How to Save Marketers, Marketing, and Free Markets…or Not

An open let­ter to mar­keters, con­sumers and experts

The Marketing Equation “M=eC” is…everything

Image by Author based on image by WangX­iNa on Freepik

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and mar­keters are fac­ing an exis­ten­tial threat. After two decades, a hand­ful of Big Tech Mega-Monop­oly Mid­dle­men (BTM3) dom­i­nate how busi­nesses reach cus­tomers. And now, BTM3 is adding AI to its arse­nal, leav­ing mar­keters and con­sumers only one path to pre­serve free mar­ket choice.

That path is under­stand­ing and lever­ag­ing every­thing the “Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion” (M=eC) reveals, where Mar­ket­ing “M” equals expo­sures “e” mul­ti­plied by credibility “C.” This equa­tion is the key to rebal­anc­ing the dig­i­tal marketplace.

The solu­tion is a sim­ple for­mula that trans­forms credibility from a pas­sive byprod­uct into an actively man­u­fac­tured asset — a for­mula that enables mar­keters to rapidly gen­er­ate Credibility “C” at scale, cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful direct-to-con­sumer plat­form beyond BTM3’s control.

And since BTM3 already dom­i­nates expo­sures “e”, mar­keters must seize con­trol of Credibility “C” to pre­vent BTM3+AI’s com­plete dom­i­na­tion of Mar­ket­ing “M,” and enable mar­keters to deter­mine their own destinies.

With­out action, BTM3+AI per­sonal assis­tants will con­trol what consumers choose and buy, effec­tively end­ing free mar­ket choice. The stakes couldn’t be higher for main­tain­ing con­sumer auton­omy. (AI: ChatGPT4o)

TL;DR: solu­tion in three words: “a mar­ket­ing Wikipedia”

In three let­ters: M=eC (The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion)
The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion M=eC defines the only two ways to increase mar­ket­ing results “M” — increase expo­sures “e” (what we see/hear/experience) or increase credibility “C” (what we believe of what we see/hear/experience).

Expo­sures “e” (dom­i­nated by BTM3) are the objec­tive, incre­men­tal “weak force” (why you need so many of them) and credibility “C” is the sub­jec­tive, expo­nen­tial “strong force” (that affects all expo­sures includ­ing past ones).
(AI: Claude 3.5, ChatGPT4o)

A “mar­ket­ing Wikipedia” increases credibility “C.”

After 20+ years, tril­lions of inter­rup­tion-based ad expo­sures have been spread across the world, on and offline. Through the “Mere Expo­sure Effect,” these accu­mu­lated expo­sures retain latent impact — sci­ence con­firms that repeated expo­sures builds pref­er­ence even with­out active atten­tion. Increas­ing credibility “C” affects all those past expo­sures “e” (as well as present and future expo­sures) increas­ing over­all mar­ket­ing “M” results. Mak­ing every­thing the mar­keter has ever done or will do — better.

The “Pedia Effect”
The “Pedia Effect” — the same force that enabled Wikipedia to become the 6th largest site on the Inter­net, is the only mar­ket-proven frame­work for man­u­fac­tur­ing credibility at scale by pub­lish­ing infor­ma­tion in the form of “branded encyclopedias.”

The “Pedia” suf­fix taps into cen­turies of ency­clo­pe­dia credibility. With over 60,000 ency­clo­pe­dias on Ama­zon, no other infor­ma­tion brand gen­er­ates higher “Inde­pen­dent Third-Party, Higher Author­ity” (ITPHA) credibility in con­sumers’ minds.

The Wikipedia Dichotomy
Wikipedia is a pow­er­ful para­dox. The “Pedia Effect” deliv­ers credibility through brand and tax­on­omy, while “wiki” rep­re­sents an inher­ently unre­li­able exe­cu­tion model (that requires a dis­claimer). “Pedia Effect” credibility proved so organ­i­cally pow­er­ful that Wikipedia achieved mas­sive author­ity with­out adver­tis­ing and despite stated unreliability.

As a “wiki,” Wikipedia was con­structed by “a bunch of nobod­ies” for aca­d­e­mic, non-com­mer­cial pur­poses that, “As a user-gen­er­ated source, it can be edited by any­one at any time, and any infor­ma­tion it con­tains at a par­tic­u­lar time could be van­dal­ism, a work in progress, or sim­ply incor­rect.” The tri­umph of the “Pedia Effect” over inher­ent credibility bar­ri­ers con­firms the power for marketers.

