Lab-Grown Marketing by Evidenza

Sales and marketing alignment might be the biggest fantasy in B2B. After decades of dashboards, handoff frameworks, attribution models, and “smarketing” workshops, most companies are still running the same internal knife fight. This week on Lab Grown Marketing, Jon and Peter argue that the problem isn’t failed alignment — it’s the assumption that alignment should exist in the first place. Drawing...

A 10-table restaurant in Harlem became a $2.7 billion CPG brand by mastering one thing: being easy to want and easy to buy. Rao’s didn’t scale the restaurant—it scaled the desire. Jon and Peter break down how Rao’s built extreme mental availability through myth, scarcity, and cultural relevance—then paired it with physical availability through disciplined distribution. From mafia mystique to premi...

From Sam Altman to Jeff Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg, the pattern keeps repeating—leaders dismiss advertising right up until they need it to scale. Advertising isn’t a necessary evil. It’s the system that makes modern markets work. This week, Jon and Peter take on one of marketing’s most persistent myths: that advertising is annoying, manipulative, or optional. The reality looks very different. They u...

Most ads aren’t ignored because they’re bad. They’re ignored because they assume attention that doesn’t exist. The real problem isn’t a “worst-case scenario” — it’s the default one. In this episode, Jon and Peter break down why modern advertising must be designed for half a second, sound off, mid-scroll. They unpack the picture superiority effect, why visuals are processed up to 20x faster than te...

AI slop? Not so fast. This week on Lab Grown Marketing , Jon and Peter make the case that AI isn’t cheapening marketing — it’s upgrading it. From voice-first workflows to a sudden boom in “storytelling” jobs, the guys explore why the real productivity unlock of AI isn’t faster typing… it’s better thinking, spoken out loud. They kick things off From the Feed with a surprising Wall Street Journal si...

Marketers love data. More dashboards. More cuts. More “just one more slide.” But what if more data doesn’t make you smarter — it just makes you slower? This week on Lab Grown Marketing, Jon and Peter go deep on the signal-to-noise ratio and the uncomfortable truth hiding inside modern marketing teams: sometimes the thing you’re asking for is the thing delaying your best decision. They kick things...

Everyone loves the idea that the best product wins. It’s clean, comforting, and almost always wrong. This week on Lab Grown Marketing , Peter and Jon take on the product delusion — the belief that product superiority alone guarantees success. In From the Feed , the guys use a timely media moment to revisit an old debate: why better products so often lose to better distribution. It’s a familiar pat...

Marketers keep talking about brand building — meanwhile, half of today’s brands are quietly dying. Jon and Peter are here to stop the funeral. This week on Lab Grown Marketing , the guys break down how to avoid brand death in the synthetic era — why it happens, what causes it, and what the top 1% are doing differently. We open with Move 37 , where Jon shares the story of how AI beat the world cham...

This week, Jon and Peter resurrect one of marketing’s most misunderstood — and most financially powerful — ideas: the 60/40 rule. If half of B2B marketers still claim brand “isn’t a priority”… well, the guys have thoughts. First up in From the Feed , they break down the newest Marketing Week report, where human respondents (adorable!) reveal why they still don’t believe brand delivers ROI. Then Jo...

What if everything marketers believe about precision is, well… probably wrong? In this ep, Jon and Peter crack open the illusion of certainty that defines modern marketing — and expose why “the right person, the right message, the right time” might be the industry’s biggest fantasy. From LLMs to audience targeting, they’re breaking down how marketing magic is more about managing uncertainty than m...

How can you add a little more movie magic to your marketing mojo? Jon and Peter dive into the theory of blockbuster marketing and explain why movie marketers either go big – or risk getting buried.   First up, they break down how Warner Bros. just beat Disney at its own game, raking in $1.3 billion to Mickey’s measly $1.2 billion. How can the blockbuster strategy work for a variety of industries?...

It’s the season finale, and Jon and Peter are bringing in the big guns: Professor Mark Ritson, the man who can make or break your marketing ego in a single sentence. Ever wondered how to beat Roger Federer at tennis? It’s basic math to Mark: you simply don’t play him. Mark’s breaking down some of his top marketing lessons of all time in a few words or less, discussing what he really thinks of * th...

What do Weight Watchers, Tropicana, ABRDN, Jaguar, and HBO all have in common? You guessed it — terrible rebrands. In this ep, Jon and Peter are putting risky marketing moves under the microscope to ask the question — just how much risk is too much? First, they’re diving into the feed and covering some of marketing’s biggest acts of brandilism. Why are so many brands turning into blands? And are t...

Back from Cannes and still reeking of overpriced rosé, Peter and Jon tackle the pain point marketers love to hate but can’t stop obsessing over: measurement . In this episode, they take a flamethrower to the click-through cult and ask the real question: why are we still chasing metrics that don’t matter? First up in From the Feed , the boys unpack the 95-5 rule thanks to a spicy little post from a...

This week on the pod, Peter and Jon are done talking about the marketing renaissance — so they’re leaping into the new age of marketing maximalism. When it comes to ad targeting, more is more. So why do so many marketers keep trying to hypertarget the “perfect” audience? After all, brands used to succeed before targeting was invented… so is it possible it just isn’t as important as we’ve been led...

Creative: everyone's got an opinion, but no one seems to have a framework. Until now. In this episode of Lab Grown Marketing , Jon and Peter pull back the curtain on what makes creative actually effective—not just award-worthy. Spoiler: most award-winning ads are terribly branded. They cover Coca-Cola’s AI-generated holiday ad (spoiler: creative directors hate it, the AI loves it), and walk us...

If you aren’t standing out, you’re blending into the competition. So, how can you ensure you’re creating distinctive brand assets that stay top-of-mind in buyers everywhere? Jon and Peter break down the data behind what makes brands memorable— and explain how to analyze the numbers to guarantee your assets leave a lasting impression. Why are brands like McDonald's, Liberty Mutual, and Apple so...

What do champagne and cloud servers have in common? Absolutely nothing — unless you’re thinking like a marketer. This week, Jon and Peter take a deep dive into category entry points and explain how those magical money moments — like when someone suddenly decides they do need to buy that $200 bottle of Dom Pérignon at the club — happen. Why is the brand that comes to mind first the brand that gets...

The customer is always right… right? Bezos knows they are. And if Jeffrey thinks it, you should probably pay attention. In this week’s episode, the guys explain why the king of Amazon keeps an empty chair in his meeting rooms at all times (we swear — it’s not a creepy billionaire thing) before exploring the importance of everybody’s least favorite topic — market research. How is it possible that B...

With so much rage bait in the world, sometimes you just can’t resist clapping back. This week, consider us sufficiently rage baited because we’re taking on Scott Galloway’s latest remarks and marking him as public enemy #1. Galloway recently went on a podcast to claim that “brand is dead.” But Jon and Peter wonder if he’s actually just brain-dead or just taking a note from the Elon Musk playbook o...

For the past century, marketing has been a human-driven craft. But in the next decade, man-made marketing will be dead. Welcome to the rise of the Synthetic Century. Before you start picturing a Skynet-style takeover, Jon and Peter are here to explain why synthetic technology is actually a good thing—just like lab-grown diamonds, oil, and rubber, it democratizes access and improves efficiency. Wit...

Man-made marketing will be dead in the next 10 years. The synthetic revolution is here. There. We said it — someone had to. But what does that mean for your marketing department? Throughout the show, Lab-Grown Marketing, Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg break down what this synthetic revolution means for the future of marketing with a little help from their AI-powered assistants. But before you go...