Are you burned out on marketing? Tired of blog posts (like this one, I guess)? Are you losing your sense of why you got into this game?

You are welcome here.

Take my metaphorical hand and we’ll take a short trip to the wooded wilds of North Carolina.

Why the hell North Carolina?

Because that’s where I shared a cabin with a particle physicist – and I’d like you to meet.

We were out there for two months, doing art therapy, talking about God, and bashing creative ideas onto pianos and paper. Don’t worry. You do not have to engage in any of these activities.

What matters is the physicist guy.

A UK fellow like me, he went out of his way to order a piece of blown-glass he could only find state-side.

He purchased a two-dimensional piece of glass that exists in four dimensions.

Yes, this is an impossible thing to have. And no, you can’t really create glass like this.

The catch: although it isn’t technically possible. It is mathematically possible.

That was enough for my physicist friend.

Do you remember the Mobius strip: a one sided shape that exists in three dimensions?

Well, this guy wanted something more:

I got mighty invested in my friend’s one-sided glass bottle.

To date, my interest in physics had been mild at best. My interest in mathematics was non-existent.

But this physicist guy was able to make me curious.

It wasn’t just his enthusiasm – lively enough to spark a fire in these woods and burn down our cabin, forcing us to sleep next to copperhead snakes – it was something more…

For him, physics and mathematics weren’t primarily about explaining the universe, they were about discovering it.

And so naturally, one of his dreams was to solve one of the six unsolved Millenium Prize problems. Seven were announced in 2000. Only one has been cracked.

The reward is a million dollars, but that wasn’t the point at all. This was just fun for my physicist friend.

I wish I’d been caught sight of this man growing up. I might have taken more interest in STEM subjects. I might have made real money sooner. I might have quelled my parents' concerns about their child who thought writing was a career choice.

I might have asked the universe better questions.

“No questions now, please. It’s time for learning.”

I don’t blame my mathematics teachers.

My parents were teachers for roughly forty years, and I know how hard it is to make students pay attention, Gerald and to move past chastisements like are you talking about the assignment or your weekend?

Most teachers are forced to contort like a Klein Bottle, and the dream of being a Robin Williams-like inspiration to a bunch of teenagers is pretty hard to accomplish.

But still.

I’m not sure anyone ever prompted me to ask a question in mathematics beyond “how do you solve this equation.”

And “How do you solve this equation” is the kind of closed question that is mighty familiar in online marketing. And you’ll hear it in the kinds of content that gets thrown onto the internet::

How to run a marketing campaign
How to choose a data science firm
Five ways to become a better CEO

Our education system has conditioned us to believe that having the answer is what really matters. And so we do the same with brand and marketing.

a lot of us approach ‘educating our readers’ without a sense of wonder.

Me included, at times.

Psychology Lecturer Susan Engel warned against this in her theory of curiosity:

“It’s almost impossible to cultivate curiosity in your students if you don’t know what it is to be curious yourself… the starting point is that.”

I wonder what would happen if marketers provided less answers. And if we inspired people to ask more questions.

It might start with us asking more questions ourselves.

What if everything I know about marketing is wrong?

This is a question I asked myself at the beginning of this year.

A disclaimer: I don’t recommend everyone asks the same question. I’ve known brilliant marketing people who too often doubt themselves and the quality of their work – and they can end up changing tactics way too often. This is not what I’m talking about.

I really just wanted to get curious again. I was tired of knowing how things worked. Tired of creating the same best practice campaigns in the same method.

Best practice has its problems. Everyone has their own version of it. And it's ultimately an assumption.

Remember how an atom looks? With the proton in the middle and the electrons whizzing around?

That’s not how an atom looks.

As in molecular science, so in marketing.

We probably know far less than we’re willing to admit.

I’ve spoken to dozens of organisational consultants in my time, the kind that sidle up to an organisation’s leaders in the midst of extreme change or crisis.

And they always start work with a similar premise: Forget all your answers for a moment. Ask questions instead. Especially the questions no one else is asking.

It’s sort of like the opposite of answering a frequently asked question.

And it's a wonderful way to create space for something new to grow.

At the start of 2024, I didn’t know why I was in the marketing game.

Couldn’t I pack it all up and go write novels and scripts for video game companies?

It was tempting. And frankly, I might still go that way eventually

But something else pulled at my curiosity, a few weeks into burnout. I found some people outside my circle who were doing brand and marketing in a whole new way.

Kind of like the way my physicist friend does science.

And I realised I had so much more to discover in this industry – and beyond.

So I started lapping up ads, Hospitality principles and Design Thinking; I began checking out other copywriters along with poets; and I experimented more in my own work.

And now the feedback I’m getting on my own work is better than I ever remember it.

Here’s a final thought from the educator and mathematician Paul Lockhard:

“Like music, with its inherent aesthetic value and interconnected parts, the discipline of mathematics can also be thought of as an art form – full of patterns and unique ways of understanding them, the worked problems like beautiful little poems of thought…’”

Want to get more mathematical about your marketing? Start by winning back your sense of wonder.

Want to keep listening? Follow me on LinkedIn.

Want to talk? Let’s chat.

I once lived in a cabin with a particle physicist.