Wikipedia is a weak use case of the “Pedia Effect.” It suc­ceeds despite being an aca­d­e­mic non-profit, with no adver­tis­ing, using vol­un­teer, con­tent providers and openly declar­ing its con­tent is “not reliable.”

The “Pedia Effect” was orig­i­nally cre­ated for a far more pow­er­ful clien­tele, as detailed in a Decem­ber 18, 2000 patent appli­ca­tion (Method and Appa­ra­tus for Inter­net Mar­ket­ing and Trans­ac­tional Devel­op­ment), that fore­shad­owed Wikipedia’s emer­gence in 2001. The Pedia Effect was intended for moti­vated, profit-dri­ven mar­keters to lever­age their adver­tis­ing, pro­mo­tion, and influ­ence to pro­duce max­i­mum credibility at scale — not an aca­d­e­mic, non-profit “wiki” with reli­a­bil­ity disclaimers.

Wikipedia’s suc­cess has proven that the “Pedia Effect” credibility expec­ta­tion frame­work is so pow­er­ful that even when explic­itly warned about unre­li­a­bil­ity by both Wikipedia and schools, users world­wide still flock to the plat­form in unprece­dented numbers.

Try plac­ing a notice on your (non-Pedia) web­site telling users your infor­ma­tion is not reli­able and have every school and col­lege tell their stu­dents the same thing and see if you get over seven bil­lion vis­its per month.

The “Pedia Effect” works for all “Pedias,” from the first online ency­clo­pe­dia to finan­cial ency­clo­pe­dias, to tech ency­clo­pe­dias, etc., ad infinitum.

The “Pedia Effect” for­mula is sim­ple: it doesn’t mat­ter if it’s 1, 2, or thou­sands of cre­ators. It’s the “Pedia/encyclopedia” brand + “com­pre­hen­sive ever­green con­tent + adver­tis­ing (and trans­ac­tions for the com­mer­cial ver­sions) or dona­tions (for the non-profits).”

Wikipedia is the only “Pedia” that states its infor­ma­tion is not reli­able, yet it’s the largest Pedia by far. The “per­cep­tion of credibility” is powerful.

Why is the Pedia ITPHA per­cep­tion so powerful?
Sim­ple expla­na­tion: Vir­tu­ally every inter­net user, every­where has a pre-exist­ing per­cep­tion of an “ency­clo­pe­dia,” from pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence or education.

Tech­ni­cal expla­na­tion: There is a potent com­bi­na­tion of cog­ni­tive heuris­tics and behav­ioral biases all work­ing together to rein­force the “ency­clo­pe­dia” perception/expectation. These cog­ni­tive heuris­tics and biases are (among oth­ers): the “rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ness heuris­tic,” the “avail­abil­ity heuris­tic,” the “fram­ing effect,” and the “con­fir­ma­tion bias.”

The first “if it looks like a ‘Pedia,’ reads like a ‘Pedia,’ etc.,” the sec­ond “I’ve seen lots of ‘Pedias’ in my life,” the third, “It says it’s a ‘Pedia,’” and finally “I knew it was a ‘Pedia’ all along.”

These mul­ti­ple cog­ni­tive heuris­tics and biases cre­ate a “frame­work of expec­ta­tions” that tell us some­thing is an ITPHA ency­clo­pe­dia. And MOST impor­tantly, when that “frame­work of expec­ta­tions” is ful­filled — we become true believ­ers (credibility). Because we lit­er­ally can’t help it.

For more than two decades
Con­sumers and mar­keters fueled the online ecosys­tem — only to cede power to what became the rich­est BTM3s in his­tory and as these giants inte­grate AI into their arse­nals, the win­dow for alter­nate paths closes.
(AI: Chat­GPT-4o, Claude3.5, Gem­ini)

At Stake is noth­ing less than the free-mar­ket system
“The dis­tor­tion of the free-mar­ket sys­tem by big tech monop­o­lies has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for com­pe­ti­tion, con­sumer choice, and over­all mar­ket health. Address­ing these issues may require a com­bi­na­tion of reg­u­la­tory inter­ven­tion, antitrust enforce­ment, and poli­cies designed to pro­mote com­pe­ti­tion and pro­tect con­sumer inter­ests. With­out such mea­sures, the imbal­ance of power in favor of big tech com­pa­nies is likely to con­tinue, with far-reach­ing con­se­quences for the econ­omy and soci­ety.” (AI: Chat­GPT-4o)

