But do we really have a way to solve these problems?

It seems that complexity is so big that we alone are not capable to define the problems. But you already know that, right?

Why the most dangerous phrase in business is “I already know that.”

“Metrics, metrics, metrics…” would have said if Napoleon were to be a marketing leader…

Clicks, conversion rates and that holy grail they call “growth”. We are obsessed with dashboards, reports, summaries…

If a founder hooks a conversation around marketing, it takes about 70-80 seconds before they start tossing numbers around.

These things matter for sure.

They are the vital signs of a company / business.

The reality I see: Looking is easy, but identifying the actual, structural problem is where almost everyone struggles.

I have an obsession to find; find the flaws, problems, the hallucinations…

Everyone thinks they can frame the problem.

They read a ten-second summary, skim an AI-generated overview, and instantly become experts.

They nod along and say, “Yeah, yeah, I already know that.”

That phrase is a smooth criminal!

The Illusion of Expertise

I don’t like to name periods; but it’s like the “I Know Best” epidemic.

It’s a collective arrogance. Hyper-automated and fast-paced where surface-level data is mistaken for deep insight.

You don’t and shouldn’t get insights like in a second!

Marketers are notoriously guilty of this. Walk into any standard agency or boardroom, and you’ll find a room full of people claiming they have the definitive playbook.

Beep; wrong answer!

They want you to believe that marketing is a simple plug-and-play formula.

Beep; wrong answer!

But it isn’t. True strategy isn’t a template you copy from a competitor; it’s a look at the messy intersections of culture, psychology, and human behavior.

Things should be considered; and now even more thoroughly. It shouldn’t be pornographic!

When you say you “know your market” based solely on quantitative graphs, you are missing the edges where the real truth could exist. You develop what I call the consciousness of misunderstanding—the dangerous state of being entirely certain about a reality that doesn’t actually exist. In other terms, hallucination.

You think you know what people want. But do you really?

Or are you just projecting a sterile, frictionless corporate fantasy onto an audience that is distracted, restless, and completely numb to your messaging?

The Power of “I Don’t Know”

In a world where time is limited, time will show us the reality.

The hardest thing for a leader to do right now is to step back, look at the boardroom, and cultivate the intellectual humility to admit: “I don’t know. Let’s figure it out.”

Real architecture isn’t built on top-down authority or corporate ego. It is built through co-creation.

It requires sitting with uncomfortable ideas, wrestling with the mess, and admitting that your previous takeaways might be entirely obsolete in today’s landscape.

When Esra and I sit down with growth-stage firms, we cannot bring a rigid, pre-packaged formula.

Why?

Because every business model has its own soul, its an independent ecosystem.

The moment a marketer assumes they “know best” without deeply listening first, they lose the game before it even begins.

Let’s Get to the Point of Order…

The most valuable asset in marketing for me is distancing.

It’s the willingness to filter out the noise, slow down the tech-panic, enjoy the chaos and let it sink in. Then challenge the static beliefs holding your business back.

This is just trying to shift your perspective and help us develop a new and fresh one!

Marketing is not a performance. Now, agents will be doing the operations, but they won’t be treating marketing as a laboratory.

So we should:

• Stop looking for the quick hack or the viral template.

• Stop assuming your past numbers dictate the rules of a changing environment.

• Start building a culture of radical honesty where your team can tear down mediocre assumptions and rebuild on bedrock truths.

We don’t need more instant experts or louder megaphones.

We need operators with the guts to face the chaos, drop the pretense, and look for actual meaning.

Let the crowd pretend they have it all figured out.

We have real problems to solve (together) and real businesses to build.

That’s what tech does; simplifies things but how?

For a long time, we bought into the narrative that it was making the world a better place. But lately?

It feels like the opposite. It didn’t just change our infrastructure; it changed us. It rewired how we behave, how we think, and how we distribute our attention (and distraction).

We are systematically lending our human skills to software. We don’t remember; we search. We don’t process; we automate. And in return, the market has flooded us with an illusion of choice.

Look at any category —food, finance, software. Thousands of products, all functionally identical, screaming for the exact same slice of your attention.

Everything has shifted into high-speed time. And we are completely drowning in it. If you’re not feeling this then please let me know.

The Normalized Addiction

We don’t even pretend to hide our mobile addiction anymore. We’ve accepted it as part of the scenery.

Think about your last high-stakes business meeting. Expensive leaders, big strategy on the table. What happens the moment someone takes a breath or pauses to think? Everyone looks down. Everyone checks their pocket. Everyone feeds their screen time.

The ultimate contradiction of modern business: We sit in rooms plotting how to change the world or increase our wealth/revenue; yet we cannot survive a ten-second silence without looking at a glass rectangle.

Algorithms are engineered to make you see more, scroll more, and want more. They thrive on your restlessness. But how can we expect to build meaningful structures or execute a pristine strategy when our minds are constantly held hostage by invaluable distractions?

Breaking Free from the Static

If you want to adapt to this reality—if you actually want to integrate with the future instead of being devoured by it—the response cannot be more technology.

The response must be subtraction.

Don’t write to LLMs for a while… Don’t look at your mobile…

We have to free ourselves from the manufactured fears and synthetic desires that the digital machine feeds us every morning. If your marketing strategy is based on chasing an addicted audience with even more digital noise, you are nearly invisible. You’re just another pixel in the blur.

Marketing for Constant Change

This is exactly where my focus lies.

I work on marketing functions designed to integrate with this environment of non-stop, chaotic change. But my approach isn’t to build a louder megaphone. It’s to fix the architecture.

How can we make you stop without sounding like propaganda.

Can I increase your awareness of addiction in some unscalable way?

This is not a trending subject, how can we flip it?

I don’t look for quick hacks to steal three seconds of an addicted user’s day. I step in to build core structures that stand out because they are grounded in unchanging human truth. So please;

• Stop trying to out-scroll the algorithm.

• Stop building plastic campaigns for a distracted world.

• Start building deep, authentic value that forces people to look up.

The noise will only get faster. The screens will only get closer. Your only leverage is to build a system that works beneath the panic.

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The upcoming change won’t be in marketing itself; it will be in titles. We ‘ll soon only need titles to understand and redefine what people are actually doing, rather than using them as symbols of corporate status. Well, that’s what I hope for.

I am a Fractional CMO.

Nobody gave me that title—I earned it myself by operating as an independent professional. Many use this term simply as a sign of not being on a traditional payroll, doing whatever you want, and organizing your time in workforce fractions.

But no, this article isn’t about the methods and logistics of fractional work. That’s the easy part. And no, this isn’t an AI-generated text filled with cliché “not X, but Y” sentences.

This is about what true independence in marketing actually means.

The change is constant, but still it won’t be in marketing; it will be more in titles, in approaches…

Independence means not being under the influence of something. Only seeking the truth, the feeling of people, the reality…

Understanding who the quick buyers are, and the future buyers and what their difference is or could be. This isn’t only about causing sales, because that’s just lame; too pragmatic. So being independent is also being very anti Machiavallistic.

We aim to not change according to competitors, but according to time, the zeitgeist. Because competition could be something valuable for people but not always. Sometimes we get blind to the market due to having the arrogance of being the one and only in the sphere…

Do you understand what people really want? Or what they may want in the near future?

What the data says is the past, maybe there’s eomthing in the future the data hasn’t told us, what could it be?

Where is the culture going?

Well to be honest, in Turkey it’s going nowhere…

An Indie CMO, creates an indie brand, meaning that it creates and builds it according to it’s core audience, reaching to the people who would likely use or buy the “brand”. So in this sense, independent marketers can be on a payroll of one company only or they may have a portfolio career. I was mono-brandist for some time back in the good old days when media planning was strong, resources were nearly infinte and social was just starting.

But I saw that learning from one category and nourishing the experience to another is something really fun, like fusion cooking.

I’ve been wrong, under influence, too much focused on the competition one decade ago… I’ve also misinterpreted people and data too…

I’ve thought people just wanted or desired something very “to the point”.

Once you step back, you filter out the collective panic, understand the biases you start to see the patterns; try to predict what could happen, what could change and not change. And sometimes there are no patterns.

My job isn’t to control the chaos or pretend it doesn’t exist; it’s to navigate through it with a clear mind, anchored only to the truth of the audience.

Sometimes that audience is only team members of my portfolio companies. Sometimes it’s other departments of the company…

We don’t need corporate hierarchies or rigid payrolls to save us from the mess.

