Building proactive & context-aware software for cities and sidewalks.

Everything was going great. My blog French Together had just hit 357k monthly visitors, the French Together course had exceeded $300k in sales. Then COVID happened. My traffic slowly started to decrease, conversions got worse. I ignored it at first, I guess I was in denial. I kept thinking things would get better and my traffic would magically reappear. Except it didn’t. It just got worse. “This is bad Benjamin, your income is way down, mortgage providers are not going to like that. Can you explain what happened? Is it because of COVID?”, my brutally honest accountant asked me.

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One tiny change in the first three seconds made all the difference.

Available indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace. Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged

I left a comment last week about “little councils of weird strategic thinkers” being the ways agencies win in the next era, and it got a lot of attention. Probably because a lot of us are feeling the same thing: the big, bloated “full-service” model doesn’t cut it anymore. The world is moving too fast, and brands don’t need armies — they need sharp knives. Here’s what I meant by that: 1. A little council is a small, senior braintrust that lives in ideas, not deliverables. Weird is non-negotiable. You can't win by stacking sameness, you win by putting unconventional thinkers in the same room and letting sparks fly. 2. Strategic is the anchor. It’s not about volume or velocity of output (though speed is important). It’s about having the right point of view at the right moment, and making it simple enough that others can run with it. 3. When agencies build around councils instead of departments, a few things shift: - Less “production treadmill,” more intellectual leverage. - Clients get clarity faster. - Talent gets to spend time where it matters (and doesn’t burn out pretending to be a machine). The next decade of agency work won’t be won by who can staff the most bodies. It’ll be won by who can convene the sharpest rooms. Little councils. Weird strategic thinkers. ☝️That’s the model. | 56 comments on LinkedIn

3 things I pitched my clients at Google that I now would NEVER do 😩 Please don't judge me - it's how I was trained! But once I started actually using Google Ads, not just selling Google Ads, I changed my perspective about these "opportunities" 1. Turn on Search partners for incremental traffic Then: Increase your reach with people searching for your keywords with the tick of a box! Now: No. Just no. Sadly, this inventory is all trash - as we can now see from the new content reporting. In fact, when you use Smart Bidding with properly implemented conversion tracking, your search campaign spend on partners will go to zero, or near zero. Enough said. 2. Use all 15 headlines and 4 descriptions in your RSAs Then: Give the system as much variety as possible! Now: Too many assets means your ad will take too long to learn and optimize - or never learn at all. 8-10 headlines and 3 descriptions is plenty for most advertisers 3. Add Performance Display to your marketing mix Then: Reach your target audience across millions of websites and apps with stunning creative (lol) Now: if by "target audience" you mean bots, then yes, that's exactly what you'll get from advertising on the GDN. This, too, is trash. Stick to Google-owned properties instead with Demand Gen Tell me: what's something you used to do in Google Ads, earlier in your career, that you wouldn't be caught dead doing now? | 37 comments on LinkedIn

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