Mr. Edutainment (Adam Fairhead) writes daily notes (since 2017) about making and marketing your ideas, creativity, storytelling, and leading a creative-led business for over 20 years. Artist and family man at heart.
I sold my DJ equipment last week.
It was really emotional, seeing it go. Original vinyl equipment, beautifully looked after.
Sad, but mixed with a sense of optimism that they’ll see live music halls again in the future.
I’m not done with music. But I wasn’t serving that equipment by holding it back from experiencing more environments it was made for. As my mediums are now online, with cartoons and playable experiences, it was time to say goodbye to the decks.
As creatives, we should honor our tools, and give them the opportunity to create great things. And we should honor ourselves, and give ourselves the opportunity to create the right things for us.
Creating is always an intimate experience with our tools, so it’s hard to say goodbye when we part ways with tools we love. But we have to say goodbye eventually, and it being difficult is a sign we’re deeply invested in our craft.
Thanks for everything, decks. Fly.
Disney’s greatest work came from when animators led the company, making and selling cartoons, profitably, so that they can make and sell more cartoons, which made fans happy.
Like a car that produces its own gasoline while driven.
Disney became “safe and boring” when businessmen led the company, making and selling cartoons, profitably, so that they could make returns for investors, which made those investors happy.
Like a car that keeps stalling due to its own gasoline being redirected from the engine before it gets a chance to combust.
The sad thing is, the former version would probably be a safer investment.
This isn’t shade on Disney.
It’s a reminder to let artists lead.
Something that’s always irked me about online education:
Education is not the same thing as “giving the answers”.
If “giving the answers” were it, school would last one day. One big pile of books with answers in them. Done.
But that’s not an education. That’s just a pile of information.
Education is where teachers create the conditions for learning to happen. The student does the work, and learning is the byproduct.
If you want to learn, you need to learn forward and participate, wrestle with challenges, and find success through your own efforts. Yes, even online.
If you want to improve code, ask a machine, or a person who can think like a machine. That’s what programmers do.
If you want to improve art, ask an artist, or a person who can communicate through images and sounds. That’s what artists do.
What you probably don’t want to do, is try to improve art by thinking like a machine.
Because while code gets better when it conforms to spec like things that came before it, art does not.
This is why we see so many tech firms dumbfounded by the pushback around generative visuals, wondering why people “feel nothing” when, to a machine, it looks the same.
Because it doesn’t feel the same.
For creative spirits building sustainable brands, I think one of the most important “laws” in the book, “The 48 Laws of Power” is ““Do Not Go Past The Mark You Aimed For”.
Without that law, we’re lulled by VC-flavored culture of “bigger is better”. More followers, products, revenue… “more”.
We’re tricked into thinking a webpage isn’t worth taking the time to make enjoyable for readers, like this comic-strip product update from Teenage Engineering. Nevermind that it invests in the culture of their crowd, further endearing current-and-future buyers to the brand. Why bother when you could just have a sterile, AI-generated update page instead?
We’re tricked into thinking a restaurant shouldn’t stop at one location, like The Den in Shibuya Tokyo. Nevermind that its known the world over for their strongly-held beliefs about Omotenashi (hospitality) that are precisely why people talk about it in the first place. Why bother being loved when you can just have a copy-paste experience just like everywhere else instead?
Remember the mark you aimed for.
Don’t trade it for what others think you should have aimed for.
It’s a lousy trade that costs your dreams.
Silly is underestimated by serious people.
And that’s pretty silly.
Silly is seen as careless, empty, clownish, or something “the intern that didn’t stick around” brought to the table.
Silly should be seen as playful (like people we like), confident (like people we like), energizing (like people we like), and remark-able (like products and ideas we like).
Mascots. Charming error pages. Product demos that feel like tiny adventures rather than slidedecks. Cartoons that use inside-jokes and culture to make their points faster than whitepapers, while building relational equity along the way. A founder that doesn’t look like every other founder on LinkedIn ever.