We just need the freedom to look at the chaos, smile (sometimes cry in silence) and say:

“I see the pattern. Let’s try to build something new from here.”

We do this to ignore the mess of today. It’s a way to feel safe. A way to look at the market and say, “I know and predict better.” We deny the problems of today by positioning ourselves for a distant tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against futurists. But the constant obsession with predicting the next decade is absurd.

Philip Tetlock, a political scientist, proved this. He ran a massive experiment and found that expert forecasters are roughly as accurate as dart-throwing chimpanzees.

Yet, we keep throwing darts.

Look at how we treat the concept of death. People died yesterday. They die today. They will die tomorrow. Death doesn’t change, but our ideas about it does. Modern culture is obsessed with longevity. We demand total comfort. We have developed a deep antipathy toward our own mortality.

This denial changes everything. It changes how we grieve. It changes relationships. It changes the business world. It changes the our gaze towards the future too.

We see disposable relationships. Customers act like there’s no tomorrow. This isn’t because they fear death. We shouldn’t over-interpret death as ghosting. The main reason should be,the absence of real connections. When there is no human bond, there is no value. Everything becomes easily discarded. And short-termed.

People constantly ask massive questions. Will AI invade us? Will the world go dark? Will cash disappear? Will there be universal income?

I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t find it useful to think about it.

I care about actual, immediate problems. Can I get through tomorrow if AI servers crash? What if a loved one leaves? What will happen if water resources runs out?

I’ve got maybe 30 or 35 years left on this earth (on average). I think about what will happen to my work, my people, and my business right now. And what I could leave to my children…

Imagine your business for a second. Erase AI. Erase the algorithms.

How would you run your company tomorrow? What does your brand actually mean without some kind of software? Agentic AI?

If you don’t have an answer, you are in a techno-panic. Your psycho-technology is broken. You need some therapy!

We’re suffering from forward-gazing vertigo. Every morning, the internet commands us secretly to “future-proof” or die. We rush to optimize prompts for tools we barely understand, trying to solve problems that don’t exist yet.

The present is heavy. It’s fragile. It contains real human friction and operational drag. The projected future is a sterile, frictionless fantasy. By obsessing over AI, we try to bypass the messy vulnerability of real, biological intelligence.

But a brand that runs away from human friction can never build a community. And intelligence is not enough for anything.

This tech-panic is like bad CGI in a movie. Hollywood uses massive digital explosions to hide a terrible script. In business, automated funnels are our CGIs. They look shiny, but they feel sunken.

Kurt Vonnegut nailed this human flaw: “Everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

We launch automated content engines because maintaining a real customer relationship feels like a chore. However there are still people who love real interaction.

An entire industry of corporate futurists exists to feed this anxiety. Predicting the future is the safest job in the world. You are never accountable for today. If a futurist is wrong, no one remembers. And you’ve probably felt that you didn’t miss the trendy hot topics.

But as a founder, your cash flow and team morale are being tested right now. While the futurist sells you a map of a hypothetical ocean, your ship is taking on water in the harbor.

But I think it’s our job to see reality, as it is, if ever possible.

Human behavior has heavy gravity. In the 1950s, people saw new rockets and predicted we would colonize Mars by 2000. They drew a straight line and ignored the gravity of reality and the effect of time. We’re doing the same thing with AI.

But the biological architecture of your buyer doesn’t change. People still need belonging, clarity, and trust.

This is exactly why I operate as a Fractional CMO.

Internal marketing teams are trapped in this theater of innovation. Full-time executives feel forced to launch fifty AI pilots just to look busy (and up to date) for the board. They inject pure noise into the company.

My job is to be a radical noise filter. Be a real independent eye…

I step in from the outside and start subtracting. I try to slow down the tech-panic. I look at the clutter and ask: What can we stop doing today to save our sanity?

You don’t need to guess the exact shape of tomorrow if your current brand is anchored in unchanging human truths.

-AI will eat us all.

-No it will devour itself.

-They also say business models will become AI based.

-Manual jobs will stay for a while.

Yes but, do you ever think about the details of these scripts?

Turn off the predictive radar for an afternoon. Stop trying to out-prompt the algorithm. Ask yourself: What are we doing right now that a machine could never replace?

Stop hallucinating about the future.

Build a system for today.

Nobody is reading. They are skimming. We just want the summary to save time. We have this ultra-mega productivity thing always ticking in our head. Give me the three bullet points and let’s see if it’s any good.

However keypoints are not the real text.

Why do we do this? Because we are being hunted by a villain: the scarcity of time.

Mark Fisher called it out perfectly. Late capitalism survives by manufacturing an artificial scarcity of time. It keeps us in a hyper-optimized rush.

Why? Because a rushed mind never has the space to think deeply. A fragmented mind cannot question anything.

So we look for shortcuts. We copy the viral templates. We publish 300-page books just to put “Author” in our bios, wanting the credibility of the object while ignoring the idea inside. We are like podcasters with a great big mic showing a phallic authority. It’s all presence. All performance.

This is exhausting and annoying for all of us.

I deliberately unsubscribe from newsletters. Do you? (Which makes this the perfect time to ask you to subscribe to this one. Stay with me. I promise not to feed you paste)

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The Slop Economy

We blame AI for the sudden influx of garbage on our screens. We call it “slop.”

But AI did not invent slop. It was always there. But it didn’t define the aesthetic of modern life.

Look around you. Long before LLMs graced our lives, we were already living in a Slop Economy. Look at the roads. Every car is millennial grey, white, or black. Look at our apartments, filled with identical stock furniture. Look at our lunch—the endless loop of identical fast-casual grain bowls scooped into cardboard containers. Thanks to Eugene’s post.

This is the aesthetic of consolidation.

Capitalism in its highest, most hyper-optimized form hates the anomaly. It hates the unique. It demands efficiency, and efficiency always breeds sameness. This is why AI loves it: the machine is entirely probabilistic. It looks at everything we've ever done, finds the mathematical average, and feeds the majority back to us. It creates a world with no edges.

AI didn’t bring the sickness. It just accelerated our symptoms. It took a culture that was already content with eating bland, pre-chewed paste and handed us a machine that generates it at infinite scale.

The Creator’s Despair

This leaves the creator in a state of quiet despair. Actually it will leave nearly everyone, if a black swan doesn’t come through.

We all think thath everyone is caught in speed. To survive in the slop economy, you have to feed the algorithm. You cannot stop. But in reality you have take a breath to think, to incubate an actual idea.

So, creators turn themselves into human APIs. They use AI to summarize their thoughts, to draft their hooks, to write their threads. They stop being artists and start being quality control managers for synthetic texts.

They will be drowning in their own output. The tragedy of the modern creator is that we are forced to produce the very noise that is making us deaf. We are working harder than ever to build an audience that is too tired to listen.

The Evangelist’s Myth

AI evangelists will tell you not to worry. They say the technology will evolve. It will become diverse. It will fix itself.

That seems like a comforting lie. A machine fed on a diet of automated slop can only output a more diluted version of that slop. It cannot generate the human soul. It cannot imitate it neither. It cannot understand the friction of real life.

Is my desire to change this just a wish? A naive dream to rescue ideas from the giant machine?

Well to be honest there is no machine, but an image of the machine… An ambitious group of companies with hungry minds running to devour the little souls left…

Maybe. But I don’t want a war. I don’t want a loud, angry revolution. Anger is just more noise, and we have enough noise.

We need something much deeper: a total mental evolution. A quiet, conscious approach of questioning what is illusionnary and what is real. We have to change the framework entirely to a non-framework approach. More experimental. With more deliberate friction.

The Illusion (The Shortcut)                                               The Reality (The Friction)
10-Second Reel                                                                     Deep Context
Viral Growth Template                                                       Agonizing Trial & Error
AI-Generated Summary                                                      Deep Strategic System
“Author” Bio Object                                                            The Heavy, Uncomfortable Idea                
Nutrient Supplements                                                         Tasting and Chewing the Meal          

The Mental Evolution: Fractal Order in Chaos

As a fractional CMO, people constantly ask me for the shortcut to growth. They want guaranteed success. They want the viral template. The quick fix. The summary of success. They refuse to read the agonizing chapters of trial and error.

But a bullet point will not save you in a complex market. It won’t make you different. Our desire for the easy way flattens our strategy.

AI will continue to cause massive complexity. It will leave a highly fragmented area of decision for your customers. The landscape of mental availability is shifting beneath our feet. If you meet that fragmentation with more automated marketing frameworks, you simply become part of the slop.

