Jay Mandel’s strategic insights
Ideas, articles
& evidence.
Explore 100 articles across brand strategy, growth and innovation, measurement, data and AI, leadership, customer experience and trust. Every headline connects to its original publication.
Across the internet
Articles & media appearances
Interviews, profiles, podcasts and contributed expertise—each linked directly to the original publisher and included in the same aggregate click measurement.
I'm delivering for Uber Eats after decades in corporate marketing. It's helped me make money — and stay humble. ↗
Visit Business Insider · External site ↗Marketing Accountability with Jay Mandel ↗
Visit In Clear Focus · External site ↗Hulk Hogan’s Branding Lessons For Companies And Organizations ↗
Visit Forbes · External site ↗Reddit Marketing: How to Use Reddit to Grow Your Brand ↗
Visit Business.com · External site ↗Why marketers are leaving and what it takes to stay ↗
Visit MarTech · External site ↗Crumbl’s legal trouble shows the risks of shortcut marketing ↗
Visit MarTech · External site ↗Brand safety is BS (until it’s not) ↗
Visit MarTech · External site ↗The Language of Brand Strategy with Jay Mandel ↗
Visit On Brand · External site ↗Brand Strategy In Three Steps with Jay Mandel ↗
Visit In Clear Focus · External site ↗Brand Strategy in Three Steps: A Purpose-Driven Approach to Branding ↗
Visit Kogan Page · External site ↗100 of 100 published articles
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Alaska Violet and the Digital Life I Had Never Asked My Daughter About ↗
Media & AttentionA Roblox creator shows how personal narrative becomes relationship, and why parents and marketers need to take that relationship seriously.
Read on Substack · External site ↗I Wanted a Fishing Licence. New York Gave Me a Deer. ↗
AccountabilityI wanted to go fishing for one day.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Marketing Has Bad Breath, Not Halitosis ↗
Growth & InnovationListerine turned bad breath into halitosis. Marketing has done the same, turning ordinary uncertainty into urgent and curable problems. Learn how to respond to the funk.
Read on Substack · External site ↗TopDog Law: Big Bark. Show Me the Bite. ↗
MeasurementI Followed TopDog’s Disclaimers to Measure the Distance Between the Law Firm Being Advertised and the Legal network operating behind it.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Optimum Customer Service Cut Off My Phone, Left Me Stranded Without Service, Then Told Me to Use My Phone to Fix It ↗
Customer ExperienceApparently, “customer service” now means creating the emergency, explaining the emergency back to you, and then recommending a solution that the company has made impossible.
Read on Substack · External site ↗I Heard It Through the Fakevine ↗
Growth & InnovationFrom Marvin Gaye to fake followers, ad fraud, bots, and manufactured consensus: what happens when the grapevine becomes the marketplace, and nobody knows what’s real?
Read on Substack · External site ↗Howard Stern, Data Brokers, and the Danger of Mistaking a Profile for a Person ↗
Data & AII’ve been listening to Howard Stern for most of my life.
Read on Substack · External site ↗A Tale of Two Gas Stations: Ownership, Empathy, and the Hidden Cost of “Not My Job” ↗
Leadership & CultureLast weekend, my car engine started steaming and smoking in Tuckahoe, New York.
Read on Substack · External site ↗How Playa Bowls’ Founder Engineered Bev Shack into a $5 Social-First Empire ↗
Brand & StrategyWhen evaluating retail concepts from a brand accountability and financial efficiency perspective, few founders possess the trend-spotting instinct, artistic execution, and operational grit of Abby Taylor
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Business Model That Produces Sh*tty Products and Huge Profits ↗
Customer ExperienceEver wonder why companies seem comfortable charging more while giving you less? It's the shift in how businesses compete and why predictable customers have become more valuable than satisfied ones.
