Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

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It did not take long. Even before getting into office, Donald Trump fired the opening shots in a new trade war. On November 25th America’s president-elect posted on social media that he would add an extra tariff of 10% on Chinese goods. But the shock was news of tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico as soon as he returned to the White House. These, he thundered, would remain in place until the two countries clamped down on drugs and migrants illegally crossing the border.

If they are imposed, the tariffs will hurt American consumers most of all. The North American supply chain is integrated; nearly $1trn-worth of goods crossed the northern and southern borders of the United States last year. Half of America’s fruit and vegetables come from its two neighbours. And more than half the pickup trucks sold by GM and Stellantis in the United States are made in Canada or Mexico, which is why the firms’ share prices fell by 9% and 5%, respectively, on the day after Mr Trump’s announcement. Goldman Sachs thinks the tariffs could raise core consumer prices, which exclude food and energy, by as much as 0.9%.

No one knows how much Mr Trump sees tariffs as negotiating tools, and how much he wants to turn away from trade. It might therefore be tempting to breathe a sigh of relief that these tariffs are a theatrical way to gain leverage.   The trouble, though, is that you cannot bank on any of this. Mr Trump could still seek to re-engineer the global trading system using steeper and wider-ranging tariffs. 

Moreover, if Mr Trump routinely uses the threat of tariffs whenever he wants countries to do his bidding, they could spiral out of control. Mexico has warned of retaliation. And the more tariff threats are repeated, the greater the danger of miscalculation. If threats are never carried through, they will lose their power. Ultimately that is likely to force Mr Trump to show that he means what he says.

For decades the benefits of global trade were so widely accepted that retaliatory tariffs were limited to trade disputes. Today free trade has depressingly few advocates, and tariffs are used willy-nilly. Even if Mr Trump intends them only as a negotiating tactic, the fear that the gains from trade might easily be frittered away will hang over the world economy.

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President Biden’s administration will end within two months, and likely to depart with him is Arati Prabhakar, the top mind for science and technology in his cabinet. She has served as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy since 2022 and was the first to demonstrate ChatGPT to the president in the Oval Office. Prabhakar was instrumental in passing the president’s executive order on AI in 2023, which sets guidelines for tech companies to make AI safer and more transparent (though it relies on voluntary participation). 

The incoming Trump administration has not presented a clear thesis of how it will handle AI, but plenty of people in it will want to see that executive order nullified. Trump said as much in July, endorsing the 2024 Republican Party Platform that says the executive order “hinders AI innovation and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.” Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has said he would support such a move.  However, complicating that narrative will be Elon Musk, who for years has expressed fears about doomsday AI scenarios, and has been supportive of some regulations aiming to promote AI safety. 

As she prepares for the end of the administration, the author sat down with Prabhakar and asked her to reflect on President Biden’s AI accomplishments, and how AI risks, immigration policies, the CHIPS Act and more could change under Trump.  For the scope consideration, we shared here this reflection in context of AI risks only.

Every time a new AI model comes out, there are concerns about how it could be misused. As you think back to what were hypothetical safety concerns just two years ago, which ones have come true?

We identified a whole host of risks when large language models burst on the scene, and the one that has fully manifested in horrific ways is deepfakes and image-based sexual abuse. We’ve worked with our colleagues at the Gender Policy Council to urge industry to step up and take some immediate actions, which some of them are doing. There are a whole host of things that can be done—payment processors could actually make sure people are adhering to their Terms of Use. They don’t want to be supporting [image-based sexual abuse] and they can actually take more steps to make sure that they’re not. There’s legislation pending, but that’s still going to take some time.

Have there been risks that didn’t pan out to be as concerning as you predicted?

At first there was a lot of concern expressed by the AI developers about biological weapons. When people did the serious benchmarking about how much riskier that was compared with someone just doing Google searches, it turns out, there’s a marginally worse risk, but it is marginal. If you haven’t been thinking about how bad actors can do bad things, then the chatbots look incredibly alarming. But you really have to say, compared to what?

For many people, there’s a knee-jerk skepticism about the Department of Defense or police agencies going all in on AI. I’m curious what steps you think those agencies need to take to build trust.

