Marketing Trends

Don’t sell to your community. Just talk to them.

DadGang founder Bart Szaniewski started with $750, 100 hats and no real business plan. Four years later, the brand has sold more than a million hats and generated over $36 million in revenue.

He’s done it while ignoring a lot of conventional DTC advice: DadGang still uses Shopify’s free Dawn theme, shoots much of its content on an iPhone and runs a private Facebook group for its community. Bart’s philosophy is simple: don’t copy what works for someone else. Build around your customer.

On this episode of Marketing Trends with Stephanie Postles, Bart explains how DadGang keeps its marketing simple at scale, turns customer feedback into real products, and uses email, SMS and AI without overwhelming the people on the other end.

 

What you'll learn

Why Bart still uses Shopify’s free Dawn theme after $36M in revenue

The question that changed how DadGang thinks about community

How customer feedback turns into real product launches

Why emails that aren’t trying to sell can still drive revenue

How DadGang uses email, SMS and AI without adding unnecessary complexity

Why Bart resists arbitrary growth pressure - even at scale

 

Connect

DadGang Co.

Bart Szaniewski on LinkedIn

Marketing Trends

 

Chapters

0:00 From $750 and 100 Hats to DadGang

3:23 The Marketing Years Before DadGang

7:13 Why Fatherhood Content Felt Wrong

10:08 $36M Without Forcing Growth

12:40 Why DadGang Still Uses a Free Shopify Theme

15:34 The Martech Stack Is Shrinking

16:16 AI Replaced the Landing Page Process

17:32 Don't Build Around the Algorithm

19:38 "Where Is Your Community?"

21:04 Why 15,000 Dads Still Use Facebook

25:13 When Customers Design the Product

29:07 How Gary Vee Became a Partner

35:18 Email + SMS for a Million-Hat Brand

37:36 Letting AI Choose the Send Time

38:22 Why Non-Selling Emails Still Drive Revenue

41:29 What Comes After a Million Hats?

 

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you get your brand into the 90% of memory that's subconscious?

In this segment from Marketing Trends, neuroscientist Pranav Yadav reveals that the human brain is a pattern-seeking storytelling device — and the formula for creating lasting brand memory hasn't changed in 5,000 years. From Vedic rituals to Alexander the Great's encounter with a naked wise man to MasterCard's Priceless campaign, Pranav traces the thread between ancient storytelling wisdom and modern brand architecture.

This episode was made possible by Attentive.

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you just busy working? Or are you adding value?

Marketing has become overloaded with channels, platforms, metrics, and specialized roles. But Seth Matlins believes the job itself is much simpler: create value, drive sustainable growth, and help the business create and keep customers.

In this episode, Seth joins Stephanie Postles to explain why CMO job descriptions are often fundamentally disconnected from business results—and why marketers must see themselves as commercial leaders, not merely brand leaders.

They discuss the danger of optimizing for departmental metrics instead of business outcomes, why short-term pressure can destroy long-term growth, and what Seth learned from one of the biggest strategic mistakes of his career. They also explore why brands must become more humane in an AI-driven world, what separates the world’s most influential CMOs, and why every decision a company makes either creates or destroys value.

Seth Matlins is the founder of The Wisdomist Company, former Managing Director of the Forbes CMO Network, and host of Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing.

Follow Seth: LinkedIn — Seth Matlins

Listen to his new show: Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing (Vox Media + The Wisdomist Company)

This episode brought to you by Attentive.

Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.

Not more marketing. Better marketing. 

That’s marketing made personal. That’s Attentive. 

To learn more visit attentive.com.

 

Chapters

0:00 The CMO Job Description Is Broken

2:30 Marketing Is a Commercial Strategy

4:19 How “Marketing Prefixes” Broke the Function

8:04 Why Your Team Is Punching Growth in the Face

13:20 David Droga: Complexity Is a Tax on Success

16:02 The Worst Work Seth Ever Did

20:21 “You Neither Give Nor Take Direction”

24:03 Stop Trying to Be Human. Be Humane.

29:23 What Separates the World’s Most Influential CMOs

31:49 Why CEOs Struggle to Understand Marketing

34:03 Why Eric Schmidt Was Wrong About Marketing

35:43 Seth’s 10 Rules of Marketing

40:09 Introducing Create or Destroy

45:52 Lightning Round: Harry Potter, Coca-Cola and More

49:40 Are Your Metrics Making You Play the Wrong Game?

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A bank just issued the world's first loan to an AI agent. The agent applied, signed, and set its own repayment schedule. That's where marketing now lives — and most teams are still optimizing for the wrong layer. In this episode, Katja Forbes (founder of The CX Evolutionist and author of the field guide on machine customers) explains why AEO is a trap, why "the more discoverable you are, the more interchangeable you are," and what the actual moat looks like in agentic commerce. Fresh off a trip to Alibaba, BYD, and Unitree Robotics in China, Katja walks through the five types of machine customers already in market, why Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles is the B2C playbook, why Walmart's AI procurement is the B2B playbook, and the one mindset shift every marketing leader needs to make this quarter.