We want our brands to have personalities like people our audience would like to be around. We want our brands to share products and ideas like those our audience would like to be around.
Perhaps it’s time to take silly seriously.
“Content” can be a nasty little word sometimes.
It reduces creativity to “something that goes into something else.” Jam in a jamjar, or dog waste in a plastic bag, doesn’t matter. “Content.”
So what is a “content creator”? Someone who fills things with other things. They create evidence of measured output.
Compare that to “artist”. What’s an artist? Someone who creates works of art. They create evidence of care, creativity, and a point of view.
On that basis, what do you want more of to represent your work and reasons to check it out?
Evidence of measured output?
Or evidence of care, creativity, and a point of view?
Since knowledge creation is accelerating at such a rate, it surfaces a question we should have been focused on more in the past:
What’s worth knowing?
We used to read more books, listen to more podcasts, read yet more books, more more… because more knowledge is… better?
But now, it isn’t.
In 2026, ~10% of active web pages are AI generated. ~50% of published articles are AI generated. 79% of images posted on visual social platforms are AI generated. Even 57.5% of web requests (ie people reading this stuff) are bots. The machines are outnumbering us in both creation and consumption.
It leaves us with the question: what’s actually worth consuming, now?
The answer may be to re-read the things you already have that are making a measurable difference, just to meditate on their ideas.
The answer may be to be hyper-critical of your sources, moreso than ever.
Or to distill your learning to the highest quality options.
Or to the ones that suit your personality best.
Or are designed to move you.
Or some combination of the above.
It’s time to be more discerning. Machines took over the median, the average. That’s not where humans belong. Not anymore.
Never been more excited to be involved in the education space than I am now.
“You need to let little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.” — Andy Warhol
I found this in a book, “Life in the Sloth Lane, Slow down and smell the hibiscus”, a coffee table book we have on… our coffee table (my wife loves sloths).
It may be true of sloths.
It may also be true of Apple, when they decided to make the Apple II.
Or maybe of Teenage Engineering, when they decided to make the OP-1 Synthesizer.
Or maybe of Braun, when they decided to make the (silent) AB 1 alarm clock.
Or maybe you, when you decide to pursue that niche interest with such infectious enthusiasm, that we can’t wait to try it just so we can get infected, too.
Infected is a good word for it. Infect people.
Why did Apple’s latest Mac Mini ad create such a stir?
People thought it was AI generated, but it wasn’t.
Apple showed the world a behind-the-scenes video exposing the production process.
Some cheered for human creativity.
Others sneered, saying AI could have done it, trying with their own tokens.
I know which “side” I’m on, but the “side” isn’t the point.
The point is: it being human-made made it remark-able. If it was generated, it would not be.
And commercial creative’s job is to be remark-able.
I talk to quite a lot of entrepreneurs.
You’d be surprised how many are very, very, very distracted.
“Should I get that other smartphone? I’ll watch hours of reviews about it.”
“Should I get a Mac mini for local LLMs? I’ll spend weeks reading reviews about it.”
“Should I be getting into watches or something? I see people on Twitter doing it.”
“I should stay ahead of the competition by watching more video podcast interviews.”
What’s much rarer, I find, is folks simply staying focused on their own thing.
Falling in love with the place they work, the thing they’re building, the future they can make with their hands.
And that’s great news: the bar is low for you. Focus up, champ.
Build in affiliation and status into your project.
Folks have lots of reasons to buy, go to, or join something…
But behind those reasons often lies affiliation and status.
Why do people buy iPhones? Affiliation with the blue-bubble crowd and other Apple enthusiasts. Status of feeling like a modern, creative professional who can afford it.
Why do people buy things from Mr. Edutainment? Affiliation with others who think growth should be fun, and aspiration alignment in pursuit of a fresh exciting brand of their own. Status of wanting being seen as someone for whom their ongoing development is high priority, career prestige, and ahead of the game in modern leadership.
