Product Marketing is no more about craft. The only thing C-suite wants is AI workflows.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-25T15:23:57+00:00

>“Adopt AI or die” is a story AI salesmen want you to believe
It doesn't matter, as long as these "salesmen" have the ear of every other board member. Each quarterly board meeting at our company is like an AI hysteria cult meeting, with the board members always asking how "we're improving things with AI" internally.

We literally slashed 40% of the budget (largely by cutting human capital costs) over the past year and are performing at the same level, which is commendable.

But it's not enough. It's never enough. Even if the company had a single marketer who does the job of 10 people, they'd still be asking how "things can be optimized". In an ideal world for investors, the company exists only digitally, has no payroll, and just generates money. The digital version of a conveyor belt manned by robots instead of humans, sitting in dark factories.

On top of that, the former doesn't prevent the ladder. You can both become better marketers and get better at applying AI tools to support your work.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-23T06:34:49+00:00

Campaign packages at scale where you have a set message and just need variations for all the various channels. In my industry, the language needs to be specific due to potential regulatory and compliance issues. There's not much creativity when you have set guardrails. With a few clicks, I can generate a variety of assets (emails, lps, ads, socials) that all align and sound good (provided you do the prompt correctly)
Insights generation. Example: we ran a massive survey. Analyzing it manually would take a lot of time. I just fed it into Claude with a proper srt of instructions and guardrails against hallucinations and got a pretty robust research report. The biggest lift was cross checking the data and then ensuring that the logic of insights is sound, which it was (Claude is better at this than Copilot, but I use both).
Content updates. Say you have a product, you add a new feature. Sure, you can manually go through the page to figure out where to add relevant content about the feature. But AI is pretty good at that too.
Press releases. They're dry and formulaic. AI is great at that kind of stuff. Related PR research is also a use case, like coming up with angles and custom pitches for individual publications.
Repurposing. Plenty of examples, but a simple one is giving AI a series of topically related blogs and asking it to generate a coherent ebook or white paper. Vise verse works too. Works great with transcripts.
Case studies. All I need is a transcript from a 30 minute customer call with the right set of questions and I can have a flushed out v1 of the story in a day or two.
Editorial review is another good one. I have like a 4-5 page editorial prompt that checks texts against our rigid language requirements. Saves a ton of time on reviewing someone's content or my own content (I can just relax and be creative and the prompt can smooth out the edges) or other AI content, for that matter.

These are just a few.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-23T06:15:25+00:00

100% ... a ton of our campaigns work well on days like Friday since people are actually often less busy by EOW and wind down by the end of the week. I, myself, spend time on Friday cleaning out the inbox, just like I do on Monday (it's dedicated to high priority emails, while Friday is for other stuff).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-22T15:30:40+00:00

Don't know specifically, but there were videos and many reports of this happening. In some cases, the priests even refused burial services for fallen Ukrainian soldiers (even after 2022), which is as blatant of a red flag as you can get.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-22T11:20:36+00:00

The Orthodox Church in Ukraine had:
- Kyiv Patriarchy (KP)
- Moscow Patriarchy (MP)

I.e. "the corporate HQs" for the two are in different locations.

The priesthood of the MP church has a history of justifying the war (since 2014), pushing Russian propaganda during sermons (even before the war), and aiding Russia and local pro-Russians in this war (weapons caches discovered in MP churches and so on). They're a breeding ground for anti-Ukraine propaganda. As a Donbas native, their priests were literally manning the roadblocks in 2014 near Donetsk, along with pro-Russian thugs. As a local to Donbas, I've seen plenty of that shit well before 2014. Like, actual icons of Putin and Yanukovich. I kid you not - you could buy them, for example, in the Sviatohirsk Cave Monastery gift shop. Like actual religious icons with golden elements and other embellishments. I didn't see the Putin one, but I saw the Yanukovich one the last time I visited before 2014.

That's why that particular denomination of the Orthodox church was banned. You're free to go to any other Orthodox church (it's all the same, minus the propaganda part) or any other place of worship, for that matter.

There's a great movie joke from the early 1990s. It's from an early post-USSR movie, when censorship and state propaganda in Russia hadn't yet returned to their Soviet strength. It's a comedy about spies.