We have to look past the summaries. Past the algorithms. We must step directly into the messy, complicated reality of the market.

That is where fractal thought comes in.

Chaos isn’t something to be ironed flat by automation. Chaos has a rhythm. In a fractal system, the smallest, deepest human truths repeat and scale upward. A real connection with one customer contains the blueprint for connecting with thousands.

You cannot optimize your way into trust. You cannot summarize an authentic human relationship. You have to build a system for it. Slowly. Non-transactionally.

Marketing must stop hiding behind automation and start co-existing with culture. Culture is the ultimate fractal. Messy, alive, and un-summarizable. It is the only gravity left that can anchor people when the information landscape is spinning out of control.

The Mirror in the Machine

So why did I tell you at the start that AI helped me write this?

Think about the paradox. If AI is a probabilistic machine that loves the majority, how can it help us find fractal order?

It can’t. Not on its own.

If you treat AI as a shortcut, it gives you slop. It gives you the average of everything that already exists. But if you treat it as a canvas, a space for trial and experimentation, everything changes.

I didn’t ask a prompt to think for me. I didn’t ask it for an ultimate guide. I threw my raw, messy, agonizing frustrations at it. I threw my anger, my doubts, and my chaotic thoughts into the screen.

I used the machine as a mirror.

When you dump your chaos into the system, a funny thing happens. It reflects it back to you. And in that reflection, if you look closely, you can see the repeating patterns. You can see the fractals. The AI didn’t do the deep thinking. It just helped me clean the glass so I could see my own thoughts clearly.

We do not need another generic eBook.

We need patience to read and write.

We need some emptiness that gives space for actual meaning.

Stop looking for the shortcut.

Face the chaos. Look for the underlying patterns.

Do the deep thinking yourself.

But do get help from AI like I did. Just make sure you are the one holding the brush.

The summary is a trap. Reclaim your time and read the long version.

The internet is full of marketers selling shortcuts. They promise ten easy steps to scale your business. They offer templates and viral growth hacks. They want you to believe everything is easy. Same with AI.

I cannot write like that.

I spend my days inside real companies. I sit with founders. I see the broken budgets and the anxiety. I read books, faces, people, hearts and minds… The reality of building a business is messy. Algorithms hold your audience hostage. Teams are paralyzed by useless metrics.

It is pure chaos. Life is like that.

My job is to walk straight into that chaos. I look at the broken structures. I look for patterns. I build a system. I try to create order.

I realized my writing needs to reflect my actual work and perspective. Because I need more order in my head than ever before, don’t you? That’s how I feel anyway…

Plus, in Turkiye, chaos is much more active and creative than other geographies… I’ll try to navigate through our own chaos, because I think the reality lived here in Istanbul is like a test before spreading to the world. It’s just an intuition (or maybe a wish).

I am done trying to fit into a neat marketing box. I refuse to write just to feed an algorithm.

From now on, I will write about the mess.

I’ll write about strategy, human connection, and the absurdity of the modern business world. I will share my own doubts. I will write about the friction required to build a company that actually lasts.

I won’t give you the TL;DR. Nor the corporate jargon.

I’ll try to look at the hard truth.

We’ll figure out how to stop reacting to the noise and start building real architecture or maybe just not…

If you want a quick hack, unsubscribe right now.

Let’s find the order.

What exactly is a generation?

In sociology, the concept of generations is key to understanding how societies evolve. But generations aren’t just groups of people born around the same time; they are social clusters shaped by historical, political, and cultural shifts. Every generation experiences life differently based on the specific events and conditions they face. (I pulled that sociological definition from right here).

But why do we assume people in a certain age bracket all act the same? And do they, really?

From a marketing perspective, as life gets more complex, people change how they decide what to buy. Change is literally part of human nature. There are organizations out there that have spent years researching what shifts and what stays the same in human behavior.

Some people react instantly, others take their time. People hit breaking points. Some change their political views, others never do. Consumption habits shift based on environmental factors, the specific situation, or even the product category. So why do we keep trying to put people into boxes based on their generation? Because looking for a pattern is easy. The human brain loves shortcuts. But oversimplifying things isn’t always a good move—we risk missing the fact that two people from the same generation can be worlds apart

(Midjourney prompt: A 20-year-old hipster woman and a 45-year-old woman)

Marketers love generalizations to sell products. Generational segmentation is just another attempt at that. But it only gives you a rational framework. In reality, people are so much more than their birth year, income level, or demographic profile. A wealthy person might choose a tiny hole-in-the-wall café; a Gen Xer might be a social media power user. Simple models just fail to explain human behavior. I’ve noticed more and more “chameleon” people lately—there’s actually a great book on this you should check out.

Gen Z and Their Needs

So, you want to sell to Gen Z. Fine. They might be using your computers, but why should they choose yours? How do they actually see you?

Maybe they don’t like your energy drink because your brand feels disconnected from them. Have you tested that? The same goes for Gen X. Why aren’t they picking your products?

The truth is, instead of approaching people through the lens of their generation, you should be touching their intentions, their culture, and their emotions. Some feelings are universal. Take “prestige,” for example. A luxury car brand appeals to that sense of prestige regardless of age. But in categories like snacks, things change. People say “chips are for kids,” but as a 45-year-old, I still eat them.

(Midjourney prompt: A 20-year-old woman, a 40-year-old man, and a 60-year-old woman)

Marketing Based on Time and Emotion

People are either spending time or trying to save it. It’s hard to get past those two basic needs. For instance, banking apps are standard now. But is your app fast? Is it easy to use? Does your call center actually help without wasting time? Do they call you just to check in once in a while instead of just trying to sell you a loan? That’s what makes a difference.

Similarly, someone might sign up for your training program just to de-stress. Regardless of their generation, people look for solutions that make their lives easier. This requires a much deeper analysis of needs.

The Bottom Line

Sure, a 20-year-old and a 70-year-old won’t always use the same products. But as natural ingredients become more important, both groups might gravitate toward the same things. Even when there is a “gap,” sometimes those differences actually create connections.

With hundreds of brands obsessing over “the next generation,” why is nobody thinking about people over 50? Either the brand teams are too young, or they’re only focused on 10-15 year long-term investments. Honestly, what happens if we ask AI to weigh in? I asked ChatGPT. It said:

“Marketing by generation allows brands to develop a deeper understanding and empathy with consumers, leading to more effective communication and campaigns. This strengthens the bond between brand and consumer, ensuring long-term loyalty and success.”

It said the exact opposite of my argument. So, who are you going to believe?

Generational segmentation can be a helpful tool, but it’s not enough. The real goal is to connect with people’s emotions and intentions. It’s not about mechanically treating people as survey data or points on a graph. It’s not just about tracking them through data. It’s about truly understanding them—feeling their struggles and gaining real insight.

Success in marketing doesn’t come from generalizations; it comes from human connections, emotional resonance, and providing meaningful solutions. Do you see what I mean?

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Instead of acting on our primal, impulsive urges—trying to step over one another or climb to the top by treading on others—we can choose a “selected behavior”: Cooperation.

It’s the delicate balance of being an “I” while becoming a “us.” This is how we build a defense mechanism, both financially and socially. To get there, we have to ask ourselves the hard questions:

• Who are we really?

• What are we afraid of?

• Are we living a life worth celebrating?

• What are we fighting for?

Even when we have a home, we often could feel like we don’t belong in it. This feeling is intensifying. Perhaps the shape of our belonging is changing, just as our identities are. Our fears are shifting from the primal to the modern (did FOMO even exist a generation ago?).

Concepts like Fractional Leadership or Fractional CMOs weren’t part of the lexicon either - I have a flaw to talk about fractionals in every context!

The milestones we celebrate have changed. We fight battles over fossil fuels and zero-waste that didn’t exist before. We also fight over honesty, radical candor and just being a good human being (whatever that may be for you). But perhaps the most important turning point isn’t financial or economic—it’s human.

Nothing is, or will be, the same. We need people who share our backgrounds, or perhaps come from entirely different ones, but who “touch” the same issues as we do. This thing called “Community” (which I insist on daily) is becoming vital.

More Than Just “Growth”

There are many flavors of community. Beyond Community-Led Growth, there is the “fandom”—the engine of the passion and loyalty economy. Some are purpose-driven; others exist purely for support and sharing.

“When you see someone who truly needs you, you take a deep breath and you support them.”

