Published November 23 2024
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A New Way for Marketing
A seismic shift is about to reshape the landscape of marketing. For the past two decades, the relentless pursuit of new customer acquisition has dominated every marketer’s agenda, fueling the rise of digital-first brands and disrupting countless industries. However, this era of unchecked expansion is drawing to a close, heralding the dawn of what I call the “Age of Anti-Acquisition.”
While “retention” might seem the natural successor, the term “anti-acquisition” more accurately captures the impending paradigm shift. It represents a direct challenge to the extreme and often destructive focus on acquisition, reacquisition, and even re-reacquisition that has, like a metastasizing cancer, eroded the health and profitability of businesses across sectors.
This transformation is driven by a perfect storm of factors: skyrocketing customer acquisition costs, dwindling venture capital and investor patience, market saturation, emerging privacy regulations, and a pivotal shift from growth-at-all-costs to sustainable profitability. In this new age, the relentless chase for new customers will become the exception rather than the rule, mirroring the backlash against excessive sugar in our food products.
The Age of Anti-Acquisition promises to fundamentally alter the marketing and business landscape, creating new winners and losers. Just as artificial intelligence is ushering in the Intelligence Age, succeeding the industrial, information, and Internet ages, agentic AI and other innovations will revolutionise marketing beyond traditional branding and acquisition strategies.
The implications are profound. With digital advertising budgets approaching $700 billion annually, and nearly half of this wasted on misdirected spend or low-value reacquisition, the industry has reached an unsustainable tipping point. As brands are squeezed between rising costs and declining returns, they will be forced to pivot.
In the Age of Anti-Acquisition, CMOs who thrive will be those who reject the obsession with acquiring at any cost. Their focus will shift to forging lasting relationships with existing customers, nurturing loyalty, and driving organic growth through advocacy and word-of-mouth. This paradigm shift offers CMOs the opportunity to elevate their role from Chief Marketing Officers to Chief Profits Officers, positioning themselves as frontrunners for the CEO chair.
The repercussions of this shift will extend far beyond marketing departments. As hundreds of billions of dollars are redirected away from acquisition and Big Adtech, we’ll witness a redistribution of power in the tech industry. The oxygen of growth, spending, and dominance that has sustained tech giants like Google and Meta will be depleted, reshuffling the digital marketing ecosystem and creating new avenues for brands to capture revenue and drive sustainable growth.
The true leaders in this new era will be the “Antis” – marketers who question the status quo of spending four out of five dollars on acquisition and choose a more balanced, sustainable path. They will employ advanced strategies like Velvet Rope Marketing for high-value segments and Kaizen Services for continuous improvement of retention tactics. Leveraging technologies such as agentic AI and digital twins, the Antis will create systems that anticipate customer needs, making every interaction valuable.
The Age of Anti-Acquisition represents a fundamental reimagining of how businesses relate to their customers and create long-term value. It’s a call to arms for marketers to lead their organisations into a new era of customer-centricity, sustainable growth, and enduring profitability.
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Past Writings – 1
Retention Re-engineering: Random to Recurring Revenues: “Retention and growth of existing customers should be the top priorities for modern marketers. However, over the past decade, the focus has shifted disproportionately towards new customer acquisition and reacquisition of lapsed customers. This shift has led to an explosion in marketing budgets, driven by relentless bidding wars on adtech platforms. Today, adtech (customer acquisition) spending accounts for over 80% of marketing budgets, with a meagre 10% allocated to martech (customer engagement) and the remaining 10% to branding. The hidden truth is that nearly half of the adtech budget is wasted due to misguided acquisition and reacquisition efforts. Marketers need to strike a balance between adtech and martech spending, but the lack of innovation in communication channels and martech platforms has perpetuated the skew towards adtech. Adtech is seen as a more reliable driver of consistent revenue growth compared to martech. This imbalance has resulted in low customer lifetime value (LTV) coupled with high customer acquisition costs (CAC), creating a profit squeeze for digital businesses. The promise of retention and growth marketing to enhance profitability has remained largely unfulfilled—until now. Five groundbreaking innovations promise to revolutionise retention: Agentic AI and the Co-Marketer, Digital Twins for Segments and Individuals, AI-Powered Large Customer Models, Epps (Email Apps) and ActionAds, and Bundled Kaizen Services…This next-generation martech, combined with innovative email strategies and advanced services, will equip marketers with the tools to drastically reduce AdWaste and embark on a Profipoly Quest – achieving exponential forever profitable growth. This will mark the most significant shift in marketing since the advent of adtech. Retention marketing – retention re-engineering – will finally claim its rightful place at the forefront of marketing strategies.”
