Lochhead on Marketing

The midterm elections wrapped up yesterday, and plenty of people are still sorting through the results. But the hosts of the Pirate Street Journal came away with a different kind of takeaway. This may have been the first AI-assisted election at any real scale, and each of them used the technology in a very different way. One built a voting framework with Claude, one cross-checked three chatbots on...

Most people assume Anthropic is bleeding cash. After reading the S-1, the hosts of the Pirate Street Journal came away with a different picture. The company pulled in about $23 billion over the first nine months of the year, compared with roughly $2.5 billion in the same stretch last year. Investors have put in around $140 billion, and about $132 billion is still sitting in the bank. The headline...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , we are looking back on our greatest hits with Paul Maher , founder of the UK agency Positive Marketing. Most companies chase press coverage by trying to invent news from scratch. Paul thinks that’s backwards. His view is simple: the news happens anyway, so you might as well be in it. Christopher Lochhead sits down with his friend of more than twenty years...

We live in an age where fear is a product. It gets packaged, marketed, and sold to millions of people who never stop to ask who is profiting from their panic. Christopher Lochhead breaks this down brilliantly by taking us back to one of the most instructive fear campaigns in modern history: Y2K. Understanding how the Doomer Industrial Complex works is not about dismissing real problems. It is abou...

During one of our recent episodes, the conversation with Benjamin Jaros around California’s Proposition 40, the so-called billionaire tax, surfaced questions that deserved more space than we could give them at the time. So we’re picking the thread back up here on Lochhead on Marketing . California’s November 2026 ballot carries one of the most consequential financial decisions in...

The conversation around AI centers, data center protests, and artificial intelligence leadership is louder than ever. On the surface, stories about Meta’s lawsuit settlement, EU AI watermarking regulations, data center backlash, and Nvidia’s record-breaking quarter seem completely unrelated. But when you look through a category design lens, they all connect to one single issue: trust....

California has long been the heartland of innovation, home to some of the most transformative companies in history. But a new proposal on the ballot is raising serious questions about whether the state is about to undermine the very foundation that made it great. Mark Cuban recently made headlines by stating that only idiot startup founders will stay in California, and while those words may sting,...

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee opened the World Wide Web to the public. At that time, the entire worldwide economy totaled roughly 24 trillion dollars. Every factory, every bank, every airline, every tech company combined. Today, the digital economy represents approximately 25% of global GDP, a number that was simply zero when the web first launched. This transformation did not happen on its own. Human...

When Spain defeated Argentina in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, most people focused on the scoreline. But a far more fascinating story was unfolding behind the numbers. With 6.8 million international visitors attending matches across 16 American cities, and a global television audience approaching 2 billion people, something remarkable happened. America, without building a single new stadium or ru...

For most of human history, helping people in need has come down to two basic approaches: give them something or teach them something. One is fast but temporary. The other takes time but builds capability. What if there was a third way? What if you could give someone an ownership stake in the greatest wealth-generating machine ever built, the US economy and the US stock market? That is exactly what...

As America marks 250 years of existence, it is worth pausing to ask a question that most people avoid: what is actually true about this country versus what we have been conditioned to believe? The noise coming from cable news, social media algorithms, and political fundraising machines has created a version of America that feels perpetually on the brink of collapse. But the data tells a radically...

America is in the middle of something extraordinary, and most people are not paying attention. Since 2021, Americans have filed more than 20 million new business applications. In 2024 alone, the U.S. averaged roughly 430,000 new business applications per month, which is approximately 50% above pre-pandemic levels. This is not opinion. This is data, and it points to one of the most powerful entrepr...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , the Category Pirates talk with Gina Bianchini about how AI is changing the way we work faster than most people expected. In just a few short years, it has transformed how we access knowledge, complete tasks, and think about productivity. For many professionals, creators, and business owners, that shift raises a pressing question. If AI can do more and mor...

Most people assume the great race in artificial intelligence is about making machines smarter. Bigger models, better reasoning, faster outputs. But a recent conversation between Christopher and ChatGPT accidentally uncovered something far more important than intelligence. It revealed the real frontier of the future of AI, and it has nothing to do with writing poems or passing exams. It started wit...

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who find their place, and there are those who have to make one. The story of Anika Nilles and her role in the return of Rush is one of the most compelling examples of category design, elite preparation, and radical originality that rock music has ever seen. It is a story about refusing to compete on someone else’s terms and instead...

Most people watch politics the same way they watch sports. Your team, my team, win or lose. We wear our colors, red or blue, and cheer accordingly. But that framing misses something profound about how real change actually happens in political landscapes. There is a different lens worth considering, one borrowed from the world of business strategy called category design. This lens doesn’t just expl...

This week, we sat down with marketing royalty Laura Ries , the daughter of Al Ries and Chairwoman of RIES, on Follow Your Different to unpack what makes for truly powerful brand building. We thought that it was so good, it would be a shame if the folks here at Lochhead on Marketing were to miss out. So let’s get everyone caught up while we wait for part 2 to drop! The discussion, sparked by...

In a special episode from the  DisrupTV studios , marketing visionaries Christopher Lochhead, Ray Wang, Vala Afshar, and guest Sunil Karkera dive deep into the themes of Christopher Lochhead’s latest book,  The Existing Market Trap . The conversation is a masterclass in modern marketing strategy, category design, and the seismic impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on business. If you’re a marke...

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing  2025 ! In this New Year’s episode, we reflect on the past year and look forward to 2025, with a focus on significant career trends and the impact of AI on the workforce. With 60% of Americans considering job changes, the episode highlights the diminishing value of traditional knowledge work and the rise of “creative capitalists” who leverage AI f...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , we dive deep with fellow Category Pirate Katrina Kirsch into the critical importance of clarity in marketing. We explore the common pitfalls that entrepreneurs and marketers face when trying to articulate their points of view (POVs) and the challenges of standing out in a crowded marketplace. This episode will break down the key insights from their discus...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , we engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Fernando Labastida , an innovative thinker in category design and a proponent of businesses creating their own unique markets. The discussion centers on the transformative role of writing a book as a strategy for businesses to carve out their unique markets and establish themselves as category leaders. We...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , Category Pirates Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon talk about the power of simplifying business strategies into a One-Sentence Strategy. They discuss how successful companies, from large enterprises to solopreneurs, leverage concise strategies to drive focus and alignment. Highlighting examples like Gillette’s “revenue per user per year&#822...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , Christopher Lochhead, a three-time CMO and a leading figure in category design, gives his Pirates Perspective into the critical concept that “the category makes the brand, not the other way around.” This principle underscores the importance of understanding and defining a category in marketing, as it can profoundly influence consumer perceptio...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon dissects Apple’s latest announcements from the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on an all-new Pirates Perspective. The conversation centers around Apple’s introduction of Apple Intelligence, a cutting-edge AI-driven personal intelligence system, and their strategic partnership with OpenAI. They br...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing , I would like to share with you a very special tribute to a man who’s not only a legend in the world of basketball but also a cherished friend of mine—Bill Walton. Join me as we take a walk down memory lane, revisiting the first time Bill graced my podcast with his presence and the indelible mark he’s left on my life. A Meeting of Minds in San...