Read on Substack · External site ↗How Bad Math and Synthetic Empathy are Ruining Customer Service ↗
Data & AICustomer service is deteriorating not because AI is inherently evil, but because corporate executives are using AI to turbocharge an obsolete, extractive financial model.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The marketing industry is burning its own talent ↗
Growth & InnovationWhat Stacey Duguid's job search, Andrew Bowins' pivot, and the Marketing Accountability Council reveal about marketing's real accountability problem
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Does Every Content Strategy Just Produce Reheated Nachos? ↗
Media & AttentionWhy does everything online feel either painfully generic or outrageously over-the-top? This article explores why every original idea eventually becomes reheated nachos.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Is This Really the Best Starbucks’ CEO Can Do? ↗
AccountabilityLast weekend at Fanatics Fest, I was handed a drink that looked less like coffee and more like the New York Knicks had been melted inside a clear plastic cup.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The ROI of Obsession ↗
MeasurementWhy “Fanaticism” is the Ultimate Marketing Accountability Framework
Read on Substack · External site ↗TIME’s “Best” vs. MAC’s Most Honest: The Glaring Gap in America’s Top Companies ↗
MeasurementOn July 9, 2026, TIME and Statista dropped their annual ranking of America’s Best Companies. It’s a list measuring exactly what Wall Street and job hunters care about: financial muscle, employee satisfaction, and ESG disclosures.
Read on Substack · External site ↗How New York City's New Subscription Rules Will Reshape National Marketing ↗
Customer ExperienceNew York City doesn’t just pass local laws; it establishes the default standards for the entire nation.
Read on Substack · External site ↗What Used to Be True About Finding a Fair Apartment Is Now a RealPage Algorithm ↗
Data & AIWhen we dropped our pieces on the ticketing and travel monopolies, a clear psychological profile emerged.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Memory Trap: Why What Used to Be True About Booking, Expedia, Priceline, and Kayak Is Now a Corporate Illusion ↗
AccountabilityThe Mirage of the Open Web:
Read on Substack · External site ↗How StubHub Transformed From a Fan-Friendly Alternative Into a Corporate Scalping Cartel ↗
Work & SystemsWe talked about this the other day—how the concept of corporate “extraction” is quietly ruining everything we love. Doug Stephens was talking about his book, The Future of Competitive Advantage? He made the powerful point that for the last 45 years, corporations have been trapped in a cycle of constant extraction—squeezing workers, exploiting the environment, and draining the capitalist system itself until there is “not a hell of a lot left to extract”.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Your Next Marketing Decision Could Save Democracy ↗
Growth & InnovationBusiness futurist and author Doug Stephens stops by the MAC to talk about his new book, explain why saving democracy is good business, and explore how marketers can help.
Read on Substack · External site ↗"Be More Strategic" Is the Most Useless Advice in Marketing ↗
Growth & InnovationMost marketers think being strategic means connecting their work to revenue and learning the language. But that advice often keeps marketers trapped in execution mode.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Big-Box Retailers Must Align Corporate Margin with Consumer Health ↗
Leadership & CultureWalking to the public-facing order pickup Lowe’s retail location in Yonkers, NY, one is greeted by a brightly decorated internal dashboard celebrating the store’s “Service & Sales Leaders.” Adorned with cheerful beach-themed cutouts and smiling employee photos, the board tracks localized key performance indicators (KPIs).
Read on Substack · External site ↗How gig platforms and data brokers run the same broken playbook — and what a positive-sum version looks like ↗
Data & AIModern platforms like Uber Eats prioritize instant gratification, delivering items swiftly, boosting metrics like conversion rates and reducing costs.
Read on Substack · External site ↗This Is My Story ↗
Leadership & CultureWhy my personal life, my professional career, and my creative output aren’t three separate compartments—and why lazy assumptions miss the mark.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The age of the lazy assumptions is over. ↗
AccountabilityIt’s time to build for the reality of who people actually are.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why I Still Drive Uber Eats While Building My Next Venture ↗
Brand & StrategyI am currently raising capital, building a brand, and scaling a new venture.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Right Message Mirage ↗
Growth & Innovation"Right Message, Right Person, Right Time" is marketing's favorite myth—an impossible optimization target that wastes time, money, and effort while distorting how advertising actually works.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Modern Mail is Broken and Needs an Overhaul ↗
AccountabilityDuring a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, bluntly titled “Reforming the U.S.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Eric André’s Survival Guide to Modern Comedy ↗
Media & AttentionAccording to TV’s ultimate agent of chaos, being a comedian is 10% creative genius, 40% corporate warfare, and 50% getting your foot run over by a car.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Nobody Wants Your Whitepaper Anymore ↗
Growth & InnovationThe value exchange that built modern B2B marketing is collapsing. What replaces it will require a different kind of marketer entirely.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why trust belongs at the center of your data strategy ↗
Data & AIMore customer data once looked like an advantage. AI is exposing the risk of data built on inference, opacity and extraction.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗Why MAC Is Backing Cauldron’s ‘Slower Thinking’ Over Polymarket Hype ↗
MeasurementThe Marketing Accountability Council rejects rapid, casino-style metrics to champion long-term strategy and ethical consumer trust.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Marketers Must Stop Being Card Counters ↗
Growth & InnovationWhy Our Odd Obsession With Odds Isn’t Optimal
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Syracuse University Deficit and the Great Higher-Ed Extortion ↗
AccountabilityMy alma mater, Syracuse University, simultaneously purged 93 academic programs, hiked total annual student costs to a staggering $95,676, and then admitted to faculty and staff that it had missed its enrollment targets and entered a formal budget deficit.
