Marketing Monday Written by Jon for June 22nd

I'm back.

Chances are you didn't notice I neglected to send this newsletter last week; if you did notice, chances are you either don't care or are my mom. But I feel bad anyway, the same way you feel bad when you skip a workout or die on level 255 in Pac-Man, because it was the first week this year in which I didn't send a newsletter and now 2026 is wasted.

(Thankfully, Tom sent his weekly email as per usual to cover for me. Apparently he hates "social clubs." Please don't tell him I'm the president of my local Soho House.)

I didn't send a newsletter last week because I was on vacation. Alli and I went to Colorado. We spent a few days in Littleton, where we'd lived for the past five years, to see friends, and then a few days in Buena Vista, where we'd never previously been, to see mountains. All of it was very good.

Anyway I didn't really tell anyone I was on vacation, because I took my laptop and I'd planned to work in the mornings. I was going to write this newsletter and answer my emails normally and all that stuff. Turns out I did work in the mornings, but I was only ever playing catch-up, and by the end of the week I was much further behind than I'd expected. (This is a thing that happens to me so often that my surprise at it can only be put down to stupidity, a cruel level of self-deception, or amnesia).

I'm still mostly playing catch-up, so I'm going to forgo a strategic marketing newsletter today and just send you a thing I'm doing tomorrow. And, self-indulgently, a poem.

I'm holding a branding workshop tomorrow.

It's happening inside of my membership at 4pm EST, it's titled the Build Your Brand Workshop, and it'll cover:

• What brand is / why it matters
• Examples of good artist brands and why they work
• Exercises to build your own brand
• Q&A

Brand is both incredibly nebulous and incredibly important; without a strong brand, most marketing activity is wasted effort, like building a house on sand. If you're interested in getting yours right, you can attend tomorrow's workshop by joining the membership.

(And if you can't attend tomorrow but still want the info, the replay will be posted for members.)

And now here's a poem.

I wrote it in my journal while I probably should've been writing an email, sitting on a rock above Buena Vista and watching the sunrise hit Mount Princeton across the valley. Of course it's way more self-indulgent than good, but I hope quality is less than half the point of poetry, and that the main point is writing it.

Mountain Time

You never have time,
but go into the mountains,
or at least find wilderness
in the gaps of the world,
and sit down like a snapped twig to
decompose.
​
Let the shadow of the
connectedness of all things
swallow your small soul
like a bird eating a bug.
​
Be still as death.
​
Live rejoicing
in your smallness,
since only small people
have hearts big
enough to lose time.
​
And what's time to a mountain, anyway?

***

That's all for today. I hope you find some time and space for something good this week,

– Jon

Jon Anderson Founder @ Two Story Media Self-Indulgent @ Most Things

🫆 100% Human Guarantee I wrote this, not AI. Today's random photo: A sunset. Super cliché, I know, but for good reason.

P.S. – Two weeks ago, I gave my two cents on the ads strategy where you front-load your budget on the first few days of a release. There are pros and cons. You can read it here.