Nova: Kiki, as a project manager in marketing, I want to start with a number that should send a shiver down your spine. According to research from SiriusDecisions, cited in Randy Frisch's book, sixty to seventy percent of all marketing content goes completely unused. As a PM, when you hear that, what's your immediate reaction?

Kiki: Honestly, Nova? It's infuriating. My immediate reaction is that's a catastrophic failure of resource allocation. It's a project that's effectively 70% over budget with zero ROI on that portion. We spend weeks, sometimes months, on content initiatives. To think that most of that effort just vanishes into the digital ether… it's a massive problem of scope, strategy, and execution.

Nova: It's a huge problem! And that's exactly what we're tackling today by diving into the provocatively titled book, "F#ck Content Marketing" by Randy Frisch. It argues that we, as marketers, are all focusing on the wrong thing. So today, we'll explore this from three angles. First, we'll uncover why most content marketing is a failed project from the start.

Kiki: I'm ready for that.

Nova: Then, we'll discuss the 'Netflix Effect' and the bad habits B2B marketers desperately need to break.

Kiki: Oh, I have a feeling I'm going to recognize some of those.

Nova: And finally, we'll unpack the actionable blueprint the book offers to fix it all, including a new role that might be perfect for someone with your leadership ambitions.

Kiki: Okay, you have my full attention. Let's do it.

Nova: Fantastic. So, the book's core argument is that the problem isn't usually the content itself. We have talented writers and designers. The problem is the environment the content lives in. To explain this, Randy Frisch tells this brilliant story, an analogy that I think will stick with you.

Kiki: I love a good analogy.

Nova: Imagine you're in your dark, unfinished basement. It's a bit damp, a single lightbulb is flickering, and you're there to grab some tools. You see a mini-fridge, open it, and find a single can of Corona. You crack it open. It's… fine. It's a beer. It does the job.

Kiki: Right. A purely functional experience. I'm with you.

Nova: Now, picture this. You're on a white sand beach in Costa Rica. The sun is warm, you hear the gentle crash of waves, and a light breeze is blowing. Someone hands you that exact same can of Corona, ice-cold, with a lime wedge in it. You take a sip. How does that beer taste now?

Kiki: Infinitely better. It's not just a beer anymore; it's part of a perfect moment. It’s an experience.

Nova: Exactly! The Corona is the same, but the experience is night and day. The book's point is: our content is the Corona. Are we serving it in a basement or on a beach?

Kiki: That's a fantastic metaphor. It immediately makes me think of our process. We spend weeks perfecting a whitepaper—that's our 'Corona'—but then the delivery is just a link in an email that downloads a static PDF. That's the basement. It's a dead end. There's no next step, no context.

Nova: It's 'homeless content,' as the book calls it. It has no environment to live in that enhances its value.

Kiki: So the 'beach' would be… what? From a project manager's perspective, the 'beach' is a deliverable we need to define. Maybe it's a dedicated, beautifully designed page where that whitepaper lives, but it's surrounded by a short video from the author, a related case study, and a clear, unmissable call-to-action to book a demo? A curated journey, not a dead end.

Nova: You've absolutely got it. That is the fundamental shift from content marketing to what the book calls content experience. You're not just delivering an asset; you're designing a destination.

Kiki: Which requires a much more creative and strategic project brief from the very beginning. I love that. It changes the goalposts.

Nova: And creating that 'beach experience' is so critical because, as consumers, we're now wired to expect it. The book calls this the 'Made For You' world, all thanks to companies like Netflix and Spotify. They've trained us to expect personalization. But then we get to our B2B marketing jobs and, as the book points out, we fall into these terrible traps, these four bad habits.

Kiki: Okay, I'm ready. Hit me with them. I'm taking notes to audit my own team later.

Nova: Alright, Bad Habit Number One: Greeting with the latest content, not the greatest. We're so obsessed with our content calendar that we push what's new, even if a piece from six months ago is way more relevant to a new visitor.

Kiki: Guilty. Our homepage blog feed is a chronological list. Check.

Nova: Bad Habit Number Two: Organizing by format, not by relevance. This is a big one. The book uses the analogy of Blockbuster versus Netflix. Remember wandering the aisles of Blockbuster?