Read on Substack · External site ↗How B2B Leaders Forgot What Marketing Is. A Historiography ↗
Leadership & CultureFor decades, executives relied on marketing to understand customers and markets. So how did it become the department responsible for defending pipeline, and proving its existence every quarter?
Read on Substack · External site ↗Social Media Was Once a Community, Now It’s a Casino ↗
Media & AttentionAnd Marketers Must Adapt
Read on Substack · External site ↗These Are the Breaks ↗
Leadership & CultureKurtis Blow and the Lost Art of Passing Culture Down
Read on Substack · External site ↗How a Smartphone and a Tripod Exposed the Local Media Crisis ↗
Media & AttentionWhile legacy news crews gave up, one creator, my son, Gavin, captured the pulse of the 40th anniversary of the Puerto Rican Day Parade on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Special Education Paywall: How New York Charges Families to Access Their Children’s Rights ↗
Trust & EthicsI'm sharing this now because systems meant to serve us no longer uphold human dignity.
Read on Substack · External site ↗How Demand Generation Become the Only Viable Marketing Strategy in B2B. A Historiography ↗
Work & SystemsThis article breaks down how demand gen evolved from a useful operating system into the center of modern B2B marketing and why so many companies now confuse pipeline motion with market understanding.
Read on Substack · External site ↗My Inside Look at Udacity’s Desperate Marketing Machine ↗
Growth & InnovationI was Ghosted by the Recruiter then Spammed by Udacity's Desparate Marketing Machine
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Illusion of the Holiday Discount ↗
Data & AIDon't Trust the Brand, Trust the Data
Read on Substack · External site ↗Is That AI Barbecuing Your Burgers? ↗
Data & AIHappy Memorial Day! It’s the unofficial start of summer.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Asking the Right Questions Transforms Marketing Accountability ↗
Data & AIA grocery receipt became the catalyst for a data analysis that reveals the hidden tax of geography on consumer spending.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Sirens of Modern Marketing ↗
Trust & EthicsAn essay on malicious compliance, ethical drift, and the Sirens of marketing — where manipulation parades as sophistication, corruption means adaptation, and incentives overpower self-awareness.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Marketing Metrics. How Did They Get So F*@ked Up? A Historiography ↗
MeasurementWe didn’t end up with dashboards, funnels, and MQL obsession by accident. The metrics marketing is measured by was decided by a series of decisions that slowly reshaped what marketing is allowed to be
Read on Substack · External site ↗GameStop's $56 Billion Prank: ↗
AccountabilityHow CEO Ryan Cohen Got Banned From the Company He is Trying to Buy
Read on Substack · External site ↗Marketing Didn’t Get Tied to Revenue by Accident: A Historiography ↗
Growth & InnovationMarketing didn’t get reduced to a pipeline machine by accident. It happened because, at a critical moment, marketing couldn’t explain its value and what replaced it reshaped the entire function.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Beyond the Prompt: Why Your AI Content Needs a Context Engine ↗
Data & AILashay Lewis on bridging the "Trust Gap" by grounding LLMs in your proprietary Product Truth.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Zeitgeist Didn’t Die, We Stopped Feeding It ↗
Growth & InnovationAnd Marketers Must Stop Trying to Feed Off It
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Burnout Isn’t a Personal Failure ↗
Leadership & CultureBurnout Isn’t a Workload Problem. It’s a System That Stopped Seeing People
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Day I Realized Personas Were Useless ↗
Growth & InnovationThis article breaks down why personas suck, what they’re hiding, and what you actually need to understand if you want your marketing to stop blending in and start working.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Marketing looks successful, but misses what matters ↗
Leadership & CultureMarketing’s drift toward optics and internal validation disconnects teams from revenue and the fundamentals that create growth.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗The Decade Meta Stopped Thinking and Started Copying ↗
AccountabilityDoes a company that has to buy or steal every new idea it deploys actually deserve to lead the next era of human connection?
