You Can’t Always Get Who You Want

But with the right pull, you might just get who you need.

Happy Monday Friends! Where geopolitical chess is being played by toddlers with flamethrowers. Hope your supply chain experts packed snacks.

And while world leaders are busy turning diplomacy into performance art, the rest of us are left navigating shifting markets, shrinking attention spans, and algorithms that ghost you harder than a recruiter after saying “you’re a perfect fit for this marketing role.”

Which brings us to today’s topic: as marketing reach collapses, gravity wins. Let’s talk about building “pull” in a world where the rules keep changing.

Juicy stuff, right? But hold up - before we dig in, a quick word from... well, me.

<this is the part where I ask you to buy something>
Let’s Stop Calling Chaos A Strategy!

Sure, chaos can be creative. But also, no? Especially when Q2 hits and your content engine now sounds like it’s held together with duct tape, good intentions, and a single Notion doc titled “2025 Plan – Final_Final_FINAL(1).

At Seventh Bear, we help teams pause the frantic publishing and actually think about what they’re doing - strategically, operationally, and with just enough existential dread to be productive.

Our Content Strategy Consulting helps you step back, take stock, and finally make your content make sense again. No jargon. No 80-slide decks (well okay it’s just under 40). Just clarity - the kind that aligns what you say with what you do.

Need a fresh perspective on what’s working (and what’s not) - let’s talk.

<this ends the part where I ask you to buy something>
<oh one other thing - I’ll eat the Tariff on our services.>

Okay… Quickly - let’s dive back in before global trade turns into an actual WWE cage match.

In this episode of LENS:

• Zoom Lens: In a world where reach is rented, pull is owned.

• Wide Angle Lens: Shopify CEO issues a Memo about AI Usage

• Lens Flare: Clarity Beats Consensus: A Recent Lesson From Our Work

• Lens Cap: Episode One of our New On-Demand Show Is Up….

Let’s roll….

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ZOOM LENS: REACH IS RENTED, PULL IS OWNED

“The algorithm is broken.”

"Nobody sees anything unless it's viral or unhinged."

"Zero-click search is going to kill discovery."

Blah blah blah. We’ve seen it. We’ve heart it.

Let’s be honest: algorithms aren’t the enemy. They’re a mirror. A finely-tuned, data-hungry dopamine machine reflecting our worst clicks and deepest doomscrolls back at us.

We aren’t stuck in the algorithm. We are the algorithm.

And so are our audiences.

Audiences used to be diverse, open to new things. They gathered around the collective media campfire. They watched the same 20 TV shows, they read the same 4 newspapers, they attended the same 10 events. And they could be introduced to new concepts. Challenged. When something (or someone) came in and inserted themselves into this broadcast world, brand awareness was built - even if it did require these audiences to think a bit differently.

But today, audiences are no longer waiting around to be discovered by a brand. They’re self-sorting (or being sorted) into hyper-specific echo chambers of curated interests, vibes, values, and memes. It doesn’t matter if it’s a TV Network, a Reddit Thread, a Google Search, or a Social Media Platform. Audiences are self-sorting into identity-focused groups. As a result, they’re choosing who gets seen - not just what they see.

That’s not a bug (well it is, but that’s for different beverages). That’s the new normal.

But, hold on, brand discovery hasn’t died - it’s just gone hyper local. Jazz club over stadium tour.

Old-school reach math doesn’t work here. You can’t just show up on a network, or search, or on a social channel with your brand, and play your Greatest Hits across these mass channels. You have to show up in the right rooms, with the right energy, and get invited to jam.

What happens when you do that well? A thing I’m calling Audience Gravity.

Audience Gravity is the magnetic pull that happens when your brand consistently shows up with contextual value - not clickbait. Not self-promo. Not “join our newsletter.” Just value.

Whether you call this Zero-Click Marketing, or just “dealing with the algos” - we are now better off if we can deliver value then and there. Hopefully, over time, that makes people want to be in the same room as your brand. If we do it well gravity builds - and more of those identity-based audiences will seek you out, outside of the room you’re playing in. You’ll pull more audiences, more creators, more communities into your orbit.

So, when it comes to Brand Awareness we’re not “building an audience.” We’re infiltrating many. One room at a time.

This “bottom-up” approach isn’t just about attracting diverse audiences with different messaging. You also need to build connective tissue between the pockets of trust you’ve earned: a unifying story, a shared identity, something greater than the sum of its parts. So that, ultimately, your room - is one of many that connects audiences to each other.

That’s the real art of brand discovery and the antidote to Zero-click marketing: creating a narrative strong enough to carry across rooms and create pull without flattening your uniqueness.

If you’re interested in digging into the nuance a bit more, you can read my full piece here.

Let’s open it up a bit…

WIDE ANGLE LENS: HOW DID YOU USE AI LAST WEEK

Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?

🤖 ICYMI: Shopify’s CEO Issued a “Use AI or Else” Memo

Because nothing says “innovation culture” like threatening to replace your team with a chatbot unless they prove their humanity in a spreadsheet.

In a memo to employees, Shopify’s, employees were told that to get new headcount approved, they’d need to prove AI can’t do the job. You know, just casually ask your team to disprove a negative, on demand, with existential implications.

Here’s the thing: encouraging AI fluency? Great. Demanding that humans continue to rationalize their continued employment against hypothetical machines? Not so great. Also deeply weird. Also completely misses the point of what people do best - creative thinking, connection, context, judgment - all the things that make teams, well... teams.

We don’t build great orgs by treating people like inefficient software. We build them by helping smart humans do smarter things - with tools that augment their strengths, not threaten their relevance.

Anyway. Cool memo, bro.

LENS FLARE: FROM SPRAY AND PRAY TO SIGNAL AND STITCH

A recent lesson-learned from a colleague that I was talking with last week:

One of my older clients is a mid-sized SaaS technology company, the Director of Marketing there decided to hit pause on the endless blog post treadmill and did something interesting: they chose one high-value story worth telling - then partnered with a trusted voice inside a key community to shape it.

But they didn’t stop there.

Together, they tailored that same core idea for different communities - turning it into a podcast episode, a guest newsletter, a conference talk, and a set of social posts, all delivered through channels where they had earned the position to share content in an educational fashion.

What he shared with me was that in six months, inbound traffic from these disparate community sources doubled. That was nice - but it was really their resonance in these communities that they could see improvement. Much higher engagement, and attraction - rather than the assumption that they were “selling stuff”. The team wasn’t just showing up - they were invited. And the brand was better for it.

LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH

🍷 Finishing Notes…

In a world where links get throttled, attention is fragmented, and AI chews up your SEO game, the real flex is showing up in the moment with complete value where the audience already is. That’s Zero-Click Marketing in a nutshell. What does that look like? It’s the whole post on LinkedIn - without a link to the website. It’s the super valuable video on YouTube - not just a teaser to visit your resource center.

We may be bummed that this doesn’t revolve around our owned media any longer. But it’s what we have, and where we’re going. Post, speak, write, share - not to extract attention, but to earn your spot. You’re not building one audience. You’re stitching together many.

The cool thing is that when you earn enough rooms, you start to build your own gravitational field. That’s when audiences start coming to you, not because you’re loud - but because you belong.

Forget audience growth. Build audience gravity.

This isn’t about shouting your brand from the rooftops.

It’s about playing something worth hearing in every quiet room - and being asked to keep playing.

It’s Your Jam. Start Improvising. Then Play It Well.