Many supportive communities exist, but they struggle to scale due to social resistance—think NGOs or niche interest groups. But why not get creative? Why not merge two worlds?

Why can’t we marry Fintech with a hobby? Why not bring “purely financial” topics together with “genuine human emotions”? Does fintech marketing have to be purely transactional?

What Does a Real Financial Community Need?

Today, if I join a fintech, I get an automated “Welcome” email. Then, the newsletter rain begins. Some Discord groups (especially in Crypto) have nice setups, but to me, they aren’t communities—they are just simulations of them.

My partner Esra and I build and maintain many communities; in some, we lead, in others, we just listen. We even have a “micro-community” of just 8 people.

I realized that when I need real advice, I don’t look at ads. I look at old forum posts or email threads where real knowledge lives. I used to chase discounts, but I got bored quickly. A discount is just an incentive; the real value is the perspective.

How can we trust a neo-bank with no physical locations? Can we judge a fintech only by its valuation / investors? How do we know what’s true? How can we blindly trust an LLM (AI Model)?

A real community is different. To build a financial community, you need data, people, and communication. You need content. But even those aren’t enough. The missing ingredient is Emotion.

My fintech expert friends might disagree, but I’ll say it again: Financial communities require emotion. Trust. Sincerity. The feeling of being backed up.

If you have the stamina to keep reading, here is what a fintech community actually needs:

1. User Psychology: The “I am Seen” Factor

Traditional banking treats you as a category: Retail, SME, or Corporate. Successful fintech communities validate the user’s identity.

• Example: Karat Financial. They give credit to creators (YouTubers/Influencers) based on social engagement, not just traditional credit scores. This isn’t just a loan; it’s the moment a creator feels their “digital labor” is recognized as a real profession.

2. Collective Learning

Finance is scary and lonely. Communities like Female Invest or Ellevest create a sense of “sisterhood,” addressing the historical exclusion of women from finance. The emotional hook isn’t just “here is a stock tip,” it’s “we are supporting each other on the road to freedom.”

3. Celebrating Micro-Wins

UX design is about neurological rewards (”Dopamine Banking”). I saw a glimpse of this with Enpara and Albaraka—when you finish a loan payment, they give you a genuine “Get well soon/Congratulations.” Nubank uses visual celebrations for savings goals. This turns financial stress into the “joy of achievement.”

4. Investing with Values

People want to know where their money goes. In an era of money-laundering headlines, ethics matter. Triodos Bank tells users: “We don’t fund fossil fuels.” Every time a user taps their card, they get a micro-dose of moral satisfaction.

5. Access Behind the Curtain

Users want to see the humans behind the “corporate wall.” Public.com does “Town Halls” where retail investors talk to CEOs. Monzo opens its roadmap to the community so users feel like they are building the bank themselves.

The Fractional CMO Strategy: Community as the Engine

We are in the middle of a digital marketing crisis. Everyone is producing “more content,” “more ads,” and “more noise.” Brands are spending fortunes to be seen, but they are buying temporary attention, not loyalty.

As a Fractional CMO, the first question I ask leaders is: “Do your customers love your product, or do they just use it?”

A product that is merely “used” is easily replaced. Brands that change the world—from Revolut (who sadly let their community fade) to Nubank—grow through the communities they build, not just their ad spend.

The Passion Economy: Being a Part of Something

The transactional approach is dead. No one loves a fintech for its transaction speed. But people do stay for the feeling of belonging. Whether it’s owning a piece of a Ferrari’s history via Rally Rd. or a share of a hit song via JKBX, people want to be part of the story.

My approach as an F-CMO is to move the brand from “something you buy” to “something you are part of.” It’s about being human. Being honest. Listening.

I don’t want an automated void in my inbox. I want a text that makes me smile or an old-school envelope at my door.

Final Word: Leave the Stage to the Community

It sounds counterintuitive, but if you want to grow, you have to step out of the spotlight.

Leave the stage to the community. Stop trying to control everything and try flowing with them. Watch what happens.

Why is it so hard to speak sincerely or launch a project that feels “different”? Why expect extraordinary results by doing the same thing every morning?

Speak to people’s emotions, their passions, and their identities. That is the only way to build a bond that lasts.

But there’s a very strange problem at the heart of it all: They all feel the same.

We don’t hear the difference… We don’t understand where we’re going, and nobody cares really…

While investors are sinking trillions into “compute power” and parameter counts, the founders of these companies are missing something fundamental: Differentiation and the “feeling.”

"The AI You Are Looking For Cannot Be Reached"

Recently, a trusted friend (Ozel Yılmaz) caught a great detail on LinkedIn. He said: “Have you noticed? These AI companies, the ones writing the world’s smartest algorithms, the ones that ‘know everything,’ don’t even show up organically in basic Google searches for ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or ‘AI tools’.”

And he’s right. They look like they’re producing the most advanced technology in history, yet they seem oblivious to the most basic rules of marketing. Their growth strategies are built solely on “easy distribution” and riding the “hype” waves on X (Twitter). Sometimes they try it on LinkedIn too.

Raising millions of dollars and failing to solve a user’s problem through organic channels... The “get rich quick” hype fueled by influencers, jumping from one tutorial to the next only to realize a new version has rendered the old one obsolete—these are all “beautiful” ways to waste time. It’s a personal choice, of course. If you’re actually learning something and it’s changing your life, I take my hat off to you. But generally, these tools are just “different versions of the same thing.” A slightly newer UI, a bit faster, some extra features... Fine. I’ve wasted plenty of time on them myself.

Once you realize you’re wasting time, your criteria evolve, and you find what actually works for you. But from what I see, many AI tools—despite their revolving door of users—are stuck in a “tech show” loop. They can’t present their technology through meaningful “content” to the average person looking for a solution.

Isn’t that a massive case of blindness?

Water, Electricity, and Artificial Intelligence

The question I asked last year still stands: How far can you go as a “commodity” without building trust?

Right now, AI companies are acting like “utility providers.” You turn on the tap, it writes code. You flip a switch, it generates an image. Great. In one year, the tech has leaped forward; some people lost jobs, others saved time, but we still haven’t seen a company that has truly built trust.

Do you have an emotional bond with your electricity provider? No. Do you care who provides your tap water? No. This is exactly where AI brands are drifting. If you only strive to be the “fastest text generator,” you will be abandoned the second a competitor comes along who is one millisecond faster (or a dollar cheaper).

Being a brand isn’t just about “user acquisition.” When OpenAI appointed its first CMO, Kate Rouch, last year, the goal was said to be “becoming a trust brand like Apple.” Looking at it today, the strategy hasn’t moved much beyond “being a tool everyone uses.”

Then you add the drama with the US government and the rivalries with Anthropic, and the picture changes even more.

Of course, an AI brand doesn’t need to engage in the absurd or aggressive marketing of a brand like Liquid Death. However, they do need a narrative and a positioning that touches the human heart—something that makes the user feel, “This tool understands my world.”

Bottom Line: Compete on Emotion, Not Just Product

Today’s investors might ask, “How good is the tech?” But the end-user always subconsciously returns to the same question: “How does this brand make me feel?”

If you are an entrepreneur (whether you’re an AI start-up or a B2B software company), don’t fall into the trap the giants are in. You cannot compete solely by writing “better code” or giving the product away for free. You either need genuine thought leadership or a real human connection.

Competition is shifting toward brands that can make people feel something, build a bond, and transparently manage human anxieties (or those AI doomsday fears). It belongs to those who can create an experimental space between the user and the AI.

AI is just a tool, a probabilistic system. You cannot differentiate through AI alone.

What turns it into a brand isn’t the algorithms—it’s the “human story” you place behind that technology.

Does anyone know a brand that actually acts on this?

But why do we feel this primal urge to belong to a team, a tribe, or at the very least, a group that “gets” us? And why is it that so many business leaders set out to build a community, yet only a handful actually survive the first year?

It’s not a trend. It’s something to capitalize on. But it’s also human biology. We are social animals. Direct human contact is the base of trust. Building a community isn’t just “gathering people”—it’s cultivating a living, breathing organism. Luckily, humans are evolving; our communities should be too.

Lessons from the Frontlines

While building niche professional communities like the FLC (Fractional Leadership Community) in Türkiye, we realized that a community is a microcosm of society. People join, people leave; there are misunderstandings and misaligned goals. This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature, a natural process. It’s proof that the organism is alive and reacting to its environment.

So, what are the “authentic” elements that keep a community standing in a world full of noise?

