Author: Jai Whiting
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Quibi: Category is…the most expensive top-of-funnel in history
The most expensive top-of-funnel in history. Quibi raised $1.75bn, bought the biggest launch audience ever, and built nothing to catch it. Scored through the 8-stage funnel: 29/80.
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Who owns the rainbow?
Pride books the biggest stars in pop and converts almost none of it. In 2025–26 the sponsors finally noticed, and left. So we scored the whole field — the brands that showed up and the brands that fled — through all eight stages, out of 80.
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Jaguar’s Copy Nothing. The category is: the gamble
Jaguar bought the most attention in automotive history — Elon Musk, a global firestorm, 3 million views — then stopped selling cars for two years. Scored stage by stage through the 8-stage funnel: 32/80. The purest proof yet that attention is not demand.
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Madonna vs Kylie. The category is: the sequel
Two veteran divas at the sequel stage — but only one planned it. Madonna’s Confessions II is a sequel by design, a deliberate callback to 2005. Kylie’s Tension wasn’t a sequel at all; its funnel just worked so well it earned one — Tension II. A week ago the two shared a screen on Graham…
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Connected TV: DRTV’s grandchild
What happened when the telly grew up on the internet: broadcast’s sight, sound and motion, bought like digital. Top-of-funnel reach with a little more aim.
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Influencers for B2B isn’t an oxymoron
Not a teenager unboxing trainers — the analyst or operator your buyers already trust. Influence is borrowed credibility, and the whole value is in the fit.
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Community: the channel you don’t own but must host
The one channel where the audience talks back to each other. You host the room; you never quite own it. The moment it feels like marketing, it stops working.
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Field of Dreams was a film, not a go-to-market plan
Building a great product is not a marketing strategy. The product graveyard is full of better mousetraps nobody ever heard of. Why distribution, demand and the buying experience are the business, not the afterthought to it.
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Kylie’s Tension. The category is: the reinvention
Kylie’s Tension, scored stage by stage across the full 8-stage funnel — 72/80. How a near-free “Padam Padam” moment became a $78M tour and a tenth UK No.1. The category is: reinvention.
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Display is for being seen, not clicked
Like buying a billboard and sulking nobody pulled over to touch it. Display is a being-seen channel: presence at scale, where the click was never the point.
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The marketing team is the product. Everything else is the packaging.
When marketing underperforms, the instinct is to change the agency, the tool, the framework. The constraint is almost never the framework. Why the most under-rated lever in marketing is how the team is led, and why almost nobody in the market will tell you that.
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The 121: highest trust, lowest volume
The lowest volume on the map and the highest trust. The 121 doesn’t scale — and that’s the entire point. For the moments too important to automate.
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Podcasts: patience as a channel
Six episodes, no leads, channel cancelled — abandoned right before the compounding starts. Podcasts are a long-trust channel: depth, not reach.
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Madonna’s Confessions II. The category is: The comeback
Madonna’s Confessions II comeback, scored stage by stage across the full 8-stage funnel — 75/80. Most brands run three stages. Here’s what the other five buy.
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Affiliate: paying for the close
The channel that only charges when it works — in theory. The hardest question in affiliate isn’t how many sales it made. It’s how many would’ve happened anyway.
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What sponsorship actually buys
Bought with the heart, judged with the wrong spreadsheet. Sponsorship doesn’t generate leads — it buys association and presence. How to judge it honestly.
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Events: expensive, and worth it when staged right
The priciest channel per person reached, and the worst-measured. The value of an event isn’t the room — it’s what you do in the three weeks after it.
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Same channel, different job
“Is LinkedIn an awareness channel or a conversion channel?” Wrong question — it assumes a channel does one job. Why the same channel does different work at every funnel stage, and the push-pull test that tells you whether your marketing is actually running.
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PR is a Notices lever you don’t control
Paid media you control and pay for. Earned media you influence and pray for. PR buys association and authority a paid placement can never quite manufacture.
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Content positions; it rarely converts
Everyone agrees they need content; almost nobody can say what it’s for. It rarely converts — and was never meant to. Its job is positioning, not closing.