// marketing

Source: Seth's Blog

Seth Godin identifies a measurement gap in brand building: most companies obsess over direct customer satisfaction while ignoring the peer-to-peer narratives that drive adoption. The "second circle"—what existing customers volunteer to their networks without prompting—is where word-of-mouth either dies or compounds, yet it's almost never quantified or designed for. Brands that win treat customer storytelling as a core product feature, not a PR afterthought. This means rethinking everything from onboarding to feature prioritization around what's actually remarkable enough to repeat.

Source: Latest Headlines - The Athletic

Fox and Major League Baseball have cracked a merchandising formula: pairing established pop culture IP with sports licensing creates genuine scarcity and secondary-market premiums rather than clearance bins. The near sell-out after two years of development shows that nostalgia-driven Gen X and millennial consumers will pay above retail for branded sportswear at the intersection of entertainment and fandom. Both studios and leagues now have economic incentive to expand these crossover collections into NHL, NBA, and MLS properties. The model works because it's not novelty licensing—it's cultural permission to wear your childhood on a fitted cap.

Source: Hakan⚡The CS Café

Customer success roles are splitting into two tracks: reactive support functions and commercial operators who own renewal economics and expansion pipeline. Competitive advantage flows to CSMs who actively shape customer decisions rather than report on them. Hiring and retention will penalize teams organized around ticket resolution. This is a structural realignment of P&L accountability that forces companies to either invest in commercial training and authority for their CS teams or accept that their best talent will defect to companies that do.