Available for useful problems

Blog & guides

Notes from the real work.

Practical writing for marketing leaders working through strategy, systems, AI and delivery. No trend theatre. No borrowed certainty. Long-form writing lives on Just Actionable Intelligence.

JAMES WATKINS / BLOG & GUIDES

Strategy / useful AI / operations / evidence / Monday morning · Strategy / useful AI / operations / evidence / Monday morning · Strategy / useful AI / operations / evidence / Monday morning ·

Featured / Strategy

Why the website brief is usually the wrong place to start

Start with the commercial system, the customer and the decision. Let the brief follow the evidence.

Coming soonFollow on Substack

AI / Operations

Your marketing team is not slow. Your process is.

The tasks that could have been automated last year, and why the specialist at the top is what makes AI output worth anything.

Coming soon

AI / Evidence

Your buyer persona is in a filing cabinet

Static personas versus a 30-day rolling picture of who your buyers actually are, where they talk and what they say now.

Coming soon

Strategy / Evidence

What "evidence over opinion" demands in practice

Send the machine into the analytics before trusting the person who has run the account for six years - including when that person is you.

Coming soon

Delivery / Systems

When a digital roadmap becomes a hiding place

Replace the theatre of certainty with a visible sequence of useful decisions.

Coming soon

Strategy / History

What twenty years of algorithm changes actually teach you

The rules keep moving. The people who last adapt without chasing.

Coming soon

The publishing standard

Every post earns the reader's Monday morning.

A plain title that says what the reader gets.
A one-sentence deck.
The problem as the reader lives it.
Short sections with descriptive headings.
The evidence: a source or worked example.
The Monday-morning bit: what changes this week.
Further reading and a soft contact route.