1. The Sense of Togetherness: “I’m Not Alone”

People don’t come together just to share a room (or a Zoom link). True togetherness happens when ideas and emotions collide and interact. But there’s a trap here: shouting the same slogan with 50,000 people in a stadium doesn’t make you a community. That’s just a crowd.

Real togetherness allows us to draw strength from others without losing our “uniqueness”—our own distinct stance. You should be able to thrive within the community, but also sustain your identity outside of it.

• A Crowd: Passive and compliant. They follow a single voice and eventually dissipate.

• A Community: Active and diverse. It grows through healthy friction and debate.

2. Unity of Purpose: Why Are We Really Here?

People don’t rally around brands; they rally around a shared mission. And/or emotional purpose (yes that exists). Whether that’s legitimizing a new profession, networking, or just finding joy, the clearer the framework, the healthier the growth.

Look at how this works across different scales:

• Indie Hackers (Global): A massive community where thousands of developers share their “revenue transparently” to help others build profitable side projects. They aren’t there for the platform; they are there for the mission of financial independence.

• Genwise (Local/Global): A Turkish-born community for those over 45 (though open to all) looking to pivot their careers. It mirrors global movements like AARP’s age-inclusive initiatives or the UK’s Centre for Ageing Better, proving that the “search for a new route” is a universal human need.

• Sendromsuzlar (No-Syndrome Mondays): We built this with the support of Anisah Coffee. With over 7,450 members, the goal isn’t just to sell coffee; it’s to spread a culture of “feeling good” on the hardest day of the week. It’s similar to how Rapha (the cycling brand) doesn’t just sell jerseys; they host “Clubhouses” globally where the coffee and the conversation are as important as the bike.

If members contribute and receive a tangible or intangible benefit in return, the structure becomes permanent. The common denominator is always “value.”

3. The Trust Coefficient

We live in an era where trust has been commodified and made artificial. In any community, the “Trust Coefficient” is your oxygen. But how do you measure it?

Trust is built through sacrifice and action, not slogans. It’s much harder in reality than in a marketing plan.

Global Example: Look at Dan Price, the CEO who famously cut his million-dollar salary to ensure every employee made at least $70k. Or founders who, during a downturn, forfeit their bonuses to keep the team intact. This kind of “radical trust” builds a bond that a thousand-page contract could never replicate.

4. Community as a Cultural Investment

In a world of skyrocketing ad costs and shifting algorithms, a community is your only hedge. I’m not talking about “social media followers.” Followers are a metric; community members are stakeholders.

The era of “persuading” people through plastic, AI-generated ads is ending. Everything is becoming standardized. The only remaining differentiator is the ability to create a genuine, original emotion. A community makes the brand the “host” and the members the “residents.”

The Bottom Line

Crowds expand, but communities deepen. And depth always beats width.

In the next few years, the only way to resist “Techno-Feudalism” (the total control of big tech platforms) is to own your relationships through community. If you approach people with the simplicity of “I need to sell more,” you will fail. If you focus on touching their lives and creating a space for change, the revenue will find you.

If you are building a community or just a mailing lis or if you’re working on a community-based startup or project, I’d love to connect and talk about this shift.

We are experiencing an inability to settle or put down roots, constantly stuck in a state of “should I stay or should I go?” We live in a cycle of unhappiness, loss of hope, and ceaseless complaining. The money we earn doesn’t feel the same as before; finding clients is harder than yesterday; we are perpetually in “saving mode.” The content of our work is shifting and transforming. We’re constantly looking for easier, faster ways out.

One cannot help but ask: Is all this just to get exhausted and pay a price? Is it all for an empty future?

Faced with these questions, it’s very easy to switch into “just getting by” mode—to simply roll along. But we didn’t come here just to roll along, did we?

So, what must we do to be genuinely hopeful?

Let’s not look for the answer in fancy books, in-scroll moments nor in Instagram quotes. The answer lies in strategy itself. In a world where the uncertainty index has hit the ceiling, it’s possible to feel hope without selling people fake dreams and without sweeping the ugliness of reality under the rug.

Building Strategy Together

Hope is trusting the future. It is putting in the effort. If we feel like we are “rowing for nothing,” that shows more to a depressive state of mind—boredom and an inability to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Today, whether we are freelancers, consultants, fractional leaders, or entrepreneurs, the work we do is less of an “idea business” and more of a “trust business.” Trust is the thing to be hacked. We’re all actually selling trust to the other side. We design the tone with which we touch the client and how we make them feel “I am here.” We think of ways to move from fiction to reality. Otherwise, the work fails.

If there is trust, the probability of collaboration increases. This is true for branding and communication as well; if there is trust, commerce continues.

Therefore, it is possible to build a strategy of hope with people. Depending on our ability to come together with people—similar or dissimilar—we can multiply the pathways to hope. This could be a community, a group of colleagues, or even a WhatsApp group where we don’t just talk shop but vent and talk nonsense. The important thing is to make space to discuss “what can we do together?” Otherwise, the work turns into a complaint bureau. If we need a wailing wall, that has its own place; but that place is not within strategy.

Perceiving Life

Take a traffic jam, for instance. The road is blocked. As a driver or a passenger, how do you approach the situation? Do you complain? Do you get angry? Or do you accept the moment and deepen the conversation with the person next to you?

How we perceive life—and how we react to life and what happens in it—seems to be what breaks things. Impulse destroys strategy. You know the famous saying about culture eating strategy for breakfast? That “culture” is actually impulse. If we approach life the same way we approach subjects we lynch on social media, hope cannot be found. We must label that thing which destroys production and different thinking as “cancer culture” and ostracize it. If we follow artificial “crises” with interest and fail to think about what can be done for hope, we are simply chasing a momentary dopamine hit and missing out on life. It’s that simple.

The difficulty lies in expecting hope to come from the outside. This is a passive state. We wait for a hero, a leader, a new technology, or a market correction to give us hope. Yet, “outside” is that very traffic jam—noisy, chaotic, and out of our control. All that remains is to focus on what we can do.

Let’s Get to the Point: Hope Strategy

Hope is not a passive optimism that says, “everything will be fine.” Hope is a strategy. And to reach hope we must have a way, a mathematics to it—both individually and commercially. Just as we do when growing a brand, we must develop the discipline to focus on potential even when the data is bad, and to plan the exit route even during a crisis.

• From Macro to Micro: We cannot fix the world or the economy in a day, but we can fix the quality of the work we do today and the communication we have with the person next to us. We’ll build strategy in the areas we can control. We won’t do what everyone else is doing. No more “just complaining,” “just raising prices,” or “just being cunning.”

• Turning Production into Therapy: Complaining is free dopamine, but producing is real serotonin. We need to build something. Whether it’s a spreadsheet or a blog post, it is a branch extended toward the future. We will think accordingly.

• Trust Zones: Since our business is “trust,” we will create predictable, safe spaces in our circles, our teams, and our families. Becoming a harbor for others (and ourselves) to take shelter in within this ocean of uncertainty is the greatest hope strategy. We must also be aware that sometimes, even the people we trust most may not be able to enter these spaces.

Because hope is the stubbornness to continue doing the right thing, even if the result is uncertain. It is the only positive obsession in life. A survival instinct.

Let’s build our strategy on this stubbornness. And let’s take action on this strategy, however we can.

If you are having trouble taking action, write to me, and let’s think of ways to move forward together.

Marketing doesn’t seem to see the “dignified” attitude it deserves.

The problem is deep. For instance, you come up with an idea. This idea provides the company with serious differentiation, perhaps even direct cash flow. But the person who found the idea just continues with their payroll or standard service fee.

The music industry solved the “royalty” issue, but the marketing world is still like the Wild West. A great slogan, a strategy that explodes sales... But at the end of the day, the profit remains with the company, and the value creator is simply considered to have “done their job.”

Aside from this injustice, the real issue lies in the perception of marketing within the business world. Let the gurus keep talking; our concern is different.

Ideally “Honest”, In Traffic “Rude”

The “ideal” value of marketing is known by everyone. “We need to be a brand,” “We need to create value,” “We need to be human-centric...”

Yes, we agree... We’re all on the same page. But when it comes to execution, it doesn’t quite work that way. Finding good examples is getting harder by the day.

I liken the situation to Istanbul traffic.
If we were to ask drivers (assuming we take the correct sample size), 90% would say they follow the rules adn they drive safely. In theory, everyone is a perfect driver.
But when you get out into traffic, the reality is completely different.