“The key is to shift from a defen­sive pos­ture to an offen­sive one, proac­tively reshap­ing the dig­i­tal land­scape rather than merely react­ing to BTM3’s moves. This approach acknowl­edges the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion and the need for bold, trans­for­ma­tive action.” (AI: Claude3.5)

Facts About the Cur­rent Crisis
BTM3s have spent two decades per­fect­ing their “Era of Expo­sures” dom­i­nance. They steadily con­sol­i­dated con­trol over every dig­i­tal ad expo­sure chan­nel — while strate­gi­cally avoid­ing credibility “C”. Why? Because increas­ing credibility also empow­ers mar­keters and reduces depen­dency on BTM3 exposures.

Orig­i­nal image by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash, ani­ma­tion by Author

It’s the credibility, stupid!
The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion “M=eC” demon­strates the inher­ent “strong force” power of credibility on all mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing, and com­pany communications.

Credibility is the sin­gle most valu­able asset of any com­pany because credibility (or the lack of it) is the only asset that can enhance or destroy any other asset of a com­pany, up to and includ­ing the entire com­pany itself. (AI: Claude 3.5)

Just plug some num­bers into the Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion M=eC to get a sense of the scale involved with the mar­ket­ing results “M” when increas­ing the credibility “C,” it mul­ti­plies the impact across all expo­sures “e” — cre­at­ing expo­nen­tial growth in mar­ket­ing results “M”.

Increas­ing “credibility” is the sin­gle most pow­er­ful and effi­cient strat­egy that mar­keters can “own,” and because of the crit­i­cal role “credibility” plays in the Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion “M=eC,” it’s the only viable response to BTM3 exist­ing dom­i­nance of expo­sures “e.”

How mar­keters take back the power
The “Pedia Effect” enables pow­er­ful mar­keters to cre­ate a “mar­ket­ing-Pedia” that pro­vides con­sumers with “every­thing they want to know about every­thing they want to buy” in mul­ti­ple com­pany “ency­clo­Pe­dias” using the “Pedia” infor­ma­tion brand that gen­er­ates the ITPHA credibility, tax­on­omy, and ful­fill­ment in con­sumers’ minds.

The “Pedia Effect” enables “man­u­fac­tur­ing credibility at scale.”

Plus: Guar­an­teed truth­ful infor­ma­tion — #1 Thing Con­sumers Want
All infor­ma­tion pro­vided by mar­keters is guar­an­teed to be truth­ful, enforced by con­sumers them­selves. The truth­ful guar­an­tee is a sim­ple process:
- Any­one, Any­where can object to Any­thing at Any­time (A4)
- Mar­keters must Sub­stan­ti­ate, Mod­ify, or Pull (SMP) chal­lenged content
- Pre-screened con­sumers review objec­tions and responses
- Auto­mated super-major­ity vot­ing deter­mines final decision

This sys­tem deliv­ers dual ben­e­fits: max­i­mum Point-of-Need (PON) con­sumer sat­is­fac­tion and max­i­mum con­sumer engage­ment with mar­keter infor­ma­tion with a “self-val­i­dat­ing stan­dard.” AI and light­weight blockchain ensure trans­par­ent automation.

Com­pany “(encyclo)Pedias” cre­ate pow­er­ful direct mar­keter-con­sumer con­nec­tions that avoid BTM3 con­trol. By using the “Pedia” suf­fix, mar­keters trig­ger instant credibility while increas­ing mar­ket­ing effectiveness.

These Truth­ful High-Value Infor­ma­tion “Pedia” plat­forms lever­age a fun­da­men­tal mar­ket­ing truth: con­sumers trust infor­ma­tion from cred­i­ble, inde­pen­dent author­i­ties at their PON. The “Pedia” for­mat auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ates this author­ity — turn­ing com­pany web­sites into trusted infor­ma­tion sources.

A few lines of code aggre­gate indi­vid­ual com­pany Pedias into the cen­tral Pedi­aNet­work® (Pedia.com) that pro­duces pow­er­ful “net­work effects” — while mar­keters main­tain full control.