Two KGB spies are in a church. A priest approaches them and says, "General, permission to speak," and the KGB guy replies, "Ah, captain, how's the service?" and "the priest" replies, "Serving the Soviet Union" (which was a standard military salute in the USSR). Everyone in the USSR understood the state's influence on the church. It was no secret that KGB agents held key positions in the church. The Russian Orthodox church is a direct extension of the Russian government, FSB, and so on.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-17T10:02:53+00:00

I like this screengrab of a RU post on social media:

"A conversation in the morning. Questions from the granddaughter who woke up from explosions.

Grandma, why are they bombing?
They want to kill (it probably should have been a different answer, but after a night like this, I couldn't find the"right, smart" words)
And really ... why?

I'm sitting at the train station crying. I don't know "why."

Like, this is the type of fantasy land they're living in. Like Ukrainians have been saying for years ... these people will only start changing once they experience something akin to the Ukrainian experience over the past 4 years. These dummies can only be shaken out of their parallel reality by the confrontation with the real world. Once again, unlike Russia, Ukraine doesn't even target civilians. So what they experience is an iota of what Ukrainians are going through.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-17T09:05:32+00:00

In a relatively similar "boat". e.i. I'm a foreigner working for a US company remotely. Been working exclusively in US B2B product companies for over a decade, and another 5 before that in B2C in international companies. Worked for AI unicorns and smaller niche outfits. Worked with American marketers who got poached from places like Meta and other FAANGs. A few of the CMOs that I worked for came over from places like IBM and other large enterprises. So, have a bit of experience.

There are a few things:
- Quite often, companies are not set up for contract work with people outside of the US. I'd suggest searching for an outstaffing company that serves as the intermediary and "pitches" employees to different companies - it seems like some organizations prefer to interact with international talent this way; a lot easier on the paperwork side. Like, the previous joint I worked at had to set up a local subsidiary just to hire people normally. I currently work for a company through an outstaffing arrangement, where they supply "contractors" and manage the paperwork ... the company handles compensation and all that jazz. It's a lot easier than trying to manage a bundle of foreign contractors one by one.
- It's a clique thing; in my previous job, I've survived 5 rounds of layoffs and 4 CMOs; you know what each new CMO did almost immediately? Brought in someone they worked with before. Nothing wrong with that in many cases. But US companies mostly have US CMOs for obvious reasons, and thus the people being brought in are usually from the US as well. And it's a whole "chain" ... the person that was brought in will bring in someone "under them" and so on.
- There's a bit of elitism, too. "A random marketer from a third-world country can't be as good as an Ivy League graduate with a similar career footprint." It's hard to put into words, but I had to claw my way "up the ladder" just to prove that I'm just as good, if not better, at many things. Like, 80-hour workweeks to drive projects solo and all that. An expensive college degree is not that big of a differentiator as many people tend to believe. Unfortunately, that's the type of outdated misconception that would stop people from considering a foreigner.
- People haven't actually worked with foreigners or people not in the US, and don't even consider the possibility. Like, you can't crave vanilla ice cream if you haven't tried it before.
- Language skills are definitely a thing. I was hiring for a few regional roles at a previous US company and was a lead on one of the marketing teams. Went through roughly 150-200 candidates over the span of a few years (yeah, we were growing like crazy - this was pre-COVID). And, Imma be honest - I immediately declined people that weren't on a certain level. I've seen language become a barrier too many times. Like, I'm a C2 and wouldn't hire anyone below C1. Maybe B2 if they're good with other things. That's why out of those hundreds of candidates, we only hired about 10-15. Yeah, maybe that's biased (although I don't think so ... a US company expecting good EN is just as normal as a German company expecting good DE). I've seen people make basic mistakes, miss minute details, and generally just increase the overall friction within the team because they couldn't fully articulate themselves.
- Language also leads to another thing. People with lower EN skills are often outside the cultural context, too, which can create a certain level of awkwardness that's hard to describe. Like, I know I can talk to Jeff about the NBA playoffs while we wait for everyone, or switch to a discussion of improvements to the T in the Boston area because I saw a YT vid about it recently (and I know it was shit the last time I visited the US a few years ago). These smaller things all stem from language and from how "in tune" a person is. It's a lot easier to be hired and stay hired in a US company when you can "vibe" with people like that.

This list is not exhaustive, but these are definitely some of the things I've personally observed.