Why do people buy your thing? There may be some clues in your your answer to those two ingredients.
“Thanks for the thoughtful questions, and for the quick response!”
I copy-paste’d this from an email I received the other day. It stood out to me because I hear it a lot.
It’s a reminder:
1: Most people don’t ask thoughtful questions. If they did, it wouldn’t be worth making a remark about.
2: Most people don’t respond quickly. If they did, it wouldn’t be worth making a remark about.
When you truly care about what you’re making, you show up to it with care, regularly.
Thoughtful questions and quick responses are, you might say, natural expressions of those things.
There’s a bonus reminder:
3: The bar is low. Most simply don’t care enough, regularly enough.
If they did, it wouldn’t be worth making a remark about.
Someone asked me, “Do you ever think about having a day off from publishing daily?”
Which rhymed with a question I had before, “Do you keep it up daily because you’d hate to break your streak?”
The funny thing is, neither!
Publishing daily has two benefits:
1: Having ideas to share daily exercises your idea-having muscle. I like to keep that muscle strong. I write scripts, build worlds and curriculum, make experiences… these are all things that benefit from a strong idea-having muscle!
2: Shipping is a habit that is easily broken. If you fall out of the habit — maybe shipping something every couple of days instead of daily — you’ve already halved your “exercise” and output.
Daily is better.
If you’re a competitive, testosterone-fuelled go-getter, you may never have visited the Sanrio website before.
Give it a quick peek.
On it, beyond the cute characters, you’ll see endless — endless — collaborations.
With brands you might deem competitors (like Tokidoki). With brands you might think are vying for the same discretionary dollars (like Loungefly). With brands you might think have nothing to do with a Hello Kitty audience (like Formula 1).
And yet there they are. Why?
Too many brands think that great experiences are zero sum games. That for us to win, they must lose.
But Sanrio disproves this outright: instead of competing, we can collaborate. We can make things together, and actively promote those joint ventures to our respective audiences. Each audience becomes aware of the other, each grows, and everyone finds something they like. Everybody wins.
Next time you think about your competitors, think of them as future collaborators. Watch what it does to the way you show up in the market.
“For Crocs, Niles represents a long-term strategy in storytelling meant to deepen the emotional connection with consumers in ways that extend beyond any single product launch, campaign or collaboration. Niles is more than a mascot – he is a character with his own personality, voice, perspective and ambitions,” — Terence Reilly, chief brand officer at Crocs.
Niles is a big green crocodile character, based on the croc graphic on the side of their shoes.
I love it.
Storytelling and deeper connection with consumers are essential vehicles for transmitting education, ideas, vision, and belief.
Whether you’re teaching kids how to count, or how to look after your feet, a big green crocodile is plenty qualified.
Hopefully, they use the opportunity well, and let him be more than just a two-dimensional shoe spokesperson.
If you’re creating for a specific audience, a persona one-sheet isn’t enough.
It never was.
Understand their problems. Goals. Fears. Wants. Secrets. Listen what they listen to, read what they read, watch what they watch. Try to think how they think. See the world through their eyes. Like a “method actor” who tries to become the character they represent on-screen, off-screen, for maximum appreciation of their responsibility.
If you think it sounds extreme, it’s likely just because you haven’t tried it, and seen what results it produces.
For instance, my “StrategyComics” product immerses company stakeholders in a story specifically to make the insights as easy to understand and remember as possible. It’s the same sort of thing: immerse yourself in the world of those you wish to serve, so you can operate from a place that resonates with them.
It’s not extreme… it’s our responsibility, if we’re to put ourselves in a position to make experiences designed to help them.
If you want your brand to inspire creativity in humans, don’t phone in your creative to AI.
If you want to be seen as a luxury vehicle brand, don’t put Spider Man trailers on the dashboard.
If you want your brand to educate children, don’t price it out of reach of their parents.
If you want to appeal to any demographic, don’t represent the opposite of what they believe in.