If consumers don’t have confidence that the AI tools they’re interacting with are respecting their privacy, are not embedding bias and discrimination, that they’re not causing safety problems, then all the marvelous possibilities really aren’t going to materialize. Nowhere is that more true than national security and law enforcement.

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Around the world in 2024, voters chose change: in South Africa, France, Britain, and Japan. But nowhere does the anti-incumbent trend matter more than in the United States. The global uncertainty created by an oscillation of power between left and right—from Barack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden and back to Trump—in the world’s only military superpower has again left political and business leaders in every region of the world scrambling to spot opportunities and risk.

The 2016 election of Trump was a surprise to allies and adversaries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and beyond, but it came in the context of relative international stability. His comeback victory comes in a dramatically more unstable—and dangerous—geopolitical environment. Trump must manage two wars and a U.S. relationship with China that has grown much more confrontational.

For business leaders navigating the next four years, there are critical questions that must be answered.

Are we heading into a trade war with China?  Trump’s primary interest in China remains in its massive bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. Trump has said he will levy significant tariffs against Beijing and against third countries through which Chinese-manufactured goods enter the U.S. For now, it appears China will counter with a tit-for-tat response of some kind, even if it further slows China’s already tepid economic growth.  Trump is also unlikely to manage relations with Taiwan as carefully as President Biden has, and Beijing will not hesitate to push back when Taiwan is at issue.

Will Europe remain united over Ukraine?  The trade pressure, combined with the uncertainty over Ukraine, could force Europeans together in solidarity—or it could lead individual European governments to seek side deals with Washington, meant to lessen the individual economic burdens they’re now carrying.

Will Trump calm the Middle East, or escalate its wars?  Trump could work on normalization to of ties between Israel and the Saudis, which would be an economic and security win for both countries. For now, Saudi officials continue to insist that any such deal would depend on creation of a Palestinian state, a nonstarter for the vast majority of Israelis. Trump is the leader best placed to test Saudi resolve on that question.    In Gaza, the violence is more likely to continue, since Israelis are far more determined to “break” Hamas than Hezbollah, and Trump is unlikely to advocate for the creation of a Palestinian state or even an improvement in Gaza’s humanitarian crises.  Another question swirling ahead of America’s regime change: Will Israel and the U.S. go to war with Iran?

How will the Global South fare?  Trump’s economic policies will strengthen the dollar and increase inflation, leaving developing countries under even more economic pressure.

What will Trump mean for the U.S.’s North American neighbors?  Mexico and Canada, America’s biggest trade partners after China, know they will face more economic pressure from Trump 2.0.

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Agreat aviator is constantly aware of their surroundings. Watching for changes in the weather and in the paths of other aircraft is vital. The same is true for being a great CEO, which is why the business press is full of information about what’s happening in the business environment: geopolitics, regulatory changes, inflation, generative AI, and so on.

Equally important for a pilot’s success is understanding their aircraft and its avionics: checking fuel levels and flight plan progress, testing safety systems, and keeping an eye on engine performance. To ensure a successful trip, pilots utilize checklists before, during, and after the flight. For CEOs, the same should hold true. However, when doing research for their New York Times best-selling book, CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest (Scribner/Simon & Schuster, March 2022), the authors found that no such checklists existed for the role of the most senior leader. Sure, CEOs have an abundance of financial, operational, and organizational metrics to look at, but what CEOs should be doing to influence those metrics wasn’t exactly clear.

Over the past two years of talking with CEOs about their findings, the authors have been struck by how many have asked for an “in flight” checklist. In response, the authors have crystalized how the mindsets that underpin CEO Excellence translate into practice in each of the six responsibilities of the CEO’s role: setting direction, aligning the organization, mobilizing through leaders, engaging the board, connecting with stakeholders, and managing personal effectiveness. In doing so, theyr have drawn on in-depth interviews with more than 70 of the most successful current and former CEOs of the 21st century, including the likes of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.  The result is 18-question checklist grouped according to the mindset.

