(
)
***********************
Happy Sunday, Everyone!
***********************
I spent much of this past week in Chicago (it was surprisingly
nice…) at ShopTalk Fall. While there, I had the opportunity to
share the stage with two fantastic marketers - Nick Hasselberg of
Every Man Jack and Lauren Price of COS - for a discussion on
Winning Brand Expression Across Platforms. That session had an
exchange about both the purpose of marketing and how it ought to
be evaluated…which dovetailed nicely into the topic I wanted to
write about this week: what is marketing supposed to do, anyway?
The second bit of inspiration came from the ShopTalk creative
team themselves: the theme of the conference was “Retail Alchemy”
- the blending of the art of human connection and creativity with
the science of data and technology to create something both novel
and extraordinary. Not only did their team do a masterful job of
bringing the theme to life at the conference, the organization
and level of attention to every detail was second-to-none. If you
are in commerce and don’t attend, I’d highly recommend adding
ShopTalk to your Spring 2026 itinerary now. The insights,
connections and experiences are worth the price of admission.
And with that, let’s get to it.
One of the common misconceptions about marketing is that it is
deterministic: do a certain set of things in a certain way, and
you’ll get a certain outcome. That belief tends to be prevalent
among more technical + financial types – and for good reason.
Most functions those types of people understand are (at least, at
some level) deterministic. Structure code in a specific way, and
you’ll get a predictable output. Budget in a certain way, and
you’ll get a consistent outcome.
Deterministic systems are clean. They’re predictable. They’re
akin to physics - if I drop a bowling ball from 10’ up, it’s
going to fall at a predetermined velocity and impact the ground
with a specific amount of force. It doesn’t matter who drops the
bowling ball, or whether they’re standing on a ladder or leaning
out from a window or just 10’ tall - the result will be the same.
But marketing isn’t physics. It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. What
worked for one brand last quarter has little-to-no bearing on
what will work next quarter for another brand. We all see it
every day: what works for one brand often falls flat for another.
Marketing is, in a word, chaotic. The same inputs, with tiny
variation (the brand, the time, the product, anything) can and do
produce wildly different outcomes.
In ancient times, that notion - small changes in the mix can have
profound effects on the outcome - was at the heart of alchemy -
the ancient pursuit of transforming base materials into precious
ones (like gold). To the ancients, alchemy was more than a
science - it was a philosophy. It was a belief system. It was
both spiritual and scientific.
Fundamentally, the alchemists believed the magic was in the mix.
The right elements, in the right balance, under the right
conditions, could produce something greater than the sum of its
parts.
That’s how marketing works.
Great marketers blend elements that behave differently, on
different timelines, with different outputs, all with the goal of
creating something transformative. Each element in the reaction
has a role to play, but the true magic comes from how each
interacts with one another over time.
On some level, that’s a deeply unsettling thing to hear for CEOs,
CFOs, Investors, etc. – because it sounds like voodoo or hokum
(depending on your point of view). And, for a long time, I would
have agreed with that assessment. But as I’ve done more and had
the opportunity to work with far more brands, I’ve seen it and
I’ve created it and I’ve come to believe it.
Marketing is part science and part art. Part deterministic and
part chaotic.
Here’s the problem: most organizations don’t treat it that way.
They try to measure everything with a single yardstick. ROAS.
CAC. Leads. Whatever metric the board or CFO is currently
obsessed with.
And when that happens, the outcome is almost always the same:
bad.
During our conversation at ShopTalk, one of the things I
mentioned was that marketing - fundamentally - is comprised of
four elements, with four different roles to play in creating the
magical outcome we’re seeking:
* Earth: create demand by building the foundation (brand, story,
positioning).
* Air: capture demand already in motion (search, marketplaces,
directories).
* Fire: convert demand into action (funnels, offers, CRO).
* Water: foster loyalty and community (retention, advocacy,
compounding relationships).
Each one matters. Each one interacts with the others differently.
And none of them should be measured by the same metric.
