As you were laying in your hammock in the summer of 1885, you probably remember reading a book titled, Successful Marketing. The thesis was simple: the more people who see your brand more often, the better off you will be.
Now if you happen to be one of my younger readers who didn’t read that book when it came out, fortunately there are plenty of marketing books still being written in 2026 teaching the same principle.
Unfortunately, that principle probably won’t work to promote you or your business.
Don’t get me wrong. If you’ve got the kind of dosh Geico, Anheuser-Busch, or Burger King has to spread the message, by all means, spray and pray it all over the landscape. Geico needs 300 million people to think of a gecko.
You just need the right 300 people to think of you.
Which is why I’d suggest we retire frequency and reach…and replace it with relevance and breach.
Frequency and reach hasn’t just survived since 1885. It’s being preached louder than ever by the hustle-porn crowd, shitposting 350 times a day across every channel that will have them. As I wrote in a recent essay, these people have confused being known with being valued.
Totally different ballgame.
If you simply want to be known, there’s an entire cottage industry of parasites happy to help you “invest” in it: a listing in a who is who book, a chapter in somebody’s anthology, or ten thousand followers from a server farm in Manila. The last time any of that moved the dial for anyone was never. And your case study won’t be the breakthrough exception.
So instead of frequency, think relevance. Think something through. Develop a point of view that addresses a real problem in a way the people in your space haven’t considered. Then publish.
Only when you actually have something to say.
And instead of reach, which is trying to get in front of everyone who can fog a mirror, aim for breach. A rupture in the groupthink of your space, noticed by the people who matter to you.
Because you matter to them.
Peace,
– RG
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