1. Direction-setting checklist: Be bold.  Vision: Do we have a clear and compelling vision that reframes what winning looks like, and is it owned by the whole enterprise?  Strategy: Have we created a short list of clearly defined big moves at the enterprise level that will distance us from our competitors?  Resource allocation: Are we ‘thinking like an outsider’ to actively reallocate resources (such as dollars, people, and management attention) to our highest priorities, even when it’s hard to do?  
2. Organizational-alignment checklist: Treat the soft stuff as the hard stuff.  Culture: Are we targeting and systematically pursuing specific areas of cultural change to further execute our strategy?  Organizational design: Is our organization characterized by a balance of stability and agility that maximizes the speed and effectiveness of execution?  Talent: Are the most value-creating roles in our organization filled with the right talent, and do they have a strong leadership pipeline?  
3. Leadership mobilization checklist: Solve for the team’s psychology.  Team composition: Is my senior team the right size, comprising people with complementary skills and characterized by an ‘enterprise first’ mindset?  Teamwork: Does my senior team effectively use data and dialogue to make timely decisions on topics that only they can take on?  Operating rhythm: Does my senior team have an effective annual operating rhythm and business review cadence that drives execution and minimizes surprises?  
4. Board engagement checklist: Help directors help the business.  Relationships: Have I built trust with my board members by being ‘radically transparent’ and showing an interest in their views?  Capabilities: Do we have the right profiles on the board, and are we sufficiently educating directors and pulling them in to help where they can?  Board meetings: Are board sessions well prepped, effectively run, and focused on the future (going well beyond fiduciary topics)?  
5. External-stakeholder-connection checklist: Start with ‘Why?’  Purpose: Are we clear on the holistic impact we aspire to (our ‘why?’), and have we embedded that into the core of how we run our business?  Interactions: Do we fully understand our stakeholders’ needs (their ‘why?’) and find constructive common ground with them?  Moments of truth: Have we built resilience ahead of any potential crises so that we’ll be able to mitigate their impact and use them to unlock opportunities?
6. Personal-effectiveness checklist: Do what only you can do.  Time and energy: Do I manage my time and energy well, and do I have the right office support in place to help me successfully and sustainably do what only I can do as the CEO?  Leadership model: Am I leading in a way that is authentic to my convictions and values while also adjusting my behaviors to what the organization needs?  Perspective: Do I approach my position with humility, focusing on helping others to succeed and continually improving my ability to do so?

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Despite the recent upheaval with Covid, the fundamentals haven’t changed in the fast-food industry in the past 50 years, says Jack Cowin, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, the privately held group behind some of the country’s biggest fast-food chains.

“Food has got to be hot, drinks have got to be cold and the service has got to be with a smile,” adds Cowin, one of Australia’s richest men with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, speaking on the sidelines of the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Bangkok in November.

Hungry Jack’s, a Burger King franchise in Australia—the name Burger King had already been trademarked by a local restaurant—is one of the largest fast-food chains in Australia, by both store count and revenue, which Cowin grew from a single store in Perth to over 440 stores today.

The chain has defied a trend that saw people, hit by higher costs of living, spending less on eating out. Australia’s fast-food and takeaway industry has grown at an annualized 1.3% over the past five years to hit an estimated $25.3 billion in 2024, per global market research firm IbisWorld. In the year ended June 30, Competitive Foods saw an 18% jump in revenue to A$2.4 billion from the previous year as net profit edged up to A$74.1 million, according to a filing with the market regulator.

Still, how the business is managed has changed, Cowin says. A shift to drive-through and takeaway alongside rising building costs and red tape has seen store size shrink by about 20% on average. “It’s a balancing act,” says Cowin, noting that costs have to be passed on to maintain profitability, so the real challenge is how to get sales up.

He’s been outspoken about rewarding employees on a profit-share basis to get better results. “Primarily it’s a people business,” he says. The principle is to take care of the people who have the most contact with the customer, he commented later at the conference, “because they have the greatest likelihood of having the correct impact on the business.” Hungry Jack’s store managers can now make as much as A$200,000-A$300,000 a year, triple the average salary from a few years ago.

“Largely our strategy has been, how do you build, how do you reinvest into what you got,” he emphasizes, which has seen Competitive Foods plowing A$75 million back into Hungry Jack’s each year. “Why we have been successful is because we have had 50 odd years of reinvesting back into the business.”

Today, the privately held group has invested over A$500 million ($325.4 million) in an overseas portfolio that includes Canadian restaurant group SIR Corp, Kansas City transport provider Railcrew Xpress, and Houston-based construction-safety and maintenance firm Apache Industrial, which has some 40 facilities across the U.S. His investment strategy: “How do I make you bigger and stronger and more dominant than what you are as an independent company?” says Cowin, which is reflective of the group’s wider approach.

