Diary of a Fractional CMO

June 4, 2026

Are you Danni or Kylie?

This isn’t another defensive AI-can’t-do-what-we-can-do post. AI is effing incredible, but if you want to differentiate, sound a bit ‘extra’ then ask: have you just slipped into reproducing the sound without the personality?

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November 1, 2020

The young ones

Little old Cliff Richard is 80.“From the moment I heard Elvis I knew that’s what I wanted to do, but I didn’t think this far ahead…” he said on the One Show this week. Well Cliff, how would you?

October 24, 2020

Let’s talk turkey

Have you heard? Turkeys are shrinking for Christmas. With smaller gatherings on the cards thanks to the government’s ‘rule of six’, farmers are having to reduce the size of the birds.

October 17, 2020

Anyone for a Mr Whippy?

There a saying in dating parlance: “Don’t give away the van when you could be selling the ice creams”. In in other words: don’t sleep with someone on a first date. Not sure about dating, but it’s a good approach to marketing.

October 9, 2020

553 people are reading this email

Remember how we laughed out loud at David’s Cameron’s interpretation of LOL as ‘lots of love’. OMG. I thought it was that too, for a while. Another trendy acronym (I love how untrendy the word trendy is) is FOMO. Fear of missing out.

October 3, 2020

Give me an E. Give me an S. Give me a G.

Do you remember when ‘the environment’ first hit the scene? In its Save the Dolphins t-shirt 🐬 and a layer of Body Shop cruelty-free lip balm 🥝 (kiwi fruit flavour of course).

September 25, 2020

We all have blue hair now

Do you remember how easy it used to be rebel? A tattoo. A nose ring. Ripped jeans. But for Millennials or Gen X-ers having blue hair now is likely to make you fit in rather than stand out. You’d probably get more attention wearing jeans and t-shirt.

September 21, 2020

How you doing?

It’s important to have an intimate relationship with your clients. You know it, my beautician knows it. That’s why she remembers things about me my own mother doesn’t know. When I bought my flat, when I launched my business, the name of my first pet.

September 12, 2020

The suit is dead. Long live the suit

Has Covid-19 wiped out the suit? Even if we’re shirted from the waist up while on our Zoom calls, we’re more than likely to be stretchy panted down below. But… those poor suits. I’m a little sad for them.

September 6, 2020

Back to school special

Can you feel it? A slight cooling of the air, the breeze through the trees, the silk inside a chestnut shell?The grass is jewelled.Jet planes meet in the air to be refuelled.All those things we know so well.

August 30, 2020

I’m a lockdown cliche

I’ve done up my garden, bought a puppy and made around 103 banana breads. It’s the new-found enjoyment from gardening that’s surprised me the most because I’m such a townie. I’ve realised all you need to feel connected to something is a little bit of knowledge about it.

August 21, 2020

You’ve got mail

I’ve had the same personal email since 1998. Faithl@email.com if you want to chat. Except don’t, because I won’t be able to reply at the moment. Due to technical issue I’m on another laptop without some of my passwords.

August 14, 2020

Harder than haemorrhoid cream: selling financial planning

The value of ongoing planning is particularly difficult to put across. How do you show people why they should keep paying for it? Especially when what you’re helping people with is invisible. And particularly when you’re encouraging them to stick to the plan and do nothing.

August 9, 2020

Greetings from Barbados

Let’s face it, I could be anywhere and you wouldn’t know. Because I’ve set up this email to automatically go out while I’m away from my desk.And that, my friends, is just the tip of the tip of the flake when it comes to marketing automation.

August 3, 2020

It’s Bon Jovi day

Oh sure, it’s great to be able to do everything online now isn’t it, so cheap, so cool, so scalable. But what do you do when everyone else is online too? Flipping heck, even the Argos Catalogue has gone digital. How are we supposed to stand out now?

July 27, 2020

The quickest way to earn trust

What do you think of when you think of the word ‘trust’? I often think of trust in terms of a glass-half-empty approach to life, as in ‘I trust them not to scam me/make a copy of my keys and break into my house at night/steal my laptop while I go to the loo in Starbucks.’

July 17, 2020

Writing tips from Daniel Day Lewis

Writing about your product or service is often a bit of a tightrope between talking passionately about what you do and boring the pants off your audience. Sometimes you have to delete what you’re personally really pleased with and start all over again.