Author Archives: bredemarket

Marketing and writing services.

Strategy is not Tactics

I’ve said that strategy is one of four essential elements of product marketing. But you have to know what strategy is…and what it is not.

To illustrate the difference between strategy and tactics, it helps to differentiate between abstract, long term goals and concrete, short term goals.

If your goal is to better the world, that’s a strategy.

If your goal is to excel in a particular industry, that’s a strategy.

Although strategies can change. Those who know of Nokia as a telecommunications company, and those who remember Nokia as a phone supplier, are not old enough to remember Nokia’s beginnings as a pulp mill in 1865.

If your goal is to secure business from a specific prospect, that’s a tactic. Or it should be.

Fleming Companies secured a 10-year contract in 2001 as the main supplier of groceries to Kmart, accounting for 20% of Fleming’s revenue. Kmart cancelled that contract when it declared bankruptcy a year later. Fleming filed a $1.4 billion claim in Kmart’s bankruptcy case…but only got $385 million. Fleming itself ended up in bankruptcy court in 2003.

But Fleming’s strategy was to excel at food wholesaling through acquisition and innovation.

It’s just that one tactical blunder upended that strategy.

Whether Bredemarket pivots from biometric content to resume writing (not likely), I am presently equipped to address both your strategic and tactical product marketing needs. If I can help you, talk to me at https://bredemarket.com/mark/.

How “Humans in the Loop” Kills Companies

What happens when you and all your competitors adopt a “humans in the loop” methodology for your marketing and your product marketing?

Quotes from Robert Rose, Content Marketing Institute.

“Generative AI promised to relieve humans of the tedious, mechanical work — freeing them to be more strategic, more creative, more human.

“The reality? We’ve wrapped our rationalizations around this new concept called “humans in the loop.”

“This often means marketers are demoted to glorified spellcheckers and fact-checkers for machine output. Not creators. Not strategists. Just custodians of content they never had a hand in shaping.

Perhaps Rose’s thoughts are wishful thinking on the part of carbon-based marketers.

But if the “humans in the loop” thought persists…isn’t everyone using the same undifferentiated loop? When everyone yells “we use AI,” no one is differentiated. And no, it makes no difference with AI flavor of the week you’re using, since they all train on data. Human data.

And if the humans at all the companies are imprisoned by their identical loops…who has the competitive advantage? No one.

Except for those that use humans…especially humans who have been around for a while and remember this. If you don’t have a full five minutes, skip right to the three-minute mark.

Examining Voter ID From an IAL3 Lens

My recent Substack post explains what Identity Assurance Level 3 (IAL3) is, and re-examines my doubts about the effectiveness of so-called “voter ID” laws. Because if voter ID proponents REALLY wanted to guarantee that voters are eligible, they would have to do a LOT more. Security theater is not security. But what is the cost of true security?

“Examining Voter ID From an IAL3 Lens” on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/johnebredehoft/p/examining-voter-id-from-an-ial3-lens

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Why Do We Trust SMS?

I hate to use the overused t word (trust), but in this case it’s justified.

“Scammers are aware that people are more likely to open and read a text message rather than an email  The open rates for text messages are more than 90% while the open rates for emails is less than 30%.  In addition, many email providers have filters that are able to identify and filter out phishing emails while the filtering capabilities on text messages is much less.  Additionally, people tend to trust text messages more than emails.  Text message also may prompt a quick response before the targeted victim can critically consider the legitimacy of the text message.”

From Scamicide, https://scamicide.com/2025/09/18/scam-of-the-day-september-19-2025-treasury-refund-text-smishing-scam/

What I can’t figure out is WHY text messages have such a high level of t[REDACTED]. Does SMS feel more personal?