Narrator: Imagine a marketing team, pouring weeks of effort into a brilliant white paper. They conduct research, interview experts, and craft a compelling narrative, only to publish it on their website where it languishes, unseen and unread. This isn't a rare failure; it's the industry standard. A staggering 60 to 70 percent of all marketing content goes completely unused. This means the majority of the time, money, and creative energy spent on content marketing is wasted. It’s a reality that frustrated Randy Frisch, the CMO of Uberflip, so much that on a flight without Wi-Fi, he wrote a fiery blog post that would become the catalyst for a new way of thinking. That post, and the book that followed, is titled F#ck Content Marketing, and it argues that the problem isn't the content itself, but the broken system for delivering it. Frisch proposes a radical shift in focus: from simply creating content to architecting the entire content experience.

Narrator: The central problem plaguing modern marketing is not a lack of content, but a deluge of it. Companies have become incredibly efficient at producing articles, videos, and ebooks, operating under the assumption that more content equals more engagement. However, this has created a paradox where the sheer volume of material makes it impossible for any single piece to stand out. The result is what Frisch calls "homeless content"—valuable assets that are lost in the noise, buried on page ten of a blog, or forgotten in a folder on a shared drive.

The Content Marketing Institute itself defines the practice as creating and distributing valuable content to drive profitable action. Yet, Frisch argues, the industry became obsessed with the first part—creation—while largely ignoring the second. This led to the absurd statistic from SiriusDecisions that up to 70% of content goes unused. It’s a systemic failure where marketers are set up to lose, churning out assets with no clear strategy for how they will reach the right person at the right time. This realization prompted Frisch to challenge the very foundation of his profession, arguing that the focus needed to evolve away from the content itself and toward the experience of consuming it.

Narrator: In their personal lives, consumers are surrounded by hyper-personalized, "Made For You" experiences. Netflix doesn't just show a library of movies; it curates recommendations based on viewing history. Spotify doesn't just offer songs; it creates custom playlists for every mood and moment. Amazon doesn't just sell products; it anticipates needs and suggests relevant items. This has fundamentally rewired consumer expectations.

Frisch argues that B2B buyers are the same people, and they now carry those expectations into their professional lives. Yet, the B2B world often delivers the opposite: a frustrating, one-size-fits-all experience. He tells the story of visiting a potential client's website and finding a call-to-action for a white paper that read, "To download, email Frank." This awkward, inconvenient, and impersonal process is a perfect example of a poor content experience. B2B brands often make their audience work too hard, navigating confusing resource libraries organized by format (blogs, ebooks, videos) instead of by topic or need. To win, B2B marketers must bridge this gap and deliver the same seamless, personalized, and intuitive experiences their audience enjoys from consumer brands.

Narrator: To explain the core concept of "content experience," Frisch uses a simple but powerful analogy. Imagine drinking a Corona beer. If you're in a dark, unfinished basement, the beer is just okay. But if you take that exact same beer and drink it on a sunny beach in Costa Rica, the experience is transformed. The beer tastes better, more refreshing. The beer itself—the content—didn't change, but the environment did.

This is the essence of the content experience, which Frisch defines by three key components: the environment in which content lives (its design and aesthetics), how it’s structured (its organization and navigational path), and how it compels engagement (its calls-to-action and ability to guide the user to the next logical step). A beautifully designed, well-organized content hub that intelligently recommends the next relevant asset is the "beach in Costa Rica." A generic blog post that leads to a dead end is the "basement." The book's central argument is that marketers must stop focusing only on brewing the beer and start architecting the beach.

Narrator: Frisch provides a five-step framework to move from theory to practice. This system is designed to help organizations operationalize the creation of personalized content experiences.

First is Centralize. Before you can create experiences, you must know what assets you have. This involves auditing all existing content—the "homeless content"—and bringing it into a single, manageable library. Stephanie Totty at ExamSoft did this and discovered 15-20% of their content was highly valuable but had been completely forgotten.

Second is Organize. Once centralized, content must be organized for discoverability. Frisch contrasts the failure of Blockbuster, which organized movies by broad, unhelpful genres, with the success of Netflix, which uses thousands of micro-tags to surface highly relevant content. The lesson is to tag content by topic, persona, industry, and buying stage, not just by format.

Third is Personalize. With organized content, you can deliver tailored experiences. For an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, the company Snowflake created personalized content destinations for each target account, featuring the account's logo and a curated stream of relevant assets. This targeted approach is far more effective than a generic landing page.

Fourth is Distribute. Distribution isn't just about sharing a link; it's about owning the experience. Instead of sending prospects to a YouTube page full of distractions, you bring the video into your own branded environment where you can control the next step. Uberflip even used this principle in a direct mail campaign, sending prospects a "Netflix" or "Spotify" themed package that led them to a personalized URL with a curated content stream.

Finally, Generate Results. This means tracking what works. Frisch uses a hockey analogy he taught his son: it's not just about the person who scores the goal, but also about the players who made the assists. Marketers must track which content assists in the buyer's journey, not just the final piece that leads to a conversion. This provides a true picture of ROI and informs future content strategy.

Narrator: A truly great content experience cannot be the sole responsibility of the marketing department. It requires deep organizational alignment. Frisch recounts a time at Uberflip when he discovered that every sales rep had their own version of the sales deck. Some used PowerPoint, some used Google Slides, and they all told a slightly different story. For a prospective customer, this meant the company's core message was inconsistent and confusing. The sales deck, Frisch realized, is content, and its delivery is a critical part of the content experience.

This principle extends across the entire organization. The book praises companies like Slack and Mailchimp, who turn something as mundane as a monthly invoice into a content experience. Their invoices don't just list charges; they include data and narrative that reinforce the value the customer is receiving. This demonstrates that every touchpoint is an opportunity to strengthen the brand story. To manage this, Frisch advocates for a new role: the Content Experience Manager, a person responsible for orchestrating and aligning the content journey across all departments, ensuring the message remains consistent from the first ad to the final invoice.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from F#ck Content Marketing is the fundamental identity shift it demands from marketers. The goal is no longer to be a prolific creator of content, but to become a thoughtful architect of experiences. The value lies not in the individual asset, but in the seamless, personalized journey you build around it. The book challenges the industry to move beyond the content production treadmill and embrace a more strategic, empathetic, and ultimately more effective approach.

It leaves readers with a critical question to guide their future efforts. Instead of asking, "What content should we create next?", the real challenge is to ask, "What experience do we want our audience to have, and how can our content bring that journey to life?" Answering that question is the first step toward fixing what's broken in content marketing.