The Grateful Undead. Marketing habits that refuse to stay buried.

It’s Halloween. Time for ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night. Here’s our spooky round-up of the marketing undead — the tactics we thought were long gone, yet keep crawling back to life.

Ad memoriam SEO—Died 2025

We got so used to stitching our content together—part by part, scrap by scrap. Frankencopy for the spiritless robots of the Web. But now, the machines can dream. They’ve evolved – and they’re hungry for stories to reimagine. 

With ChatGPT and its generative cousins no longer simply summarising content, but synthesising it anew, the old dream of page-one ranking is fading. The new game? Surfacing in that all-important AI-synthesised answer. Search isn’t gone — it’s shape-shifting. Time to optimise for curiosity, not compliance. One last thought: if SEO was our creature – docile and mechanical – then Gen Search is our creation. And it may be testing its harness?

Email—died so that others might make a living – 2020

Dead? Depends whether you’re checking for signals or soul. When social feeds were still fun, email looked doomed — too selly, too spammy, too stiff. But now that X is a real-life horror show and timelines are haunted by bots and bogeymen, the inbox suddenly feels strangely cosy.

Email isn’t dead. It’s maturing — a channel for believers, not bystanders. Opt-in has risen again. The best emails? They read like a note from someone you actually like – and might want to answer. 

RIP print—D. 2012

Declared dead—far too eagerly— on the night scrolls smothered spreads and the old print lore of ems and ens, ligatures and kerns was laid to rest. 

Or was it? Print is back — slower, more thoughtful, and infinitely more human. In a world of frictionless digital, the weight of paper and the smudge of ink remind us that someone cared enough to make something. Print has an afterlife on shelves and coffee tables — with room for storytelling, space to breathe, and time to feel. Add back a sprinkling of digital magic (micro-runs, QR codes) and print delivers personalisation and performance too.

In loving memory of creativity—D. 2023

A fixation on numbers made bravery feel reckless. Safety became a strategy, everything started to look the same, and campaigns just blended into the background. That’s the real nightmare. 

But safety doesn’t cut through. Real creativity is the current that jolts a message into motion. Creativity is alive still, kicking off its coffin lid, and ever so slightly unhinged (…as all the best ideas are).

Qui resurgit—QR Codes—D. 2012

Reanimated as the tiny runes of omnichannel outreach and slick digital streamlining. Almost died from embarrassment because once upon a time no one knew how to scan them. 

Can’t imagine life without QR boarding passes? How about QR tickets to the afterlife? Undertakers now offer QR-inscribed headstones—your digital memorial, to be summoned in the cemetery.

Long-form content—gone to meet its maker—2016

And not for the first time. Earworms and eyeworms were meant to gnaw away the marrow of our attention, leaving us sipping content through novelty straws. 

And yet – Substack. And original LinkedIn essay. Stories are what we share around the fire, when chaos presses close: to feel connected, safe, and warm inside. The best ones take a little time to tell.  

Person-to-person marketing—pushing up daisies—2020

Even before the pandemic, the portents were clear. Revenant tradeshows and conferences staggered on from year to year, proclaiming that all was well through unnerved grins while underneath the corporate polo shirts, the rot had set in. Then connection became contagion, and the doors slammed closed. 

What we learned then was that time spent with other warm blooded humans is the most precious time of all. And so the event was reborn—smaller, a conclave maybe – built around stories, community, human connection. 

Last words :The Resurrection Economy

Marketing never truly dies. It just changes form, a bit like a vampire. The trick (and the treat) is knowing what deserves a proper burial, and what is worth raising from the dead.

So this Halloween, let’s light a candle for creativity, breathe life into what still works, and let the rest rest in peace.

From all of us at Cohesive — happy haunting 🎃