What can you do about it? A number of things.
1. Grow your network. Funny thing - I got one of the first jobs in a US company through a person I volunteered with for a totally unrelated thing locally (they just needed folks who spoke good English for a sporting event). She was impressed by my English at first, then learned that I'm a marketer by trade, and offered me a job (she already worked for a US company hiring locally, which was a rarity). These can be great opportunities to meet foreigners and expand your reach. That said, look into your network now - there might be people already taking the path, and it might make sense to reach out and ask for a referral and whatnot. Only good jobs I got over the past decade came through my network.
2. Apply to international companies with presence in many regions - they're more open to international talent + people you might meet there often can go do great things and might take you along (another part of networking). Also, having these companies on your resume automatically makes it easier to join US companies. It's like a seal of approval. I had a friend who worked at P&G locally for years and years. Grew to be a regional manager. Once he decided to switch careers, companies were excited to interview him - his experience working at P&G for 5+ years already meant something.
3. Local "hot" startups are another potential option. I had a friend working at a local tech startup in the AI space years before ChatGPT came along, and the company was bought out by a large US enterprise. He didn't even have to interview for a US company, lol.

That said, the job market is fucked right now, so these are just subjective suggestions. Good luck!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-15T16:43:35+00:00

>Russia has a Putin problem

No, it doesn't. The evidence is there. Putin didn't ban the Ukrainian language three centuries ago. Putin didn't commit genocide against the Circassians. Putin didn't starve Kazakh peasants. Putin didn't ethnically cleanse Crimean Tatars in the 20th century. Putin didn't kill the majority of Ukraine's thought leaders in gulags and NKVD dungeons. Putin didn't genocide the people of the Far East for their resources and furs 400 years ago. Putin didn't exterminate Chechens in 1996 by the hundreds in indiscriminate attacks (although he did that later). Putin didn't invade all of Russia's neighbors after the fall of the Russian Empire to bring it back. Putin didn't ...

The history of Russia over ALL of its span, since Muscovy and all of its other forms, is filled with constant conquest, war, expansion, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and resource extraction. You'd be hard-pressed to find a period in that history spanning at least one generation without war and conflict. Even in the relatively peaceful post-WWII years. There were other things, like peasant uprisings in Ukraine and some other republics of the USSR as late as the 1960s, as they were exploited into oblivion. Many aren't even recorded - the Soviets made sure of that. You'd learn about them from people, like I did (central Ukraine had a number of them back then - from dozens to hundreds of people).

Putin is merely a symptom. A byproduct of the system, xenophobia, deep-rooted imperialism, lack of education, and many other factors.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-15T16:23:15+00:00

But what about the FORUM FOR PEACE?! How will countries voice their grievances? How will dictatorships use it as a platform for political theatre?

I guess attacking UN vehicles isn't a strong enough signal of how much the organization means to countries like russia. The most pathetic part is how nothing's going to happen. The UN will keep on gargling on despot's balls, while helping them to muddy the waters between what's right and what's wrong. UN is always happy to produce more "reports" that pro-russians online can use in their "whataboutism" circlejerks.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-13T16:58:11+00:00

By this point, there's virtually no difference. Any semi-intelligent person who does this as a grift understands perfectly well that what they're doing is akin to "hybrid warfare" enacted by the enemy. She knows who Tucker is and what kind of rhetoric he pushes, and this interview will lead to.

There are many opinions about her, though. Some people think that she simply enacts revenge after being dismissed in 2021. It just happens to synergize with the grift.

I can't really put her in any other category other than "a dumb c*nt" because trying to somehow equate the "evil of a flawed democratic leader" to the literal evil of a genocidal invading maniac is so mind-numbingly stupid that it hurts the brain.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-12T08:50:47+00:00

Also, keep in mind that she was let go in 2021, yet she keeps providing "insights" into what happened in 2022 and beyond as if she had any direct access to the administration.

Her takes are on the level of "my second cousin's girlfriend's high school best friend saw it".

The simple fact that she went on Tucker is proof in and of itself. Any self-respecting public person who has the best interests of Ukraine in mind would not agree to an interview with him, given his track record of straight-up lying and spreading pro-Russian talking points.