The 82-year-old has no plans to list either, eschewing dividends in favor of retaining cash on hand to expand. “The primary focus in business is to not get yourself into a position where, if something goes wrong, you can get taken out of the game,” Cowin says. “Rule one in business is don’t go broke.”

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AI is changing the cost and availability of expertise, and that will fundamentally alter how businesses organize and compete. At its most basic level a business can be considered a differentiated bundle of expertise organized to accomplish specific tasks. Expertise—which can be defined as a combination of deep theoretical knowledge and practical know-how in a specific domain—can take many forms within a business. 

Companies create value by applying their expertise efficiently at scale to solve problems for their customers. Typically they possess it in a variety of areas, but most differentiate themselves through their unique proficiency in just a handful of activities that are fundamental to how they create competitive advantage.

The evolution of expertise defines the evolution of business. Given the unrelenting nature of competition, companies must continually improve how they deploy expertise to remain relevant. We’ve seen the competitive advantage of many incumbents erode when new expertise becomes critical for success in a market.

Remaining on the frontier of expertise in important areas is critical to any company’s success. Technological progress creates two fundamental forces that complicate that challenge.  First, the overall body of expertise in the world is constantly expanding, making it harder to stay at the leading edge in every relevant area. Second, the cost of accessing expertise is constantly falling. Although that can benefit existing companies, it can also lower the barriers for new entrants.  The authors believe that the interplay between these two factors—the increasing amount of expertise required to create value and the decreasing cost of accessing that expertise—shapes companies and affects the scope of their operations. 

Friedrich Hayek, a contemporary of Coase’s, believed that markets and price systems would be more effective than companies at accessing and managing dispersed knowledge in society. Since the 1980s several technological innovations have led companies to rely more and more on markets to access expertise far broader and deeper than what could practically exist within a single entity. Those that use third-party business and technology platform services have been able to narrow the scope of their in-house expertise, allowing internal resources to focus on the areas that drive their competitive differentiation.  Developments in communications technology have played an important role in this transition. 

We are at an early stage in the AI era, and the technology is evolving extremely quickly. Providers are rapidly introducing AI “copilots,” “bots,” and “assistants” into applications to augment employees’ workflows. Although the quality of expertise embedded in such tools is already relatively high, the amount of it continues to grow swiftly while the cost of accessing it decreases.  Companies that take advantage of AI will benefit from what the author call the triple product: more-efficient operations, more-productive workforces, and growth with a sharper vision and focus.

If companies derive value from providing a differentiated bundle of expertise, how can they continue to be relevant when improvements in AI’s core capabilities make some or all of that expertise more easily available to competitors and customers? What is the basis for value capture in an era of abundant expertise?  The authors believe that every company will need to reevaluate its strategy in this changing era and will have to ask itself three questions.  Which aspects of the problem we now solve for customers will customers use AI to solve themselves?  Which types of expertise that we currently possess will need to evolve most if we are to remain ahead of AI’s capabilities?  And which assets can we build or augment to enhance our ability to stay competitive as AI advances?

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Brian Kelly, also known as the Points Guy, built a small empire out of working the system, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s also an expert at gaming restaurant reservations. 

When the former Morgan Stanley recruiter started the Points Guy blog in 2010, his audience was the equivalent of extreme couponers, but for hotels and flights instead of bulk groceries. “Points people”—competitive, slightly nerdy, obsessive about getting the best deals and eternally online—soon began flocking to the site, which made money through affiliate marketing. Next came an app and a points valuation calculator. In more than a decade at it, Kelly has grown his hobby into a website, online community and consulting business.  According to him he started with a $10 domain and a WordPress blog, so to be what it is now and to still be profitable and growing is incredible.

The typical points person today is what finance professionals dub a “Henry”—high earner, not rich yet—Kelly explains, pointing to the thirtysomethings next to us indulging in lavish meals on a Tuesday at noon. “It’s people who are working in good jobs and want to travel but just don’t have $10,000 to spend on flights,” he says.

