After these essays we'll be right back...

It's been a minute or two since we last did this. I missed us.

A lot has happened while we were apart. But instead of bore you with the particulars of my absence after publishing the fourth edition of this newsletter and the podcast, how about we skip ahead to the part where I tell you how things are going to go from here on out.

First off, you can expect more episodes of Marketing Under The Influence Volume One 

As the parent of a toddler and a senior content marketer responsible for the organic growth of a small business during a time when organic growth ain't as easy as it used to be, finding time to produce a podcast like Marketing Under The Influence — one that requires script writing, sound design, and all the other elements that make it the most unique podcast in B2B marketing on the market — and publish it on a steady cadence is a lot fucking harder than I anticipated.

It's tempting to cut corners and ship content. But my original vision for Marketing Under The Influence wasn't a podcast but an animated series that immersed us in the stories behind the media that influenced the marketers responsible for the messages we consume today. Doing just a podcast was already a tradeoff. I refuse to concede further aspects that will diminish the quality of my vision.

In fact, I haven't given up on the idea of an animated series and have been talking with creatives about a potential partnership. TBD on that but rest assured the podcast will spin back up once I'm finished putting the rest of Marketing Under The Influence Volume One together — which I should've done in the first place and is why I'm calling it a "volume" and not a "season."

While we wait for more podcast episodes, I will go back to publishing the essays that channeled my frustrations with B2B marketing and distilled my knowledge and experience in (hopefully) interesting ways.

But that's not all!

Sooner or later I'll get around to explaining what I'm trying to do with Neutral Ground Network and Neighborhood. But in the meantime, I wanted to let y'all in on some projects that have been cooking on the back burner and will come out of development this year.

Red ocean content strategy cohort-based course and ebook: Long story short here is that brilliant and more talented people than me have been encouraging me to figure out how to transfer my knowledge and experiences so that others could benefit from applying my approach to content marketing but could never figure out how.

Well, after getting frustrated with people who've been working in content marketing for five years refer to bad advice they learned in 2019 as "the old way" and act like stuff seasoned content veterans like me have been doing for decades as "the new way," I decided to channel my negative energy into a curriculum designed to help brands and creators navigate the paradigm shifts in this so-called new era of content marketing.

The course and ebook are the closest we’ll get to a playbook today. The closest analog I can surmise is Robert KcKee’s Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting — a book and seminar that deconstructs story to its essential elements, revealing the underlying tenets that storytelling masters wield to the benefit of their goals and the audience’s.

Once I get the value prop sorted out, I’m confident the value of these resources will help at least recoup my costs and fund an exploration of what's possible on the frontier of content marketing.

Speaking of the frontiers of content marketing... I’m collaborating with a couple of marketers who want to boldly go where no marketer has gone before.

Untitled Maryia Delano/ADMD and Ronnie Higgins/NGN Collab: It's tempting to go rogue and tell you all the ways this project excites me. But I don't want to give too much away yet. What I will say is that Maryia and I are cooking up something that's very meaningful to us and that we think you'll soon agree.

TBA "This Old Marketing" Collab: This one will go into development after everything else is up and running but feel the need to tease it here because I believe this collaboration will fill a major skills gap in modern marketing. More will be shared as the ingredients start coming together. Stay tuned.

That's everything in the pipeline.

In the meantime, you can expect to some essays coming your way after this hits your inbox.

Until then,

♥️ Ronnie