When you flatten the roles of marketing into one metric, you
break the system. You cut brand spend because the ROAS/CAC
doesn’t justify continued investment. You underfund retention
because it’s assumed that email + SMS will always convert. You
ignore demand capture on the assumption that people interested
will just find your brand. You assume that your brand can capture
the demand created by others indefinitely.
The right way to think about marketing isn’t as a single element,
function, campaign or channel, but as an alchemical combination
of all of them. The goal should never be to maximize any one
element, but rather to balance the mix so that transformation can
occur.
---------------------
Earth = Create Demand
---------------------
Earth is the starting point. The bedrock. In alchemy, Earth
represents stability, permanence and inevitability. In marketing,
Earth is where you create demand where none existed. It’s the
ads, stories, and narratives that take a product people weren’t
thinking about yesterday and make it impossible to ignore today.
But Earth on its own is inert. You can spend millions on
campaigns that “reach” people and create demand, but do nothing
to build your business (just ask Quibi, Zune + TiVO).
Like soil, Earth compounds too slowly to notice, until it's too
powerful to overcome. You won’t see it influence a dashboard over
a seven-day window or magically bring a bunch of customers to the
door tomorrow - but over a long enough time horizon, its impact
is massive: Nike spends less capturing demand because the brand
is already embedded in culture. Apple can run minimalist ads
because buyers arrive pre-sold. Tesla has unpaid evangelists
because its identity creates belonging no referral bonus can buy.
In financial terms, Earth is your core holdings. Index funds.
Long-duration bonds. They don’t produce spikes in net worth, but
they compound relentlessly. They stabilize the portfolio. They’re
the ballast that lets you take bigger risks elsewhere.
No one evaluates their S&P holdings by asking, “Did this double
in value last week?” Yet boards routinely evaluate demand
creation investments with that level of impatience. Sell your
core holdings to chase meme stocks and you might get lucky once,
but more often you’ll get wrecked. Cut demand gen spend to juice
short-term “efficiency” and CAC will dip....but in 6 months, your
top of funnel + demand will be in a world of hurt.
The right horizon for Earth isn’t days or weeks. It’s years and
decades. The question isn’t “did this campaign generate X leads?”
Rather, it’s something like: “Are more people actively seeking
out our solution than before?”
From a KPIs standpoint, you can’t evaluate demand creation based
on demand capture metrics. Instead, focus on ones that align with
the ultimate goal:
* Share of Search: are more people looking for your
solutions/products?
* Aided & Unaided Recall: do customers name you without
prompting?
* Branded Traffic Growth: is direct demand growing?
* Pipeline Velocity: are prospects showing up earlier and more
ready?
* Brand Lift Studies: is perception moving in the right
direction?
When Earth is working, the cost of everything else — clicks,
conversions, retention — quietly drops. The paradox of Earth is
that its absence hurts more than its presence helps. Strong Earth
makes every other channel more efficient. Weak Earth taxes every
one.
Earth is the long, unsexy work of building inevitability. And
inevitability is what makes growth scalable. Without Earth, Air
has nothing to carry. Fire has nothing to ignite. Water has
nothing to nourish.
--------------------
Air = Capture Demand
--------------------
Air is - in many ways - the opposite of earth. Where earth is
steady and stable, Air is always in motion.
To the alchemists of old, air represented agility and
adaptability. It was the invisible current that carried energy
forward. In marketing, Air is how you capture demand already in
motion — search, marketplaces, affiliates, review sites,
recommendation engines.
If Earth is where you plant seeds, Air is the wind that carries
them. As a result (in part) of your demand creation, your
potential customers/clients are already in motion - searching,
comparing, exploring. The role of demand capture is to deliver
those interested prospects to your brand as effectively and
efficiently as possible.
The mistake most companies make with Air is reducing it to a set
of numbers on a spreadsheet. Too many marketers (especially
performance marketers) treat demand capture exclusively as a game
of decimals: how do we shave a few cents off each click, how do
we reduce the CPA by 500 basis points, where can we attain
fractional gains in impression share.
That kind of thinking misses the point.
