Funnel Reboot Podcast

One of the best known events in the modern Olympics is the High jump. Since its dawn in 1896 all jumpers used the same technique. They would run towards the bar, then begin their vault by putting one leg over, or trying to go head-first over the bar. But someone came to the 1968 Mexico City games, who couldn’t win on physicality, but who did have a hack no one had thought of.    That person was 21 year old American Dick Fosbury, who you wouldn’t find anything notable looking back at his track career.  Back in high school he’d struggled to master  all the motions used in the high jump; and coaches noted how little he practiced; when time came for track meet qualifiers, his jumps came up short.    But when he got to University for civil engineering, he began to experiment with other ways of jumping. In his studies he learned that our ability to jump is limited by our centre of gravity. Lifting our whole body over a bar at the same time demands that we raise our centre of gravity to that same height. So Fosbury

Artificial General Intelligence is a term that most of us have heard, a good number of us know how its defined, and some claim to know what it will mean for the average marketer. Here’s what OpenAI’s Sam Altman said “It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.”   What nobody knows for sure is when it will be here. Some said that GPT5 would herald the dawn of artificial general intelligence.    This episode is airing In mid-2025, and GPT5 has come out…and it is not widely believed to have AGI.   Our guest says AGI is a long way off, and more importantly, that it might not be the sought-for milestone we need for AI to be a revolutionary force in our lifetimes. Today’s guest takes us through what it will take for AGI to truly arrive. We also talk about  public vs private models, Mixture of Experts (MoE) models, the Branches of AI like Foundational vs generative, Agents and Agentic

Hey, Glenn here. It’s the middle of summer when I’m recording this; a time we don a pair of shades, a beach towel and a good book. Funnel Reboot usually shares talks with marketing book authors, but for this show I’m going to share some reads that go a little farther afield.  Come along with me through six books that are all amazing. The subjects range between business, humanities, technology and science fiction.    Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00 Intro 00:01:44 The Discoverers 00:12:43 Blindsight 00:19:05 How Big Things Get Done 00:24:12 Private Truths, Public Lies 00:27:41 Seveneves 00:30:01 Other SF recommendations 00:31:00 Earth Abides 00:34:57 conclusion Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode, #214.

Sometimes, to reach a solution, we must take unfamiliar paths.  In the early 1940s, a brilliant mathematician named Abraham Wald left his homeland in Hungary fleeing the spectre of war. He moved to the United States, and became part of a team at Columbia University tasked in 1942 with an aspect of the war where the Allies were losing badly to the Nazis. It involved the many Allied planes that would leave from England but never return to their bases, having been shot down somewhere over Europe. These B‑17 and B‑24 bombers had 10-man crews, weighed up to 30-32 tonnes, had wingspans of 100-110 feet, and were defended by machine guns planted along the plane’s entire length. Despite all this, they would lose planes every day, presumably because they’d taken enemy fire and  either crashed during their campaign or as they headed back over the English Channel.  Wald’s team had to determine how to minimize bomber losses. They had been poring over aircraft returning from missions, mapping out the distribution of bullet

We as consumers do a lot of things just because the people around us are doing them. For proof, look no further than some historical examples—from the 17th-century tulip bulb craze in Holland to doomsday cults and prepper movements in the lead-up to Y2K. Buying fads such as pet rocks, fidget spinners, Beanie Babies, and NFTs all show how easily prevailing thoughts influence individual behavior.   The science behind this is well understood. The evolutionary drive to fit in with our peers is very strong. When a group of people’s purchases are plotted as a histogram, we always see the majority of them clumped near the centre - we see it so often we came up with a term for it - the Bell curve.    So even when people think they are  expressing themselves, showing individuality by their brand choices, they are only veering slightly away from the norm.    Hey, Glenn here—welcome to Funnel Reboot. Our guest today—who I really do think has positively impacted marketers’ careers—argues that marketers are just as suscep

Most of the leading AI companies tell us how wonderful their technology will make our lives.  In a recent post put out by OpenAI’s head, Sam Altman called The Gentle Singularity, he says “We will figure out new things to do and new things to want...Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we’ll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each other.”    Of course, these new things need to be marketed and sold. Sam has good news there too, saying: “Generally speaking, the ability for one person to get much more done in 2030 than they could in 2020 will be a striking change”   This all sounds wonderful; it’s used so heavily by Silicon Valley, it’s been given the title of Effective Accelerationism. It’s essential thesis is that AI will cause progress all by itself. So we should just let it take over? Are we willing to bet our livelihoods on that?   Where we are here in 2025, it’s a challenge to do sales and marketing work using AI. Very few know how to run

