Lochhead on Marketing

When crisis hits, marketing becomes the company’s leadership engine. Explore how CEOs and CMOs can unite communications, practice radical transparency, support their communities, and cut waste intelligently. The conversation also covers aggressive moves during downturns, making a category essential, and turning creative marketing ideas into revenue.

The midterm elections wrapped up yesterday, and plenty of people are still sorting through the results. But the hosts of the Pirate Street Journal came away with a different kind of takeaway. This may have been the first AI-assisted election at any real scale, and each of them used the technology in a very different way. One built a voting framework with Claude, one cross-checked three chatbots on California propositions, and one skipped AI entirely and tested what campaign marketing does to a voter’s head. What they found was useful, a little uncomfortable, and in one case very funny. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   Building a Voting Plan With a Chatbot Eddie went into this cycle with a problem most of us share. Beyond the two or three names at the top of the ballot, he had no idea who half the candidates were. So he gave Claude his address, asked it to pull up his ballot, and had it interview him about what he cares about. The result was a personal framework: a sensible economy, a reflective stance on AI, leaders who look forward, and measurable outcomes over speeches. He voted ahead of time, so the booth held no pressure. The tool had gaps. It missed a few races, and judges and forest preserve candidates were beyond its reach because no information existed. Eddie filled the holes with a loose belief in checks and balances, voting against incumbents in a heavily Democratic Illinois and tossing a few random votes to Republicans for the sake of competition. When he had nothing at all, he confessed he voted for Asian candidates, a bit of what he called positive racism borrowed from a Ronny Chang comedy routine.   Cross-Checking Props and Local Races Christopher faced a different headache in California. Many ballot propositions are worded so confusingly that even when you know what you want, you can’t tell whether to vote yes or no. He ran the props through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok, and argued with each of them, since he figures a single chatbot is too eager to please. Gemini, he said, shut down any political conversation almost immediately. About two thirds of his props turned out to involve raising taxes or making it easier to raise them. He was also surprised by how much the models knew about hyper-local races. ChatGPT had details on a city council contest in Capitola, a town of roughly 10,000 people, and even tracked the vote count drops. That raises an opening for entrepreneurs: a nonpartisan voting agent that gives someone in rural Alaska the same depth of information as someone in a California beach town.   Bias, Marketing Noise, and a Peaceful Handoff Christopher raised the touchy question of who builds these models. He pointed to a stat that roughly 80% of engineers at the major labs lean left, and argued that bias deserves a public conversation, ideally solved by builders and not by new regulation. He also noted that models are designed to agree with you, so you have to tell them to give you facts and not flattery. Bri ran the opposite experiment. She skipped AI, judged the election by the flyers, texts, and TV ads she saw, then discovered the “vote no on number two” slogans had little to do with what was printed on her ballot. Christopher closed on a note that stuck. He recalled George H.W. Bush saying that watching power change hands without a drop of blood shed is the real marvel. Whatever side you’re on this morning, the peaceful transfer is worth appreciating. To hear more about the topics in this week’s The Pirate Street Journal, download and listen to this episode. You can also read more Pirate Street Journal entries in the Category Pirates newsletter.   We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