Read on Substack · External site ↗The “Prove It First” Economy Is Breaking Marketing From the Inside ↗
Work & SystemsMarketing is trapped in a system that demands proof before it allows anything to work, then punishes it when it doesn’t.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Meta Verdict Isn’t the Story. Our Dependence Is. ↗
Work & SystemsA New Mexico jury just determined that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Did Marketing Kill the BDR Role? ↗
Growth & InnovationWe’ve been asking BDRs to turn clicks into conversations, then blaming them when it doesn’t work. This piece breaks down how marketing quietly set them up to fail.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Accountability in the Age of the One-Way Mirror ↗
AccountabilityAfroman and the Moment Surveillance Became Accountability
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why “Best Practices" Can Only Lead to “Average at Best” ↗
Growth & InnovationMost B2B campaigns look different on the surface, but underneath they’re built from the same template. This article exposes how marketing became a campaign factory.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why B2B Marketing Feels Seen Yet Invisible ↗
Leadership & CultureThis article unpacks how modern, hyper-targeted marketing made B2B marketing departments feel invisible, why this frustrates marketers and confuses leadership, and what it takes to fix it.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Marketing Gets Disrespected in B2B Organizations ↗
Growth & InnovationMarketing has been made "simple", so everyone thinks they know how to do marketing. That has lead to a complete lack of understanding and disrespect of the function.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Platforms Aren’t Broken. That’s the Problem. ↗
Trust & EthicsA conversation with Omar Oakes on fraud, trust, and what the industry keeps getting wrong.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Backflip Economy ↗
Leadership & CultureHow the Savannah Bananas Perfected Spectacle and What Their Success Reveals About Our Dopamine-Driven Culture
Read on Substack · External site ↗Is Your Self Worth Tied to a Dashboard? ↗
Growth & InnovationThis article exposes how marketers have tied their self-worth to dashboards and why breaking that dependency is the only way to build work that actually matters.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Business Case for Moral Marketers ↗
MeasurementWhy There’s ROI in Listening to Our Better Angels
Read on Substack · External site ↗You Found the Loophole; Congratulations, You Still Look Petty. ↗
AccountabilityThere is a version of winning that should make you embarrassed.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Substack, Polymarket, and the Platform Dilemma ↗
Work & SystemsAs I’ve mentioned in several essays this month, it’s been two years on Substack.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Teen Takeovers, Media Amplification, and the World We Built ↗
Work & SystemsResearch shows that emotionally charged content, especially outrage, spreads faster and farther on social platforms.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Welcome to Sky Zone™:Where Childhood Becomes a Revenue Model ↗
Media & AttentionI walked into Sky Zone and immediately thought, "This building used to sell shower curtains and offered 20%-off coupons that expired but somehow didn’t." Now it sells trampoline time, tiered memberships, and $6 socks.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Why Publishing My Book, "Brand Strategy in Three Steps,"Changed Nothing and Changed Everything ↗
Brand & StrategyI wasn’t ready. The market wasn’t ready. Now both are starting to be.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Resist and Unsubscribe ↗
Growth & InnovationWhen the Only Lever Left Is the Market
Read on Substack · External site ↗How the Marketing Accountability Council changed the way I see marketing, trust, and the systems behind them. ↗
Trust & EthicsTwo years ago, I started the Marketing Accountability Council because I couldn’t ignore the widening distance between what institutions claimed to stand for and how they actually operated.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Karma Has an API Key: How AI Is Eating SaaS ↗
Data & AIB2B SaaS spent years chasing “efficiency” by cutting humans out of the equation. Now AI is doing to software what software once did to everything else.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Bad Bunny, the Big Game, and the America That Refuses to Listen ↗
AccountabilityBad Bunny isn’t some performative diversity booking. He’s the most-streamed artist in the world for multiple years in a row. He’s already mainstream. The Super Bowl is just catching up.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Making Lemonade Out of Don Lemon ↗
Growth & InnovationThis month marks two years of the Marketing Accountability Council, and over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing reflections on where we started, where we’re headed, and what’s breaking (and changing) across marketing and business.