Fundamentally, demand capture is about showing up in the exact
moments people are already searching, comparing or deciding. It’s
about being the answer when demand is in flight. To borrow a
phrase from a (now) decade-old Google deck, it’s about “winning
the moments that matter”
The metrics that matter aren’t complicated, but they’re often
ignored:
* Impression Share: are you visible where the demand flows?
* Click Through Rate: when you show up, do they pick you over the
alternative?
* Coverage: are you present across the queries, categories, and
platforms that actually move your market?
* Efficiency (CPC/CPA): are you capturing demand at a sustainable
cost?
The paradox of Air is that it looks one-off and transactional,
when in reality, it compounds. Every captured click strengthens
preference. Every conversion reinforces trust. And over time,
that preference makes the next click cheaper, the next conversion
faster, the next customer’s loyalty easier to win. Air becomes a
flywheel (or a cyclone): presence drives clicks, clicks drive
familiarity, familiarity drives efficiency.
Amazon is the perfect encapsulation of Air: they’ve invented
virtually none of the products they sell….but they’re a
trillion-dollar company (primarily) because they’ve mastered the
art of capturing demand. When people start searching, comparing,
or deciding, Amazon is omnipresent: the reviews, the product
pages, the Prime benefits. They’ve gotten so good at predicting
and redirecting intent that most of the time, they capture it
before most other retailers know it’s there.
The challenge with air is that it is fleeting – either you
capture it in the moment when it's in motion, or you lose it to
someone else.
---------------------------------
Fire = Convert Interest To Action
---------------------------------
Fire is transformation. In alchemy, it’s the element that
transmutes raw ingredients into something new. In marketing, Fire
is where intent becomes action - the landing pages, offers,
checkout flows, demos and conversations that transform curiosity
into commitment.
If Earth is where you create demand and Air is how you capture
it, Fire is the forge where it all pays off. Without Fire, the
energy you’ve built dissipates.
The mistake most organizations make is reducing Fire to friction
management.
It is - without a doubt - true that a broken checkout flow or a
sluggish site will kill conversions. Too many form fields or
terrible demos will send the demand you’ve created and captured
elsewhere. But the true power of fire isn’t in removing friction;
it’s in making the conversion feel both natural and inevitable.
The best-converting experiences don’t feel like funnels; they
feel like natural progressions.
The headline reflects the search query. The offer matches the
expectation. The lander makes the decision obvious. Each element
- copy, creative, pricing, proof - feels aligned with the intent
that brought the visitor there. Fire works when the leap from
“interested” to “committed” feels effortless.
The metrics here are sharper and more immediate than Earth or
Air:
* Conversion Rate (CVR): are you turning attention into action?
* Average Order Value (AOV): when people buy, are they spending
more?
* Completion Rates: do customers finish the flows you start?
* Time-to-Conversion: how fast do they move from intent to
outcome?
* CAC + Payback Period: how quickly are you recouping the cost of
acquisition?
But numbers alone don’t capture the full story. Fire is
psychological. It’s about trust, desire, momentum. A checkout
button isn’t just a button — it’s a moment of judgment. Does the
brand feel credible? Is the product worthy of the price? Is the
offer compelling?
The paradox of Fire is that when it works, it looks simple. Great
checkout design doesn’t feel like design at all - it just seems
obvious. A powerful offer doesn’t feel manipulative; it appears
like the right choice. That simplicity is engineered. It’s the
product of iteration, testing and ruthless clarity about what
your target customers actually want, need and value.
And here’s the risk: if Fire fails, everything else collapses.
You can build demand with Earth and capture it with Air, but if
you can’t convert, you’re running a charity for your competition.
They’ll thank you for the awareness and attention you’ve
generated while gleefully taking clients that should have been
yours.
Think about Booking.com. Their site isn’t glamorous. But it’s
engineered around Fire: urgency signals, social proof,
transparent pricing, one-click paths. It’s not “beautiful,” but
it’s brutally effective. It turns intent into bookings at scale.
The essence of fire is making the “yes” easy, fast and obvious.