The situation is no different in marketing budget management and strategies.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anyone is “cutting corners” maliciously. We just can’t seem to focus on what will provide long-term value.

We act more to legitimize our existence. To account for the budget we spent, we take refuge in “guaranteed” areas and short-term metrics that give immediate results (if it will). If there is a boss or management asking, “What did I spend, how much did I sell, what was the ROI?”, then naturally, you do whatever other brands are doing...

Because we are in an era of cost-cutting. But this pressure distances us from what is “valuable and original.”

Can You Manage a Brand with “Home Economics” Logic?

Let me explain this through an example that a CFO would love: “Home Economics.”

If the money coming into a house is fixed, you can only save so much by cutting expenses. You turn off the boiler, cut back on luxury consumption, and live “modestly.”
But this doesn’t make anyone rich. It just keeps you alive.

What is required for a more successful home economy?
Savings are not enough; you need to find new ways to increase income.

It’s the same for companies. You keep costs reasonable; we all have to (apologies to the CFOs, duty is duty). But building a brand isn’t just about managing the expense column in an Excel sheet. It’s not about showing off with retention or growth jargon ratios either. Experiments are important, growth is essential, but there are numerous ways to achieve them.

Let’s go back to our example: Building a brand is also about the social, the emotional, and taking pleasure in life. I mean the home economics example. As the French say, one must find a “savoir vivre” (knowing how to live). A brand needs to know how to live, too. You cannot lead a happy life at home just by saving money; it won’t last long!

If your marketing department is only trying to “optimize expenses,” it means you are cutting off the brand’s life energy (and future revenue). We see many firms focusing heavily on this point, out of necessity...

The Search for Meaning and “Getting Your Hands Dirty”

We are all searching for meaning. (Yes, a bit cliché, but true.)
However, the meaning I search for as Burak is different from the meaning you search for. In marketing, “one-size-fits-all” truths are over. It was over long time ago…

We need to become more specialized. I’m not talking about specializing or personalizing with AI. I’m talking about sharpening, deepening, and getting your hands dirty. I’m talking about understanding the human who gets lost looking at their phone while walking, browsing, dealing with notifications. Whatever the company’s problem is, it is essential to solve it according to people’s material or spiritual needs.
That is strategy. And these problems aren’t solved solely on digital platforms...

Doing this with existing internal teams is sometimes difficult. Because they drown in the company’s priority wars and waves of diplomacy.
It’s also hard to do with agencies or firms that are just trying to “sell” you something from the outside.

Sometimes a fresh perspective, or even a brand-new system, is required. It is also necessary to implement and develop that system... To build a structure that works in harmony.

Fractional Conclusion: Focused on Impact, Not Time

As a Fractional CMO duo, this is what Esra and I try to do.
To set up your system with a fresh perspective and save you from that “home economics” trap.

Don’t mind the “CMO” in our title; we don’t have our eyes on anyone’s chair.

We are neither selling you a product nor forcing you into an expense.
Our goal is to turn your budget from an “expense item” into a “revenue leverage.”

This should be in the nature of fractionality.
Otherwise, this model would remain just “part-time consulting.”
For us, the situation is a mindset shift. The world is heading here... We will see more semantic movements instead of transactional ones.

So, most people get it wrong. The secret of Palantir isn’t their software. I just ignore the ethical part. It’s that they embed their people inside the client organization for months. They become residents. Fractional leaders do this exactly. And we have a lot to learn from this model.

Growth (like the wild growth approach) breaks things. The problem is rarely just “running more ads” or hitting a metric. Attention spans are short for employees and customers alike. We’re all human. Or are we not!

The real issue is organizational blindness. You need to break patterns and find what is actually broken. This distinguishes Fractional Leadership from traditional consulting. I’m not against consultants. But that model is shrinking. Growing companies need a diagnosis, not just more output.

Diagnosis Over Output

Agencies are designed to take orders. You ask for a commercial, they say “sure.” A Fractional Leader finds what you actually need. Clients usually describe the symptom. Our job is to ignore the wrong self-diagnosis and find the disease.

If a client screams for Instagram ads because sales dropped, we say stop. Advertising is the last step. Shooting blindly won’t score points. We dig into the data first. Sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of ads. It’s a complicated checkout page that scares customers away.

The Agency Approach: Spend $3,000 on ads. Traffic goes up. Sales stay flat. Final scene: The agency gets fired.

The Fractional Approach: Cut the checkout process from three steps to one. The problem wasn’t marketing. It was user experience and biased people.

Find the leak before you turn on the hose. That is a leadership reflex.

Housemates, Not Guests

Consultants are guests. They see the tidy living room. A Fractional Leader is a housemate. We see the messy kitchen and the dirty dishes. Agencies live for the brief. We live for context. We live you, the company and the customer. Agencies hold weekly status meetings where everything looks fine. We are in the Slack channels and at the lunch tables. We see the real mess.

Here is the difference between a brief and the reality. A CEO wants an “energetic” brand face. But the customer service team is terrified to answer the phone because the product quality is like really poor. The agency tries to sell a happy lie. We tell the ugly truth. We can’t sell happiness outside when morale is dead inside. We cannot just fake marketing for the sake of doing something.

We can say this because we’ve experienced it. You can’t buy that insider perspective from a visitor.

Organizational Diplomacy

Marketing problems are usually people problems disguised as metrics. SEO and funnels are the easy part. The hard part is managing egos and internal politics. A Fractional CMO is an organizational diplomat. And people hate change. They have resistance.

It’s easy to say a campaign failed. It’s hard to fix it without humiliating the Marketing Manager who built it.

Take the classic war between Sales and Marketing. Marketing says sales can’t close. Sales says the leads are trash.

We don’t make a new campaign to fix that. We lock those managers in a room until they agree on what a “lead” actually is. That is political mediation.

Pattern Recognition

Consultants sell hours. We sell patterns. We don’t guess because we’ve seen the movie before. If email marketing is neglected, we don’t write a strategy from scratch. We pull a proven revenue playbook from our basket and install it.

If trade shows are burning cash, it’s usually the follow-up system. We integrate a post-fair automation setup because we’ve done it three times already.

A Cognitive Approach

You don’t need more hands. You need a better brain to manage the chaos. Companies get crushed under “jobs to be done.” Everyone runs. Nobody knows where the finish line is.

We cut the noise. We transform the CFO report. We turn down the volume on the fluff and focus on the growth signal. This often means creating a “Not-To-Do” list. Is the team drowning in TikTok, blogs, and YouTube? We tell them to stop. Resources are limited. Focus on LinkedIn for six months and kill the rest.

The value isn’t just in what you do. It’s having the guts to decide what not to do.

The Point

Fractional Leadership isn’t part-time management. It is embedded growth and understanding. Working around the hard part of bringing a new perspective, and even sometimes the obvious!

We untie political knots and fix the cognitive load. Old solutions from ten years ago don’t work anymore.

If you have chronic marketing problems, stop looking for a pill. You need a correct diagnosis.

Read the Palantir Model.

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About For You

I’m a Fractional CMO and strategic consultant helping businesses scale through brand positioning and business development. Have a professional background spanning over 17 years in sectors such as film, fintech, FMCG, education, and media. I worked for 6-7 years with Esra Lobut Yedek. I was the brand manager and she was the agency director. Then we got married and founded a fractional marketing company: For You. So, we’re a duo actually.

“Vibe” has been sold in the marketing world and some other fields. Essentially, it’s a one-man show; the “vibe business” is doing the work of many people using AI tools and automation. As Balaji says:

“The new trend is going AI native. Not just selling your agents, but using them to build the company”

I don’t know what will happen in the future… But for sure, it will be difficult in non-transactional marketing.

Vibe is now nearly everywhere: personal apps, indie-hackers, accounting, payroll and finance. This vibe approach is spreading. Yes, it’s nice, our work will become easier. New positions and roles will emerge. But there is something missing: AI alone cannot convey the authenticity of a product or service. Campaigns, videos, three-point stories, shiny visuals... If there is no meaning inside, the outside doesn’t hold. It fades away. Meaning that is authentic cannot be created purely by AI.

I hear you say, “not yet”. Let’s bet!

In a period where consumer trust is evaporating and budgets are being slashed, brands need to exist not by “making people feel,” but by “meeting demands”—and doing so in a genuine and sincere way. Brands that have something to promise and can show this in every detail that carries it will remain tomorrow. Those who just catch waves with trends face the risk of falling into the water. Becuase trends dillute brand power.

