CARGETING … The Silent Marketing Killer
Marketing has been under attack for 25 years because everyone has been forgetting the first part of the word is MARKET!!
Marketing used to be an economic and business leadership role. A strategic beacon of Vision and ambition. It used to encompass the whole gamut of the what, why, how, and when of growth & profit.
Today we talk about branding vs. marketing.
We use the term growth marketing for optimizing budget results.
People are selling recipes and hacks instead of strategy.
Incentives are tied to vanity metrics instead of results.
The CMO has been demoted to channel execution director.
Chasing
Arbitrary
Random
Goals
Every
Time
= CARGETing
Cargeting Is Killing Your Growth.
Marketing Didn’t Fail, You Replaced It with Cargeting!
When companies confuse activity with strategy and economics…
Cargeting looks like:
“We need 200 leads this month.”
“Run ads, we need a bump.”
“Let’s try TikTok.”
“We need a new funnel.”
“Let’s do a promo to hit Q3.”
“Can we get more impressions?”
“For SEO, don’t do this, do this!”
Cargeting is marketing stripped of:
market understanding
positioning
pricing architecture
distribution strategy
loyalty psychology
customer experience
long‑term thinking
Cargeting is execution without architecture.
The Silence Gap
Marketing used to speak for the market. Now it speaks for the dashboard.
Marketing used to challenge bad goals, protect positioning, align ambition with economics, diagnose the real blockers, advocate for the customer, shape the product, and guide the business model.
Today, that voice is gone. Marketing became the “make the numbers go up” department. The content team, the social team, the email team. They used to be minor parts of a larger whole.
Marketing became execution without authority, which created the silence gap.
Cargeting filled the silence.
The 5P’s and Where Cargeting Breaks Them
Product
Cargeting uses promotions to compensate for weak product.
Price
Cargeting confuses temporary incentives with pricing strategy.
Place
Cargeting chases channels instead of designing distribution.
Promotion
Cargeting treats hacks as strategy.
People
Cargeting ignores the ICP and optimizes for the wrong audience.
Marketing collapses when the 5 P’s collapse. Cargeting accelerates the collapse.
Signs You’re Ready to Stop the Cargeting Apocalypse
✅ Are you tired of seeing people talk about loyalty as a tool, and not the outcome of killer marketing, R&D, and delivery?
✅ Are you going to pull your hair out if you see one more “Branding = A, B, & C and Marketing = X, Y, & Z” post?
✅ Does it make you crazy seeing CMO job postings that focus more on knowing tools and channels than economics?
✅ Does your blood boil when you see people peddling “hacks” instead of, “How can I be relevant and provide delight?”
✅ Do you scratch your head when you see companies with 50% margin saying they can only “afford” 7X ROAS?
✅ Are you tired of watching companies jump platforms without addressing their lack of actual strategy or governance?
If you can confidently and passionately answer yes to all these, you’re ready to take a stand!
Take a Stand: Put the 5 P’s Back