Kiki: Oh, vividly. Trying to find a Tom Hanks movie meant checking the 'Comedy' section, then 'Drama,' then 'New Releases'... it was a nightmare.

Nova: Exactly! That's organizing by format. And it's what we do on our websites. But Netflix organizes by what you actually want: 'Shows with a Strong Female Lead' or 'Because you watched Stranger Things.' Which one is more helpful?

Kiki: The second one, obviously. And it's painful how much we do the first. Our resource center is literally a navigation menu with the words: 'E-books,' 'Webinars,' 'Case Studies.' We're making the user do all the work! From a PM standpoint, that's a bad project plan for the user's journey.

Nova: It's a terrible user story. Okay, Bad Habit Number Three is Ignoring the User Experience. We might have great content, but if the site is slow, ugly, and hard to navigate, it's a basement experience. And finally, Bad Habit Number Four: Passing the buck on who owns the experience.

Kiki: Ah, now you're speaking my language. The classic 'not my job.'

Nova: Precisely. As a PM, do you see that happening?

Kiki: Absolutely. It's the biggest gap in our whole process. The content team writes the asset. The demand gen team sets up the email campaign. The web team posts it on the site. But if you ask, "Who is responsible for the overall journey from the email click, to the content, to the next step?" The answer is... no one. There's no single owner for the end-to-end experience. That's a huge gap in the RACI chart, so to speak.

Nova: And when there's no owner, the user is the one who suffers, and that 70% of content gets wasted.

Kiki: It all connects. This is a process problem, which means it's a leadership problem.

Nova: You've just identified the million-dollar question, Kiki. Who leads this? And the book proposes a radical solution. First, it lays out a five-step framework. Think of it as a new project lifecycle: Centralize, Organize, Personalize, Distribute, and Generate Results.

Kiki: Okay, so it’s a methodology. Like Agile or Waterfall, but for content experience. That’s a language I can take back to my team.

Nova: Exactly. It gives you a structure. But the most interesting part of the book, especially for you, is its answer to your 'who owns it' question. The book argues for a new, dedicated role: the Content Experience Manager.

Kiki: A Content Experience Manager? So, not a content creator, but an orchestrator? Like a film producer or... a dedicated project manager for the customer journey?

Nova: Precisely! Someone whose job isn't just writing blog posts, but is liaising between all those siloed teams—content, demand gen, sales, UX—to ensure that 'beach experience' is consistent everywhere. They own the journey, end-to-end. They are the single point of accountability.

Kiki: Wow. That makes so much sense. It directly fills the ownership gap we just talked about. It elevates the key performance indicator from a vanity metric like 'publish 4 blog posts this month' to a business metric like 'increase engagement on the buyer journey by 15%.'

Nova: You're right, it reframes the entire goal.

Kiki: It makes it a strategic role, not just a tactical one. For someone like me who's interested in leadership, that's a real, tangible career path. It's about architecting the system, not just executing tasks within it. That's incredibly appealing.

Nova: So, to bring it all together, in just a few minutes we've gone from the shocking realization that most of our content is wasted, to understanding we need to create these immersive 'beach experiences' like Netflix, and finally, seeing that it might require a whole new framework and even a new leadership role to make it all happen.

Kiki: It's a complete paradigm shift, but it feels so logical. It’s not about working harder and creating more content; it’s about working smarter and making the content you already have deliver more value.

Nova: That's the perfect summary. So, for everyone listening, what's the one thing they can do tomorrow to start moving in this direction?

Kiki: I think for anyone listening, especially if you're in a role like mine, the first step isn't to go and demand a new hire. It's to take this thinking into your next project meeting. Look at the content you're planning and ask the team one simple question: "Is this a basement beer, or a beach beer?"

Nova: (laughs) I love that.

Kiki: I think that one question could change the entire conversation. It forces everyone to think about the user's journey, the environment, and the 'what's next.' It’s a small question that opens up a huge, and necessary, strategic discussion.

Nova: That is a perfect, actionable takeaway. A question that can start a revolution. Kiki, thank you so much for bringing your project manager's lens to this. It's been fantastic.

Kiki: This was great, Nova. I have a lot to think about, and a few meetings to disrupt.