Recently, a brand’s GM, we work with said, “Ads are watched but forgotten.” He was right. Especially for wrongly executed ad campaigns. He probably saw videos made mostly with vibe marketing that fell into his feed.

So, how’s the right advertising done? If done, can it be with vibe?

The advertising idea is just a point that touches the human. Distribution, experience, product... It is all a whole. “The product creates the brand. But the product alone is not the brand.” Real experience is the skeleton of the brand. The first contact before sales: The support line, the shipping process, even the smell of the product... All carry the brand’s “promise.” They either reinforce it or refute it. Thinking of this whole, of course, you can do vibe marketing, but you need to work a bit, spend some effort. A simple attack tactic like “we give this message to target audience XY and then do this” cannot be vibe marketing, nor can it be normal classic marketing!

Marketer or Real Estate Agent?

Today, many marketers work not like strategists, but like contractors. Drawing attention on social media takes precedence over the brand. Small brands lose their essence while imitating the consumption greed of the big ones. Naturally, impact decreases. Of course, the habits of us social media users are also effective here.

Another illusion is: “Designing emotion instead of product experience.” Yes, emotion is important. But it is not enough. Because at the end of the day, we should encounter reality. And no one forgives the feeling of being taken for a fool.

That’s why the bandwagon effect exists. The logic of “Oh, everyone has it, why don’t I? Am I stupid? Then let me buy it too.”

Real experience either creates loyalty... or accelerates being forgotten.

What Should Be Done?

Strategy cannot exist without insight. And insight is not cliché thoughts like “young people love fun.” It should pursue meaning, not fashion... This requires patience. Reading, observing, getting cozy with data, sacrificing a bit of speed... Yes, AI speeds up the process. But connecting with humans requires a brewing period. It requires thinking time. That brewing tea or coffee has a duration too, right?

If Words Are Empty, The Narrative Is Empty

“Authentic,” “lifestyle,” “storytelling,” “became viral”...

We use these words a lot. But sometimes they tell us nothing. The language coming from where real insight emerges is clear: It contains meaning and leaves an impact.

Build Bonds, Not Channels

Consistency must be created not just on social media, but at every point the product touches people. Otherwise, you just become a billboard. Your viral content fades away. People decide about brands in seconds, but when they build a bond, they don’t forget.

Resist Anti-Intellectualism

There is a fatigue in the world against deep thought. You think thought is just data now (LLMs don’t genuinely think or write; they only work with data and produce results). But thought is like thinking subtly... Since ridiculous sentences and absurd videos have become tools for popularity and are made easily without thought, we want to reach the result immediately. Even now, I can almost hear you saying “get to the point.” But people are aware. They continue to seek sincerity, depth, and trust. They will continue to. Look at behavior, not demographics. Drop the generation gap. Understand “your people.”

Let’s Cut to the Point

Crisis Time is the Test of Authenticity

Sincerity starts from the mind, not by production. Brands that understand emotions and build their strategy from there will build trust. Whether you do vibe, automate or use agentic marketing, it doesn’t matter. Because marketing is not just a visibility job, it is the art of accumulating trust.

Briefly, What is Vibe Marketing?

It is a fast, low-cost, and scalable approach with the help of artificial intelligence, against the structure of traditional marketing that requires large or small teams, long approval processes, and high costs. The decision-making process is instantaneous, campaigns are launched within hours and continuously optimized. A single marketer can create a broad impact with AI tools; if they know marketing well, have the ability to utilize human insight, and do their job properly! Although it is said that speed, emotion, and technology work together in this model, actually large language models are working, not emotion.

You probably think “part-time consultant,” or you say, “Everyone has started adding a ‘fractional’ title on their LinkedIn... For God’s sake... What’s this? I don’t get it.”

Or perhaps, “It’s like a consultant who pops in and out of meetings for a few hours a week, just talking BS from the outside.”

And you wouldn’t be wrong. There are certainly those kinds of people. There is so much artificiality and fakery, just as in every sector... Especially like the get rich quick scheme people using AI at the moment. So the question is being a sucker or non-sucker (cheers to N. N. Taleb).

But we view the fractional business a bit differently.

The time dedicated is fractional, but the mind or responsibility isn’t.

It is a form of pure, concentrated leadership. After all, marketing (and its science) aren’t complex subjects. What is difficult is changing human behavior and acting in unison according to the situation. It’s not impossible, though. That’s why the critical point of effective marketing is the leadership part.

A professor named Peter G. Northouse, the author of one of the most comprehensive books ever written on leadership, the book is called Leadership). What Northouse attempts to explain in his book of hundreds of pages, we live out in the field every single day (By the way, I translated the book into Turkish; will be published soon).

And we actually realized that the nature of fractional work necessitates that most ideal, “textbook” form of leadership. Let me try to explain how:

Adapting (Situational Leadership)

Northouse calls this “Situational Leadership,” but in the field, we call it “survival.”

Imagine: One day, we walk into an office with a young, excited, but inexperienced team. That day, we have to show our “boss” or “manager” face. We must provide direction, saying, “We are doing it this way because of X and Y.” The next day, however, we are in a meeting at another company with experts who are even better than us in their respective fields. Playing the boss there would backfire. There, we switch roles and become the person who simply “clears the space,” sketches out the strategy, and provides guidance. Asking the right questions is what matters there.

A full-time executive might have a single style and can live within that comfort zone for years. We don’t have that luxury. Besides, we don’t really like routines. We are required to adapt our color, language, and style to every company we work for. Transforming and being like a chameleon isn’t being insincere; on the contrary, it is the greatest sign of the respect we have for the team.

The “Bulldozer” Effect That Clears the Path

In corporate life, things sometimes become so complicated that the main goal is lost. Approval processes, unnecessary reports, granular metrics, and those gray areas where no one knows who is doing what are always present...

What Northouse calls “Path-Goal Theory” is actually the summary of our work. When a fractional leader enters a company, they usually don’t have time to get tangled in complex webs of relationships. Our job is to cast aside the stones on the path where the team wants to run.

Sometimes motivation isn’t achieved through fancy speeches. Sometimes, an employee’s greatest motivation is simply seeing a bureaucratic obstacle removed from their path. That is partly what we are here for. We sweep the path so that the internal talent can sprint down it.

Improving the System by Saying “The King is Naked”

Companies usually call us when a “problem” arises. “Sales have dropped,” “The marketing budget is being wasted,” or “My revenue isn’t increasing”...

These are technical problems. They can be solved. But the real issue usually seems to lie deeper... Northouse calls this “Adaptive Leadership.” Meaning, the problem might not be in the Meta ads, but perhaps in the team’s fear of change or the fact that teams aren’t talking to one another.

The best part of being an “outsider” eye is the freedom to say, “The king has no clothes.” We can put those uncomfortable topics on the table. We left corporate life precisely for that reason. This way, we force people out of their comfort zones and down to the root of the problem. Because our duty is not just to put out the fire of the day, but to build a culture where a fire won’t break out again. And improving the system while doing so is crucial.

By the way, the system is changing, all over the world. In a world where uncertainty is the norm, you will have no option other than stepping out of your comfort zone.

Seeing the Big Picture

When you are buried in operations every day within a company, it’s very hard to lift your head and look up. Weeks or months can pass while asking, “What post are we publishing today?” or “Has the email been sent?” or even “Did my agentic AI do well?”

Leadership is about “conceptual” thinking rather than doing technical tasks or jobs. That is, thinking abstractly and strategizing.

Your team might be executing operations perfectly. The piece we bring to the table is that missing vision. We essentially find the answer to the question: “Okay, we are working hard, but where’s the ship going?”

Cutting to the Point

Fractional leadership isn’t just about “doing a lot of work in a short time,” as most people assume. It’s the ability to use the right leadership muscle at the right time. This cannot always be achieved in every firm; that is why we also evaluate [the fit] before we start working...

In fact, as time goes by, we think this: Perhaps what the modern business world needs is not managers who work 9-to-6, but result-oriented companions (not just “staff”) who have shed their egos and can shape-shift according to the situation, the need, and the person.

Whether it is the company you work for or the audience you address, leadership is not the title on a business card; it is the impact you create in the lives of others.

But there’s a problem:
No matter how fast these tools get, they still can’t answer one question:

“What sits at the core of this brand?”

Or more precisely:
“Who are we—and can we actually feel and understand what people think about this brand?”

No, the deepest function of marketing is not content production. Content is a tool; a way to reach, a wave to ride…

But you need to build a meaningful bridge between the company’s inner voice and its outer voice.