These branding mistakes are happening in real life, right now.
The bar for excellence has never been lower.
Your industry all uses a certain app that doesn’t suit your workflow?
You don’t have to care. Do you.
Your industry decided AI needs to be used for everything, but you don’t want to?
You don’t have to care. Do you.
Your industry thinks something is fundamentally right or wrong, but you disagree?
You don’t have to care. Do you.
Your industry works at a certain pace, and that pace isn’t your preferred pace?
You don’t have to care. Do you.
In the 17 years since I started my business, I can’t think of many things I completely agree on with any of the industries I touch.
And yet here we are, 17 years later, profitable, and happy.
Do you.
“There’s no market for that idea.”
Dear friend, have you ever opened eBay?
People buy the wildest things all the time, every day.
Don’t focus on if there’s “no market” for an idea.
Focus on your wild ones. Make things for them they’ll love and look forward to.
There’s a market for that.
There’s a faster path to “more” than “more”.
When you enjoy creating and shipping great work, it’s only natural to want to do more of it.
But “more” is more easily achieved by cutting, than by additional raw effort.
Parts of the process that didn’t need to be there.
Parts of the deliverable that don’t change the recipient’s experience.
Every part of the process of creating that slows you down, or doesn’t pull its own weight in the value or delight of those you create for.
Cut those parts out.
Even if you’re unsure, try cutting them out anyway. If they’re important, they’ll come back to you and let you know about it. They’re good like that.
Cut.
I queued for the original iPhone.
I queued for the original iPad.
I don’t queue for things anymore.
When Apple meant something… when it told a story about revering artists, thinkings, makers, doers… that story was worth queuing for.
And buying the story just so happened to come with a small black rectangle as a souvenir.
It doesn’t mean anything anymore, and so I don’t queue.
Those affections now lie with more nuanced things, like specific japanese brush pens I can’t get enough of, as they continue to tell a story that resonates with me.
Clearly, Apple is doing fine. But most of us don’t benefit from trying to glean insights from multi-trillion dollar strategies. Most of us benefit from seeing what moves people, what stories they tell themselves, what change they seek to make, and equipping them with that, instead.
Then perhaps they’d like what we make as souvenirs along the way, too.
eBay surprised me today.
When cleaning out a room we’re turning into our home library, we found a boxed/sealed toy I bought years ago but forgot about.
We were about to wholesale it away with some other items, but I checked eBay quickly on a hunch.
People were selling it for hundreds.
A Series 1 figure of a franchise that, to my knowledge, doesn’t exist anymore.
And it got me thinking: that is branding.
People on the internet, looking for — and buying — 22 year old boxed figurines of your thing. You wouldn’t know it by any MBA or economist’s definition of branding. Their cash register didn’t ring, so it didn’t happen.
But it did happen.
And so few brands optimize for it: of being sought after even after you’re gone, by a loyal fanbase who love what you’ve made, to adorn their places of meaning with a bit of your meaning, because of what they believe it says about them.
Put more succinctly, for people to love and look forward to more of your work.
Worth investing in, perhaps?
Part of getting traffic is making a promise. the other part is keeping it.
People stay on social because they’ve learned that scrolling is more likely to produce novelty than leaving.
A webpage isn’t just for selling. It can be almost any experience you can imagine. What would they like?
Give somebody a novel experience that improved their lives somehow and they’ll tell others who need it too.
Make good promises. Keep them.
Marketing teams could learn a lot from scriptwriters.
A lousy script starts with the script, then works on the logline (a one-line summary of the whole story designed to pique interest and draw people closer).
A great script starts with the logline, finds interest in that logline (modifying it until it resonates) then fleshes out into the full script.
Marketers do the same thing.
Bad marketing starts by just demanding what should be sold, then finding ways to pitch it to people.
Good marketing starts by demanding to better understand what change people want to make, then fleshing out the answer into what should be sold.