Most people assume Anthropic is bleeding cash. After reading the S-1, the hosts of the Pirate Street Journal came away with a different picture. The company pulled in about $23 billion over the first nine months of the year, compared with roughly $2.5 billion in the same stretch last year. Investors have put in around $140 billion, and about $132 billion is still sitting in the bank. The headline loss of $104 billion looks scary until you see that roughly $94 billion of it is a paper charge on convertible notes that gained value as the company did. Here is what the hosts found when they dug in. This episode of The Pirate Street Journal breaks down three major business topics through that lens. Christopher, Eddie, and Bri take a hard look at the week’s most important business news and share what the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the mainstream press consistently miss. The result is a faster, sharper, and more honest read on how business actually works. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   The Fastest Revenue Ramp Ever Recorded Compare fifth-year revenue. Nvidia did $29.1 million. Google did $439.5 million. Anthropic did $4.59 billion. Nothing in tech history looks like that. Strip out the accounting noise and the business is cash flow positive, with about $6.6 billion in operating cash flow over nine months. The company spent only $9 or $10 billion in net cash to stand up a $65 billion revenue business. Market share tells a similar story. Menlo Ventures reported Anthropic’s share climbing from roughly 40% last year to 55% this year. Even the biggest customers spend only about 0.1% of their revenue on tokens, against technology budgets closer to 4 or 5%, so the room to grow looks enormous.   Anthropic: Power, Politics, and the Problem of Messaging Anthropic has a weak spot: it does not control its own infrastructure. Its S-1 names access to data centers, compute, and power as its biggest fear. Elon Musk has said power is now the limit, Microsoft has struck a long deal to revive Three Mile Island, and data center moratoriums are gaining ground in politics. If the U.S. turns hostile to data centers, Musk, with his plans for orbital compute, could end up holding the strongest hand. The hosts also think the company markets itself badly. Its letter leads with abstract benefits and heavy risk language, including a warning that the technology could harm humanity. Simple promises would land better: a doctor or nurse available around the clock, a personal CFO that saves you money, and a software engineer on call. Bree’s own story fits that pitch. AI helped her sort out her acne, then her thyroid problem, and then a skin condition, and her family benefited too.   A Knife’s Edge Business With Near Infinite Demand The CFO’s job looks brutal. Slow the spending and revenue cools, which drags down the valuation. Push the spending and you need power that may not exist yet, plus compute bought on the spot market, which can flip the P&L upside down fast. The hosts expect wild swings in year one for anyone buying the stock, and say only an iron stomach will do. Still, the long view is bullish. The category is not really artificial intelligence, it is intelligence, and the collective intelligence of everyone beats the intelligence of a few. Demand for that may have no ceiling. The hosts expect Anthropic to produce a legendary outcome, though they expect the volatility to be just as legendary. To hear more about the topics in this week’s The Pirate Street Journal, download and listen to this episode. You can also read more Pirate Street Journal entries in the Category Pirates newsletter.   We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

Paul Maher, founder of UK agency Positive Marketing and a former journalist, is renowned for earned media and trendjacking. He shares how companies can turn breaking news into visibility, why provocative angles attract journalists, and how invented moments can make familiar stories newsworthy. They explore timing, preparation, flexible commentary, and the persistence needed to shape the news cycle.

Y2K transformed a genuine technology problem into predictions of societal collapse, sending people scrambling for cash, supplies, and safety. This conversation examines the fear flywheel behind such panics, the incentives drawing media, politicians, consultants, and businesses into it, and how similar dynamics shape AI doomsday narratives. It also explores questions for separating real risks from profitable hysteria.

Benjamin Jaros, a Stanford Hoover Institution economist specializing in public finance, examines California’s Proposition 40. They explore why it would be America’s first true net-worth tax, how a “one-time” measure could become permanent, constitutional challenges, California’s entrepreneur exodus, and the threat wealth taxation poses to innovation, investment, and family businesses.

AI’s future may hinge less on algorithms than on trust. This discussion connects Meta’s treatment of children, personal superintelligence, EU watermarking rules, data center protests, Nvidia’s explosive growth, and the credibility gap among AI leaders. It also explores transparency, human-AI creativity, public backlash, and why trusted leadership could become technology’s greatest competitive advantage.

A debate over Prop 40 and its ripple effects on startup equity and incentives. A look at how taxing unrealized stock and options could change where founders choose to build companies. An analysis of constitutional changes that might open the door to broader asset taxation. A discussion of potential migration, fiscal consequences, and the future of California’s innovation engine.

A look back at the web’s 35-year ripple effect on the global economy and how entirely new industries were born. Stories of category creation from e-commerce to streaming and how one innovation unlocked the next. How smartphones and app stores accelerated creator economies. A big-picture take on AI as the potential next platform for brand-new categories.

A take on how the 2026 World Cup turned into a massive marketing win for America through millions of visitor stories. A contrast of Qatar's huge spend versus organic trust and word of mouth. Exploration of category design, the magic triangle of company-product-category, and five laws for earning word of mouth. Examples of everyday abundance that surprised visitors and created viral testimony.