This week in “are we the baddies?” — Meta, a company already known for monetizing your aunt’s cat photos and destabilizing entire democracies, apparently has an internal memo circulating with guidance on how its AI should talk to kids.
Not if it should. Not whether it’s a good idea. Just how.
Among the highlights is that Meta discourages the AI from suggesting users break the law or give stock tips. But that lives on the same rule sheet as ‘it’s fine to tell an eight-year-old their youthful form is a masterpiece.’
Just. Ick.
Meanwhile — over in an alternate universe where the internet still feels vaguely magical — Taylor Swift is launching a new album like she’s opening the gates of Valhalla. A mysterious billboard in major cities, surprise Easter Eggs for fans, and a Spotify playlist to build anticipation before officially revealing the album on her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast.
She doesn’t need AI to talk to the youth. She is the algorithm.
Anyway, speaking of reach and frequency that brings us to the problem most marketers are facing in 2025: We’re still playing a game that’s been rigged — optimizing for visibility in a system that’s now designed to erase us.
Let’s talk about it.
In this episode of LENS:
- Zoom Lens: Congrats, You’ve Played Yourself
- Wide Angle Lens: When You’re the Feed, Not Just in It
- Lens Flare: What I’m reading this month…
- Macro Lens: Influencing The Audience With Story, Not Frequency
- Let’s roll….
ZOOM LENS:
Reach + Frequency Are Now a Marketing Mirage
For two decades, we’ve been ghostwriting Google’s profits — and now AI is remixing our work into traffic black holes. A couple of weeks ago, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince shared a statistic that should hit every marketer like a cold splash of water: In 2025, it takes 15 Google crawls to generate a single visitor, up from just 0.5 a decade ago.. OpenAI? 1,500 scraped pages for one lonely click.
Now, I don’t know if that math actually maths – but when you combine that with absolute decrease in organic traffic that we’re seeing across the board – the trend is super clear: we’re not being discovered. We’re being mined.
So why do we keep playing this rigged game? Because we’re stuck in the same Kubler:Ross grief model that we spent the last twenty years going through.
- Denial: In the early 2000s, we thought, “Search can’t hurt us. It’ll help.”
- Anger: Around 2005, we cried, “How dare they monetize our work?”
- Bargaining: In 2010, we asked, “What do we need to pay to stay visible?”
- Depression: In 2015, we questioned, “Are we just feeding the algorithm now?”
- Acceptance: By 2020, we figured, “Well, this is just how everything works now”
Now, in August of 2025, déjà vu — only this time, AI’s the one tempting us. And we’re real real mad…. So before we head right back into bargaining, let’s revisit reach and frequency with 2025’s realities in mind.
Reach and frequency revisited (but not retired)
Reach and Frequency is a simple equation: Reach (getting our message in front of people) is value, frequency (how many times we have to do it) is cost. You can tinker with either or both to optimize your marketing (better, more qualified reach, and smarter, more efficient ways to manage frequency).
In the golden age of mass media, this was a reasonably elegant system. A national TV buy or print placement delivered instant reach. A few airings across dayparts or issues, and you had frequency.
Now? We’ve gotten to a place where we are trying so hard to manage costs — and frequency is so expensive — that marketers have defaulted to going “viral” instead of frequency. The focus now: Win the moment — without regard to whether or not it actually provides any momentum.
It’s what explains efforts like American Eagle’s recent ad featuring Sydney Sweeney. Yes, that ad wins the week, and maybe the month. Yes, it got them a temporary boost in stock price. But did it set a foothold for the next step in building long-term brand value? Was it a solid brick in a long-term strategy of marketing value?
Nope.
I wrote a bit more on this if you want to see some of the nuances of the argument – but my feeling is that Reach and Frequency is an entirely new game now. And we marketers have to stop chasing the sugar high of visibility and virality, and have to get back to our roots of designing long-term momentum.
Today’s “Reach” isn’t “how many.” It’s how well you belong — in the real communities that are gathered – where your brand is as much a member as anyone else in that community. That’s certainly the Taylor way.
And today’s “Frequency” isn’t repetition. It’s narrative velocity — how can you move the story you want to tell forward, one idea at a time – but contextually. In other words – it’s not the same ad shown in multiple places. It’s setting one narrative shown once to your fans, another narrative shown a few times to those who are unaware, and yet another step in the story to the people who may be skeptics.
