Marketing Matters: Four Big Words Worth Slowing Down For

BUSNESS NORTH: February 2026

This article is dedicated to an exceptionally perceptive friend, the late Dan Hansen, who died on December 28, 2025, from pneumonia and complications related to Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Despite significant physical challenges, Dan lived a rich, creative life marked by curiosity, insight, and careful attention to ideas.

 

One evening, while discussing a project we were working on, I used the word discernment. Dan paused and said, “That’s a big word.” He didn’t mean it as a criticism. He meant it as an observation.

 

As we talked about what the word meant—and how it applied not just to our project, but to decision-making more broadly—he suggested that certain words carry more weight than others. These were words worth slowing down for, words that shape how we think and act if we take them seriously.

 

Over the next few weeks, the list began to grow. What follows are the first four: 

 

Discernment, Context, Motivation, and Momentum

Each matters in marketing. More importantly, each matters because they help us make better judgments in a noisy, fast-moving environment—something Dan understood instinctively.

 

Discernment

Marketing today suffers less from a lack of information than from an excess of it. We are awash in metrics, dashboards, trend reports, expert opinions, and algorithmic advice. The temptation is to believe that if we just collect enough data, the right decision will present itself. In practice, the opposite often happens.

 

Discernment is the ability to decide what matters—and just as importantly, what does not. 

Not every new platform deserves your attention. Not every metric deserves equal weight. Not every tactic that worked for another company will work for yours. Discernment requires judgment, not just measurement. It means asking better questions before acting: Who is this for? What problem does it actually solve? Does this align with who we are and where we’re headed?

 

Without discernment, marketing becomes reactive. Businesses chase trends, imitate competitors, and respond to noise instead of signals. Effort increases, clarity decreases, and results flatten out.

 

Good marketing decisions often look boring from the outside. They involve saying no—to distractions, to shiny objects, to unnecessary complexity. Over time, discernment builds focus, coherence, and credibility.

 

In marketing, wisdom isn’t knowing everything. It’s knowing which few things deserve your attention.

 

Context

Once discernment helps clarify what deserves attention, context determines whether that attention lands well or falls flat.

 

Marketing messages do not exist in isolation. They are received at a particular moment, by a particular audience, under particular conditions. The same message can feel timely and relevant in one context—and tone-deaf or irrelevant in another.

 

Context includes more than demographics. It includes timing, culture, local conditions, economic mood, and recent events that shape how people interpret what they see and hear. A message that works nationally may miss the mark locally. A campaign that made sense last year may feel out of step today.

 

When marketers ignore context, they tend to overestimate the power of their message and underestimate the situation it enters. That’s when marketing starts to feel intrusive rather than helpful.

 

Effective marketing doesn’t just speak clearly. It speaks appropriately. That depends less on clever wording than on situational awareness.

 

Motivation

Discernment helps us decide what deserves attention. Context helps us understand where that attention will land. Motivation answers a more basic question: why anyone would care at all.

 

Good marketing does not create motivation out of thin air. People are already motivated by something—solving a problem, reducing risk, saving time, improving status, or avoiding frustration. Marketing works when it recognizes those existing motivations and aligns with them, not when it tries to manufacture desire through pressure or hype.

 

When motivation is misunderstood, marketing becomes noisy. Messages get louder, offers more aggressive, and tactics more intrusive. The assumption is that people need to be pushed. In reality, they usually need to be understood.

 

Motivation also matters internally. Organizations that lose sight of why they market often drift into activity without purpose. Without a clear motivation, effort increases while impact diminishes.

 

Marketing succeeds not by overpowering motivation, but by respecting it.

 

Momentum

With the Super Bowl approaching, it’s worth borrowing a lesson from sports.

 

In baseball, a string of base hits can be more damaging than a single home run. The rally builds pressure, unsettles the opposition, and energizes everyone involved. In football, the same principle applies. Methodical, sustained drives down the field are often more demoralizing than a single long touchdown pass. Those drives communicate control. They wear opponents down.

 

Marketing momentum works the same way.

