Field Notes from a Business Creative

Observations, strategy notes, and musings written by a marketer who still believes story, taste, and intent matter more than algorithms.

If everything seems under control, then you’re just not going fast enough.

— Mario Andretti

Ryan Caldarone Ryan Caldarone

License to Risk: Creative Risk and Return

There isn’t exactly a recipe for breakout work, but there is a curve. Low-risk creative has capped returns. I’ve found that taste-forward, asymmetric bets on your creative compound the potential for higher returns when you learn from them. So, build your creative or content operating model around that curve. 

Those sharp or edgy narratives can become force multipliers for your content, creative, product marketing, or any other team(s) that help place the building blocks of your story where it meets your audience. 

If nobody asks, “Are we sure we want to say that?”, your message probably isn’t worth saying.

Strong messages, like strong products, can’t be everything for everybody. Treat your creative operations like a portfolio, with different buckets for levels of risk or edginess, and assign each body of work a risk budget. Keep your publication/production tempo in mind, and distribute your weights accordingly. 

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Ryan Caldarone Ryan Caldarone

The Algorithm Is Not Your Story

How to build a content engine that ships fast without losing the plot.

The story is the asset. Story-led is just a sales-centric perspective on brand marketing… and of course, brand marketing is just future revenue, future demand. 

Build a library that deserves to be quoted. The laboratory micro-narratives that can move will quote the library, iterate on those stories, and do so consistently at scale.

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Ryan Caldarone Ryan Caldarone

Jurassic Marketing: When Distribution Eats the Story

AI is here. Learn it. Use it.

Metrics clarify, but they aren’t the story. If you want to connect with people, begin with people. Work remembers its origin.

Everything else—automation, dashboards, templates—comes after. Get the order wrong, and the machine comes apart. Good luck cold-starting it.

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Ryan Caldarone Ryan Caldarone

Traditional SEO vs AI?

Having reviewed some of the early testing with Googles new SEO and search for AI, I’m pleasantly surprised, fear less for humanity.

Bottom line I’ve seen 📣 keep your webpages modern.

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Ryan Caldarone Ryan Caldarone

#Hashtag Content Strategy (For TikTok and everywhere else)

Discovery strategy using a combination of high and low visibility hashtags with context, on TikTok. Examples of relevant tags, a comprehensive methodology for hashtag analysis, and a step-by-step procedure for experimenting with your own videos.

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