"Right Message, Right Person, Right Time" is marketing's favorite myth—an impossible optimization target that wastes time, money, and effort while distorting how advertising actually works.
One of the things I value most is agency. I want the freedom to make decisions on my terms. I want autonomy. Good marketing respects that. Too much marketing today treats people as variables in a conversion model instead of human beings with lives that don’t revolve around brands.
To be fair, this isn’t entirely marketers’ fault. Many are working under unrealistic expectations from executives and investors who expect every campaign to produce immediate, measurable returns. When capital demands instant growth, marketing becomes less about helping people make good decisions and more about forcing outcomes that don’t exist.
That pressure creates desperate tactics like more retargeting, more interruptions, more personalization, more urgency, more surveillance, and more attempts to manufacture demand on command.
Ironically, those tactics often produce the opposite result. People don’t like being treated like targets in a shooting range. They don’t like feeling hunted across the internet until they finally give in. Respect isn’t a soft metric. It’s one of the foundations of long-term brand growth.
The brands that win aren’t the ones that pressure people into buying. They’re the ones that are remembered when people are ready to buy..
This is a scathing, necessary takedown of the "Right Message, Right Person, Right Time" (RMRPRT) dogma. You’ve hit on the central irony of modern marketing: in our frantic pursuit of algorithmic precision, we’ve abandoned the one thing that actually drives business—memory.
By chasing the "perfect" interception, we’ve traded durability for fragmentation. We aren't building brands anymore; we're just managing "machinery" that generates disposable content. As you rightly pointed out, marketing isn't a real-time puzzle; it’s a memory game. If you aren't remembered when the buyer finally decides to move, the accuracy of your targeting becomes a moot point.
The transition from "Right Message, Right Person, Right Time" to "The remembered message at the buying moment" is the most important strategic pivot a brand can make today.
If you are interested in exploring how to shift your resources away from "endless variation" toward building the kind of brand assets that actually stick, I would love for you to check out my space: https://www.google.com/search?q=https://nicolocaiti.substack.com/
Love this rant and rabbit hole, Jacob. Something that has bothered me for years with attribution is the way some companies will only examine the performance of recently launched campaigns. Meanwhile, user engagement is happening with older campaigns as people search 🔍 their inboxes or the company blog and engage with older resources. That behavior shouldn’t be ignored 🤦🏼♀️
The catalog! I see it happen with the podcasts I produce - people might show up for the latest, but the start digging through the remnants and stay, because they have something to stick around for/or stick around with/to...interesting angle on it; there's probably 13 more articles here - appreciate you!
YESSS! It's just another log on the bonfire that needs to crank into a smoke signal people can start orienting toward. You, me, even Mr. Right - we're all in this together!!
One of the things I value most is agency. I want the freedom to make decisions on my terms. I want autonomy. Good marketing respects that. Too much marketing today treats people as variables in a conversion model instead of human beings with lives that don’t revolve around brands.
To be fair, this isn’t entirely marketers’ fault. Many are working under unrealistic expectations from executives and investors who expect every campaign to produce immediate, measurable returns. When capital demands instant growth, marketing becomes less about helping people make good decisions and more about forcing outcomes that don’t exist.
That pressure creates desperate tactics like more retargeting, more interruptions, more personalization, more urgency, more surveillance, and more attempts to manufacture demand on command.
Ironically, those tactics often produce the opposite result. People don’t like being treated like targets in a shooting range. They don’t like feeling hunted across the internet until they finally give in. Respect isn’t a soft metric. It’s one of the foundations of long-term brand growth.
The brands that win aren’t the ones that pressure people into buying. They’re the ones that are remembered when people are ready to buy..
Raise your hand if you love being tracked by click-sniffing biz dev bloodhounds? No one?
This is a scathing, necessary takedown of the "Right Message, Right Person, Right Time" (RMRPRT) dogma. You’ve hit on the central irony of modern marketing: in our frantic pursuit of algorithmic precision, we’ve abandoned the one thing that actually drives business—memory.
By chasing the "perfect" interception, we’ve traded durability for fragmentation. We aren't building brands anymore; we're just managing "machinery" that generates disposable content. As you rightly pointed out, marketing isn't a real-time puzzle; it’s a memory game. If you aren't remembered when the buyer finally decides to move, the accuracy of your targeting becomes a moot point.
The transition from "Right Message, Right Person, Right Time" to "The remembered message at the buying moment" is the most important strategic pivot a brand can make today.
If you are interested in exploring how to shift your resources away from "endless variation" toward building the kind of brand assets that actually stick, I would love for you to check out my space: https://www.google.com/search?q=https://nicolocaiti.substack.com/
“You don’t ever hear marriage proposals characterized as “Right message, right person, right time.””
Sadly, on LinkedIn, you do hear this.
Love this rant and rabbit hole, Jacob. Something that has bothered me for years with attribution is the way some companies will only examine the performance of recently launched campaigns. Meanwhile, user engagement is happening with older campaigns as people search 🔍 their inboxes or the company blog and engage with older resources. That behavior shouldn’t be ignored 🤦🏼♀️
The catalog! I see it happen with the podcasts I produce - people might show up for the latest, but the start digging through the remnants and stay, because they have something to stick around for/or stick around with/to...interesting angle on it; there's probably 13 more articles here - appreciate you!
Hey, stop writing better versions of my story! Jk! This is great, let's keep beating the drum against our most damaging collective delusions!
https://www.adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/the-paradox-of-personalization-billions-of-ai-tailored-ads-creates-a-measurement-mess/
YESSS! It's just another log on the bonfire that needs to crank into a smoke signal people can start orienting toward. You, me, even Mr. Right - we're all in this together!!
💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