🎪 The Circus is on Fire, and Sam & Carl Brought Marshmallows 🔥🍿

👋 Hey there, fellow marketing ringmasters—

Welcome back to ADOTAT, where we don’t just point at the flames, we roast marshmallows over them while the marketing big top collapses in slow motion.

💡 Today’s Issue: We’re throwing two heavyweights into the ring: Sam Bloom (PMG’s head of partnerships, soccer goalie, and unofficial clown car driver) and Carl Fremont (CEO of Quigley-Simpson, industry sage, and human eye-roll at bad strategy). Two men, one broken industry, and zero patience for the nonsense clogging your feed.

The ad industry right now? Picture this:
🎟️ A circus with no ringleader, flaming hoops flying through the air, CMOs being fired like t-shirt cannons into the void, and everyone clapping wildly for yet another AI-powered...thing. 🙄

Marketers are stuck playing tactical whack-a-mole. Every day, someone’s screaming “TikTok Dances Sell Insurance!” or “Let’s throw another DSP into the blender!” Meanwhile, the popcorn machine is on fire and nobody’s got a real escape plan.

✨ But here’s the twist:
Sam and Carl—two industry vets who’ve seen behind the velvet curtain—aren’t running for the exits. They’re sitting there, sipping something stiff, saying: “Why don’t we just climb above the chaos and look for the actual pattern here?”

🔥 What this issue is really about:

• Why agencies and brands keep mistaking chaos for innovation.

• Why “fast fashion marketing” (Sam’s words) is burning us all out.

• Why Carl calmly points out that getting tactical too early is the death of strategy—and how marketers are drowning in shiny-object syndrome because of it.

• Why CMOs last about as long as mayflies, and how both Sam & Carl would rather bet on durability than trends.

💣 TL;DR? This ain’t another LinkedIn circle-jerk. We're going deep on what happens when real leaders stare down the flaming tent and go, “Yup, been here before.”

👉 Why we’re doing this:
Because you’re sick of reading strategy blogs written by interns in cheap ChatGPT disguises.

Because the phrase “let’s make it go viral” makes your soul wilt a little more each day.

Because deep down, you know someone needs to grab the fire extinguisher and call out the circus for what it is.

👊 We got you. Sam and Carl did, too.

👇 Keep scrolling. Next: Two brutally honest lessons you should steal from them before the next client call.