It is the ignition point where interest is transformed into
action.
----------------------------------
Water = Foster Loyalty & Community
----------------------------------
Water is renewal.
To the ancient alchemists, water represented flow, adaptability
and the ability to sustain life. In marketing, Water is where you
foster loyalty, retention and community - turning one-time buyers
into repeat customers, and customers into loyal advocates.
If Earth builds awareness, Air captures intent and Fire sparks
transformation, Water keeps the system alive and growing.
Yet, too many brands treat it as an afterthought. They pour
endless budgets into acquisition, but leave retention to the
intern or whatever their ESP’s default template spits out.
To be honest, it’s pure, unadulterated insanity.
Acquiring a customer is the most expensive thing most brands do.
Keeping a customer/client is among the most profitable. Joe Jaffe
was mocked back in 2013 when he coined the phrase “retention is
the new acquisition” – but time has proven him wise. While the
costs of acquisition have skyrocketed in virtually every
industry, the costs of retention have remained surprisingly
reasonable.
That means retention - water - is where margins expand and where
true competitive moats are built.
One of the things that stood out to me while talking to brands +
tech platforms at ShopTalk was how misunderstood loyalty and
community is among both executives and solution providers. So
many conversations focused on how they can push more – more
upsells, more cross-sells, more requests, on more devices - to
your customers.
At the risk of sounding crass, virtually every solution provider
treated retention like an extraction mechanism, engineered to
separate your customers from their money as efficiently as
possible.
That is the polar opposite of water’s role.
Water should create gravity - the pull that keeps people coming
back, engaging and evangelizing. Communities don’t form around
discounts. Loyalty isn’t earned through generic nurture flows or
bombarding inboxes until your customers can’t take it any longer.
Retention is the inevitable result of showing your customers
care, love, attention and respect.
It’s really that simple. Add value for your customers. Treat
emailing them (or texting them) as a privilege, not a right. Help
them get the most from your solution. And in return, they’ll
stick with you. They’ll tell (and sell) their friends and
colleagues. They’ll buy more.
Retention, loyalty & community are not instantaneous processes -
they take time. Evaluate them as such:
* Retention Rate: are customers sticking around longer?
* Lifetime Value (LTV): is each customer worth more over their
relationship with you?
* Churn Rate: are fewer people leaving, canceling, or
disengaging?
* Referral & Advocacy: are customers recruiting others into the
fold?
* NPS or CSAT: are you building satisfaction that translates into
word-of-mouth?
The paradox of Water is that it doesn’t seem remarkable, but it
quietly builds empires. Most “growth hacks” are just clever ways
of buying time. Water is how you build staying power.
Netflix isn’t dominant because of its signup funnel or its demand
creation; it’s dominant because subscribers stick around. Apple
isn’t one of the most valuable companies on the planet because of
one campaign or product, but rather because they’ve created such
a strong community around their products that wait lists are
filled the instant a new product is announced.
For the brands that treat retention and loyalty like an exercise
in extraction, acquisition becomes the Sisyphean task of filling
a bucket with no bottom: every customer you acquire slips away
(usually into the hands of your competitor).
My favorite case study in the importance of water is Peloton:
their early growth was explosive - earth, air & fire all working
together to create stunning growth. But none of that mattered
when their annual churn rate eclipsed 90% (yes, 90%) back in 2022
- the stock went into free fall from the $150s in 2021 to $2.40
in 2024, and still has not recovered (currently $8.27).
Contrast that with brands like Patagonia or Harley-Davidson,
where loyalty runs so deep, customers willingly become
evangelists who defend the brand as if it’s part of their
identity.
Building retention isn’t glamorous. It’s not a Super Bowl ad or a
viral TikTok. It’s not going to win you awards or dazzle on the
speaking circuit (trust me on that one). It’s the patient,
thankless, boring work of building belonging. It’s making sure
that when a customer/client says “yes” once, they have a hundred
reasons to say “yes” again and again and again.