The Retention Revolution: A Nayi Disha for Marketing: “A new direction for marketing is necessary. Excessive funds are being poured into acquiring and reacquiring customers, while retention is neglected. This imbalance is detrimental to brand profits and customer experience… Marketing needs a Nayi Disha moment – a movement towards a fundamental shift in priorities. Brands must pivot from acquisition to retention, from “one and done” to multi-monetisation, from focusing on new customers to nurturing existing ones, from profit killers to profit creators, from high Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) to high Lifetime Value (LTV), from AdWaste to brand profits, from being profitless to building a profipoly (profits monopoly)… Consider the potential impact: by 2025, half of the projected $700 billion annual digital advertising spend will be wasted. That’s $350 billion – and climbing – every year that brands could reallocate to customer retention, boosting profits, and sparking innovation… For businesses to thrive, they must break free from the obsession with new customer acquisition and turn their attention to existing customers. They need to reimagine customer engagement, re-engineer retention strategies, and reset their vision toward becoming a profipoly.”
Profitless to Profipoly: A CEO-CMO Dialogue on Marketing’s New Direction: “Welcome to the world of Retention Re-engineering, where we transform random, one-off revenues into predictable, recurring streams, and pave the way for exponential, forever profitable growth. This is how we build a true profipoly. Now, let’s begin by reframing the challenges you face with retention. There are three core issues: first, a lack of deep customer understanding, which limits effective personalisation; second, the absence of hotlines, leading to what I call “attention recession”; and third, the underutilisation of your martech platforms, which prevents you from unlocking their full potential for driving retention… When done right, [the Nayi Disha for marketing] has the power to transform profitless companies into profipolies. And by profitless, I don’t just mean companies that are operating in the red – I’m also talking about those that are handing over a large share of their profits to the adtech giants… In every industry, there’s a finite pool of profits. The goal of a successful business should be to capture the largest share of that pool, thereby depriving competitors of the resources they need to grow. This is the strongest moat you can build – a foundation for exponential forever profitable growth. When a company achieves this, it has created a profipoly – a monopoly on profits in its industry.”
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Past Writings – 2
The 10 Tenets for Re-engineering Retention: “The 10 tenets for re-engineering retention offer a strategic compass for marketers navigating the critical shift from a profitless state to becoming a profipoly. Each tenet is not merely a principle, but a portal to profound insights, providing a scaffold for reimagining customer relationships and propelling business growth in the digital era. Collectively, these tenets have the potential to catalyse the most significant paradigm shift in marketing since the advent of adtech with the Internet’s rise… The transition from adtech to martech, and from acquisition to retention, harbours the potential to disrupt entire industries, paralleling the transformative promise of AI. While no single technology will drive this change in isolation, the collective impact of innovations will fuel the re-engineering of retention. The productive redeployment of hundreds of billions of dollars from AdWaste to brand growth and customer satisfaction could be truly disruptive, reshaping not just the marketing landscape, but the broader business world for the better.”…Here are the 10 tenets:
- Measure and Minimise AdWaste
- Forge a Unified Foundation
- Harness the Large Customer Model
- Deploy AI-Powered Co-Marketer
- Create AI Twins for Hyper-Personalisation
- Revolutionise Customer Engagement Touchpoints
- Implement Velvet Rope Marketing
- Partner with a Kaizen Progency
- Establish Earned Growth as the North Star Metric
- Redefine the CMO as the Chief Profits Officer
The Coming Fight for Marketing’s Soul: Incumbent Acquis vs Challenger Antis: “Acquisition-focused marketers, whom I call the “Acquis,” became the driving force behind the digital marketing revolution, relentlessly pursuing new customers through increasingly sophisticated targeting and bidding strategies across an expanding array of digital platforms…The focus on acquisition often came at the expense of customer experience. Brands found themselves in a perpetual cycle of acquisition and re-acquisition, treating all customers – new and existing – with the same broad-brush approach. This neglect of existing customers not only increased churn rates but also missed opportunities to cultivate brand loyalty and drive organic growth through word-of-mouth referrals…In most companies, CRM and retention teams have historically played second fiddle to acquisition-focused marketing teams, who control the majority of budgets and attention. With limited resources, retention teams are left to handle the grind of segmentation, campaign creation, execution, and analysis. Their role often feels mechanical, with little room for innovation. But this is about to change, and with it comes the need for a new label – the Antis, marketers dedicated to challenging the acquisition-first mindset. The Antis represent a new breed of marketers focused on nurturing and growing existing customer relationships. They understand that the true value of a customer lies not in the initial transaction, but in their lifetime value (LTV). This shift in perspective is not just a tweak in strategy; it’s a fundamental reimagining of the customer-brand relationship.”
