Marketing, in plain language

Rebranding is expensive, disruptive, and frequently unnecessary. The signals people act on usually aren't the ones that justify it. Here's how to tell the difference between needing a rebrand, a refresh, and a simple file cleanup.

AI-generated content is competent, neutral, and completely forgettable — which is fatal for brand building. Jonathan Petrous explains the real problem with AI content and what it can and can't do for your business.

A website is one of the few purchases where choosing badly shows up years later — not in how it looks, but in whether you can update it, whether you own it, and whether leaving means starting over. Here's what to ask first.

Three years on the New Baltimore Arts & Culture Commission, this year as treasurer. Why community participation is worth more to a local business than another advertising channel.

Google Ads and Local Service Ads both put you in front of local searchers — but they work very differently. Jonathan Petrous breaks down which one is right for your business and when to use both.

Hiring a designer means evaluating work in a field where you don't have expertise. Here are the specific questions that predict how a project will actually go, the red flags worth walking away from, and what to ask before anyone starts.

This month: the logo I rebuilt instead of redesigning, the client work I never invoiced, and why showing up consistently in the community has done more for my business than any single referral I could trace.

On October 15, we filmed New Baltimore's Town Hall on the fire department millage and the proposed new City Hall, start to finish, at no charge to the City. Here's what we captured, how we kept it neutral, and what we've offered next.

There's a big difference between a review strategy that works and one that drives customers away. Jonathan Petrous breaks down exactly what separates the two — with a clear picture of both approaches.

Vacation Innovations had an excellent in-house creative team and more work than hours to do it. For a year, JpCS was the overflow capacity — email campaign design across their brand portfolio, plus logo work. Here's when adding outside capacity beats hiring.

Skip the statistics you can't verify. Here's the actual mechanism by which reviews turn into revenue — and why review count often matters more than your star average.

Brand strategy can be transformational — but it's not magic, and it won't fix everything. Jonathan Petrous gives an honest assessment of what it can and can't do for your business.