How to get unstuck: 5 marketing planning thought experiments
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Thought experiment
16 min read
The article is structured around thought experiments as a planning methodology. Understanding the philosophical and scientific history of thought experiments—from Galileo's falling bodies to Einstein's elevator—would give readers deeper appreciation for why constrained hypotheticals are such powerful cognitive tools.
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Pareto principle
10 min read
The 'no new content' experiment implicitly relies on the 80/20 rule—that a small fraction of existing content drives most results. Understanding Vilfredo Pareto's original observation about wealth distribution and its application across domains would help readers identify which assets to double down on.
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This past week I’ve been spinning on newsletter topics. Staring at a list of ideas, starting to write, backtracking, scrapping paragraphs, rewriting them again. Nothing felt quite right.
And honestly, that feels like the default state of marketing right now.
We’re all scrambling to break the mold and stand out. We’re overwhelmed by everything we could do, yet underwhelmed by the results of what we are getting.
Then it hit me: The best follow-up to my recent annual planning newsletter isn’t more prioritization frameworks or more structure. It’s the opposite. Whenever I’m advising marketers, the biggest breakthroughs come from thought experiments: hypothetical exercises with a few intentional constraints. These conversations force new ideas to the surface and bend your brain just enough to reveal ideas that might actually work.
So this newsletter shares 5 of my go-to thought experiments. Simple, occasionally uncomfortable prompts to jolt you out of the rut and help you rethink your 2025 strategy with a fresh, more creative brain.
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