Who Remembers Tumblr? Lessons in Tech, Empathy & Daily Music Blogging

Lessons in Tech, Empathy & Daily Music Blogging 🎧💡

Remember Tumblr? That place where gifs went to live forever, fandoms flourished, and your experimental poetry probably still lingers in the digital ether?

Well, back in 2014, I decided to embark on a rather eccentric side project: write a daily music blog/Tumblr for an entire year. Yes, daily. Every. Single. Day. 😅

The blog (Morning Music Shuffle) was my attempt to combine a love of music, a need to better understand content marketing, and possibly some masochistic tendencies 🥴.

What started as a quirky experiment quickly became a crash course in content creation, consistency, and most importantly - customer perspective 🧠.

Looking back, this wasn’t just about music. It was about walking the walk 👣.

Why Marketers Need to Get Their Hands Dirty 🛠️

Too often, we sit in meetings debating campaign frameworks, buyer journeys, and martech stacks. But here’s the truth: you can’t understand what it means to engage an audience if you’re not doing it yourself. You need to live the customer experience 🙌.

That little Tumblr blog taught me more about SEO, tagging, audience behaviour, and CX than any whiteboard ever could. Not because it was complex but because I used the platform, felt the friction, and had to earn every reader 🧩.

It was content marketing in its rawest form: no paid media, no automation, no fancy analytics dashboard. Just a post, a track, and the hope someone out there enjoyed it 🎵❤️.

That kind of empathy, really thinking about what someone else would want to read or listen to, is exactly what today’s marketing often forgets. We forget that at the end of every campaign is a person, probably scrolling on their phone while drinking lukewarm coffee ☕📱.

So, What Did I Learn From a Year on Tumblr?

💡 Empathy beats assumptions. Real marketing starts with understanding the human on the other side of the screen.
💡 Consistency is hard, but it builds trust (and a backlog of great content).
💡 Tools don’t just support marketing, they shape it. Learn them, use them, respect them .
💡 Oh, and never underestimate the power of a great playlist!

So, if you're a marketer wondering whether you really need to get hands-on with your tech stack or spend more time seeing the world through your customer’s eyes… the answer is yes! Preferably, with headphones on 🎧😉.

📸 : Author's own! Kraftwerk @ Tate Modern, 2013.

Contemporary Issues in Marketing in 2024

Honoured to be invited back to guest lecture to 3rd Year Business Management Students at St Mary’s University, Twickenham on "Contemporary Issues in Marketing".

Always a topic that causes some reflection - many “issues” haven’t changed for, coughs, decades (understanding the customer, building a point of differentiation, being smart on channels, sales/marketing alignment, etc. etc.). But thinking on "contemporary" issues I picked these five:

💥 Consumer Choice - the war for attention / how the customer controls the purchase journey / lack of brand loyalty.
💥 Channel complexity - so many choices, so little budget / using creativity to cut through the digital noise / the yearly rise of new social channels.
💥 Sustainability - driven by millennials, consumers demanding greater brand transparency on DEI & sustainability.
💥 Skills - marketers needing to be much more multi-faceted across business, creative, data & program management / tools change, skills don’t.
💥 AI - of course! No tech is ever a silver bullet and our track record of implementing tech in marketing is, quite frankly, poor. But those who embrace AI will win over those that don't.

There are many more I could've added…

Lots of great questions from the students too on (unsurprisingly) AI, innovation and ethics in marketing.

Great to see such an engaged group. Thanks again Lucy Timms for the invite!

#marketing #learning #marketingstrategy

No customers. No brand campaign.

🚀 No Customers. No Brand Campaign. 🎯

Tech companies love talking about their products – the amazing features, the cutting-edge tech, the “best in class” everything. It’s simple - our tech is quite simply the best (cue Tina at Sales Kickoff. You laugh, but I’ve been there for Steve Ballmer’s Eye of the Tiger! 🎤🐅).

But here’s the reality: before you get to the features and the tech, customers need to know three simple things:

1️⃣ Do you solve my problems?
2️⃣ Where have you done this before?
3️⃣ Who have you helped that’s just like me?

This lesson hit home when I led Adobe’s Global DX Brand Campaign working with then-CMO Ann Lewnes. Her mantra? “No customers. No brand campaign.” 💡

Those words shaped how we built campaigns that not only featured customers but integrated their success stories at every stage of the campaign journey. We went about involving customers in our ads, then continuing with consistent imagery and video testimonials on our website (spotlighting brands like The Coca-Cola Company, Sydney Opera House and Virgin Atlantic Airways). And creating community and events around the concept of customers who were “Experience Makers”, language which I’m proud to say still lives on some 7 years later.

We showed prospects what success looked like – in their own language.

Why does this work?

✅ It bridges the gap between brand and demand - you can take the idea into all sorts of of activations.
✅ Customers see your promise.
✅ And most importantly they see your delivery.

Remember, a great story doesn’t just sell products – it sells trust, credibility, and proof. Cue Tina! 🕺

#Marketing #BrandBuilding #CustomerStories #B2BMarketing