Michael Kraabel

    Branding - Marketing - CMO - Creative Direction - Minneapolis

    I Found Proof That The Cat Simulation Is Real

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    I’ve always suspected cats ruled the world and that we were just the simulation. This week, I accidentally got an answer back. I was testing a new application for Humaners, building what I called a semi-autonomous content generation lab. One of my creative testbeds, Catiki, became the perfect home for it. The theme was cat…

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    The Presentation Deck They Never Saw

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    I like to believe most client–agency relationships start with good intent. You reach out looking for help. We listen. We all agree on the next steps, then we go do the work that proves we heard you and we have a shared vision for your brand to move forward. I was chatting with a client…

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    “Reimagine This”

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    At some point the word “reimagine” escaped a TED Talk and began lurking in every tagline. “Reimagine health.” “Reimagine banking.” “Reimagine the future of brackets.” You name it, someone is allegedly reimagining it. Yet the real question remains: is anyone actually doing anything or are they sitting in beanbag chairs pondering the possibilities? I was…

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    The future is life automation

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    Most people are afraid that AI will replace them. The fear is understandable. It’s a quiet tension under every meeting, every career decision, every creative choice. The tools are getting faster. The outputs are getting better. And the gap between human effort and machine output is closing quickly. After years of working with these systems,…

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    The Limits of Echoed Intelligence

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    Through my experiments with Humaners, I started to push the limits of LLMs and their ability to complete complex tasks and stay focused on the direction given. I noticed when I was building Small Lanuage Models (SLM), I could get pretty accurate with content analysis, sentiment, and accuracy. But when I pushed the LM’s to do…

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    Dear Internet of the Late ’90s and Early 2000s

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    I miss you. You weren’t perfect. You were loud, clunky, and a little too obsessed with under-construction GIFs. But you were alive. Messy, chaotic, and full of raw energy. You weren’t trying to be “seamless” or “user-friendly.” You were digital for the sake of digital. And that made you exciting. You didn’t care about KPIs…

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    The Bio Challenge

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    Most bios are word salad. You’ve seen them. “Strategic leader.” “Passionate innovator.” “Driving growth through synergy.” None of it means anything. I was reviewing resumes for a social media and paid media management role recently, and by the fifth one, I couldn’t tell if I was reading different people or copy-pasting the same buzzword-laced template.…

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    The Silent Erosion of Language in the Age of Algorithmic Curators

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    Words are disappearing, and most of us haven’t even noticed. A recent study from technologist Richard Soares found that more than 11,000 common English nouns have dropped in usage by over 80 percent. Not over centuries. Not even over decades. In just the past few years. These aren’t obscure terms or outdated jargon. These are…

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    Writing Human: Stop Speaking in Acronyms

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    I’ve been in this industry a long time, and I’m trying to figure out if I’ve just turned into a grumpy old veteran or if acronyms have genuinely gotten out of control. Either way, it’s a problem we need to address. Stop writing and speaking in acronyms. Meetings already require stamina. Now add an endless…

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    The Machine Watches, The Machine Waits

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    When E. M. Forster published The Machine Stops in 1909, the world had no internet, no digital assistants, no algorithms curating every desire. And yet, he saw us coming. His world of isolated citizens, living underground, connected by a vast system that both provided and controlled, was not merely a dystopian fantasy. It was a…

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    200+ Overused Words and Phrases in AI Generated Content

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    There’s something off about the way content reads lately. You’ve felt it. Your audience has felt it. Maybe they can’t name it, but it’s there. That weirdly polished, vaguely helpful, suspiciously wordy copy that says everything and nothing at the same time. It’s the content uncanny valley. And AI is digging it deeper every day.…

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    Brand Performance Marketing

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    Clients don’t usually come to me asking for help with their brand. They come when performance starts slipping. When Customer Acquisition Costs spike. When retargeting stops working. When the paid ads that used to convert like clockwork start going quiet. And the ask always sounds the same: “We need better performance marketing.” But nine times…

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