In summary: The coming age of Anti-Acquisition marks a pivotal shift in marketing from the blind chase of new customers to the strategic nurturing of existing ones. Retention re-engineering will transform random revenues into predictable profits, catalysing the rise of a Profipoly – a monopoly on profits – where brands maximise lifetime value and reduce costly acquisitions. The 10 Tenets of Retention provide a strategic roadmap to navigate this shift, challenging the dominance of the Acquis and championing the Antis – marketers focused on long-term relationships over short-term gains. Ultimately, this paradigm shift will reshape the entire marketing landscape, empowering brands to move from being profitless to profitable, ensuring exponential forever profitable growth.
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The Shifts – 1
The Age of Anti-Acquisition represents a fundamental shift in how marketing departments operate, moving away from the traditional obsession with acquisition to a focus on sustainable growth driven by retention. This transformation redefines the old metrics, tools, and strategies, placing profitability and customer loyalty at the centre. These shifts are a complete reimagining of how businesses build long-term value and competitive advantage.
The Old Way of marketing, dominated by the Age of Acquisition, was defined by a relentless focus on growth at any cost, with new customer acquisition as the primary objective. Brands invested heavily in reaching new audiences and re-engaging churned customers, regardless of profitability. In contrast, the New Way, or the Age of Anti-Acquisition, shifts the focus to sustainable profitable growth by emphasising retention, loyalty, and lifetime value. This transformation involves a series of defining characteristics that reshape the traditional marketing playbook and redefine success metrics for modern marketers.
In the Old Way, growth was synonymous with top-line expansion, even if it meant incurring losses or sacrificing long-term profitability. The mindset was “more customers at any cost,” leading to profit erosion and dependency on constant reacquisition. The New Way advocates for Sustainable Profitable Growth, where profitability becomes the cornerstone of growth strategies. Marketers now seek to balance customer acquisition with retention to drive a healthier bottom line and create value through sustained relationships, rather than one-time transactions.
The Old Way relied heavily on Acquisition and Reacquisition, fuelled by an over-reliance on adtech platforms. This led to massive ad spend with little attention given to nurturing existing customers. In the New Way, this focus shifts decisively to Retention, utilising martech strategies and tools to build deeper, more meaningful connections with customers. Instead of being trapped in an endless cycle of chasing new customers, brands now invest in keeping existing customers happy, thereby reducing churn and increasing loyalty.
The success metric in the Old Way was Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Optimisation, where the primary goal was to lower the cost of acquiring a new customer. The New Way measures success through Lifetime Value (LTV) Maximisation, emphasising the long-term value each customer can bring to the business. By focusing on LTV, marketers prioritise the quality of customer relationships, aiming to create high-value customers who generate recurring revenues over time, rather than simply minimising the cost to acquire them.
The Old Way also suffered from Siloed Data systems that fragmented customer insights across channels and touchpoints, making it difficult to form a holistic view of the customer journey. The New Way integrates Unified Data Ecosystems, merging martech and adtech data to create a comprehensive, cross-channel understanding of each customer. This unified data approach empowers marketers to deliver seamless, personalised experiences that anticipate customer needs and preferences.
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The Shifts – 2
Another key distinction is the evolution from Predictive and Generative AI to Agentic AI and Multi-Agent Systems. In the Old Way, AI was primarily used for basic predictions and campaign optimisation, operating within predefined boundaries. The New Way leverages Agentic AI – intelligent systems that can autonomously make decisions, simulate scenarios, and engage with customers dynamically. This is world of a Co-Marketer interacting with AI Twins. This allows for richer, real-time experiences, where AI systems operate as co-pilots, assisting marketers in creating adaptive, high-impact strategies.
In the Old Way, marketers executed Campaigns for Cohorts or Segments, crafting generalised strategies for broad customer groups. The New Way moves towards “Departments of One” for a Segment of One, where hyper-personalised campaigns cater to the needs of individual customers. With AI-driven insights, marketers can now tailor offers, content, and journeys for each person, delivering N=1 personalisation at scale, a feat previously impossible with traditional campaign models.
The Old Way used One-Way Push Channels like email and SMS, relying on these channels to broadcast generic messages. The New Way redefines customer engagement with Two-Way, In-Channel Conversions that enable customers to interact, respond, and convert directly within the channel itself. Innovations like AMP for Email, Epps (Email Apps), WhatsApp, RCS, and AI-powered chat interfaces turn traditionally passive channels into interactive engagement hubs, making conversions frictionless and immediate.
While the Old Way measured success through Revenue Increase, primarily driven by paid marketing, the New Way prioritises Earned Growth. This new metric combines the impact of retention, organic referrals, and customer advocacy to capture true business health. Earned Growth reflects how well a business cultivates loyalty and converts satisfied customers into vocal advocates who help the brand grow organically.
The role of the CMO in the Old Way was constrained to optimising marketing spend and generating new leads, often with little emphasis on profitability. The New Way elevates the CMO to the Chief Profits Officer, responsible for driving profitable growth and taking ownership of the entire customer lifecycle. This new mandate transforms the CMO from a tactical marketer into a strategic business leader, bridging the gap between customer engagement and business profitability.
