Intelligence is a term that most of us have heard, a good number of us know how its defined, and some claim to know what it will mean for the average marketer. Here's what OpenAI's Sam Altman said "It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI."   Wh...

Hey, Glenn here. It's the middle of summer when I'm recording this; a time we don a pair of shades, a beach towel and a good book. Funnel Reboot usually shares talks with marketing book authors, but for this show I'm going to share some reads that go a little farther afield.  Come along with me through six books that are all amazing. The subjects range between business, humanities, technology and...

Sometimes, to reach a solution, we must take unfamiliar paths.  In the early 1940s, a brilliant mathematician named Abraham Wald left his homeland in Hungary fleeing the spectre of war. He moved to the United States, and became part of a team at Columbia University tasked in 1942 with an aspect of the war where the Allies were losing badly to the Nazis. It involved the many Allied planes that woul...

We as consumers do a lot of things just because the people around us are doing them. For proof, look no further than some historical examples—from the 17th-century tulip bulb craze in Holland to doomsday cults and prepper movements in the lead-up to Y2K. Buying fads such as pet rocks, fidget spinners, Beanie Babies, and NFTs all show how easily prevailing thoughts influence individual behavior.  ...

Most of the leading AI companies tell us how wonderful their technology will make our lives.  In a recent post put out by OpenAI's head, Sam Altman called The Gentle Singularity, he says "We will figure out new things to do and new things to want...Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we'll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each...

Since July 1st, 2023, the world of web analytics has undergone a seismic shift—and if you're still reeling from the transition to Google Analytics 4, you're not alone. In this episode, we unpack what many are calling the 'Armageddon' of digital measurement. You'll hear why GA4 isn't just a new version of an old tool, but a completely different ecosystem In human years, GA4 is still a toddler. But...

Episode 209 When it comes to initiatives humans undertake, we only need to look at a few to see how they can fail spectacularly. One example:  The iconic Sydney Opera House came from a competition won by a young Danish Architect. The board who'd commissioned him to build it was told it would be completed by 1963, but things were so chaotic and so behind schedule, he had to be fired. It is truly a...

Episode 208 People resist change. They only stop resisting when they're convinced the change is needed. They're only convinced change is needed when they grasp the truth. The best way to present them the truth is with data.    You might think that what works on people is a dry statistical presentation of the data in all its Indisputable, inscrutable glory.  Nope. Those avoiding change give themsel...

Episode 207 Those of you who know me outside of this podcast, know that if I'm doing anything that involves advertising, whether it be in a classroom or a consulting setting, I think of ads as a complicated puzzle that is never fully solved. While it may not have a predictable outcome, there are a few key principles about it that are always true. I've picked up these lessons one at a time, either...

Episode 206 There's no denying that ChatGPT and other GenerativeAI's do  amazing things. Extrapolating how far they've come in 3 years, many can get carried away with thinking GenerativeAI will lead to machines reaching General and even Super Intelligence. We're impressed by how clever they sound, and we're tempted to believe that they'll chew through problems just like the most expert humans do. ...

Episode 204 Eyes are important. Each of us puts heavy weight on our vision when forming a mental model of the world around us. Seeing is believing. This is so important in business, almost every time people meet, some visual tool guides the discussion - this practically essential object is a presentation, specifically a data presentation. But knowing what we know about our visual senses, creating...

Episode 203:  How many words does a message need to be for it to be useful? Would you believe under 35 words, or under 160 characters? Here are some examples: Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address: "We cannot dedicate. We cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The world will little note nor long. Remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."  Suffragette leader Em...

Episode 202 One of the most famous western philosophers of all time is GWF Hegel. He influenced other thinkers like Karl Marx, Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. He lectured at the universities of Jena, heidelberg and from 1818 until 1831, at Berlin. As a matter of fact, his lectures there drew students from all over campus, to the point that the belltower at the University would sound its be...

Episode 201: While our guest wasn't the one who invented content marketing, by founding the  Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi became its standard-bearer. For decades now he has shown  marketers how to make their marketing better by building a media presence that directly connects them to their audience.  These days, Joe is saying this model applies to a much wider populace. He's showing ho...

Episode 200 Podcasts are tiny time capsules, preserving moments of wisdom and insight. Every time I revisit past episodes, I am reminded of how insightful our guests have been. Certain themes consistently emerge, echoed by guests from the very beginning of the podcast to just yesterday. The cost of ignoring these insights is so high that they bear repeating. Tune in to our latest episode where I s...

Episode 199 Today's topic is AI and ML, and though you may think this doesn't concern marketing, we need to acknowledge how it'll shift things. Up to now, marketing was done on the premise that for a given audience shown a message, some  average percentage, would act on it. With AI, we're now able to look at individual audience members and predict how each of them would act upon a message, and at...

Episode 198 A pretty widely held view in the world of B2B products is that sales has gotten harder, not easier. It's not that buyers aren't buying. By definition, buying is something they do. But in the example of software, some sales reps won't even know they were being evaluated, let alone passed up for a rival's product. Only the winning vendor knows that that account uses them for that specifi...

Episode 197 Today, we are going to talk about how those of us who sell things find new buyers once we've exhausted our own audiences. We involve partners, and we can do this in a few ways. These partners may have high-traffic sites or be social media influencers. We are trying to use someone else's channel to reach their audience, hoping they will buy from us. Alternatively, we might be the ones w...

Episode 196   There's something we take for granted these days, something that wasn't even possible a short while ago. Let's go back to 2008, to the first iPhone, the 3G. What you could send & receive with one, if you could afford the data plan, was restricted to voice, text & small images. That's because at the time, the cellular networks could transmit at around a third of a Megabyte per second,...

Episode 195 We all want our organization's decisions to be driven by the numbers. Who wouldn't want to have at their fingertips analytics that accurately show which course of action will be best.   But doing this takes analysts, and that doesn't mean hiring them, it means managing them to function well. It means creating processes for them, Outfitting them with technology. Giving them budgets. It'...

Episode 194 There's more than one way to skin a cat. Being honest, doing something differently is often neither better or worse, it's just different. - Playing Music with an acoustic vs electric guitar - Writing with a pen on paper vs a computer. And continuing on that theme, it could be a Mac or a PC - Programming can be done in various languages - Films can be made with a variety of filming equi...

Episode 193 Those of us in the digital economy think a lot about growing our business, but we don't think as much about the tech that enables customers to interact with our business. When our sites don't run smoothly or aren't available, our customers suffer and it stops working as our sales and marketing engine. Terms for these episodes: the site crashed or it croaked, give us a perception that s...