There are lots of examples like this. Perhaps we should explore more of them in future notes, we’ll see.
For now, it’s worth pondering scriptwriting, or reading about how the process works if you’re unfamiliar.
It might be really illuminating for you.
“Should” is an enemy of “Creativity”.
“We should raise our prices because economists say so.” Maybe? Or maybe not: maybe being sought after with a waiting list around the corner is part of your appeal.
“We should have more clients like other agencies.” Maybe? Or maybe not: maybe a handful of excellent relationships suits your team far better.
“We should use Slack because everyone else does.” Maybe? Or maybe not: maybe you have a way of doing things that suits your collaboration style better.
“We should use that new tool my peers are using.” Maybe? Or maybe not: maybe what you’ve mastered is better for your craft than the new-fangled thing.
“We should be doing more outbound, or inbound, or JVs.: Maybe? Or maybe not: maybe doubling down on what serves you and your customers is a better path.
Perhaps “Should” benefits from “Maybe” whenever it shows up in our vocabulary.
As “should” can be a fast-track to blending in with all the others, and “maybe” is an invitation to explore your unique curiosities.
The problem with advertising is that the mug wins. Great for the seller, not great for the buyer.
If webpage real estate is auctioned, you paid the most, so you show up. Everyone else stopped bidding, which is why you won.
The main solution to that problem is to use advertising as kindling, not the fire.
If you make things people actually love, and would look forward to seeing more of, there’s a good chance they’ll tell people for free. The auction got it in front of the first person who, in turn, got it in front of the second person.
If you don’t make things people actually love — you’re just there to push product and that’s that — there’s a good chance you’ll have to be a mug for a very long time.
Some designers have a 12-month waitlist.
Some designers are nervous about finding their next gig because an MBA told them to keep raising their prices.
Some designers are desperate for their next gig at any price.
If we assume they all do great work for a moment… why are their pipelines so different?
The first designer with the waitlist has a reputation for what they do, and those who see the waitlist find as much value in the waiting as they do in the final product. The wait is part of the service, and it’s one that makes people feel like they’re in the right place.
The second designer did what the gurus tell them to do. Charge more, ramp up production, template what they do for economies of scael, outsource to the lowest bidder, maximize profits. Except now they’ve put their greed before their craft, and that doesn’t make as compelling a story for the buyer, even if it’s what economists recommend.
The third designer has a story, too. One of desperation, which isn’t an appealing story to buy either.
Interestingly, the one that ignored the economists, slowed down, did their best, even against the headwinds of “can you do it faster”, had the best story of them all.
Your work may not fit into the metaphor at all.
But the metaphor serves as useful context when you ask yourself, “What’s your story?”
We’re cancelling a SaaS subscription in our business soon.
One we’ve maintained for close to 15 years, every month, for a not-insignificant sum of money.
One I even used to have a tshirt for.
Why?
Because they got lazy and greedy.
Rebranded, tacked on AI features nobody asked for, then increased our subscription fee by 11X, overnight, with nothing more than an email notification.
11X.
People have taken to forums worldwide, outraged and confused. The company has said nothing in response.
It’s a good lesson that if you look after your people, they’ll look after you (long, tshirt-wearing tenure). And if you take them for granted or treat them unkindly, they’ll move on.
Everyone thinks they can “vibecode” a Slack competitor in an afternoon.
Yet no one is trying to compete with Slack right now (unless you’re Microsoft or Jack Dorsey etc.)
Why is that?
Clearly, the moat isn’t the code.
It’s something bigger than that. More amorphous. More difficult to produce.
It’s the network.
The “people like us do things like this” factor.
Perhaps the code was never the moat, or the onramp, or the eagerness to try something new.
Perhaps the moat was an experience so novel, special, unique, and fit for you, that you had to tell the others.
Perhaps it always was.
I create a newsletter called GrowthCandy. Each issue shares one idea to help build and spread your work, delivered as a short comic. Fast to read. Easy to apply. Hard to forget!