 

What you'll learn

• Why "AI agent" is too small a frame — and the 5 types of machine customers already buying today

• Why AEO and machine-readability are table stakes, not strategy

• The values-as-data play: how Patagonia and Walmart are already winning the agentic moat

• Why you can't greenwash an AI agent (and what to do if your supply chain receipts aren't flattering)

• The abundance-vs-efficiency mindset shift — and why stripping headcount for AI gains is corporate anorexia

This episode is brought to you by Attentive.

Attentive helps brands personalize messages across SMS, email, RCS, and push - so every interaction feels relevant, not random.

Not more marketing. Better marketing. 

That’s marketing made personal. That’s Attentive. 

To learn more visit attentive.com.

 

Connect
Katja Forbes on LinkedIn

The CX Evolutionist on Substack

Marketing Trends

 

Chapters

• 0:00 The customer isn't human anymore

• 1:34 Inside Alibaba, BYD, and Unitree — what China is shipping today

• 4:09 How robots get their brains (and start transacting)

• 7:05 The 5 types of machine customers every marketer should know

• 10:37 Alibaba's 120-million-order onboarding campaign

• 13:33 Your car is reading your emotions — and about to buy on your behalf

• 16:31 What the US can actually learn from China's stack

• 23:12 "Marketing to robots is not a thing" — the AEO trap

• 27:36 A bank just gave the world's first loan to an AI agent

• 29:32 Why BJ Fogg's behavior model breaks for machine customers

• 37:17 The decision-paralysis problem and the rise of values-as-data

• 40:14 Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles: the brand moat playbook

• 45:39 Walmart's Pactum: B2B values-as-data is already live

• 54:51 Marketers need to start acting like scientists

• 56:53 Abundance, not efficiency — the corporate anorexia trap

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if everything you're optimizing for in marketing — attention, clicks, engagement — is a proxy for the one thing that actually drives action?

Pranav Yadav is the Founder & Global CEO of Neuro-Insight, the world's largest measure of memory. His company maps brains to determine what advertising actually does to people — second by second — with an 86% correlation to real-world sales. In this conversation, he makes the case that memory is the only metric that matters, explains why hyper-personalization is destroying culture, and breaks down exactly why Budweiser's most iconic Super Bowl ad failed at the brain level while Samsung's Wallhuggers became their most successful campaign ever.

Pranav Yadav is a former Goldman Sachs trader turned neuroscientist, Forbes 30 Under 30, and Ad Age 40 Under 40. He created the Neuro Impact Factor — the brain-based metric that all Australian out-of-home media is now traded on.

 

Key takeaways

• 90% of all memory is subconscious — brands have been measuring the wrong 10%

• $750 billion in annual marketing spend is wasted because recall ≠ memory

• The brain is a pattern-seeking storytelling device — personal relevance opens the door to memory

• Hyper-personalization destroys the shared cultural memory that makes marketing work

• The #1 rated Super Bowl ad (Budweiser Lost Puppy) placed the brand at the exact moment the brain stopped encoding memory

• Samsung's Wallhuggers hid the brand for 45 seconds and became their most successful campaign

 

Follow Pranav on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/pranavyadavpy

Learn more: neuro-insight.com

 

Chapters

0:00 Introduction

1:31 The Urdu Couplet That Opens the Conversation

2:28 Marketing Has Been Leaning on Pseudoscience for Decades

5:09 Why Memory Is the Only Metric That Matters

8:32 The Shirt Test: Recall vs Memory

12:23 How to Get Into the 90% — Story Is the Boat

15:17 What 5,000-Year-Old Vedic Rituals Teach About Memory

19:41 Alexander the Great vs the Naked Wise Man

24:28 MasterCard's Priceless: Finding the Core Truth

27:29 Why Brands Don't Do This (It's Hard)

32:23 Brain Mapping: How Neuro-Insight Actually Measures Memory

39:26 Brand Architecture: The Formula Every Brand Needs

43:48 Why Hyper-Personalization Will Destroy Society

50:54 Why 90% of Super Bowl Ads Fail at the Brain Level

54:17 Budweiser's Lost Puppy: The #1 Ad That Failed

58:04 Samsung Wallhuggers: Genius at the Memory Moment

1:00:25 Why LLMs Are Trained on the Shadow of Thinking

1:07:41 Vows, Not Values: How Neuro-Insight Stays Creative

1:15:51 The Neuro Impact Factor: Changing How Australia Trades Media

1:19:57 What Makes a Great Billboard

1:20:23 Where to Find Pranav

 

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Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.