But air travel and points these days aren’t just optimizing for that first-class upgrade or bonus resort getaway. Travelers are dealing with melting-down airline technology and crumbling planes. They’re having to contend with travel companies that are pinching them after they’ve spent years accumulating loyalty points—so much so that in September the US Department of Transportation began probing the four largest US carriers’ points programs on the devaluation of earned rewards, hidden or dynamic pricing, extra fees, and reduced competition and choice.

All this chaos and confusion isn’t great for travelers, but it is for Kelly, who’ll publish his first book, How to Win at Travel, in February. There he’ll set out to prove he’s more than just a points evangelist, recasting himself as a consumer advocate helping travelers fight back against an establishment designed to take advantage of them. He’s also taking on Airbnb Inc. with a curated vacation rentals platform as part of a collaboration with former Points Guy exec John Sutton. The venture, called Journey, will feature home rentals and boutique hotels that users can book with points accumulated through its own loyalty program. Journey also plans a credit card for frequent travelers.

Although the 41-year-old describes himself as an “Instagram boy,” he recognizes the importance of meeting consumers where they’re at—and right now that’s TikTok. The Points Guy account, which has about 750,000 followers, is filled with videos of Kelly going on tours of new airport lounges, giving tips like using AirTags to locate bags or discussing how potential credit card legislation would affect consumers.

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No one ever said leadership was easy. But in recent years, as with so many jobs, being a leader has, in fact, become harder. Leaders rush from meeting to meeting feeling like lunchroom attendants for an unruly junior high. With exponentially escalating business complexity; diminished civility; and intrusive, pervasive technological interruptions, you may feel like it’s barely possible to keep order, let alone lead employees on an inspiring journey.

Four specific areas that most leaders care about have genuinely become more difficult in the past few years: 

1. Leader as Cheerleader: Hyping Up Your Team.  The basics of keeping your team energized haven’t changed. But the environment in which you’re doing so certainly has. Work in 2024 has been noisy. For instance, the average worker receives 121 emails a day.  Those messages could be morale-destroying, truly exciting, or anywhere in between — and don’t even get employees started on dealing with the oversharers and negativity-dispensers in group chat (and private group chats).  What to do: Continue your “ground game” for keeping the team’s spirits up, in a way that’s authentic to you. But adapt your approach to fight the clutter and the conflicting messages around you. Relentlessly join in the conversation wherever it occurs — and be punchy. A quick, funny GIF, a one-line email, or a two-minute conversation at someone’s desk can all be effective, if that’s where folks are listening. In general, think shorter, more frequent communication, varied across more channels. You can’t be everywhere, but you can make your personal warmth felt in bursts.
2. Leader as Detective: Getting to the Truth.  A proliferation of data of questionable quality, housed within a host of competing systems,just confuses many people.  What to do: Think like a data scientist — not in the sense of learning to code or performing advanced analytics, but in the sense of asking better questions of information, in a structured and methodical way. Don’t be afraid to ask where data came from, what the gaps in a data set might be, or what kinds of analytics were performed to get to the numbers you’re seeing. Come in with a hypothesis and see if it proves out rather than just taking the numbers at face value.
3. Leader as General: Focusing on Strategy.  Even if you can work through the complexity of a multistrategy environment where strategies stack atop each other precariously, keeping strategy execution on track amid constantly changing data stories and general initiative overload is a Herculean labor — or, worse, maybe a Sisyphean one.  What to do: Strategy requires space, so give strategic work some oxygen. Clear time among an endless array of tactical meetings to check on how your strategy is doing. Strategy is not a dog that needs to be walked twice a day, but it might be a plant that has to be watered a few times a week.  Color-coding your calendar against your strategic objectives can help keep you honest — though the results may alarm you at times. The brute-force metric of how much time you spend on strategy is perhaps the only way to hold tight to your objectives, day to day and week to week.
4. Leader as Human Being: Staying Sane Yourself.  Back to those burnt-out managers and leaders: Perhaps the signature challenge of leadership today is just maintaining your own mental well-being. It’s hard to truly support and energize the people around you when you’re completely drained yourself.  What to do: given that we’ve reached a point where more than half of the managers in the U.S. are suffering from burnout — and even CEOs are marching out of the corner office — it’s clear that the issue is systemic in nature. It’s not addressable with scented candles. Treating yourself to a chocolate muffin will not suffice.  Instead, leaders need to pick their battles at work, focusing on what must get done, and draw their boundaries alongside work — defending what cannot be sacrificed in their lives in the name of getting their must-do’s done. You get bonus points, obviously, for fixing the broken work of your team. When you do this, you support the sanity of the people around you.

