GREG SWAN
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Contagious Creativity
22/04/2026
🌜🚀Just added to this Friday's lineup: What happens when a mission to the Moon meets the social internet?
GREG SWAN (Senior Partner, FINN Partners) will explore how Artemis II became one of the most participatory storytelling moments in modern history, and what marketers, creators, and communicators can learn from it here on Earth.
🎟️ Tickets still available - https://smbmsp-apr2026.eventbrite.com/
26/07/2025
AI-driven search is rewriting the playbook. But if you never learned SEO 101, this post is for you.
16/05/2025
How are you? “Busy!” “Crazy busy.” “Back-to-backs all day.” We all know these default answers. But they’re not a red flag. They’re a reflex. A conversational cop-out. A way to dodge real connection with a socially acceptable excuse.
But if everyone is busy all the time… is anyone actually saying anything?
In this week’s Social Signals (https://open.substack.com/pub/gregswan/p/the-busy-trap-revisited), I revisited “The Busy Trap” (circa 2012), and unpacked why **busy** still dominates our self-image in 2025, and what we can do to move beyond it.
Less balance fantasy. More intentional blur. Fewer meetings. Smarter AI sidekicks. New rituals for a world that never really slows down.
Maybe it’s time to stop fantasizing about a return to balance and instead start designing for a world where imbalance is the baseline. The goal isn’t to opt out of ambition but to build systems that support both achievement and sanity.
What’s your (new) default answer when someone asks how you’re doing?
06/05/2025
I'm quoted in Digidaytoday about the massive changes in digital + social that happened in the first 100 days of President Trump’s term and what marketers are doing to adapt, leverage, and match pace -->
Marketing Briefing: Check in with marketers after the first 100 days of President Trump's policies For marketers, there’s been an expectation of chaos this time around but that expectation doesn’t make the reality any easier to manage.
⚠️ Welcome to the era of algorithmically average ideas.
In a world where everyone’s feeding the same prompts into the same models and playing it safe to stay “on-brand,” we’re watching creativity collapse into a beige blob of sameness.
Safe work doesn’t spark. It scrolls by.
And guess what? The algorithm is optimizing you into irrelevance.
If your work looks like it was written by the same robot as everyone else’s... it probably was.
👇 This week I wrote about why bold is the new smart: https://gregswan.substack.com/p/safe-work-is-the-riskiest-move
24/01/2025
In this issue of we’re talking Employee Generated Content (EGC) based on some thoughts I shared with Ad Age last week and wanting to unpack it more ➡️ https://gregswan.substack.com/p/more-employee-generated-content-in
11/12/2024
In a world where humans are never **not** connected with technology, brands must adapt to engage their new ‘cyborg’ audiences. 🤖
🤖 ➡️ https://www.prweek.com/article/1898545/connect-cyborg-audience-2025
06/12/2024
Happy Register Your Brand on Bluesky Day! 🦋 From a reputation management perspective, the breakout platform has reached the point where all brands should get their branded handles. Wrote about that this week: https://gregswan.substack.com/p/register-your-brand-on-bluesky
05/12/2024
We took some listener feedback over at The Cave Project, and Jenny and I put together a little "2024 Holiday Gift Guide" based on stuff we both put on our lists, what our kids asked for, and a bunch of technology that runs our house we still recommend. 🎁
Check it out here ➡️
The Cave Project's Black Friday Must-Haves Get a Bird Buddy so our birds can be friends with your birds. 🦆
26/11/2024
Whamageddon is a viral internet game where players try to go from December 1 to Christmas Day without hearing "Last Christmas" by Wham! 🎄 And by knowing about this game, you are now playing whether you planned to play or not. Good luck! 🤞