Where marketing knowledge is gathered and kept.

The 4 Ps of marketing

The marketing mix says a marketer's job is to set four controllable variables: product, price, place and promotion. It is a classification, not a theory, and has never been tested as one.

Positioning in marketing

Positioning, as Ries and Trout set it out in 1972, claims that a brand wins by occupying one clear slot in the prospect's memory. The memory half holds up.

Market segmentation

Market segmentation claims a market is not one demand curve but several, and that a firm does better serving some of them well than all of them adequately. The evidence supports that claim for categories: buyers differ in what they want and how much they use.

1841. Who invented the advertising agency

Volney Palmer opened the first US ad agency in 1841, paid by the newspapers. How that commission shaped agencies to the Mad Men era, and what replaced it.

1922. The first paid radio commercial

On 28 August 1922 a property firm paid WEAF $50 to talk about apartments. What radio's first thirty years say about sponsoring a show versus buying the spot.

1941. The first television commercial

The $9 Bulova spot of 1 July 1941 created the paid TV unit. Why it took thirty years, a scandal and a tobacco ban to become the 30-second spot you buy today.

The Coke and Pepsi brain study: what McClure found in 2004, and what the result can and cannot carry

In 2004 Samuel McClure and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine scanned people drinking Coke and Pepsi. Blind, preferences were split and brain activity in a reward region tracked the taste.

System 1 and System 2 thinking in marketing: what the two-system model says, and what marketers added to it

System 1 and System 2 are the names Daniel Kahneman used in Thinking, Fast and Slow for two modes of thought: fast, automatic and effortless on one side, slow, deliberate and effortful on the other. The labels came from Stanovich and West in 2000.

The somatic marker hypothesis: emotion as the machinery of choosing, and the experiment that was challenged

Antonio Damasio argued in 1994 that emotion is part of how people decide, not interference with it. Patients with damage to a specific region of the prefrontal cortex kept their reasoning and lost their ability to choose well.

What is AI marketing?

AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence systems inside marketing work: to research buyers, generate and test creative, target and bid on media, and to earn a place in the answers AI assistants give when somebody asks for a recommendation. It is a set of tools and a new distribution channel at the same time, and most teams are only treating it as the first.

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the practice of writing and structuring content so that generative engines cite it in the answers they produce. The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues at Princeton, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Allen Institute for AI and IIT Delhi.

What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the practice of preparing content so that it is used in a direct answer rather than in a list of links. In practice it means answering one question per page, plainly and early, in a block that can be lifted out whole and still make sense.

Brand versus reputation: what is the difference?

A brand is what a company says and shows about itself. A reputation is what other people conclude from what it does. One is authored, the other is earned, and in a buying meeting the second one decides.

The Edelman Trust Barometer

An annual survey of trust in four institutions, business, government, media and non-governmental organisations, published by the communications firm Edelman every year since 2001. It is the most widely cited public measure of institutional trust, and it is worth understanding both what it shows and what it is.

1982. The Tylenol case

In the autumn of 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. Johnson & Johnson pulled the product nationally, warned the public not to take it, and reintroduced it in tamper-evident packaging. It remains the reference case in crisis communications, and it is routinely misread.

How Brands Grow. Byron Sharp (2010)

The evidence-based case that brands grow by reaching more buyers rather than by deepening loyalty among the ones they have. Built on decades of purchase panel data from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and the most disruptive marketing book of the last twenty years.

Growth comes from being easy to think of and easy to buy, not from being loved by a few.

Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy (1983)

The working manual of the man who built Ogilvy & Mather, on headlines, layouts, research, and the difference between advertising that wins awards and advertising that sells. It is a book of craft instructions, not a theory, and it should be read as one.

The consumer is not a moron. Write as if she were reading over your shoulder.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout (1981)

The book that moved the battleground from the product to the prospect's mind. Own a word, or own a place relative to the leader, before somebody else does. It began as a series of articles in Advertising Age in 1972 and has shaped how marketers talk ever since.

You do not position a product. You position it in a mind that is already full.

How the AI search vocabulary moved in a year

Three terms compete to name the same worry: that buyers are asking an AI assistant instead of a search engine. We tracked all three in US search volume across a year. AI SEO is the largest, generative engine optimization peaked early and fell back, and answer engine optimization climbed from almost nothing to a real number. Our own data, fetched 14 September 2026.

How AI engines answer marketing questions: a citation study

We asked a live AI engine eight marketing questions and checked every source it named. It performed a live search for two of them. Of the sources it listed for the rest, 21 did not exist. This is our own test, run on one engine on one day, and the method and its limits are below.

What people search for in marketing: the demand map

We measured US monthly search volume for every topic a marketing reference site might cover. Three findings. Film titles are the largest entries by a wide margin, concept names beat author names by roughly two hundred to one, and two categories we had planned barely exist as searches. Our own data, fetched 14 September 2026.

Thank You for Smoking (2005)

Jason Reitman's satire follows a tobacco lobbyist who can argue any side of any question. It is a film about spin, about the gap between persuasion and truth, and about what happens to a person who is very good at the first and indifferent to the second.

The Founder (2016)

Ray Kroc turns a single hamburger stand in San Bernardino into McDonald's. The product was the brothers'. The system was theirs too. The brand, the real estate and the name became his. It is the best film ever made about what a brand actually is, and it is not a flattering answer.

Art & Copy (2009)

Doug Pray's documentary on the creative revolution in American advertising, with Lee Clow, George Lois, Mary Wells Lawrence, Hal Riney and others talking about the work that defined the trade. It is the most affectionate film on this list and the least critical.

This Note's for You. Neil Young (1988)

A refusal to sell songs to sponsors, with a title that parodies a beer slogan. MTV initially declined to air the video, then gave it Video of the Year in 1989. It is the clearest artefact of the moment when musicians had to decide whether sponsorship was selling out.

Sell Out. Reel Big Fish (1996)

A ska-punk band signs to a major label and writes a hit about signing to a major label. The commercial bargain, sung cheerfully from inside it. It is the funniest entry in this section and the one that best describes how the argument actually ended.

Television, the Drug of the Nation. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (1992)

Michael Franti's spoken-word indictment of broadcast media, consumption and attention, written before the feed replaced the channel. It is the most analytically serious song in this section and the one that has aged into something closer to prophecy than protest.