 

Many businesses look for the equivalent of the long pass—one campaign, one viral post, one silver bullet, one promotion that suddenly changes everything. Occasionally that happens. More often, lasting advantage is built through steady progress: consistent messaging, repeated exposure, and incremental trust earned over time.

 

Momentum isn’t about speed or spectacle. It’s about direction and endurance. Familiarity takes time. Trust takes repetition. Recognition builds quietly before it becomes obvious.

In marketing, as in sports, the teams that control the field over time tend to win—not because of one dramatic moment, but because the pressure never lets up.

 

Closing

These are big words. Not because they sound impressive, but because they ask more of us. They require judgment, patience, and restraint—qualities that are easy to overlook in an environment that rewards speed and volume.

 

Discernment, context, motivation, and momentum won’t make marketing easier. But they do make it better. They remind us to slow down, think clearly, and act with intention. In a world full of noise, those may be the biggest advantages of all. 

From Population Bomb to Ethanol Mandates

Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash

When I was in college around 1970, one of the books that shaped how many thought about the future was The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. The central fear then was stark and urgent: humanity was growing faster than the planet’s ability to feed itself. Mass starvation, we were told, was not a distant possibility but an approaching certainty unless something changed.

Whether Ehrlich’s predictions would prove right or wrong is beside the point. What mattered was the anxiety that framed the era. Food was precious. Arable land was finite. Population growth threatened to overwhelm fragile systems. Feeding people was the overriding concern.   

Fast-forward a few decades, and the picture has shifted in ways I never would have imagined back then. Today, the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone. And yet hundreds of millions of people remain food insecure, many of them acutely so. Hunger has not disappeared; it has simply become chronic, unevenly distributed, and easier to ignore unless it erupts into crisis.

At the same time, something else has happened—something that strikes me as strange. Vast amounts of productive farmland, particularly in the United States, are no longer devoted primarily to feeding people, but to growing corn that is converted into ethanol. This ethanol is then blended into gasoline—not to replace it, but to dilute it. We are using food-producing land, water, fertilizer, and energy to marginally extend a fuel supply, all in the name of energy independence.

This is where the dissonance creeps in.

I’ve written before about the ethanol debate and the political enthusiasm that surrounded it, especially after the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Ethanol was sold as a clean, patriotic solution to foreign oil dependence. And once embraced, it quickly became politically untouchable. Powerful agricultural and industrial interests ensured that mandates stayed in place, even as questions mounted about ethanol’s true energy balance and environmental benefits.

But step back from the technical arguments for a moment and look at the larger picture. We once worried that there wouldn’t be enough food. Now we grow food to burn it. This is weird to me. 

I don’t mean that as a slogan or a condemnation. It’s simply an observation—one that feels increasingly difficult to square with the world as it is. In many parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food insecurity is not theoretical. It shapes daily life. It fuels migration, political instability, and despair. And yet it rarely stays in our media spotlight for long. Hunger that is constant does not make for compelling headlines.

What we see instead are debates about fuel blends, mileage standards, and subsidy structures—important questions, perhaps, but questions that often unfold in isolation from broader human consequences.

None of this suggests that biofuels are inherently evil, or that farmers are villains, or that energy transitions are unnecessary. It does suggest, however, that priorities can drift in subtle ways. Policies designed for one moment can harden into assumptions, even when the conditions that gave rise to them have changed.

Perhaps what unsettles me most is not the existence of ethanol mandates, but how little we seem to reflect on their implications.* We live in a world where hunger persists alongside abundance, where farmland feeds engines while people go without, and where the moral weight of those choices is rarely discussed.

Back in 1970, we were taught to fear a future defined by scarcity. Today, the problem looks different. It is not that we lack resources. It's that we struggle to decide what they are for. And that, to my mind, is a far more troubling question.

* * * 

When I considered the title for this post I was tempted to replace the word Mandates with Madness. I left it as is because I didn't want to be accused of having a clickbait title. The topic is too important to be trivial about it.

* * * 

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE

*Another negative feature of blending ethanol into gasoline has to with how it damages small engines due to "phase separation." Phase separation in ethanol-blended gasoline occurs when the ethanol absorbs moisture from the air or environment, causing the fuel to split into two layers: a water-ethanol mixture at the bottom and pure gasoline on top. This happens more readily in humid conditions or during long storage periods.

