It lands in your inbox and Slack channels not with a crash, but with an ooze and a slurp.
You’ve been hit by an AI slop bomb.
Casually lobbed over by one of your subordinates, or that dotted line that works across the hall.
It took only 30 seconds to produce.
The brief.
The deck.
The workflow.
But for you? It will take hours, or days to unpack and dissect the bloated mess.
When the cost of creating these artifacts is nil, marketing processes gorge and become pathologically obese on their own outputs.
You’ve been pitched “growth loops” and “infinity campaigns”, but what you really need is time:
Time to think.
Time to curate.
Time for restraint – what *not* to build.
Step back and return to strategy.
Don’t abdicate to AI agents, instead, make room for an era of “Mercatura Contemplativa”.
Behind the Sketch
Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist and philosopher, talked about the “obesity” of global communication and information systems. He passed away in 2007, but if he were around, he would likely see AI slop bombs as the “final boss” to his theory.
Byung-Chul Han, a South Korean-born German philosopher advocates for a “vita contemplativa” (contemplative life), which our hyper-action, endless optimization and digital exhaustion have eroded. If Han had any interest at all in MarTech or marketing operations (unlikely), he might call for more “Mercatura Contemplativa” (contemplative marketing) to more humanistically meet corporate goals.
I’ve listed some of my favourite vita contemplativa tools here, which I’ve used to help identify, evaluate and test the market for consulting accelerator projects & product spin-offs. Many of the techniques I outline in the “ideation” and “managing risk” and other sub-pages are fairly universal, and can help you slow down and contemplate.