If you have been around marketing for any length of time, you’ve most likely heard of Ann Handley. Ann is the Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs, a best-selling author and international keynote speaker. Recently, Lee Odden, co-founder of TopRank Marketing, caught up with Ann for a chat. 
Ann is the queen of marketing metaphors. At last year’s Healthcare Internet Conference in Scottsdale, she delivered an entire keynote talk using Charlotte’s Web as a marketing metaphor. (Among her many attributes, Ann is the ultimate E.B. White fan.) During her chat with Lee, Ann talked about “badaxe” marketing. While at an event in Toronto, Ann accompanied other speakers and attendees on an ax-throwing outing. As she is apt to do, Ann found an analogy to marketing from her experience – and not the more obvious one of hitting the target as marketing’s goal.
Instead, Ann saw a little deeper into the ax-throwing experience, saying that while it’s often enough just to hit the target, the success comes from the trying and the practice. Even though it can be scary to try new things, you have to take the risk and throw an ax at your desired target.
Another topic for discussion was marketing trends for 2020. Ann sees email as a “vastly undervalued” marketing tactic that is making a comeback. She sees marketers spending a lot of time on developing great ads and voice applications, while almost completely ignoring their email newsletters.
What “badaxe” things are being done at your organization?