Marketing by Design – Design thinking that makes marketing work
I test the AI tools, design trends, and brand moves marketers are talking about, then tell you what holds up and what doesn’t. Written by the author of the bestselling The Visual Marketer, after 20+ years leading brand, creative, and digital experience marketing teams.
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MBD112: Do You Give Compliments Without an Ask?
Published about 1 year ago • 4 min read
5 October 2025 | Issue #112
In this issue:
A Compliment With an Ask Isn't a Compliment
News
The Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide for Marketers
Slideshare is Back (kinda)
How AI Changes Your Customers
Delta, YouTube Ink Inflight Entertainment Partnership
Where Has the Money Gone in Creative Industries?
Citi Trains 175,000 Employees on AI Prompts
AI Shame: 57% of Workers Hide Their AI Use
500 Episodes of Marketing Shenanigans
Have You Tried Sora 2 Yet?
I have many appearances in the next few weeks!
Design Quote of the Week
Midjourney prompt: a manager is giving a designer a complement. A vibrant, high-contrast illustration using flat vector-style shading with neon and duotone color blocking. The characters are stylized with exaggerated lighting in cyan and magenta tones, set against a yellow background. There’s a strong use of shadow and highlight to create depth without using gradients. It uses clean lines and a minimal background to keep focus on the figures and objects. --ar 16:9
Do You Give Compliments Without an Ask?
I'm not someone who is good at receiving compliments. Back in my design days, I would receive compliments, but I never felt comfortable receiving them.
It made me feel weird. I was just doing my job. Some people attributed it to my New England upbringing, and that could be true. We're not boastful (except for Patriots fans, but they're quieter these days).
For years, I had a great team that I worked with so I'd always deflect the praise to them. I like doing a good job, but I never liked the praise.
But I noticed something. Years after we had stopped working together, an old boss was praising my marketing work.
That compliment meant more than any I had received before.
It took me a day to figure out why it meant so much. But once I saw it, it made so much sense:
Up to that point, every compliment had come with an ask.
Every time I had received a compliment, it was followed by someone wanting me to do something for them. I had learned to not only ignore the compliment, but I started to resent the compliment because it was just an obligatory precursor to more work.
Of course, there are the compliments that are dismissed because people feel obligated to say something nice. These people are often related to you.
If you are in the position to give someone praise, divorce that compliment from your next ask. Be generous with praise. It helps people feel good about what they do, and they're more likely to keep doing great work. I know there were times I wasn't generous with praise, because I was skeptical of the intentions of those who were offering compliments. But I thankfully abandoned that mentality a long time ago.
My ask of you today is to let someone know you value their work. They'll appreciate it more than you know.
NEWS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MARKETING, DESIGN, & AI
The Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide for Marketers
This new guide from Trust Insights is a deep dive on what has changed on LinkedIn and what you have to do to get noticed in this noisy space.
If you were making presentations in the early/mid 2010s, you were a big Slideshare user. I had a lot of success with presentations I created for others (millions of views) and presentations of my own (200k views). Now it's ready for a new generation!
It's still has an ad-infested interface, but it has a new visual brand.
Delta, YouTube Ink Inflight Entertainment Partnership
Delta noticed flyers were already streaming YouTube mid-flight, so they made it official with seatback access to creators and podcasts (plus free Premium trials to hook subscribers post-landing).
Banks are treating prompt fluency like Excel proficiency, with Citi mandating AI training across its entire workforce (6.5 million prompts logged this year alone).
This weekend marks the 500th episode of This Old Marketing. Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose have been teaching me the ins and outs of content marketing, and marketing in general, for over a decade. Congratulations guys!
I've been playing with it. I tried making a little vlog/day-in-the-life series of me starting a job at Sterling Cooper Advertising. It's scary how realistic these videos look.
“The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to ‘tidy up’ the mess, as opposed to understanding it’s a ‘day one’ issue and part of everything.” – Tom Peterson
My AI disclaimer: I write the main article. And the news items. If AI generates the images, I include the prompt so you can see how I got to that image.
Marketing by Design – Design thinking that makes marketing work
Jim MacLeod
I test the AI tools, design trends, and brand moves marketers are talking about, then tell you what holds up and what doesn’t. Written by the author of the bestselling The Visual Marketer, after 20+ years leading brand, creative, and digital experience marketing teams.
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