Without water, every sale is a one-off. With it, your brand
flourishes. Customers don’t just buy. They stay. They tell
others. They defend you when critics appear. Water sustains the
ecosystem.
--------------
Aether = Brand
--------------
The ancients believed in a fifth element, Aether - the invisible
substance that bound the others together, filled the space
between things and gave coherence to the cosmos.
In marketing, Brand is Aether. It’s not just another channel or
tactic. It’s the force that animates earth, lifts air, fuels fire
and deepens water. Without brand, the other elements are
disconnected, even contradictory; with it, they combine in
magical ways to produce astounding results.
Here’s the truth most marketers avoid: you can run paid search
without a brand, but it will be expensive and forgettable. You
can build a remarkable post-click experience without a brand, but
conversions will be fragile. You can launch a loyalty program
without a brand, but it will feel like bribery or extortion
(depending on which platform/tech partner you choose).
Brand is the magical ingredient.
It makes every other part of the mix work harder, cheaper and
longer.
The mistake most CMOs make is treating brand as if it is Earth -
a bucket of demand-creation spend. That reduces it into awareness
campaigns + brand plays.
The reality? Aether is ambient. It’s everywhere.
It shows up in trust, preference, conversion, credibility,
belonging. It’s why Nike spends less to capture clicks, why Apple
commands premium pricing with minimalist ads (and disappointing
updates), why legions of Swifties defend Taylor as if she’s their
sister.
Put another way, Aether is near-impossible to see, but its effect
is unmistakable:
* Does Earth take hold faster? A strong brand makes awareness
campaigns stick
* Does Air get cheaper? A strong brand raises CTRs + lowers CPCs
* Does Fire burn hotter? A strong brand increases CVR, reduces
objections and accelerates decision-making
* Does Water flow deeper? A strong brand extends retention,
lowers churn and builds communities instead of relying on coupons
The paradox of Aether is that it’s invisible until it’s gone.
Companies only realize its value when they strip brand investment
to chase “efficiency,” then wonder why demand capture gets more
expensive, conversion rates falter and their loyalty/retention
goes the way of Peloton.
The ancient Greeks referred to aether as the quintessence - the
unseen force that makes alchemy possible. It’s what makes earth
productive, air efficient, fire effective, and water enduring.
That’s what brand is to marketing - it’s the enabling layer for
alchemy.
The challenge is that Aether moves slowly. It compounds over
years and decades, not days or weeks. That reality is why it's
(generally) one of the first things to arrive on the chopping
block when budgets tighten. But strip it out, and the whole
system falls apart.
----------------------------------------
Blending the Elements = Portfolio Theory
----------------------------------------
Alchemy was never about a single element; it is about combining
all of them in the right way, at the right time, to create
something magical.
Marketing works the same way.
No single channel or tactic delivers sustainable growth in
isolation. The system only works when the elements complement and
reinforce one another.
* Earth is the foundation: the stories and positioning that make
your brand difficult to ignore
* Air is the current: the channels that capture intent already in
motion
* Fire is the ignition: the experiences and offers that turn
curiosity into action
* Water is the renewal: the loyalty and community that keep your
customers delighted + coming back
* Aether is brand: the invisible force that makes every other
element stronger and more effective
The mistake most CMOs (and CEOs + CFOs) make is trying to reduce
the entire alchemical process into a single number or metric –
rather than evaluating each element individually alongside the
whole.
That’s like evaluating your brand story through the same lens as
a landing page or performance creative, or a loyalty program by
the same metrics as a search campaign.
It misses the point.
And when you do it, the inevitable outcome is skewing the entire
system toward one element, rather than maintaining a balance
between all five.
None of this means that each element should not be evaluated (it
should!), or that balance is equivalent to equality (it sure
isn’t), or that once you find the right balance, your work is
done (far from it). Don’t mistake anything here for an argument
that you shouldn’t cut channels or tactics that aren’t performing
the job they have to do, based on the metrics relevant to that
role.