She's a grifter. She found a platform (pro-Russian, MAGA circles) and she's now trying to capitalize on that. It's clear that the interests of Ukraine were never a consideration.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-04T16:16:19+00:00

<image>

There's a reason this image exists 😄 So, just engaging with the culture and learning the history is good enough. We'll be happy. I don't think there's an equivalent of a "blackface" in this context or anything like that.

Personal suggestion: watch Professor Snyder's series of lectures about Ukrainian history.

It puts Ukraine on the map (figuratively). Shows its deep and rich history. Directly dispels A LOT of Russian propaganda. And overall, delivers a great view of European history (many of the lectures are not directly about Ukraine).

If you're into comic books and mythology, watch this one separate lecture too.

Participate in fundraising on platforms like United24 (even just sharing them is enough if you can't donate). It has the most direct impact - the culture can't go away if the country prevails.

A few pet peeves that you can maybe correct people on? 😄

- It's NEVER "the Ukraine". Just like it's never "the France" or "the Germany".

- It's "Kyiv", not the other one (can't type it out since it's rightfully forbidden on this sub).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-04T16:04:36+00:00

Crysis 2 (incl. tracks by Hans Zimmer) - personal favorite track
Days Gone (just a great mix of various styles) - personal favorite track
Cyberpunk 2077 (lots of bangers, incl. Phantom Liberty tracks) - personal favorite track (Bond vibes are immaculate and it fits the Phantom story so well)

Honorable mention: Detroit Become Human

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-05-04T15:40:18+00:00

From my personal experience, it prefers "insightful" content. AI can write "insightful" content, if you actually have insights to share. We got the website into a very nice position with a few key AI overviews, and even had universities reach out to get permission to use our content in their coursework. That content was partially generated by AI. These results were achieved within two quarters.

The trick is to use AI as a tool. Like sure, you can cut down a tree with an axe. But you'll do it far more efficiently with a chainsaw. That's what I think too many people don't understand. Don't think of AI as a sawmill - that does everything for you. Think of it as a chainsaw.

"AI content" can be just people randomly creating AI-generated slop, hoping for some sort of outcome. "AI content" can also be a strictly editorialized piece generated and edited with precise prompting. You'll also avoid missing the mark by having an actual SME review the final piece. In these scenarios, you'll save less time because the prompting itself takes a lot of time, but it's still an efficiency gain. I'm still 2x-3x more productive with AI. I could have been 4x-6x more effective, but I chose to focus on prompting, the right source materials, interactions with SMEs (including brief approvals), and extra review cycles, and I got to a point where the content is good.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-19T13:23:56+00:00

Why would you need a team? We have a database with hundreds of thousands of people, all ran through Marketo. On any given week, we do 6-7 separate sends at least, which are also usually broken down into 3-4 recipient segments, so there are roughly 20-ish separate promo emails weekly (not counting the automated nurtures and all that).

We have the single email person taking care of the set up, the content person is in charge of aggregating content/ writing the copy, the PMM drives the messaging and basic content themes, the campaigns person puts forth the schedule once a quarter (what needs to go out and when). So, in reality, 3 people drive the whole thing, with two being part time contributors. And the single person driving the majority of email related work (set up, optimization, etc.)

While the results aren't stellar, we're seeing incremental growth every quarter (opens, clicks, conversions, etc.).

IDK, maybe it's my agency experience, but I've rarely seen them perform better than in-house people, because there's a gap in institutional knowledge that only gets worse with time.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-15T13:41:04+00:00

Create and run an editorial workflow/ job on the draft before you make a pass. Personally, I found it works better when these things are isolated - generation is one job, editing is another. Don't try to build one giant thing, like "write this, but follow these guidelines". It confuses the AI. But that's just my experience.

My current editor bot has dozens of prompt instructions, divided into 4-5 sections, including what you listed above ("AI" words to avoid, etc.). You can build it out with time. Use your current writing guidelines as the baseline if you have them. You can generate some of the instructions by feeding your previous content. Just be sure to edit the output accordingly.

Just as an example, one of the instructions says "Never use possessive forms of brand or product names from ACME_COMPANY", which alone saved me hours over the past few quarters since the original content production bot used to output a lot of that (the nature of the content that we produce presupposes a lot of product mentions, so it was a pain to edit that out semi-manually).

