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🪩 Volume 114 | December 10, 2025
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Brand My nightly ritual these days goes something like this:
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Step 1: Turn on Landman.
Step 2: Remember I’m emotionally invested in Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
Step 3: Spend 17 minutes figuring out where either of them is actually available to stream.
Step 4: Question why I pay for eight different platforms to experience inconvenience.
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And somewhere in that spiral, I had a realization:
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The Streaming Wars aren’t just annoying. They are the perfect metaphor for everything brands get wrong about growth.
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Let’s talk about it.
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This week's read time: 4ish mins
For you skimmers: 2 mins (hit the bold headers and bullet points)
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image of play doh and a statement about how the best marketing keeps things simple

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This whole streaming war drama is interesting – trust me I have my popcorn. But it’s sparked some other thoughts… 
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(If you’re not in the loop, Netflix is trying to acquire Warner Bros for like 70 something BILLION DOLLARS. And there’s an all out business war over it).
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Ok now, forget Hollywood for a second — I, personally, am exhausted.
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I just wanted to watch one show.
One.
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Not launch an expedition across eight platforms like I’m Indiana Jones with a remote.
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Netflix has some of it.
Max has another season.
Disney+ bought a prequel.
Hulu has the rights until 2026 except for episodes 3, 7, and 12 on leap years.
Paramount+ keeps auto-signing me back in like it’s desperate for closure.
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As a consumer, it feels ridiculous.
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None of this is because the shows got worse.
It’s because the experience got harder.
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The streaming wars haven’t just fragmented the industry.
They fragmented the viewer.
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They made watching TV feel like product management.
And that, my friend, is where this becomes a small-business lesson.
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Yes, I’m going there: what the streaming wars teach us about MARKETING.
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Small brands aren’t out here spending $80B to win the internet, but the downstream effect is the same:
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When you make people work too hard to engage with you, they just… won’t.
Take it from me. I canceled my Netflix subscription for like a whole ass year. And don’t get me started on how long it takes me to pick SOMETHING TO WATCH.
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Streaming platforms accidentally built a user experience nightmare:
  • too many choices
  • too many entry points
  • too many subscriptions
  • too many login screens
  • too many half-baked brand identities
  • too many disconnected ecosystems that pretend to be ā€œseamlessā€
Sound familiar?
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Brands do this all the time:
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Here’s our main offer.
And our second offer.
And our membership.
And our podcast.
And our templates.
And our newsletter.
And our 7-step nurture.
And our events.
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And suddenly the audience is like:
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Like, Ā ā€œI’m sure you’re great, but… where do I go? What do I do first? What do you WANT from me?ā€
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The irony is:
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People WANT to buy things. They just don’t want to solve a maze first.
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šŸ’” Here’s what streaming has accidentally proven:
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People don’t avoid things because they’re not interested.
They avoid things because they’re overwhelmed.
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People don’t choose the ā€œbestā€ option.
They choose the clearest option.
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People don’t fall off because your product isn’t good.
They fall off because your experience isn’t simple.
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Streaming giants forgot something small brands forget every day:
Make it easy for people to love you.
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That’s it.
That’s the whole playbook.
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šŸ° The real lesson
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You don’t win by giving people more places to find you.
You win by giving them one obvious place to start.
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You don’t win by offering everything.
You win by offering the right thing — clearly.
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You don’t win by being everywhere.
You win by being unmistakable.
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The streaming wars made content a chore.
Your job as a brand is to make working with you the opposite.
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ā€œFocusā€ isn’t sexy, but it is scalable.
And focus isn’t loud, but it is what people remember.
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Here’s my ā€œsummed upā€ take:
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Most marketing problems aren’t marketing problems. They’re experience problems—born from too many steps, too many messages, too many offers, and too many distractions.
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So here’s your challenge this week:
Find one place your audience is working too hard… and make it sweet, simple, and stupidly obvious.
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That’s how you build a funnel people actually want to be in.
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That’s how you build a brand people remember.
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And that’s how you scale without turning into the streaming wars. šŸ™‚
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→ NERDY STUFF!!! Steph Curry shot the moon in real life with this billboard that was planned in line with a literal astrophysicist (the planned the exact minute a moon would pass his fingertips – what). ā€œAn ad that rewards people who pay attention.ā€
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→ The Mercedes CEO retired after 49 years and BMW made an ad about it (I won’t spoil it, but it’s FUNNY. Watch here.
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→ If you’d like to SOB today—StoryWorth can make that happen! INCREDIBLE storytelling and brand marketing, in such a meaningful way; this is so wildly achievable by brands with a purpose. We need MORE of it!
šŸŽ
Gifting inspo (you're welcome)
I like to THINK I’m really really good at gifting but what I'm actually good at, is getting big time analysis paralysis when it comes to gifting.Ā 
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Also why is literally everything $100 these days? Rude.Ā 
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Anyway, I’m in the midst of client gifting, family gifting, and trying not to buy things for ME and thought I’d share what I’m gifting this year in hopes it inspires your shopping list? Act fast. Christmas is like, 10 days away, or something, idk math is hard.
  • For my mildly crunchy friends, Primally Pure gift bundles (the lip kit is NOICE)
  • For the ones I don’t know what TF to get: Goody credit (they can pick something NOICE) ← btw that link is an affiliate link, and you'll get a $20 credit if you use it to sign up!!
  • For the tweens/teens in my life, this Magcubic Projector
  • For my kids (4 y/o and almost 2 y/o): Crocs. Lol.
  • For my team: something off their wishlist šŸ˜‰
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How'd you like this week's send?
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