Blueprint — page 7 | The Gradient

Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

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Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

5 Ways To Make Your Marketing Channels Work Together

Multi-channel marketing tends to sound more complicated than it needs to be. But we live in a world of “more”: more platforms, more campaigns, more assets, and more reporting to explain. The work expands, but the strategy behind each channel is not always clearly defined. Especially when you’re asked to do more at the speed

The CMS is becoming the AI operating system for brands

AI is changing what the CMS is expected to do. What used to be a publishing system is becoming the control layer for how brands are discovered, understood, personalized, and transacted across human and machine experiences. The CMS is now where brands provide structured context that AI systems use to discover, understand, validate, and recommend

More of a performance than a fixed system, Ronnie Scott’s new identity does a typographic dance

Dan’s new visual system for the venue started out by bringing two new typefaces to the brand: “Railroad Gothic, a bold, condensed font that gives impact, scale and structure and Century Condensed sits alongside as a more restrained secondary layer – inspired by the club’s elegant interiors and late-night hospitality,” he says. Jazz is a

5 Lessons From Running AI Agents Across Every Search

Last year, 2.5% of Writesonic’s leads came from AI search. As of March, 35% do. Samanyou Garg, Founder and CEO of Writesonic, showed the system behind that number in his Search Engine Journal webinar: agents surface what moved across every search platform, practitioners prioritize and act. “AI search didn’t necessarily kill SEO, but it turned

advertising has lost its way

At an IAB Europe forecast panel yesterday (July 7), Ian Whittaker — a former City equity analyst who now runs Liberty Sky Advisors — dropped the kind of line that tends to go quiet in a room full of ad execs: “Advertising has lost its way.” His reasoning is that four or five decades ago,

This TikTok-famous engraving pen turns wooden spoons into tiny artworks

If you don’t have room for one of the best laser cutting machines, or find the best Cricut craft machines too complex, then the answer is the Resparked Cordless Rechargeable Engraving Pen – and it’s reduced by 22% right now on Amazon, at £23.49. Why this one? It caught my eye because the same engraving

Is Your Content Strategy Recommending Competitors?

This post was sponsored by FirstPromoter. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. For years, software companies have published pages that rank the best tools in a category and place their own product at the top. The tactic was cheap and easy to scale, and for a long time it helped shape

Is This the End of Tech-Spec Marketing? ft. Hisense CMO Sarah Larsen

Consumer electronics marketing has a bad habit: It talks too much about the product and not enough about the person buying it. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Sarah Larsen, CMO at Hisense USA, joins Jenny Rooney to unpack why she’s throwing tech speak out the window and rebuilding marketing around sell-out, consumer behavior, and

Colon ? brand Identity & Packaging Design

:: It is a calling instruction. It symbolizes our process of extracting coffee from the vague category of “agricultural products” and transforming it through precise experimental methods into a controlled and perceptible “sensory coordinate”. It represents the necessary path from the original (Origin) to the resolution (Resolution).

CMOs Don’t Have an Influence Problem. They Have an Operating System Problem.

Gini Dietrich describes why CMOs are losing C-suite influence—and why the missing operating system, not short-term thinking, is the real cause. The post CMOs Don’t Have an Influence Problem. They Have an Operating System Problem. first appeared on Spin Sucks.

Google Search Console Adds Social & Video Platform Properties

Google is introducing a new property type in Search Console called platform properties, which lets you monitor how social media and video posts perform in Google Search and Discover. This feature supports platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube and is available even to creators who don’t have their own websites. Moshe Samet, Product

The HubSpot controversy asks why customers pay to improve AI products

On July 1, HubSpot announced new terms of service that allowed the company to take enrichment data from one company and use it to enrich or supplement another company’s records. Then it automatically opted in all of its customers. Their response was fast and quite furious. “What the hell is HubSpot thinking?” Gabe Larsen, CRO

Stanley Plowman’s Garble is machine-executed typography filled with human mess

With image-based media sinking a little bit further down the AI-slop slope every day, we find ourselves yearning for the analogue simplicity of our childhood drawings. Blow pens, which allows for randomness and freckles of felt tip spraying across the page, and multicoloured graphite pencils that allow you to draw in rainbow streaks. One particular

Google Answers Question About LLMs-Author.txt For SEO

Google’s John Mueller answered a question related to something a Redditor was using that’s called an llms-author.txt. The person who posted the question is having a hard time being found for their name because it is the same as two other more popular entities, making it more difficult for people to find them and discover

AI makes agencies optional, not obsolete

Dollar Shave Club already makes 90% of its advertising in-house. Its new brand boss wants AI to close the rest of the gap. “We are 90% in-house,” said Dollar Shave Club’s chief brand and innovation officer Laura Higgins, when asked how much of the brand’s advertising is done internally. Asked if that figure could climb

Video tutorial series shows how to make a 3D game in free Godot Engine

The free open-source platform Godot Engine was is widely rated as one of the best game engines. The Godot AI ban has won the software still more good will among indie devs. Fast and lightweight, the platform’s most known for creating 2D platformers, puzzle games and metroidvanias, but it’s also highly capable for 3D projects,

AI Content Didn’t Stop Working, Your Metrics Did

Everyone in the industry is going through the same thing right now. Your content team ships a solid asset, but traffic stays flat or declines. You pull up the analytics, see the line trending sideways, and conclude that AI content has stopped working. That verdict is often wrong. The data may be accurate, but the

LiveRamp Launches Brand Campaign on Netflix as Publicis Deal Fuels Scrutiny of its Neutrality

LiveRamp, which has for years helped brands, publishers, and platforms connect and activate customer data, is launching its first brand campaign on connected TV. The message, one of trust and flexibility, arrives amid a pending Publicis takeover that has the ad industry questioning whether the platform can remain neutral. The adtech company will air 15-

Build An OKF Brain Like Mine!

My last piece on Google’s Open Knowledge Format (OKF) was one of the most popular I’ve ever published. Since then, I have been heads down working on my own OKF structure. I’ve essentially built my own personal brain, and today, I want to show you how it works and why this standard is so incredibly

Turning marketing complexity into a competitive advantage

Marketing has never been more exciting — or more demanding. Today’s teams operate across a rich web of customer data platforms, AI-powered analytics, commerce channels, content engines, partner networks, and emerging digital experiences. The possibilities for personalization, agility, and growth are unprecedented. With that opportunity comes a new kind of challenge: ecosystems that are more

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