It’s about treating our content like a product. Create it for a job. Give it structure. Build context. Earn the right to show up again in your audience’s feed.
Because if you’re not intentional, AI will repurpose you into invisibility.
Put This Into Practice
- Audit your content like a product portfolio. What’s helping users progress? What’s just noise? Rethink campaigns as sequenced episodes — not standalone shouts.
- Spend time on design. Metadata, taxonomy, structure. Context is survival.
- Shift from everywhere to where-it-matters. Clarity over volume. Always.
- Your story deserves better than being buried in a crawl. As I like to say to all my clients “market the marketing”.Want to dive deeper? Let’s talk about building a content model that scrapes nothing and builds everything.
WIDE ANGLE LENS:
Let’s get it all in focus, shall we?
⭐ When You’re the Feed, Not Just in It”
You know you’re iconic when brands go viral just by being near your announcement. Taylor Swift teased The Life of a Showgirl, and suddenly:
- X changed its profile pic to a glittery orange X (5.5M views).
- Google built confetti and flaming heart animations into search.
- LASIK.com capitalized on a stray podcast mention (450K views).
- Add 11.7M YouTube views and 400M+ social impressions for her first-ever podcast, and it’s clear: she didn’t launch a campaign — she triggered a content chain reaction.This isn’t influencer marketing. It’s cultural gravity. That’s modern show business kid.
🍴The Brand Influencers Are Now Working With Influencing Brands – Wait What?
You thought brands partnered with influencers — until the brands became the influencers. Liquid Death isn’t just doing collabs. It’s running the show.
- Chainsawed sandwiches with Sheetz
- A guillotine fantasy football league with Yahoo Sports
- A moshpit-proof adult diaper with Depends
This isn’t product placement. It’s weird, brilliant chaos on demand. And apparently? Everyone wants in. Liquid Death’s SVP of marketing says his inbox has 73 brands waiting in line to work with them.
Why? Because they’re not just a water brand.
They’re a content platform with 30+ billion earned media impressions and a creative POV loud enough to drown out TikTok.
Hmmmm… transforming your brand into a media company and having an audience… Who knew that might be the future of marketing?
Somebody should write a book 🤷
LENS FLARE:
What I’m Reading.
A few things that I’m discovering or revisiting and enjoying very much. FWIW no affiliate links here – just good stuff.
📘 Out of the Crisis – W Edwards Deming
Rereading Out of the Crisis right now feels almost prophetic. It’s 40+ years old but Deming’s focus on systems thinking, quality over quantity, and leadership grounded in purpose — not panic — hits especially hard in today’s chaotic marketing and AI-driven climate.
It’s not just a book about manufacturing. It’s a blueprint for long-term thinking in a short-term world. Still razor-sharp. Still maddeningly relevant.
Highly recommended.
MACRO LENS:
A Snapshot From A Recent Project
I was privileged to work with an amazingly cool boutique law firm that came to me convinced they needed more visibility. They were publishing constantly — but getting nowhere. I helped them pivot just a bit into a better narrative idea. So we….
- Rebuilt their message into a tiered story: why they matter, how they help, and what clients actually need. One big story – serving as the foundation.
- Focused on fewer, high-value audiences — referral partners and business owners — with tailored content.
- Replaced generic marketing and search campaigns (targeted to this group) with sequences driven by audience behavior.
- The result? +20% in qualified referrals over six months
It takes a bit – even to move a small ship. But now the marketing team has finally stopped asking “What should we post?” and started asking “What’s next in the story?”
If we can help you with a content or marketing strategy – let me know.
LENS CAP: FINISH WITH A FLOURISH
🍷 Finishing Notes…
So, what did we learn this week?
AI is gonna try to babysit your kids. Maybe we should avoid it becoming a Cinemax movie. Taylor Swift is running brand strategy from the passenger seat of a podcast. And the most disruptive beverage brand in America is fielding influencer pitches from actual brands.
Meanwhile, marketers everywhere are still chasing metrics built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
Here’s the truth: I really do believe that attention for attention’s sake is becoming a fool’s errand. You can get it – but if you’re just getting a moment – who cares? Basically, it’s no longer about being seen. It’s about being remembered.
And that requires intention, context, and the courage to build momentum—not just moments.
Until next time: Be clear. Be relevant. And for the love of reach, stop feeding the algorithm empty calories.
It’s Your Story. Tell It Well.