Since July 1st, 2023, the world of web analytics has undergone a seismic shift—and if you're still reeling from the transition to Google Analytics 4, you're not alone. In this episode, we unpack what many are calling the 'Armageddon' of digital measurement. You'll hear why GA4 isn’t just a new version of an old tool, but a completely different ecosystem In human years, GA4 is still a toddler. But it is growing  rapidly and some are giving it a chance to mature.  Many marketers took their licks in the forced transitioning to GA4 and there are still some raw emotions about how this tool was rolled out. But our guest says that even though change is hard, he guest believes GA4 is the change we didn't know we needed.  Our guest grew up in the New York tri-state area, which gave him two passions. The first one is hockey and watching people grow up playing the game they love - he’s a lifelong Islanders fan. Working in Manhattan, he also worked a lot with numbers. Over time, he morphed from analyzing financial data t

Episode 209 When it comes to initiatives humans undertake, we only need to look at a few to see how they can fail spectacularly. One example:  The iconic Sydney Opera House came from a competition won by a young Danish Architect. The board who’d commissioned him to build it was told it would be completed by 1963, but things were so chaotic and so behind schedule, he had to be fired. It is truly a marvel of design, but it’s a posterchild for poor projects because it didn’t open until 1973.    Another example: Out of a desire to research high-energy particles and potentially solve the fundamental  of physics, the US Government set out to build the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC). A site in Texas was chosen, but after 6 years they had only tunneled a fraction of the 88 kilometres, when the project was cancelled at a cost of $2B.   A last example: In 1998 NASA’s Mars Climate Observer travelled about 200M miles and was about to start researching the red planet. But the software setting its orbital altitude ha

Episode 208 People resist change. They only stop resisting when they’re convinced the change is needed. They’re only convinced change is needed when they grasp the truth. The best way to present them the truth is with data.    You might think that what works on people is a dry statistical presentation of the data in all its Indisputable, inscrutable glory.  Nope. Those avoiding change give themselves offramps by arguing about your data. History shows that to persuade people to take an action, it takes taking them through data in a way that grabs them emotionally. Some examples include: Florence Nightingale, 1854 Al Gore, 2006 Princess Diana, 1997   Numbers prove, but a story compels. This has so much to do with marketing. Here’s why. To do what we do, our bosses / clients must be convinced in how our work is yielding results. That is the core of every story that a marketing presentation tells.  Our guest is a Data Storyteller. After graduating from Massey University in 2002, she moved into data analytics. She

Episode 207 Those of you who know me outside of this podcast, know that if I’m doing anything that involves advertising, whether it be in a classroom or a consulting setting, I think of ads as a complicated puzzle that is never fully solved. While it may not have a predictable outcome, there are a few key principles about it that are always true. I’ve picked up these lessons one at a time, either by studying competitors or through the brands that entrusted me to run their ads—sometimes through painful trial and error. The models and principles that emerge from this process become a valuable piece of baseline knowledge, allowing you to make case-by-case decisions. However, it's hard to pass these insights along to others. They're often too abstract, and the examples become stale and dated as campaigns retire. Does this mean anyone wanting to adopt this perspective on advertising must go through the same process I did? Not necessarily. Thanks to someone with a gift for brevity and illustration, these principles

Episode 206 There’s no denying that ChatGPT and other GenerativeAI’s do  amazing things. Extrapolating how far they’ve come in 3 years, many can get carried away with thinking GenerativeAI will lead to machines reaching General and even Super Intelligence. We’re impressed by how clever they sound, and we’re tempted to believe that they’ll chew through problems just like the most expert humans do.  But according to many AI experts, this isn’t what’s going to happen.   The difference between what GenerativeAI can do and what humans can do is actually quite stark. Everything that it gives you has to be proofed and fact-checked.  The reason why is embedded in how they work. It uses a LLM to crawl the vast repository of human writing and multimedia on the web. It gobbles them up and chops them all up until they’re word salad. When you give it a prompt, it measures what words it’s usually seen accompanying your words, then spits back what usually comes next in those sequences.  The output IS very impressive, so imp

Episode 205    Rich Brooks is founder and president of flyte new media, a digital agency in Portland, Maine.  He founded The Agents of Change a weekly podcast that has over 550 episodes. He is a nationally recognized speaker on using digital channels like search, social media and mobile for marketing to your audience. Rich also hosts the Agents of Change conference which takes place October 9th and 10th both virtually and in his hometown of Portland, Maine.   Timestamps/Chapters 0:00:00 Intro 00:02:49 welcome Rich 00:08:56 using GPT to make text seo-friendly 00:17:32 blending generative text with your own content 00:22:47 expanding to image & video 00:27:11 PSA 00:27:45 managing projects and events with AI 00:38:36 when to use a human vs aGPT 00:47:52 info on Rich. his podcast & his conference   Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.