And you still need someone to do that.

But that person might no longer be a “manager.”

The Old Role Is Ending, But the Need Isn’t

In the past, “marketing” meant a fixed set of tasks assigned to certain people.
Copywriter, social media, media buyer… They are seperate functions.
The CMO sat on top of all this as the “person defending the budget.”

Today it works differently.
Everything is faster, more fragmented, more chaotic.

And in the middle of that chaos, we need one thing more than ever: Meaningful alignment.

We need alignment now. Every product, message, and support ticket must carry the similar signal. Classic leadership structures break down here because they focus on output, not intent.

This is exactly where the “classic” marketing leadership model collapses.

Automation Can Do Tasks, But It Can’t Carry Intent

AI can tell you what needs to be done.
But it can’t tell you why it’s being done.

It can say, “This content will go viral.” Yes it’s a prediction.
But it can’t really answer, “Does this content really represent us?”

Because that question isn’t technical.
It’s cultural. Meaning-related. Human.

That’s where the marketer’s new role begins.
Not “producing one more thing,”
but reading—and holding—the intent behind everything.

Marketing = The Operating System

Think of it this way: Marketing is no longer a function.
It’s the operating system of the entire company.

When you’re developing a product:

“How does this make the people feel?”

When you’re selling:

“Are we communicating the value clearly?”

When you’re providing support:

“Does our tone still feel human?”

When you’re creating content:

“Is this really our language, or just more noise a way to reach without any consistency?”

The person who can answer these questions shouldn’t sit at just one table.
They need to be present at many tables.

Less like a department head, more like a calibration mechanism—
someone who tunes the meaning, values, and voice of the company.

I call this the “meaning layer.”

What Does This Change?

This new model changes a few things at the root:

Hiring: We’re no longer just looking for specialists. We need people who can see the story, synthesize, and connect dots.

Project briefs evolve: We don’t start with “Let’s make an Instagram post.”
We start with: “What are we trying to say/point out?”

Budgets shift: We don’t spend just to “be seen” in ads.
We spend to truly understand who we are on the inside.

And most importantly:
Marketing is no longer “the marketer’s job alone.”

But someone still has to hold the integrity of the whole system.

If not, everything looks like it’s working—
while, underneath, it really isn’t.

Get to the point: Sincerity in the Noise

Brands are everywhere now.
Every moment, on every channel, they’re saying something.

But very few are actually saying anything real. And people get interested to real things. Not to “acrobatic hooks”.

Making noise is easy.
Carrying intent is hard.

That’s the new marketer’s job.
Not to shout through a megaphone,
but to tune the frequency between the brand’s inner voice and its outer voice.

Just imageine what would happen if we could scale this approach…

AI can do a lot. But it can’t give a brand its character.

That part will always belong to humans.

AI is no longer just an assistant; it’s almost the main character. Some of us are following every new thing, chasing trends—some of which disappear as fast as they appear.

I’m asking something else:
Are we humans just the decision-makers, or just are an intermediary to press the “approve” button?

This question is just as relevant at the moment of purchase as it is for strategic or critical decisions.

OpenAI comes out and says: “AI will be able to do 95% of today’s marketing work almost instantly and for free.”

Maybe your heart rate increases when you here that sentence.
I don’t see it that way. I might be wrong.

AI can know a lot (I’m not going into the philosophical debate of what “knowing” means for AI, no worries), but there’s still one thing it hasn’t learned: instinct/intuition.

When someone gets you from a blink of an eye, or you give a message to someone just by staying silent, or the chats inside the DMs, the “secret” intuition that gets when your emotions shifts…

The thing that hears the “but” inside the customer’s “yes” is intuition.

AI recommends.
AI markets.
AI targets.
AI codes.
AI is probabilistic.

But the final decision is made by us—and should be.

And those decisions are not always rational. Sometimes they rest on a single sentence: “I just have a feeling about this.”

AI can’t explain that. Which is why its predictive power is limited.

Today’s competition is no longer just about “share of shelf” or “share of voice.”

A new metric is emerging: “Share of AI Recommendation.”

In other words, how often—and how strongly—do the algorithms recommend you?

Marketers are asking: What can we do about this? How much and how can we influence LLMs?
Yes, these and many more questions are in people’s minds—but rest easy. It’s still very early.

As long as those recommendations remain technical and operational, the situation isn’t that dangerous. You ask the LLM, it suggests something. Simple.

But to be truly positioned with meaning, or to be genuinely “heard” by people, we still need one more thing: the human spark.

AI can generate 100 content ideas for you.
But the thing that makes you fall in love with one of those ideas belongs to a human.
And the one who gives that idea a body and a context is also human.

AI creates visuals, writes copy, prepares reports.

But when there’s a crisis and you need to reach a customer with a tone of voice, a certain look, a small act of courtesy—that can only be done by a human.

AI can know you, analyze you, pretend to think in your place. It just mimics, in a cheap way.

But it doesn’t know you “as much as you know yourself.”

I’m not someone who sees marketing as a “speed race.”

I see marketing as the craft of building the story right.
It’s not even a race, actually.

And that story is written by humans.

Everyone is asking AI.

But most people decide based on their intuition or their own dynamics—rational or irrational.

That’s why I see the future of marketing like this:

AI works. Humans steer the wheel.

AI recommends. Humans choose.

AI leads you off track. Humans can bring you back.

AI produces. Humans give it meaning.

So the question is that it’s not a replacement; it shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t be racing; we should try to use it for the greater good.

Especially for people who want meaningful work.

As Naval Ravikant wrote in a post on X: “Great works are fractal by nature, elegant from afar and perfect in the details.”

It’s also, as I described here, about “finding difference and originality within the chaos of nature and humans.”

I wanted to write these lines specifically as a fractional CMO, because in our work we care about bringing strategy together with finance, product with culture, and data with intuition, every single day.

Marketing’s Trial by Cliché

“Marketing is changing” is a line we all know. The real issue is the speed and depth of that change.

A single customer comment, a response to that comment, a failed launch, or one bad reflex can break the whole game instantly, or elevate it.

So the question isn’t “What does the customer want?” It’s “Why do they want it? What fragility moves them? What do they feel?”

Leaders who ignore this question hide behind reports. Those who ask it with courage have a chance to rewrite the game.

Advertising Is No Longer the Center

Advertising is no longer the center, it’s a side story. Anyone can collect data; adding soul is still a craft.

AI may say “This content will go viral,” but its prediction is only as good as a human’s. Maybe even less. Ofcourse there can be precise predictions about nonesense videos that could go viral.

But in a marketing POV, the question is “Is this content true to our identity? Our raison d’etre?” This is where the fractional CMO must step in: blending algorithms with humans, metrics with meaning.

Fractional CMO: Not a Temp, a Catalyst

We’re more than a “part-time executive.” We must go beyond focusing on growth and lifting brands by the numbers; that’s a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

Because we’re independent, we’re bolder. In one place we reset strategy, in another we activate culture; for one brand we question the business model, for another we rewrite the customer experience. We tell the uncomfortable truths when needed.

This flexibility keeps us from being a “stopgap” and makes us a catalyst for change. It also stops us from obsessing over just raising the numbers, because no chart always goes up, nor always down.

The Ecosystem Age

It’s not about a single brand’s growth, but the flow of the whole ecosystem. A fractional CMO touches not only the company but the industry, builds partnerships, and speeds up collective learning. Alongside market share, they grow share of meaning.

Human + AI: This Is the Real Dance

AI optimizes processes, but it isn’t vision. It certainly isn’t automation. AI analyzes behavior; it’s humans who turn that behavior into a “human-like” experience. Young people are drawn to the lure of quick results, but culture, experience, and meaning live in humans. Bringing the new into being consistently cannot be left to chance. With AI we speed up processes and catch the day, but catching the moment—the heart or emotion of people—is something else entirely…

Getting to the point: Leadership Is a Reflex

Marketing leadership isn’t campaign management; it’s a reflex, a mindset. This is exactly where the fractional CMO comes in: flexible and human-centered within the chaos, free from the sluggishness that sometimes comes with payroll employees (not all of them, of course). At least, that’s how it is for us.

Meaning, intent, and the human being… these are domains AI cannot capture. Go ahead and take the trendy AI courses, learn.

Chairs wear out, titles are forgotten, but those who protect and grow the soul of the brand are remembered.

That’s exactly our job: protect the soul, build the system and try to change the game.