            The problem for small engines, like those in lawnmowers, chainsaws, or boats, is that the watery layer can corrode metal parts, clog fuel lines, and cause starting issues or engine failure. The separated gasoline lacks octane, leading to poor performance and premature death. Using ethanol-free fuel or specialized additives helps prevent this damage, but you seldom hear anyone talking about this.

Bad News, Bad News

"Nobody likes the man who brings bad news."
—Sophocles

"Grief" -- 24"x 24" Acrylic on panel. 

It''s a stubborn feature of human nature: we often confuse the message with the messenger. Bad news disrupts comfort, threatens hope, and forces reckoning, so our irritation or fear seeks an outlet. Rather than grapple with the reality being reported, we turn on the person who delivers it. This instinct appears in families, politics, workplaces, and even religion, where truth-tellers are labeled as negative, disloyal, or cruel simply for naming what others would rather avoid saying

Sophocles' quote also exposes a moral hazard. Societies and leaders that punish bearers of bad news slowly lose access to truth. This brings to mind an observation by Pixar's Ed Catmull in his book Creativity, Inc., "If there is more truth in the hallways than in meetings, you have a problem." In other words, when honesty carries social cost, people learn to soften, delay, or conceal reality. What begins as a desire for emotional comfort becomes a system of self-deception. Sophocles, who wrote Greek tragedies, understood that catastrophe often follows not from ignorance alone but from hostility toward warning.

Yet the quote also invites humility from the messenger. Bad news need not be delivered with relish or contempt. Courage, compassion and empathy must travel together. This is part of the problem with our toxic social media culture. There is seldom empathy, only outrage.

The challenge is to speak truth clearly without delighting in the pain it brings—and to hear truth without demanding pleasantness as a condition before accepting it.

Sophocles' observation applies on many fronts. It explains why whistleblowers are often shunned and why reformers are resisted. It's why leaders reward flattery over honesty and why families avoid difficult conversations. 

The truth stings, but it's better than the alternatives.  

Grace Unbound: Memoir of an Orthodox Bishop Who Takes the Roads Not Taken

"The first step of any great journey can be the riskiest one of all."

So begins the descriptor on Amazon.com for Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop (published May 2025). The book is a co-authored memoir/true story by Bishop Demetrios C. Kantzavelos (also referred to as Bishop Demetrios or Fr. Demetri) and Patra McSharry Sevastiades, with a foreword by Bill Kurtis. It chronicles Bishop Demetrios's personal journey as a Greek Orthodox priest in Chicago who unexpectedly becomes a prominent social activist, grounding his work in Christian faith, compassion, and the belief that every human life is sacred and made in the image of God.

The narrative centers on two pivotal encounters that transformed his ministry. The first took place in 1992, amid the height of the AIDS crisis. The newly ordained Fr. Demetri visited Bob, a dying man abandoned by his own parish priest due to fear and stigma. This act of compassion sparked his calling to AIDS ministry and the founding the Bishop’s Task Force on AIDS in the Greek Orthodox Diocese (later Metropolis) of Chicago. It became the first such Orthodox Christian initiative in the western hemisphere, offering resources, workshops, and pastoral care. Despite initial resistance and skepticism within his own church, the effort expanded nationally, addressing misinformation and providing support during a time of widespread fear.    

Seven years later, in 1999, Fr. Demetri was called to visit Andrew (Andrew Kokoraleis), a convicted gang member on death row for a gruesome murder (part of the "Ripper Crew" case). Andrew, who maintained his innocence and had a tragic background, became a focal point for the priest's advocacy. Grappling with moral complexities—justice for victims, empathy for the condemned, societal demands, and Christian mercy—Fr. Demetri visited him repeatedly, appealing to the governor, and ultimately joining broader efforts to halt Andrew's imminent execution. When clemency was denied and the execution proceeded, the experience propelled him into an 11-year campaign against the death penalty in Illinois.  

