A lot of marketing agencies still treat marketing like they’re assembling Ikea furniture. They line up the pieces–brand strategy, a content calendar, paid ads–and follow the execution instructions step by step. If they stay on script, they believe they’ll end up with growth, or at least something sturdy enough to sit on.

But marketing in frontier tech doesn’t work like that. It’s not a manual you follow or a piece of furniture you build. It’s an open problem. What worked last quarter will probably flop today. The ground keeps shifting, the vibes keep changing, and the playbook you’re clinging to is already outdated.

The checklist mindset feels safe because it promises predictability: predictable budgets, predictable content, predictable outputs. But safe quickly turns into stagnant. In crypto, where culture mutates at the speed of X, predictability is just another word for irrelevance.

That’s why we need a new mindset that builds on Vibe Marketing.

Right now, most people equate Vibe Marketing with automation. AI tools that crank out copy. Scheduling apps that drip posts across socials. n8n workflows chaining half a dozen APIs together to push campaigns out without a human ever touching them. It’s marketing as fast, efficient, and hands-free scripts.

And to be fair, that’s part of it. AI and automation have collapsed the cost of execution. What once took a team a week now runs in the background on autopilot. That’s real leverage.

But if that’s all Vibe Marketing is, it misses the point. Automation isn’t the mindset. It’s the accelerant.

The Vibe Marketing Mindset is about faster, tighter feedback loops. It’s a commitment to two things: relentless iteration and relentless sense-making. AI just makes that loop radically cheaper and radically faster.

This means treating every campaign like an open problem. Learning in days what used to take quarters. Running experiments not to ship content, but to surface signal.

The best marketers don’t use AI to escape the work. They use it to compress the cycle of learning. They don’t act like assembly-line workers following a script. They act like explorers–wayfinders in shifting terrain, feeling out the landscape, adjusting to shifts, searching for signals in the noise. Their job isn’t to follow a map, but to redraw it in real time as the culture moves beneath their feet.

Relentless Iteration

The first commitment is to the loop: Test → reflect → adapt → repeat.

This is the rhythm of real vibe marketing. Every post, every drop, every activation is a test. You throw it into the arena and see how it lands. If it resonates, you scale it. If it doesn’t, you cut it and move on.

It’s not 10,000 hours of repeating the same tactic, it’s 10,000 iterations that sharpen your instincts and teach you where market fit actually lives. 

Yes, plenty of those iterations will flop. But flops aren’t failures, they’re the tuition fees for your Master of Vibe Marketing degree. Each one buys you signal. Each one teaches you something the deck or the strategy doc never could.

Take micro-KOLs. Old-school marketing would bet big on one or two influencers off of ZachXBT’s leaked crypto influencer list and hope for impact. Vibe Marketing takes a different route: run dozens of small experiments with micro-KOLs, use AI to monitor engagement and conversions in real time, and cut underperformers fast. No endless reporting cycles. No sunk costs. Just a living lab where the loop is always running, and winners surface naturally.

This is where the vibe marketing mindset shines. Instead of dragging out cycles with endless weekly syncs and approvals, the vibe marketer compresses them. They pause, reflect, and ask: Did this create resonance? Did it spark momentum? If yes, double down. If no, discard and reset.

Iteration isn’t guessing. It’s disciplined wayfinding. The terrain shifts, you adapt. It’s survival of the fittest idea. 

Relentless Sense-Making

But iteration alone isn’t enough. Without structure, iteration risks becoming noise–random trial-and-error, chasing vanity metrics, mistaking motion for progress.

That’s why the second commitment is just as important: sense-making.

The best marketers aren’t just testing blindly. They’re constantly expanding their toolkit of mental models, frameworks, and case studies that help them interpret what they see.

Models are maps. They don’t tell you the exact road to take, but they help you understand the terrain. They give you a lens to recognize patterns, shortcuts for better decision-making, and guardrails to keep you from confusing noise for signal.

Frameworks like Pirate Metrics, positioning exercises, or the Diffusion of Innovation curve don’t solve marketing, but they do accelerate learning. They turn each loop into compounding intelligence instead of isolated guesses.

And it’s not just about abstract models, case studies validate your thinking. Studying wins and flops, your own and others, so you can see where the patterns hold and where they break. Each campaign you analyze becomes another waypoint, another landmark in your internal map of the marketing landscape.

Zora illustrates this perfectly. Their move from a NFT marketplace into a creator platform wasn’t random wandering, it was sense-making in motion. They upgraded their mental model: tokens aren’t just speculative collectibles, they’re cultural objects that reward creativity, liquidity, and participation. Every post is now embedded in the creator economy. The insight that tokens are not static assets but cultural flywheels is a model shift. 

This is relentless sense-making: always hunting for better models, clearer maps, smarter questions. Iteration gives you experience; sense-making gives that experience meaning. Together they create momentum.

Curiosity and Strengths as Compass

Wayfinding isn’t random wandering. You still need a compass.

Curiosity points you toward where to explore next. Your strengths determine how you execute once you get there. Some people are wired for long-form storytelling, others for viral meme drops. Some thrive in podcasts, others in IRL activations that create cultural moments.

The point isn’t to chase every channel. It’s to let curiosity be your compass and strengths be your medium. Follow what energizes you, double down on what you do best, and iteration will sharpen both your craft and your edge.

Here’s where AI really changes the speed of the game. What used to take a full campaign team, custom dev work, and weeks of execution can now be done in hours. AI lowers the cost of testing, lets you run ten experiments where you used to run one, and multiplies your capacity to reflect and refine.

But speed isn’t the same as wisdom. AI doesn’t tell you what resonates. It can’t replace taste, courage, or curiosity. Those are human traits, and they’re the difference between noise and signal.

Think of AI as the wind at your back. It pushes you faster, but you still need to know how to steer.

Vibe Marketing is the fusion of experimentation and speed. That’s the breakthrough. Iteration that used to take a village now takes a weekend.

The Commitment

At the end of the day, the marketers that will thrive aren’t the ones clinging to playbooks or chasing a library of n8n templates. They’re the ones who treat marketing as an open problem, who run learning loops relentlessly, who build sharper models every round, and who stay curious enough to keep evolving.

Relentless iteration. Relentless sense-making. Running loops and building maps. Learning faster than the terrain shifts.

That’s the Vibe Marketer mindset. That’s the game we’re playing.

And if you want to thrive in this space, that commitment isn’t optional, it’s the whole game.