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If you want to stand out in a sea of sameness as an entrepreneur, it’s imperative that you bring a distinct brand to the market. And if you want to do that, you need to deliver a better narrative—a better story—than your competitors. Your brand story must speak directly to your target market and provide something unique and compelling that sets you apart.  Here are seven keys to creating and growing a distinct brand that’s built to last.

1. Engage with your audience.  Your customers are your brand’s best source of knowledge. Ask them for feedback. What do they expect to see? What’s missing for them? Knowing what they want and what they don’t want allows you to better align your products and communications with their needs, thereby instilling loyalty and trust.
2. Stay ahead of trends.  Business changes rapidly and if you want to stay up to date with what is going on in the market, you need to be in touch. Look for holes in the market and use your gut instinct to pick out an opportunity.
3. Build your own audience.  Building your own audience is more critical now than ever in the world of social media and digital marketing. Don’t try to push the story away but instead, communicate with your customers or clients directly. This way you build an active audience to help your brand grow.
4. Know how your financials work.  It’s important to build a strong financial base for any business. If you’re lacking in a financial background, you need to partner with someone who has that expertise. Good money management will help your brand not only survive but thrive over time.
5. Learn how to sell.  Sales is something that every business owner needs to go through firsthand. It is a hands-on learning about resilience, flexibility, and how to communicate effectively with customers. These talents are the keys to establishing a brand that feels relatable and real.
6. Surround yourself with positivity.  Branding is not easy, so surround yourself with positive and supportive people that have faith in what you’re building. Don’t give in to critical people. They’ll zap your energy.
7. Take care of yourself—and your team.  Self-care is the kind of medicine we could all use more of. Keep your health at the forefront to keep your personal and professional success going. Work on your weak spots and build your team around your strong points. By solving blind spots within your team, you’ll build a balanced group that will propel your brand to new heights.

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In an increasingly crowded digital landscape, there’s more content than ever vying for audiences’ attention.   That’s a lot of marketers creating a lot of content, and for good reason. According to Aspiration Marketing, content marketing can increase customer lifetime value by up to 70%. When it seems like everyone is playing the game, how can you get your content to stand out?

The key is to be ultra-selective. And, as always, it starts with your audience. You want to develop a deep understanding of who you’re serving and then tailor your output to their distinct needs. Some basic — but essential — pointers on crafting content that builds trust and affinity with your market are:

The risks of producing content without strategy.  Have you ever come across branded content that feels out of step with its brand voice, like a fashion company blogging about the best food in Manhattan or a literature publisher weighing in on pet grooming?  This can happen when your brand lacks a content strategy that outlines topics and formats that best serve your audience. Without a plan to keep content focused on customers, you risk wasting your business’s resources (and audience’s time) on low-quality material that doesn’t resonate.  Furthermore, without a long-term plan, you also risk crafting generalized content that doesn’t address your audience’s specific questions or pain points, leaving readers disinterested and confused. A strong content strategy is a lens through which you can quickly and consistently assess whether a content idea is worth pursuing. Over time, these strategic content decisions create a cohesive brand narrative.

Simple steps to developing an effective content strategy.  Strategy can be intimidating, but the steps to developing strategic content are fairly straightforward. It’s all about getting clear on the outcome you’re driving toward — and working backwards from there: define your goals, research target audiences, audit existing content, select the right content formats, create a content calendar, and adopt a new web address. 

Key questions to guide content production.  To help determine whether your current content output and ideas align with your content strategy, consider answering these questions before starting a piece of content:  Who is your target audience(s)?  How far along are they in the buying journey?  What is your topic and goal?  Where will you publish your content?  Which formats will you use?  It’s not rocket science — but it’s amazing how frequently brands publish materials without considering these basic questions. Don’t be one of them!

Good strategy makes content effective.  The best strategies are built on a knowledge framework, starting with understanding your customers and their needs. You also must define your goals to know where your marketing strategy needs to take you.