Read on Substack · External site ↗MAC Reality Check - Paul Ruscoe on Control, Accountability, and Marketing Without Illusions ↗
Growth & InnovationWhy modern marketing’s obsession with control is making us worse at the very thing we’re trying to improve.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Death of a Thousand Fees Economy ↗
AccountabilityWhen Government Gets Cornered and Everyone Else Gets Petty
Read on Substack · External site ↗No means no, even when the system refuses to listen ↗
Trust & EthicsSilence is a signal, and ignoring it damages trust.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗The Lie We Keep Telling Ourselves About B2B Sales ↗
Work & SystemsBuyers aren’t avoiding sales conversations. They’re avoiding the pressure, harassment, and desperation we’ve normalized and the systems that reward it.
Read on Substack · External site ↗What a Kitchen Table Conversation Taught Me About Career Resilience ↗
Leadership & CultureWhy the right traits matter more than titles, tools, or resumes.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Demand Gen Isn’t Dead, but I’m Here to Kill It and Replace it With Something Much Better ↗
Growth & InnovationDemand generation is anti-marketing.
Read on Substack · External site ↗I was charged $150 for $25 of gas; and it made me realize how little control we have over our own money ↗
Work & SystemsSurprise credit card holds are more than just an inconvenience; they’re a silent, systemic way of shifting power away from consumers.
Read on Substack · External site ↗One Purple Sign; Two Broken Systems. ↗
Work & SystemsA $19 EZ-Pass charge shows what happens when agencies optimize for enforcement instead of ownership and force people to absorb the friction they created.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Marketing Let Him Go. Real Estate Let Him Lead. ↗
Work & SystemsWhen the System Breaks, You Build Your Own.
Read on Substack · External site ↗If Marketing Isn’t Measured on Revenue, Then What? I Got the Answer, Sway! ↗
MeasurementThis article breaks down what executives really mean when they say they want to see marketing's revenue contribution and how marketers can finally replace revenue with much more effective metrics.
Read on Substack · External site ↗The myth of brand community in the age of data agency ↗
Data & AIClean metrics stop masking the gap between engagement and real commitment.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗Thirteen Years, No Half-Stepping: What Jacob Sanders, Big Daddy Kane, and MAC Have in Common ↗
AccountabilityNo half-stepping shows up over time
Read on Substack · External site ↗Careless People Gave Me PTSD ↗
AccountabilityBut Not for the Reason You Think
Read on Substack · External site ↗When Marketing Becomes Indistinguishable from Fraud ↗
Trust & EthicsHow Personalization, Influence, and Assumed Trust Power Modern Scams
Read on Substack · External site ↗The Teleprompter Died and So Did CBS News ↗
AccountabilityTony Dokoupil’s Debut Didn’t Fail. The CBS News Model Did.
Read on Substack · External site ↗How dirty data broke marketing ↗
Data & AIClean data restores context, consent and meaning.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗Rethinking marketing’s relationship with data ↗
Data & AIClean data offers a route back to trust.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗Marketing leadership asks for radical candor but wants compliance ↗
Trust & EthicsWhen candor becomes a slogan, teams pay through burnout and broken trust.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗The cost of silence in marketing is too high ↗
Growth & InnovationDigital marketing too often rewards performance over principle.
Read on MarTech · External site ↗Reflections from my content marketing crossroads ↗
Media & AttentionA consistent and repeatable approach to content marketing connects audience, story, strategy and results.
Read on LinkedIn · External site ↗AI Has a PR Problem ↗
Data & AIThe backlash against AI is a mirror, reflecting how far marketing has drifted from storytelling, empathy, and serving real human needs and why audiences are finally pushing back.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Lost at CES: A Guided Tour of Marketing’s Collective Delusion ↗
Growth & InnovationLet’s talk about the CES marketing pilgrimage, the annual tech-theater ritual where marketers act like futurists and technologists pretend they understand brand.
Read on Substack · External site ↗When Belief Systems Override Reality ↗
Work & SystemsYou can’t market to stupid and you shouldn’t have to.
Read on Substack · External site ↗Can Mamdani and Khan Prove the Public Still Has Power? ↗
AccountabilityBehind the scenes, they mapped forgotten statutes and buried authority. If it holds, New York could become a model for rapid, people-first governance.
Read on Substack · External site ↗