The book weaves these stories with reflections on faith, resilience, redemption, and the true cost of living out the Gospel. It argues that social activism—ministering to the sick, imprisoned, and marginalized—is not a departure from Orthodox tradition but a reclamation of it, confronting "social unrighteousness" while affirming life and human dignity. Themes include internal church struggles, interfaith collaboration, personal doubts, family moments, and mentorship from figures like Metropolitan Iakovos of Chicago. 

In Grace Unbound, Orthodox Christianity provided the spiritual foundation for Bishop Demetrios’s activism, following a call to live out Christ’s love through service and compassion, as highlighted in the book’s themes of sacred activism and empathy. The faith’s focus on theosis—becoming more like God through acts of love—underscores Demetrios’s efforts to minister to marginalized individuals like Bob (dying of AIDS) and Andrew (on death row for murder), showing how Orthodox principles can inspire social justice. Co-author Patra Sevastiades’s storytelling captures this blend of faith and action, making the book a powerful example of Orthodoxy’s relevance in addressing modern challenges.

Through Patra and her husband Dean Casperson, who live here in Duluth, I've  learned a few things about the Greek Orthodox Church that I'd not known before. For example, the Greek Orthodox Church broke off from Roman Catholicism in 1054 and made Constantinople its center, an event called The Great Schism. Unlike the Roman branch, which gives all authority to the Pope, the Eastern church rejected papal supremacy and governs through bishops, with the Patriarch of Constantinople as first among equals, not a ruler. There are several theological differences as well. In addition, Greek Orthodox priests can marry, whereas Catholic priests make a promise to remain celibate.

The Greek Orthodox emphasis on compassion, community, and spiritual depth is the primary driver for Demetrios in Grace Unbound. Its rich traditions and focus on personal transformation align with themes of empowerment and purpose, encouraging readers to see faith as a catalyst for meaningful change, much like Demetrios’s journey.

I'll close with these excerpts from reviews on Amazon.com.

Bishop Demetrios has written a compelling, deeply personal and highly engaging book that would appeal to ANY reader of non-fiction. Grace Unbound is written from a faith-based point of view but does not demand or assume belief from the reader. It's an easy read that draws you in quickly. It's grounded in lived experience – part memoir, part true crime, and part history and the result is inspiring, thoughtful, and surprisingly accessible to anyone interested in human stories, moral complexity and justice.

* * * 

What makes Grace Unbound particularly powerful is its balance of timeless truths and timely relevance. Whether reflecting on Scripture, personal stories, or the challenges of contemporary life, Bishop Demetrios draws the reader into a conversation that is both intimate and universal. His message is clear: no wound is too deep, no distance too great, and no soul too lost for the reach of God’s grace.

* * * 

The book blends theological reflection with personal anecdotes and practical examples, illustrating how Orthodox Christianity can inspire meaningful engagement with social issues and community needs. Bishop Demetrios advocates for a dynamic faith that goes beyond institutional boundaries, urging believers to embody Christ’s love through active service and social justice.

For more information or to purchase: Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop

A Letter to Micah, June 1991, When My Son Was Five

To my son Micah, whose dream it is to one day be an animal doctor:

When I think of special moments we have shared, it is fitting that so many of them have something to do with animals. Whether it's petting goats at the county fair or praying for the animals that died in the war because of the "mean man" who poured oil into the Persian Gulf, your sensitivity and love for nature will always be precious to me.

One memory that especially stands out for me is the day your friend Nate brought you a toad. It was the week of your fourth birthday. Do you remember how much fun we had last summer with Mr. Beaver? (You named him after Nate's dad, Mr. Beaver, who caught him for you.) Nate's mom made a very nice home for him inside a fishbowl, with rocks, some small plants, dirt and a little water hole. The only thing missing was, well, his dinner.

Until that day, I always thought toads were sluggish and dull. Then we put in that first little grasshopper.

At first, it seemed like the toad didn't notice he had company. Then suddenly Blip! a pink tongue whipped out from his mouth and snatched that little hopper right up. It happened so fast we almost missed it.

"Let's go catch another one!" you said as you raced to the door.

After two more grasshoppers we found a spider. "Think he likes spiders?" I said as we dropped a daddy longlegs into the bowl. Seconds later Mr. Beaver gobbled him up with a sideways flick of the tongue.