Finally, in the Old Way, many digital businesses remained Profitless or Just Marginally Profitable due to spiralling acquisition costs and poor customer retention. The New Way aims for the creation of a Profipoly—a monopoly on profits within the industry. Brands that master retention re-engineering and optimise LTV over CAC become dominant players, capturing the lion’s share of profits while squeezing out competitors. This shift marks the ultimate promise of the Anti-Acquisition Age: a future where marketing doesn’t just drive growth, but builds lasting, defensible profitability.
In the age of anti-acquisition, marketing departments are no longer mere collection agents for Big Adtech; they become the true architects of customer loyalty and catalysts for sustained, profitable growth – fulfilling the role they were always meant to play.
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The Time is Now
The Cost Per Click (CPC) innovation in the early 2000s revolutionised the world of marketing. It ushered in the Age of Acquisition, where every brand began frantically chasing new customers in a relentless landgrab, driven by the pervasive “fear of missing out.” This paradigm shift orchestrated a flywheel of spending, underpinned by what is arguably the most ingenious business model in corporate history – an auction for attention (and the coveted click). In this arena, businesses found themselves pitted against one another in a high-stakes digital arena, constantly outbidding rivals in an endless cycle of escalating costs.
But the era of unchecked acquisition is approaching its breaking point. Rising customer acquisition costs, increased investor pressure to prioritise profitability over growth, stringent privacy regulations, and evolving consumer expectations have created a perfect storm that necessitates a new approach. The tipping point is here, driving the shift towards Anti-Acquisition.
Businesses that cling to old acquisition-centric models risk spiralling into unprofitability or becoming obsolete. The opportunity cost of inaction is enormous. Yet for those who embrace the Anti-Acquisition mindset, the rewards are transformative. Early adopters stand to gain a significant competitive edge, building customer loyalty moats that are difficult to breach and establishing themselves as industry profipolies – monopolies on profits. These early adopters will leverage AI-driven personalisation and retention strategies to maximise customer lifetime value, creating a virtuous cycle of loyalty and profitability that competitors will struggle to replicate.
At stake is the future of the $700 billion adtech industry. Approximately $300 billion of this sum is wasted each year on ineffective or poorly targeted campaigns – AdWaste that is up for grabs. This staggering figure represents an unprecedented opportunity for brands willing to pivot towards more efficient, retention-focused strategies. The reallocation of these funds could fuel innovation in martech, drive improvements in customer experience, and dramatically boost profitability. This shift has the potential to upend the entire digital ecosystem, diminishing the dominance of current adtech giants and creating room for new players who prioritise customer value over sheer reach. This redistribution of resources could spark a new wave of innovation in martech, with emerging companies developing sophisticated tools for retention, personalisation, and customer experience optimisation, challenging the status quo of the current adtech landscape
The time for half-measures and incremental changes has passed. CMOs and business leaders must take bold, decisive action to implement the tenets of Anti-Acquisition marketing. This means reallocating budgets from acquisition to retention, investing in AI-driven personalisation technologies, and reimagining customer engagement strategies. It calls for a fundamental shift in how success is measured, from short-term metrics to long-term value creation.
Imagine a future, five or ten years from now, where marketing is not just a cost centre but a powerful profit driver – where businesses grow organically through the advocacy of delighted customers, and where AI-powered systems anticipate customer needs, crafting experiences that are seamlessly relevant and timely. In this future, brands will strike the perfect balance between personalisation and privacy, using zero- and first-party data responsibly to create value for customers while respecting their desire for control over their information. This future is within reach, but only if we act decisively today.
The transition won’t be easy. It requires dismantling entrenched habits, retraining teams, and confronting short-term growth pains. But the alternative – continuing down the unsustainable path of acquisition addiction – is far more perilous.
As we stand at this crossroad, we have a critical choice to make: will we continue feeding the insatiable appetite of acquisition marketing, or will we forge a new path? The Age of Anti-Acquisition is dawning, offering a way forward to sustainable profitability and true customer-centricity. The question is no longer whether this shift will happen, but who will lead it.
The time is now for marketers to reclaim their role as the true architects of business growth. In this new paradigm, CMOs have the opportunity to evolve into Chief Profit Officers, taking ownership of the entire customer lifecycle and directly impacting the bottom line. Those who successfully lead this transformation may well find themselves on the fast track to the CEO’s chair, as businesses recognise the critical role of customer-centric, profit-driven marketing in overall corporate strategy.
It’s time to break free from the acquisition addiction and build lasting, profitable customer relationships. The future of marketing – and indeed, the future of business – depends on the decisions we make today. Let’s seize this moment, embrace the Age of Anti-Acquisition, and usher in a new era of marketing excellence.
