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Michelangelo

—Resources / Insights

Notes on the craft.

Short essays on how we think about creative, measurement and the conversations that follow.

  1. CreativeAttention is borrowedNovember 2, 2026 · 01
  2. MeasurementNumbers that tell the truthNovember 2, 2026 · 02
  3. CommunicationsThe conversation is the productNovember 2, 2026 · 03

Creative

Attention is borrowed

· Michelangelo

Every advertisement interrupts someone who had other plans. That is not a complaint about advertising; it is a description of the deal. A person lends you a few seconds, and the only fair return is something worth their time.

In practice this means saying one thing, clearly, and then stopping. It means frequency caps that assume people notice repetition. And it means refusing the cheap tricks — false countdowns, fake scarcity — that convert once and erode trust for years.

Campaigns built this way are often quieter than their competitors. They also tend to cost less per customer over time, because people do not learn to ignore them.

Measurement

Numbers that tell the truth

· Michelangelo

A dashboard is a set of claims. Each figure asserts that something happened, and a figure that hides its uncertainty is as misleading as an overstated headline.

We label every number: actual, pending, estimated or unavailable. Today’s spend is pending because platforms revise it. Allocated costs are estimated, with the method written down. When data is missing, we show a dash — never a zero, which would claim something that is not true.

This sounds like bookkeeping. It is really about decisions: budgets move on these numbers, so the numbers have to deserve the trust placed in them.

Communications

The conversation is the product

· Michelangelo

Most marketing ends where the customer’s real question begins. Someone sees an ad, calls a number — and meets a queue, a script or a salesperson who was not prepared.

We design that moment as carefully as the ad itself: who answers, what they know, what they are allowed to say, and when they hand off to a licensed professional. Nobody is connected to silence, and nobody is pressured.

It is the least visible part of a campaign and often the most important. People remember how they were treated long after they forget what they were shown.