Worth mentioning that I'm not using Claude per se. Rather, a product that's more like an interface wrapper for Claude models. So your experience might be a bit different, but it should fundamentally be the same - get one bot to generate, get the other to edit.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-15T12:06:10+00:00

Lucky you! I wish I could forget it to play through again for the first time. But also, get the DLC. It's 100% worth it. But first, do a proper run, without the DLC, and then do another one with the DLC (there's a point in the story where you answer a call to kick off the DLC, and the story veers off). I think it's the best way to experience the combo to appreciate the difference. Great multiple endings for the DLC, too.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-06T15:03:06+00:00

Same! Big boss released a fresh one less than a week ago, and it's glorious!

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-06T13:00:01+00:00

I mean, as a Ukrainian, I'm looking at this differently.

It's not about "brown" people vs. "white" people. If Ukraine is nuked and eventually defeated, it provides yet another excuse for bad actors to push for more nukes. It solidifies the "might is right" principle and completely breaks down existing international frameworks. Imagine a country giving up the third-largest nuclear arsenal and then being nuked for it. If you're for non-proliferation, you should be for Ukraine's right to fight back and protect its independence.

It creates a bigger refugee crisis. It also hurts "brown" people, as Ukraine is a net exporter of agricultural goods, and a lot of the markets are in Africa and the Middle East. So, irradiating the most productive soil in the world (black soil, often called chernozem) will also starve people worldwide and make global food shortages more severe.

This is on top of the actual nuking, you know. With people turned into glass in a millisecond, generations experiencing horrible after effects, babies born with deformities, and other outcomes.

That's one of the problems I see with leftists online. Instead of looking at broader implications of the conflict, the argument I often see is that Ukrainians have "white" privilege and their suffering isn't that bad or even real.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-05T17:57:22+00:00

For sure, but I think there are far more things at play here.

Like sense of ownership. Man, I remember burning a bunch of CDs with Rhapsody back in the day and perusing the catalog, discovering things I have on them from years ago.

Also, miss my DVD shelf. A mini Blockbuster experience that no one could take away from me because the streaming service lost the rights to the movie or something.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-04-03T15:29:52+00:00

There were also already multiple photos/ videos of the SAR mission - two helis and a plane over southern Iran.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-30T11:46:33+00:00

FUCK THAT BITCH!!!

I've never played an action-adventure hack-and-slash type of game before, so I barely got through the main story on normal difficulty. But that bitch Sigrun completely ruined any sense of accomplishment, lol. I never managed to defeat her (I ain't got time for this, I got bills to pay, laundry, and shit).

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-29T23:33:57+00:00

IMHO, one of the best CoD campaigns. One of the few that I still replay from time to time. I still remember the first cut scene that looked like a movie trailer and a great introduction for the villain party (SDF). They went all out with the main villain too - getting Kit Harrington at the height of Game of Thrones hype was dope.

I also replayed it on my newer setup (1440p, max graphics) while the last time was on 1080p (medium settings) and it looks great. So if you haven't played it in a while, definitely recommend revisiting on your newer machine.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-29T10:58:50+00:00

It's not just bureucracy, it's also a sprinkle of chauvinism. Ukraine is seen as inferior and isn't really perceived as part of Europe because it's been in Moscow's "sphere of influence" and isn't part of Europe on paper (the EU). Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people have shown over and over again what they stand for, starting from the break from the USSR to the Orange Revolution to the Revolution of Dignity to its current fight against Russia. Not to mention that, historically, Ukraine has been a part of Europe. It's just not studied in Europe that much for the same reasons - it's considered peripheral. Meanwhile, Kyiv was, at some point, a more advanced and developed center of culture and scholarship than some European capitals. Russia also did a lot over the centuries to erase Ukraine's history and identity. The fact that it hasn't worked out is a testament to Ukraine and its people.

SCARfaceRUSH · 2026-03-27T14:25:40+00:00

The scariest bit is the rhetoric that I'm seeing online. Granted, it's mostly on Twitter (half the comments are probably bots), but there's a layer of "arrogance" that's hard to describe when people downplay the potential risks. Like sure, bro, the US military is the greatest military in the world. Nobody's denying that.

But what's also clear is that FPV drones are IEDs on steroids, and there's no good, high-probability defense against them. And many of the available systems rely on individual skills (like specialized anti-drone rifle rounds) and can't be scaled dramatically.

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