Benjamin De Castro
@MADmarketer
A 20+ year marketer w. a penchant for working with co.'s looking to change the world & grow brands by way of osmosis (we have no idea what that means either).
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I didn’t believe in hyper-targeting because personas worked and kept marketing sane. That era is over: customers expect personalization, outcomes prove individual-level relevance wins, and generative AI killed the creative-scale excuse. benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/i-didnt-beli…
Xfinity fixes Jurassic Park by asking the obvious question: what if the Wi-Fi actually worked? Nostalgia with a job. Reliability as the hero. Most Super Bowl ads shout. This one rewrites the plot. adage.com/super-bowl/sup…
ChatGPT ads move brands from interruptions to conversations. Ads show up inside intent. Discovery → comparison → decision happens in one dialogue. SEO → AEO Keywords → GEO Funnels → Helpfulness forbes.com/sites/terdawn-…
Media is fragmented. Retail is media. Media is retail. Procter & Gamble is using AI to keep brands coherent, not just produce more ads. Insight > channels. marketingdive.com/news/pg-priori…
AI marketing crossed the line. AI buys media. Creative is hybrid. Ads move into AI chats. Culture moves faster than brands. AI isn’t a tool. It’s infrastructure. adage.com/creativity/cam…
Hollywood still thinks marketing = trailers + talk shows. Timothée Chalamet went weird, loud, culture-native for Marty Supreme and it worked. $56M+. Records broken. Attention captured. Lesson: playing it safe is the real risk. nypost.com/2026/01/06/ent…
Watching my son leave for film school turned into a marketing lesson. Fundamentals still matter. AI doesn’t replace them, it changes the speed and scale. Refusing to adapt doesn’t protect the craft. It traps it. #Marketing #AI #Creativity benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/marketing-le…
AI isn’t the problem. Broken marketing systems are. Bolting AI onto messy workflows just adds noise. Simplification is the strategy. AI buys back creative bandwidth. Design the system or get buried. fastcompany.com/91467667/to-ta…
Everyone wants the speed of AI but keeps holding the reins of their old workflows True AI adoption is not adding a tool. It's rebuilding the whole system around a new way of working I wrote about why so many teams are stuck in the past and what comes next benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/true-ai-adop…
Mondelēz spent $40M building an AI engine for cookies. Not hype. A reboot. Faster creative. Real personalization. Up to 50% lower costs. If Oreo is doing this, your category is next. #AI #AIMarketing fooddive.com/news/oreo-pare…
Agentic AI is the new marketing OS. Early adopters are already tripling ROI and slashing cycle times. This isn’t optimization. It’s a reset. CMOs who move now gain the edge. Those who wait won’t catch up. bcg.com/publications/2…
Everyone keeps saying AI will kill Amazon. I tried buying a lamp last week. Let’s just say: marketplaces aren’t dying , they’re laughing. AI can fix the nonsense up front. But the part where the box actually arrives? That’s still Amazon’s world. benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/ai-wont-kill…
Chalamet’s Marty Supreme promo is funny because it’s true. Too many teams jump straight into tactics and call it strategy. Ritson’s reminder stands: diagnosis → strategy → tactics. Skip that, and you’re just making noise. #Marketing #Strategy #Ritson adweek.com/brand-marketin…
adweek.com
Timothée Chalamet Didn’t Mean to Drag Marketers, But He Did
Tactics and communications are merely the tip of the marketing spear. Proper marketers start in exactly the opposite place: diagnosis.
AI won’t take your job. Someone using AI will. Staying relevant means staying in motion. Read my short piece on how to actually AI-proof your career, mindset, tools, and the signals employers now expect. benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/how-to-ai-pr… #AI #Careers #GenerativeAI #Upskilling
AI isn’t replacing workers. It’s replacing how we work. Layoffs? Overhiring. Fear? Misplaced. AI won’t take your job— just your busywork. We’re at the inflection point. Adopt or get left behind. benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/we-are-at-th… #AI #FutureOfWork #Leadership #Innovation #Growth
AI marketing just went cinematic. McDonald’s made “Frankenstein Burgers.” Sixt dropped an AI horror film. A$AP Rocky & Puma went surreal. AI isn’t killing creativity—it’s mutating it. #AIMarketing #AIcreativity adage.com/creativity/cam…
Everyone’s “doing AI” in marketing, but <1% have real maturity. AI doesn’t fix chaos. It scales it. Start with data, workflows, governance - then scale. cmswire.com/digital-market… #MarketingAI #AIAdoption
Most brands fight for space on the highway. The great ones build the road. If people don’t understand your category, they’ll never remember your brand. Build the road first. Then drive the car. benjamindecastro.substack.com/p/building-the… #Marketing #Brand #Growth #Creativity #CategoryDesign
Virgin Voyages cut agency costs 35% with 50+ AI agents, including “Email Ellie,” who writes campaigns in days, not weeks. The new creative team? Code. #AI #Marketing #AgenticAI adage.com/brand-marketin…
OpenAI just failed Marketing 101. ChatGPT’s new ads scored bottom-tier, only 59% knew what brand it was. Great tech, invisible brand. A logo at the end isn’t branding. It’s camouflage. #Marketing #AI #branding adweek.com/brand-marketin…
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