After the spider, it seemed time for something more challenging. As we crossed the back yard I saw a bumble bee, the huge, scary kind. "What do you think?" I asked, and your eyes just glowed.

At the kitchen table we carefully dropped the bee into the toad's fishbowl home and instantly Mr. Beaver brightened up again, eagerly leaning forward as if crouched to pounce. The bee seemed to deliberately keep to the furthest part of the bowl, but the longer the bee stayed away from him, the more eager Mr. Beaver became, crawling forward almost cat-like toward the middle of the fishbowl, then pulling back, then creeping forward again. I have never seen a toad look so alert.

And we, too, were alert, our eyes wide as we leaned forward on our elbows, watching.

For more than five minutes the bee kept his distance, but then, he began flying nearer and Blip! Glump! that big bee completely disappeared. After a few seconds, Mr. Beaver seemed to cough, then he opened his mouth a couple more times like he was burping. In the end, he looked very satisfied.

Thank you, Micah, for giving me fresh eyes to see anew the wonders of this world that is so exciting for you and precious to us all. Don't ever let me take it for granted.

* * * 

Postscript: Micah never became an animal doctor.

He instead went to culinary school and has served 

as a line cook, sous chef and head chef at some

very fine restaurants.

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration

"We have all been here before; we have all been here before."
--David Crosby, Déjà Vu

With immigration policy at the center of our national conversation, I went to the library last week to find a specific book that was referenced in an online debate. What I found (among other things) was another intriguing title: One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over Immigration.

Before tackling our current immigration issues I wanted to set the stage by outlining the various stages of our own immigration history, The Seven Eras of U.S. Immigration History.

Jia Lynn Yang's book, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide, is a well documented deep dive into the decades-long battle over U.S. immigration policy from the passage of the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 through the enactment of the transformative Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In other words, it covers Era Five of the seven periods. 

The 1920's was a strange time in our history. Many people have images of flapper girls and wild parties, inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It was also an era of gangsters and turf wars generated by the Volstead Act (Prohibition). Simultaneously, we have images of a "lost generation," the young veterans of WWI having returned to a society they didn't understand, that didn't really understand them either. (See "Soldier's Home" by Hemingway in his first small volume of short stories, In Our Time.)

The early 1900s was also a time when the Eugenics movement gained significant traction,  legalizing sterilization in 33 states lest "inferiors" reproduce. Eugenics was seen as a means for addressing overpopulaton and "over-multiplication of the unfit and unintelligent," among other societal problems. Promoted by intellectual elites, the eugenics movement reached its apex in the early 1930s. More han 66,000 Americans were sterilized against their will.

We should also note here that the Ku Klux Klan had had a rebirth at the beginning of the last century as well and were well represented in politics. According to the Congressional Record the Klan elected about 16 U.S. Senators as well as 11 governors, along with an undetermined large number of congressmen. "Undetermined" means that not all federal officeholders were openly affiliated with the Klan, but owed their electoral success, in part, to Klan support. (This surge in Klan power also contributed to mass migration of blacks from the Deep South to industrial centers in the North. But that's another story.)

The combination of these factors contributed to passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, which imposed ethnically based national quotas on immgration, sharply curtailing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and nearly banning immigrants from Asia, reflecting widespread nativism and racial prejudice of the era.

Yang's book follows the political struggle to dismantle these discriminatory quotas over the next forty years, focusing on the efforts of key lawmakers, activists, and presidents—from Emanuel Celler, Herbert Lehman, and civil rights advocates to presidents like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—who worked to build coalitions for reform.

This long campaign culminated in the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which abolished the national-origins quota system and created a new immigration framework emphasizing family reunification and skills. That legislation dramatically reshaped America’s demographic landscape and opened U.S. immigration to people from Asia, Africa, and Latin America in unprecedented numbers.

Yang frames much of this history through personal context—drawing on her own family’s immigrant experience—while illustrating how the yesterday's debates over immigration policy resonate with ongoing controversies today.

Related Links
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide (Amazon reviews and more)
A More Perfect Union: Eugenics In America
Birth Selection vs Birth Control
Ideas Have Consequences. Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882