This is the 89th dispatch of The CMO Journal, the 44th this year.
I’ve been writing it for almost 2 years now, and I intend to continue. It’s become one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done, and I’m grateful that it has come this far.
I have to thank you, my readers, for supporting me, and egging me on. And I’ve said this before: It’s because you read that I write.
But I need a bit of a break.
The treadmill has been pretty much continuous, and I want to devote some time to a couple more writing projects, hopefully at least kickstart them before next year’s grind kicks in. You’ll hear about them soon enough.
So this will be the last edition for 2021, and I hope you had a good year of reading. Because I certainly loved the writing.
This pause also gives me a chance to go over everything and pick out favourites. I don’t want to call this the best of 2021 though, that would be too subjective.
But these are the essays I think you should go back to, or in the case of new readers, discover. I have chosen 6 of them.
The first four are startup and brand focused.
Easily my best of this year. It wasn’t received as well as I’d hoped, but I understood. It’s not tactical at all. It’s a bit of a philosophical treatise on why we think about and do branding. It’s my most deeply researched essay of this year, and draws from ridiculously disparate sources for the point I want to make. I enjoyed writing it very much, and I think it’s worth a relook.
I hope newer readers enjoy my take on why we marketers do what we do.
My take on why, if we want to create something significant, we need to do interesting things for boring amounts of time. I used a bunch of stories to illustrate how normal folks can create amazing things by just turning up every day.
This was a fun essay to write, and a lot of people loved it.
Probably my most important essay this year. I was able to tell the story of an Indian startup doing everything that I have been talking about in my newsletter. My newsletter has the theory, and Rocketlane is showing how all of it can be done in the real world. There is a lot to learn from them, and I was overjoyed by this being one of my most successful pieces of the year.
I needed it to be; That startups learn and implement things from stories like this is the entire point of this project.
I realised in the last year how big a gap in understanding there is for early stage founders who want to get press coverage for their startups. So I wrote this rather exhaustive piece that covered the basics for them. It’s a personal favourite because it gives a founder most of what he or she needs at an early stage.
If founders read this and go to a PR meeting, they’ll be ready to ask smart questions and take smarter decisions.
The last two I chose are career-focused.
I write about the idea of doing one thing well. Not just in the context of careers, though. Even in products, I posit that there is a disproportionate advantage in being really good at solving just one really important problem. It can be read as a guide to a personal mantra, or as a positioning guide.
If the earlier essay could be read as something for early-career professionals, this one was written for people in the middle of their careers, with some expertise in what they do already. I give an example of a friend, and also talk about my own career to help folks think about and grow in their niche.
That’s it then, 2021. A whole year. Went by so quick, didn’t it? That’s what everyone has been feeling after the pandemic, a sense of time speeding up beyond one’s control, making everything seem fleeting.
Which is why it’s absolutely necessary for all of us to take a break, and get some well deserved down time. Because it’s not time that’s racing, it’s our minds.
So take care of yourself, have a drink and a laugh with the people you love. Enjoy the holidays. There will be time to think about work and career in the new year.
Finally, before you go, I’m going to ask you to take a few seconds to endorse this newsletter. If this newsletter has helped you think through something or accomplish anything this year, this is all I ask in return.
I’ll make it easy for you, too: Please just click the button below, go to LinkedIn or Twitter, and share why you subscribe to The CMO Journal.
Here are a couple of prompts:
"I read Sairam Krishnan’s newsletter because.."
or
"If you are a marketer or a founder, you should subscribe to The CMO Journal because.."
and fill up the rest. That’s it. Click on the button below, and share it on Twitter or LinkedIn. And yes, you can absolutely tag me. :)
Thank you for that!
Wishing you a merry Christmas, folks, and a super-happy new year. See you on the other side.