Episode 204 Eyes are important. Each of us puts heavy weight on our vision when forming a mental model of the world around us.Seeing is believing. This is so important in business, almost every time people meet, some visual tool guides the discussion - this practically essential object is a presentation, specifically a data presentation. But knowing what we know about our visual senses, creating something that’s tuned for people’s minds…as well as their hearts, takes combining neuroscience, storytelling, emotion, persuasion, design and effective communication.  That’s a lot to know, but our guest can help you do it. For over a decade, she’s helped those in the digital marketing and web analytics communities transform their  presentations from snoozefests into experiences that inspire action She’s a workshop leader and keynote speaker. We’re going to talk about the book she came out with in 2024 “Present Beyond Measure.”  Let’s go south of NYC to the Jersey shore to talk with Lea Pica.   Links to everything me

Episode 203:  How many words does a message need to be for it to be useful? Would you believe under 35 words, or under 160 characters? Here are some examples: Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address: “We cannot dedicate. We cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The world will little note nor long. Remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”  Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst declared, “We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.” Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden, on experiencing Nature should be accessible to all, regardless of social or economic status. “The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode”.  JFK “the goal, before this decade is out, [is] of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” Pierre Trudeau: proposed in 1967 that Canada should decriminalize homosexuality. He said “The view we take is, there's no place for the state in th

Episode 202 One of the most famous western philosophers of all time is GWF Hegel. He influenced other thinkers like Karl Marx, Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. He lectured at the universities of Jena, heidelberg and from 1818 until 1831, at Berlin. As a matter of fact, his lectures there drew students from all over campus, to the point that the belltower at the University would sound its bell to announce the start of Hegel’s lectures People may have flocked to hear him, but that doesn’t mean they understood Hegel. One student who went on to write a biography of him was Karl Rosenkranz, who said “His lectures were not clear and systematic presentations, but profound expositions of the inner movement of concepts, which often raised more questions than they answered”…..in another part, he said “The students often complained that Hegel was difficult to understand.” Many moons ago, I was a Political Science major, in which I had to take a philosophy course that covered Hegel - I had the toughest time unders

Episode 201: While our guest wasn't the one who invented content marketing, by founding the  Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi became its standard-bearer. For decades now he has shown  marketers how to make their marketing better by building a media presence that directly connects them to their audience.  These days, Joe is saying this model applies to a much wider populace. He's showing how individuals can make a go of having businesses that are 100% content-based. He's urging these people, formerly known as the audience, to go make their own audience. He calls this type of person a content entrepreneur.  This business model’s definition has two criteria. First is that content is the vehicle used to market the product. We all know this as Content Marketing. It lets buyers take samplings of a business model where they present the skills they've acquired and  The next criteria - content must also be the product. Unlike experts who work full-time as a teacher, writer or consultant who sell their expertis

Episode 200 Podcasts are tiny time capsules, preserving moments of wisdom and insight. Every time I revisit past episodes, I am reminded of how insightful our guests have been. Certain themes consistently emerge, echoed by guests from the very beginning of the podcast to just yesterday. The cost of ignoring these insights is so high that they bear repeating. Tune in to our latest episode where I share six aspects of marketing that I didn't know when I first started this podcast. Please listen in on these valuable pieces of wisdom.   Links to all episodes that featured the people mentioned are in the Show Notes.  

Episode 199 Today’s topic is AI and ML, and though you may think this doesn’t concern marketing, we need to acknowledge how it’ll shift things. Up to now, marketing was done on the premise that for a given audience shown a message, some  average percentage, would act on it. With AI, we’re now able to look at individual audience members and predict how each of them would act upon a message, and at the opportune moment we could have the message show up to each one of them. Goodbye analyzing what happened with crude audience averages, Hello to using detailed data to predict what’s likely to happen.  With AI holding such promise, why don’t more companies hand things over to AI? I had thought it’s held up by a lack of technical people who know how to do this, but our guest says we’ve had enough technical expertise - He himself was previously one of those data people, and his expertise wasn’t enough to do the job.  He says AI initiatives are held back by those running business functions like marketing who haven’t m

Episode 198 A pretty widely held view in the world of B2B products is that sales has gotten harder, not easier. It’s not that buyers aren’t buying. By definition, buying is something they do. But in the example of software, some sales reps won’t even know they were being evaluated, let alone passed up for a rival’s product. Only the winning vendor knows that that account uses them for that specific function in their technology stack. All other companies are in the dark.     But are they really? Another way to look at this is that every vendor has information that could be valuable to others. You can find many buyers stacks with products having some overlap but that largely complement each other. As proof, note that lots of these products even integrate with each other because of buyer demand.    Should vendors consider collaborating with vendors they compete against? Aren’t we supposed to hate the competition?   We don’t have to. A famous example of that was Apple’s announcement in 1997 of the deal it struck

Episode 197 Today, we are going to talk about how those of us who sell things find new buyers once we’ve exhausted our own audiences. We involve partners, and we can do this in a few ways. These partners may have high-traffic sites or be social media influencers. We are trying to use someone else's channel to reach their audience, hoping they will buy from us. Alternatively, we might be the ones who are influential or have a large audience that brands want to reach, so they pay us to be their marketing channel. The name for teaming up like this is affiliate marketing. Today’s guest came to affiliate marketing through dabbling in online gambling. He watched the incentives sites put out to attract players, and then in 2010, he created a website that reviewed gambling affiliate programs called Gaming Affiliates Guide. This site’s traffic led him to become, you guessed it, an affiliate. Over time, he managed several gambling affiliate sites. As you progress in this field, you always hit a ceiling with this market