01. RANDI M. GLADSTONE

Why I’m Here

It feels a little strange to make myself the first Person to Note.

WHY I’M WORTH NOTING

I’ve spent a lot of my career in the space between what brands want to do for customers and what actually happens. I’ve been the person inside the brand trying to build the strategy, rally the organization, make the technology work, and prove the impact. I’ve sat on the technology side, where I saw both what incredibly sophisticated platforms make possible and how much of that possibility goes unused. And I’ve consulted with organizations trying to figure out why all the right pieces still aren’t adding up to the experience they imagined.

That vantage point has made me endlessly curious about the gaps.

  • Between data and understanding.

  • Between personalization and relevance.

  • Between having the technology and actually knowing what to do with it.

  • Between the customer journey we put on a slide and the one a customer actually experiences.

I care about growth and measurement. I love technology. I can happily go down a rabbit hole on lifecycle strategy, customer behavior, retention, loyalty, AI, experimentation, or why your beautifully orchestrated journey is probably not as beautifully orchestrated as you think it is. But underneath all of it, I’m interested in people.

  • What makes someone pay attention.

  • What makes them stay.

  • What makes something useful, meaningful, delightful, annoying, or completely forgettable.

And after years of helping companies answer those questions, I’ve learned something else:

I still have a lot of questions. That’s probably the best reason I’m worth noting. Not because I have all the answers. Because I’m paying attention.

ME, RANDI

IN MY OWN WORDS

  • What do you think companies misunderstand most about customer lifecycle?

    “That lifecycle isn't a series of campaigns. Customers don't experience acquisition, activation, engagement, loyalty, retention, and win-back as separate marketing programs. They experience one relationship with a brand. We created the stages. We created the channels. We created the organizational silos. The customer just knows whether we seem to understand them. That distinction changes how I think about almost everything.”

  • We have more customer data and technology than ever. Why aren't customer experiences dramatically better?

    “Because having the pieces and connecting the pieces are two very different things. Most organizations don't suffer from a lack of technology, data, ideas, or talented people. They struggle to connect them around a shared understanding of the customer and the outcome they're trying to drive. I've seen organizations invest enormous amounts of money in sophisticated platforms only to recreate the same experiences they were delivering before. Technology creates capability. It doesn't create clarity. And without clarity around the customer, the business objective, and the behavior you're trying to influence, more technology can sometimes just help you do the wrong thing more efficiently.”

  • What separates good lifecycle marketing from great lifecycle marketing?

    “Great lifecycle marketing starts with behavior, not the message. Instead of asking, What email should we send? I want to know:

    • What is the customer doing?

    • What are they telling us through that behavior?

    • What do we want them to do next?

    • What would make that next action valuable to them?

    • And what experience could help move them there?

    Sometimes the answer is an email. Sometimes it's a push notification, an offer, a product experience, a loyalty benefit, a piece of content, or nothing at all. That last one may be marketing's least favorite answer.”

  • What excites you about AI, and what do you think marketers are getting wrong about it?

    “I'm fascinated by AI because I think it can fundamentally change both what marketers are capable of doing and how we do the work. But I'm less interested in using AI simply to create more. More content. More campaigns. More variations. More messages. We already have plenty of more. I'm interested in whether AI can help us understand customers better, identify patterns humans might miss, make smarter decisions, remove operational friction, and give talented people more time to think. The opportunity isn't just greater efficiency. It's better judgment at greater scale.”

  • What are you paying attention to right now?

    • The gap between personalization and actual relevance.

    • The evolution of loyalty beyond points and programs.

    • How AI changes marketing organizations, not just marketing output.

    • The growing tension between automation and humanity.

    • Why companies continue to optimize individual channels when customers experience the entire brand.

    And the increasing importance of knowing when not to communicate. Mostly, I'm interested in the places where customer expectations are moving faster than organizations. That's usually where the interesting work begins.

  • What have you seen lately that made you think, damn, I wish I thought of that?

    “Honestly? The things that make me think this usually aren't the most technologically sophisticated. They're the ideas that seem incredibly obvious once someone else has had them. A tiny experience detail. A brilliantly simple piece of copy. A brand anticipating something I needed before I thought to ask for it. A use of technology that removes friction instead of announcing how innovative the company is. The best ideas often make you wonder why no one thought of them sooner. Those are the ones I wish I'd thought of. It’s where less is typically so much more.”

Customers don't care how complicated it was to make something feel simple.

They don't see the data architecture, the journey logic, the organizational alignment, the six meetings required to get approval, or the heroic analyst who discovered that one field wasn't passing correctly.

  • They experience the result.

  • Did you understand me?

  • Did you make this easier?

  • Was this useful?

  • Did this feel like it was actually meant for me?

Behind a great customer experience can be an extraordinary amount of complexity.

The customer's job shouldn't be to notice it.

