Serendipity: the unexpected but meaningful discovery.

For years, marketers have quoted John Wanamaker’s famous line: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Here’s the problem? He was wrong! And we’ve been repeating it like gospel.

Wanamaker’s quote assumes that marketing outcomes are binary, working or wasted. But marketing isn’t that simple. At its core, marketing is about spotting the signals others miss. It’s about serendipity: the ability to recognize unplanned moments of traction and amplify them before the window closes.

The reality is, 50% of your advertising isn’t wasted, you just don’t know where the hotspots are. That’s the failure. Not the spend.

Our job as marketers is not just to launch campaigns or run A/B tests, it’s to see emerging patterns, social undercurrents, and cultural moments, and move quickly. As Gary Vaynerchuk said recently POSSIBLE and every other conference he's been at, organic content is your real A/B test. Let creators plant seeds and watch what blooms. That’s your signal. Then amplify what resonates.

Here's the problem; the marketing industry is too fragmented, the data too siloed, and the platforms too disjointed.

There’s no system that lets you see it all. That’s why we built mktg.ai. To serve as the Bloomberg Terminal for marketing. Not a metaphor, a necessity.

Years ago, Esther Dyson called our concept the “Holy Grail of advertising.” In truth, it’s the Holy Grail of marketing, and only now, with AI and LLMs, can it be built. So in 2024, we started building it.

Marketing needs a serendipity machine. A system that lets you see what’s working, when and where, and most importantly, why. A top executive at a major holding company recently told me, “Even just as an audit tool, this should be standard.” I agree. Because right now, CMOs are trying to fix broken parts instead of understanding the whole system. That’s why their tenures are so short.

Wanamaker didn’t get it wrong because he wasn’t smart. He got it wrong because the tools didn’t exist. Now they do.

And we’ve built it.