Echo Beach

Echo system or ecosystem?

Ian Truscott
April 22, 2025

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant, and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye, topics from our podcast, and our street knowledge blog.

Hello!

The other day, I was listening to Scott Galloway (Professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, author, investor, entrepreneur, and all that) on the rather splendid Uncensored CMO podcast, and, I noticed that when the professor said “ecosystem”, his accent made it sound to me like “echo system” - (I’m British so I say it like ee-kow-system)

This inspired this week’s thought that we marketers need to distinguish between the two - are we marketing to the echo system or the ecosystem?

Marketing to the echo system is doing things that impress the industry and peers, rather than potential buyers. Showing up at events, because the competition shows up, not the customers. Slavishly copying the competition’s messaging and tactics to the point where there is no differentiation in the category to help the buyer choose.

(I talked a bit about this in my LinkedIn newsletter recently)

You see the echo system at work whenever the good and the great of advertising on LinkedIn get all frothy about a brand doing x or y, but there is no real evidence that the consumer gave much of a shit about it.

For example, when Coca-Cola used AI to clumsily rework their classic Christmas ads, did anyone outside Adland really care?

The ecosystem, on the other hand, is (of course) everyone who is going to play a role in convincing a buyer to part with their hard-won budget, the influencers, analysts, bloggers, sneezers (as Seth Godin calls them), internal champions and sponsors, users, finance people, the C-suite anyone who can help steer our hero buyer.

The song that has given this email its subject line, is Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins; I am unapologetically raiding the 80s again this week, as one of you lovely subscribers got in touch and is a fan of the period, so this is for you, Mike!

So, market to the ecosystem, not the echo system.

Thanks for reading this far, have a great week.

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Please say hello by replying to this email or stop by our website.

This week’s street knowledge

From the community, what caught my eye and a bit more from me…

Uncensored CMO | Prof G on AI eating itself, social media rage & the end of the CMO

The inspiration for this - Scott Galloway (Prof G) returned to the Uncensored CMO podcast for a second time, in a special live episode….

uncensoredcmo.com/184

I was wrong. People love Coca-Cola’s AI remake of a Christmas classic

(Not from this week - but relevant to the echo system theme) - When he first heard Coca-Cola remade its ‘Holidays are Coming’ campaign using AI, System1’s Andrew Tindall felt worried. After testing showed real people loved it, he learned its success was in long-term brand-building, not tech.

www.thedrum.com/opinion/2024/11/15/i-was-wrong-people-love-coca-cola-s-ai-remake-christmas-classic

Just Add Purple To Your Content Strategy

Want to break out of the echo system? - Take some advice from my chum Robert Rose - and add a bit of purple.

seventhbear.com/purple-ocean-strategy

Personal Brand More Powerful Than Resume

Friend of the show and all-round splendid fellow Dennis Shiao has shared some great tips for creating your personal brand on the Content Marketing Institute blog.

contentmarketinginstitute.com/training-education/personal-brand-content

Tuesday 2¢ – Green Eyed Marketing

A slightly different perspective on this week’s topic, which I called Green Eyed marketing - which is the tactic of the folks that are marketing to the echo system.

iantruscott.com/tuesday-2c-green-eyed-marketing