The Growth Hack Era is ending, according to Digiday's former Editor-in-Chief

Let’s take a moment to commiserate, marketers.

Google is sending the whole planet to Reddit; your favorite social platforms are getting bought, banned, or abandoned; and your carefully crafted email just got pushed to a new category at the back of the inbox. Oh, and have you heard of this little thing called AI that no one is talking about?

But today’s master is no stranger to seismic changes in media. He’s been doing this since before the dot-com bubble. And he’s got a message you need to hear to survive this one: Stop peeing in the pool.

Brian Morrissey

Founder, The Rebooting; Former Editor-in-Chief, Digiday

Claim to fame: Brian’s been covering digital media and marketing long enough to remember when Pets.com was a thing.

Lesson 1: Stop peeing in the pool.

When every digital marketing channel is in a state of change, all of the usual playbooks are out the window — but Brian Morrissey sees this as more of a correction than a catastrophe.

“Every business got used to distribution being a commodity that you could just purchase off the shelf,” he says. For years, you could pay for a nearly guaranteed audience on almost any channel. “But this is contrary to how marketing in general has worked… forever.”

Morrissey points out that the rise of performance marketing led (perhaps inevitably) to an era of growth hacks. A generation of marketers trying to find the one weird trick to go viral.

“Show me the incentives, I’ll show you the outcome. And the incentives have been about quantity, not quality.”

The result is that “there’s been a ton of mid-level to low-level content pumped out. And with AI, that’s going to become untenable. You can scale low-level content to infinity. It’s peeing in the pool. Everyone has to get out.”

To Morrissey, that means the Growth Hack Era is coming to a close, and he isn’t mourning.

“True marketing is not just looking for distribution seams before they close,” he says. “This shift is going to put an emphasis on having a truly great product, and it’s going to rely much more on word of mouth. You’re going to need to earn distribution.”

In other words, we’re back to the basics. Marketing 101.

Lesson 2: Keep what works. But build for the future.

Now, Morrissey isn’t saying distribution is or will be unimportant — and abandoning effective channels would be a costly mistake — but he does recommend taking a long view of marketing.

“It doesn’t mean all that stuff goes away,” he says. “But it probably stands to reason that, for example, marketers should plan for SEO to continue to go down.”

And the irony of what I’m about to say isn’t lost on me, but… pay attention to what you’re seeing, not just what the experts are saying. Especially when those experts are also the sellers.

“There’s this strange thing where Google comes out and says ‘We’re sending just as much traffic to everyone,’ but every publisher I talk to is seeing way less traffic.”

As these distribution seams shift, Morrissey predicts that most marketers will simply continue to jump from tactic to tactic. “Oh, email is flooded? We’re going to start texting people,” he grins.

But that means there’s a big advantage for those who start to think about what they’re working towards.

“It’s about continuing to try to win at the methods you’ve been relying on, but also building what the future looks like in 5 years.”

Lesson 3: People trust people, not institutions.

“One of the big shifts we’re seeing right now is from institutions to individuals,” Morrissey says. “People trust people.”

Think of the current rise of microinfluencers, executive social presences, and lo-fi marketing.

“I think it’s a little overwrought,” he confesses. “But I think the direction of travel is pretty clear: Individuals will have leverage in the marketplace over institutions. I don’t expect institutional trust to bounce back all of a sudden.”

In practical terms, that means highlighting the humanity behind your brand. Take a scroll through any HubSpot blog or email and notice that we no longer use the “royal we.” Three years ago, I would have written this as HubSpot. Now I get to write it as Curt, a human being who happens to be an employee of HubSpot. (Nice to meet you!)

But Morrissey cautions that you need to have realistic expectations here.

“There’s leverage in personality, but don’t expect to create another Sam Parr,” he says, talking about the creator of The Hustle. Sticking with that example, he points out that HubSpot didn’t create Sam Parr — it just bought his brand.

“The reason people like Sam have such enduring influence is because it’s organic.” Creating an authentic, organic personality is rare and difficult — and that’s exactly why it’s valuable. “I don’t think Sam was created in a marketing lab.”

Lingering Questions

Today’s Question

“What’s one marketing belief you held five years ago that you’ve completely changed your mind about?” – Jay Schwedelson, founder of SubjectLine.com and GURU Media Hub

Today’s Answer

Morrissey says: “That in-person events would become less important. 100% wrong. In-person events are more important than ever.

Humans are social animals and will always congregate. No matter what comes with AI, I do not believe the human species will throw in the towel on congregation.”