Ours is to make sure they don't have to.

02. Lindsay Tendler

The person behind the ideas and the systems that make better work possible.

There are people who are great at ideas. There are people who are great at getting things done. And then there are the rarer people who understand that the magic usually happens somewhere in between.

WHY SHE’S WORTH NOTING

Some people are exceptional at generating ideas. Others are exceptional at turning ideas into action. Lindsay Tendler brings both strengths together; with the cultural instinct to recognize what matters and the operational discipline to make it real. That combination is exactly why you should want to work with her. For nearly two decades, Lindsay has led integrated campaigns, consumer experiences, partnerships, and brand activations across retail, QSR, entertainment, sports, hospitality, automotive, and lifestyle brands. But her value isn’t defined by the brands, channels, or campaigns on her résumé.

It’s defined by the way she approaches the work and the way people work with her. Lindsay has a sharp instinct for culture: what people are paying attention to, what they’re talking about, what will resonate, and how a brand can enter the conversation without feeling forced or opportunistic. She can take the earliest spark of an idea and see what it could become: the story, the experience, the activation, the partnership, the content, and the moment someone might actually remember. Then she asks the questions that turn possibility into progress: What is the real opportunity here? Who is this for? Why should anyone care? What would make it distinctive? What needs to happen to bring it to life?

That’s where Lindsay becomes especially valuable. She doesn’t just make ideas bigger. She makes them sharper, more relevant, and more achievable. And she thinks deeply about how the work gets made. Long before “AI transformation” became everyone’s favorite presentation slide, Lindsay was exploring how AI could improve the creative process itself; building workflows and systems that help teams move faster, collaborate more effectively, and spend more time on the thinking that genuinely requires human judgment. She understands that better tools are only useful when they lead to better work. Her focus is not technology for its own sake, but practical systems that reduce friction, unlock creativity, and help teams do their best work more consistently.

  • What are brands getting wrong about culture right now?

    “I think brands are trying too hard to keep up with culture instead of asking how they can help shape it. Everyone wants to jump into the latest trend or conversation, but sometimes the bigger opportunity is to create the conversation yourself with something that makes sense for your brand, gives people a reason to engage, and is strong enough to travel across channels.”

  • Where do you think AI genuinely makes creative teams better, and where should we be careful?

    “I think AI genuinely makes creative teams better when it takes some of the process off their plate, like automating workflows, streamlining repetitive tasks, and even helping refine messaging. That gives teams more time to focus on the creative thinking and big ideas where they can add the most value. Where we need to be careful is relying on AI too heavily. AI can get you started and help you get somewhere faster, but it still needs that human layer of making sure the output is accurate, sounds natural, reflects the brand voice, and ultimately connects with people. I see AI as a tool to enhance creativity, not replace the human thinking behind it.”

  • Where do you think AI genuinely makes creative teams better, and where should we be careful?

    “I think AI genuinely makes creative teams better when it takes some of the process off their plate, like automating workflows, streamlining repetitive tasks, and even helping refine messaging. That gives teams more time to focus on the creative thinking and big ideas where they can add the most value. Where we need to be careful is relying on AI too heavily. AI can get you started and help you get somewhere faster, but it still needs that human layer of making sure the output is accurate, sounds natural, reflects the brand voice, and ultimately connects with people. I see AI as a tool to enhance creativity, not replace the human thinking behind it.”

  • What’s one consumer behavior you’re watching right now that marketers aren’t paying enough attention to?

    “I think people are becoming much more aggressive filters of content. There’s so much competing for their attention that they’re making split-second decisions about what’s worth engaging with and what they’ll scroll past. For marketers, that means it’s more important than ever to create something that immediately feels relevant and gives people a reason to stay.”

  • What have you seen lately that made you think, damn, I wish I thought of that?

    “Spotify Wrapped. It’s not recent, but I remember seeing it and thinking, why aren’t we doing this for every brand? Taking data that already exists and turning it into something personalized, entertaining, and inherently shareable is such a smart idea. It makes the consumer part of the creative, which is something I love.”

That combination is rare: Creative instinct + cultural curiosity + operational rigor. It means Lindsay can help you find the idea, pressure-test it, shape it, sell it in, and build the path to execution. She brings energy without chaos, ambition without ego, and structure without slowing the work down. Because great creative isn’t just about having the idea. It’s knowing which idea matters, understanding why someone might care, and figuring out how to bring it into the world, all with the right people, process, and momentum behind it.

Lindsay Tendler

IN HER OWN WORDS

They’re watching people. What they care about. What makes them laugh. What they’re tired of. What they’re suddenly obsessed with. What they share with someone else. The channels will change. The technology definitely will.

Understanding people remains the job. And making something meaningful from that understanding is what Lindsay does best.

The best creative thinkers aren’t just watching brands.