This aggre­gated net­work cre­ates unprece­dented scale: a con­sumer-direct, PON plat­form that out­per­forms any POI adver­tis­ing sys­tem in his­tory. As it grows, it ensures free mar­ket forces — not BTM3s — future commerce.

The log­i­cal evo­lu­tion and expan­sion is a “.Pedia” top-level domain.

This rep­re­sents a shift from credibility as a pas­sive byprod­uct to credibility as an actively man­u­fac­tured asset — while main­tain­ing authen­tic­ity through con­sumer enforce­ment and ency­clo­pe­dia expectations.
The ele­gance lies in lever­ag­ing exist­ing ele­ments (con­tent, expec­ta­tions, and behav­iors) in a new way to cre­ate some­thing pre­vi­ously thought dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to sys­tem­at­i­cally pro­duce: credibility at scale. (AI: Claude3.5)

This is how mar­keters and con­sumers take back their power, or not.

It’s eas­ier to see what’s going on when you stand still and look. Image ©2000 by author.

To Mar­keters: Your Win­dow of Opportunity
The “Pedia Effect,” a sim­ple for­mula, returns con­trol to mar­keters with­out exter­nal depen­den­cies. It replaces Wikipedia’s vol­un­teers model with your pro­fes­sional mar­ket­ing capa­bil­i­ties and influence.

You con­trol the plat­form from day one. All changes require super-major­ity mar­keter approval, ensur­ing per­ma­nent ben­e­fits and inde­pen­dence from BTM3s.

To Con­sumers: Shape the Future Now
Pedi­aNet­work® (Pedia.com) puts you in con­trol. You enforce truth in mar­ket­ing while direct­ing plat­form rev­enues toward world-chang­ing ini­tia­tives you choose.

To Experts: Your Role is Critical
It’s obvi­ous how to build a truly ben­e­fi­cial plat­form and this is the oppor­tu­nity for experts to step up and help save the free-mar­ket sys­tem from BTM3+AI dom­i­na­tion by cre­at­ing the most pow­er­ful pos­i­tive voice and move­ment. Your guid­ance, exper­tise, and vig­i­lance are needed.

Con­clu­sion
The key com­po­nents —The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion “M=eC,” the Credibility Expec­ta­tion Frame­work, and Guar­an­teed Truth­ful Infor­ma­tion — have been val­i­dated by the three lead­ing AIs (Claude 3.5 Son­net, Gem­ini 1.5, Chat­GPT 4o). Full analy­sis details are avail­able at marketingpedia.com.

M=eC reveals marketing’s core dynam­ics with math­e­mat­i­cal clar­ity. The “Pedia Effect” offers the only mar­ket-proven path to scal­able credibility and the only viable response to BTM3+AI dominance.

It’s the ulti­mate “AI insurance.”

Why this mat­ters now
BTM3 is inte­grat­ing AI to cement its power, cre­at­ing a cycle where they con­trol not just the mar­ket, but also the tools of inno­va­tion. If left unchecked, they will evolve into an unas­sail­able monop­oly — not just in mar­ket­ing, but across soci­ety. The only way to resist is to act before they com­plete this trans­for­ma­tion, build­ing a move­ment that is faster, smarter, and more aligned with the needs of mar­keters and consumers.

The goal isn’t just to resist BTM3; it’s to out-evolve them with a sys­tem that ren­ders their dom­i­nance obso­lete. This isn’t a fight for mar­ket share — it’s a fight for the future of free mar­kets them­selves. (AI: ChatGPT4o)

Imple­men­ta­tion
- $1 mil­lion first-year license, payable only if 100% satisfied
- All par­tic­i­pat­ing mar­keters shape systems/processes from day one
- 70% super-major­ity required for plat­form changes

PS
This solu­tion offers the only viable path for­ward: sim­ple enough, fast enough, and pow­er­ful enough to let mar­keters con­trol Credibility “C” before BTM3+AI does to achieve total mar­ket­ing dominance.

Time is crit­i­cal. We must “dis­rupt the dis­rup­tors” before BTM3+AI cap­tures Credibility “C” and con­trols both ele­ments of the Mar­ket­ing Equation.

Con­tact me at for more information.
More infor­ma­tion: marketingpedia.com.