The Journal
Notes from
the practice.
Arguments, field notes and the occasional manifesto — on search, brand, paid media, content and AI. We write the way we work: opinionated, evidence-led, and unafraid to say the thing the rest of the industry would rather we didn't. No SEO filler, no thought-leadership theatre. Just what we actually believe, on the record.
Latest
Recent writing.
Short, sharp pieces on where modern marketing is actually going — and where most of the industry is wasting its money. New writing lands here regularly; the rest is in the works.
We don’t follow the algorithm. We write it.
Search changed more in two years than in the previous twenty.
Generative engines now answer the question instead of listing ten blue links — and the brands that win are the ones the machine quotes. What GEO actually is, why it isn’t SEO with a new hat, and how to become a source rather than a result.
Read →The rate card is a relic.
Why we don’t publish prices — and why the agencies that do are telling on themselves.
A published price is a promise to charge the same for a problem you haven’t seen yet. We scope to the goal, not to a menu — and we’d rather talk you out of work you don’t need than sell you a package you do.
Read →AI is leverage, not a layoff.
The honest version of AI in a creative business.
The same tool that gives a good team enormous leverage lets a careless one flood the world with slop. The difference is the hand directing it. Why we keep a human firmly at the helm — and why that’s the only version worth paying for.
Read →Native advertising is a tax on trust.
Why we refuse to disguise an ad as an article.
The case against the “you may also like” sludge at the bottom of the internet — and what to spend that budget on instead.
Coming soonThe unglamorous work wins.
Compounding beats performing. It just doesn’t photograph as well.
Why the boring, patient work — the refresh, the audit, the thousand small fixes — quietly outperforms the campaign everyone wants to put in the showreel.
Coming soonBrand is the last moat.
When everyone has the same tools, the only edge is being unmistakably yourself.
AI has commoditised competence. What it can’t copy is a brand with a point of view — which makes brand the most defensible investment left.
Coming soonWhy we write
Most agency “content” exists to be found, not to be read. Ours exists to be argued with. If a piece here doesn’t say something we’d defend in a room full of clients, it doesn’t go up.
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