Rather, when a channel, tactic or creative inside an element
isn’t performing, the answer isn’t to abandon the element
altogether. That’s like saying “our search ads aren’t working, so
demand capture doesn’t matter” or “our retention emails suck, so
loyalty is irrelevant.”
That’s both wrong and incoherent.
The underperformance is a signal that what you’re doing within
that element isn’t working. Your job then is to refine, adjust
and re-engineer the execution - not to remove the element from
the system.The subtle but crucial distinction: you cut bad
tactics, not the role itself.
The beauty of alchemy is that it is a dynamic, chaotic system –
just because you do the same things that you did before, does not
entail that you’ll get the same results that you achieved
previously.
The right mix is always shifting - and the marketers who find it
won’t be the ones chasing shiny objects or reducing everything to
ROAS; they’ll be the ones who focus on the whole.
The magic isn’t in reducing marketing to a deterministic process
or a single number; it’s in finding the right combination of
elements for your brand at each moment. It’s an equation that can
never be solved, which is (if you think about it) why it’s so
damn fun and interesting.
This week’s issue is sponsored by Optmyzr.
------------------------------------------
Most SaaS tools promise you leverage, then throw you into a
dashboard and leave you to figure it out. The tech support is
slow, generic, and usually scripted. You’re on your own.
Optmyzr isn’t like that. Their team actually works with you.
They’ll jump on Zooms. They’ll walk you through how to set up a
specific feature, blueprint, or rule group. And if you’re stuck,
they’ll sit there with you until it’s built.
Case in point: I had a client last week who wanted to create a
complex ruleset using inventory signals — in-stock, out-of-stock,
different availability levels, plus pricing and features — to
drive how we targeted and bid on items. Not only did the Optmyzr
team help me figure out the logic, they actually wrote custom
code with me. They tested it. They made sure it worked in
production.
That’s unheard of. And that’s 100% why you pay for software like
Optmyzr. Not just for the features, but for a team that makes
sure whatever you’re trying to do for your clients actually gets
done.
If you’re managing PPC accounts and you want software and a team
that has your back, Optmyzr is it.
-->Try Optmyzr For 14 Days Free (
)
Try Optmyzr For 14 Days Free (
link )
At the end of the day, marketing isn’t deterministic. There’s no
generalized, closed form solution, no set of constants, no
guarantee that repeating yesterday’s playbook will deliver
tomorrow’s results.
It’s chaotic.
And yet, like alchemy, it holds the possibility of transformation
when the right elements combine under the right conditions.
Every element has a role to play and different signals to watch.
Each needs a different time horizon. None should be judged by the
same metric.
The mistake is pretending marketing can be flattened into one
number: ROAS, CAC, leads, whatever happens to be in vogue with
the powers-that-be.
That’s not a strategy. That’s delusion or theater (or maybe
both). And it almost always leads to imbalance - cutting demand
gen to chase efficiency, underfunding retention because it’s
quiet, ignoring conversion until it’s too late, assuming demand
capture will always “just work” because it has in the past.
The truth is both simpler and more difficult: marketing is
alchemy.
The work is in balancing the elements and knowing that no single
campaign, channel or tactic is the answer, but that together,
they can create outcomes bigger than the sum of their parts.
That’s what separates the brands that endure from the ones that
flame out. Not the tools. Not the hacks. Not the dashboards. The
discipline of respecting the role each element plays and managing
the combination through an evaluation of the performance of each
one.
And when the inevitable question comes - “What’s our marketing
strategy?” - you’ll have an answer that isn’t a deck or a demo,
but a system. One that makes your brand harder to ignore, easier
to find, more compelling to act on and stickier once customers
are in.
That’s the real magic. That’s marketing alchemy.
Enjoy the week ahead.
Cheers,
Sam
Loving The Digital Download?
Share this Newsletter with a friend by visiting my public feed.
---------------------------------------------------------------
-->View the Newsletter Feed (
)
View the Newsletter Feed (
link )
Follow Me on my Socials
(
) (
) (
)
1700 South Road, Baltimore, MD 21209 | 410-367-2700
Unsubscribe (
) | Manage Preferences (
)