Perception Doesn’t Wait

I have a theory…everything is marketing. And before every marketer reading this starts nodding enthusiastically, I don't mean everything should be marketing. Frankly, that sounds exhausting. I mean that nearly everything communicates something.

Think about it, a CEO answering a difficult question - marketing, a company staying silent when customers expect an answer - marketing, the way someone answers the phone - marketing. The ridiculously long line outside a restaurant? Believe it or not, marketing. Even deciding not to do something can become marketing. Fact is, marketing isn't just an ad, a logo, a social post, or somebody in a conference room saying, "Can we make the logo bigger?"

It's perception, and lately, I've found myself watching the news through that lens.

Take AI.

Some of the biggest names building this technology are now publicly asking Washington for greater oversight. Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and xAI's Elon Musk have all called for stronger government involvement in some form. Meanwhile, Washington is moving considerably slower.

There are legitimate disagreements over what regulation should look like, how much is necessary, and how to protect people without strangling innovation. Add an election year to the mix, and major legislation becomes even harder to move. I know that's politics, but it's also marketing. 

Imagine you're the customer for a minute. The people building the thing are essentially saying, "Hey, we may need some guardrails over here,” and the people responsible for potentially building those guardrails appear reluctant or unable to move quickly. Regardless of why, the public is left to interpret what it sees, and perception doesn't wait for the strategy meeting.

That's the part businesses sometimes forget.

You can spend millions carefully defining what you want your brand to stand for, but people are also defining it every time they watch what you do or don't do.

Which brings me, naturally, from artificial intelligence regulation to Sydney Sweeney posing nude with footballs. Haha!bStay with me.

Sweeney recently appeared in a very provocative campaign for sports prediction platform Novig. If the objective was attention, congratulations. Attention was achieved. Novig's social mentions reportedly jumped ninefold after the campaign launched. That's a marketing win, right? Wellllllll.

One analysis found that only 4% of the online conversation surrounding the campaign actually mentioned Novig. Houston, we may have a branding problem. Meanwhile, Sweeney reportedly lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers over two days as criticism of the campaign spread.

Same campaign. Two brands. Two very different scoreboards.

Novig wanted awareness and got a mountain of it. Whether that attention becomes brand recognition, users, and long-term value is an entirely different question. Sweeney already had enormous awareness. For her personal brand, the question wasn't whether people noticed her. Clearly, they did. The question was what the campaign made some of them think about her.

And there it is - marketing. It’s not because somebody bought media; it’s because somebody formed an opinion. That's why I think we need to stop thinking about marketing as the department responsible for making things look good.

Marketing happens in customer service, when the CEO responds to criticism, and when a company screws something up and decides whether to own it. It happens in Washington, and apparently, it happens while holding two strategically placed footballs. None of this means every decision should be made according to what will get the most likes. PLEASE DON’T.

It means we should recognize that brands aren't built exclusively through campaigns. They're built through accumulated perceptions, some intentional and some accidental.

That's what makes marketing fascinating to me. You don't completely own your brand; you influence it. Then people experience you, watch you, talk about you, and decide what you mean to them.

So yes, everything is marketing. The only question is whether you realized you were marketing when you did it.