Think different: The Positionless Marketing manifesto

In 1997, Apple launched a campaign that became cultural gospel. “Think Different” celebrated the rebels, the misfits, the troublemakers. The ones who saw things differently. The ones who changed the world. 

Apple understood something fundamental: the constraints that limited imagination weren’t real. They were inherited. Accepted. Assumed. And the people who broke through weren’t smarter or more talented. They simply refused to believe the constraints applied to them. 

Twenty-eight years later, marketing faces its own Think Different moment. 

The constraints are gone. Technology has removed them. AI can generate infinite variants. Data platforms deliver real-time insights. Orchestration tools coordinate across every channel instantly. The infrastructure that once required armies of specialists, weeks of coordination and endless approvals now exists in platforms accessible to any marketer willing to learn them. 

Yet most marketers still operate as if the box exists. 

They wait for the data team to run the analysis. They wait for creative to deliver the assets. They wait for engineering to build the integration. They operate within constraints that technology has already eliminated, not because they must, but because assembly-line marketing taught them that’s how it worked. 

Creative waits for data. Campaigns wait for creative. Launch waits for engineering. Move from station to station. Hand off to the next department. That was the assembly line. That was the box. 

And that box is gone. But the habits remain.  

Here’s to the marketers who refuse to wait for approval

The ones who see a customer signal at 3 p.m. and launch a personalized journey by 4 p.m., not because they asked permission but because the customer needed it now. 

The ones who don’t send briefs to three different teams. They access the data, generate the creative and orchestrate the campaign themselves. Not because they’re trying to eliminate specialists, but because waiting days for what they can deliver in hours wastes the moment. 

The ones who run experiments constantly, not occasionally. Who test 10 variants instead of two. Who measure lift instead of clicks. Who know that perfect insight arrives through iteration, not through analysis paralysis. 

Here’s to the ones who see campaigns where others see dependencies 

They don’t see a handoff to the analytics team. They see customer data they can access instantly to understand behavior, predict intent and target precisely. 

They don’t see a creative approval process. They see AI tools that generate channel-ready assets in minutes, allowing them to personalize at scale rather than compromise for efficiency. 

They don’t see an engineering backlog. They see orchestration platforms that automate journeys, test variations and optimize outcomes without a single ticket. 

They’re not reckless. They’re not cowboys  

They’re simply operating at the speed technology now enables, constrained only by strategy and judgment rather than structure and process.  

This is what Positionless Marketing means: Wielding Data Power, Creative Power and Optimization Power simultaneously. Not because you’ve eliminated everyone else, but because technology eliminated the dependencies that once made those handoffs necessary. 

And here’s what most people miss: This isn’t just about speed. It’s about potential 

When marketers were constrained by assembly-line marketing infrastructure, their job was to manage the line. Write the brief. Coordinate the teams. Navigate the approvals. Wait for each station to finish its work. The marketer’s skill was project management. Their value was orchestrating others. 

Now? Your job in marketing has changed entirely 

Your job is no longer to manage process. Your job is to enable potential. To help every person on your team (and yourself) realize what they’re capable of when the constraints disappear. To show them that the data they’ve been waiting for is accessible now. That the creative they’ve been briefing can be generated instantly. That the campaigns they’ve been coordinating can be orchestrated autonomously.  

Teach people to think outside the box by showing them there is no longer a box 

The data analyst who only ran reports can now build predictive models and operationalize them in real time. The campaign manager who only coordinated handoffs can now design, test and optimize end-to-end journeys independently. The creative strategist who only wrote briefs can now generate and deploy assets across every channel. 

This is the revolution: not that technology does the work, but that technology removes the barriers that prevented people from doing work they were always capable of. 

The misfits and rebels of 1997 saw possibilities where others saw limitations. They refused to accept that things had to be done the way they’d always been done. 

The Positionless Marketers of today are doing the same thing 

They’re refusing to wait when customers need action now. They’re refusing to accept that insight takes weeks when platforms deliver it in seconds. They’re refusing to operate within constraints that technology has already eliminated. 

They’re thinking differently. Not because they’re trying to be difficult. But because the old way of thinking no longer matches the new reality of what’s possible. 

In 1997, Apple told us: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”  

In 2025, the people crazy enough to think they can deliver personalized experiences at scale, launch campaigns in hours instead of weeks, and operate without dependencies are the ones who will. 

The constraints are gone. 

The assembly-line marketing box can no longer exist.