30+ marketing skills
Ergo comes loaded with specialist playbooks for positioning, ICP mapping, messaging, pricing, launches, channel plans, AEO audits and more.
Meet Ergo · Now in private beta
Smarter marketing systems, built together in your Slack.
Ergo is an agentic marketing partner that maps strategy, pushes work forward, and helps you make sharper calls. Based on Inference’s frameworks and backed by a human-in-the-loop for the judgement you can’t prompt for.
Acme HQ
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Ergo
# marketing
3 members
Thu 9:12 AM
M
Mara9:12 AM
@ergo Competitor X just launched their AI copilot. The board wants our response.
Ergo9:13 AM
I checked it against the positioning decision you made last month and the latest competitor scan. Their move pulls them towards enterprise; it strengthens, rather than weakens, our claim with your core buyer.
I’ve put the evidence, the risk and two response options into a decision document for the team. Next steps could be to run a pricing/packaging review or run the positioning implications by Thom — want me to bring him in?
context, evidence, a real recommendation
The problem, stated properly
P1
You’re already making marketing plans with AI.
P2
But the AI you’re using agrees with everything, remembers nothing, and is trained to revert to averages.
You don’t need another AI tool. You need on-demand CMO-level judgement in the loop.
A generic LLM has read everything, so it believes nothing. It has no view on your positioning, no memory of why you made the calls you made, and no stake in whether the work is right. That’s fine for drafts. It’s a liability for decisions.
Most marketing AI does the work blindly. Ergo works out which work is worth doing and how... and then gets on with making it happen.
Why it’s different
Three things a generic AI
can’t give you.
Not features. Structural differences — the things that can’t be added to a chatbot with a better prompt.
01
Judgement, not agreement.
It has a point of view and it will disagree with you. A generic LLM is trained to please — it will find merit in whatever you bring it. Ergo gives you a straight recommendation, sequenced strategy-first, and the reasoning to challenge it.
02
A direct line to a human.
When a call is too important to leave to software, Ergo says so — then packages the question, with context and its own read, and routes it to the Inference team. Experienced humans stand behind the hard decisions.
03
Context that compounds.
Ergo starts with your material, then keeps the strategy, decisions and learning in play as the work moves. Inference’s working frameworks give that context a point of view — not a generic answer that forgets you tomorrow.
See it work
More than a blank chat box.
Ask for a strategic read, or let Ergo arrive with one. Browse a few of the ways it can help.
Ergo
app
Ways Ergo can help
# marketing
Ergo · just now
M
Mara9:38 AM
We’ve shared the site, pitch deck, win-loss notes and customer calls. Where should we start?
Ergo9:41 AM
opening read — acme.com
I’ve mapped the footprint. Your site, pitch deck, win-loss notes and calls; three closest competitors; review and news signals; and how answer engines describe you today.
The Reflection is ready. Company, market, ICP, positioning, competitors, messaging, proof, channels and priorities — each marked as a draft for you to correct or approve.
What I see. You win on implementation speed, but your site leads with a category claim every rival can make. The repeatable 14-day go-live story is the stronger commercial thread.
Where I’d start. Test whether that claim holds across the buying journey, then turn it into the homepage, sales proof and the next competitive comparison.
Opening Read published
Exec summary, strategy foundations, AI-readability audit, source gaps and the three moves most worth running next.
M
Mara1:56 PM
The team keeps reaching for “AI-native” in the homepage. Can you pressure-test it before we rewrite?
Ergo2:03 PM
positioning analysis — homepage
The alternative isn’t just other AI tools. For your speed-sensitive buyer, it’s the internal implementation project they expect to drag on for months.
The differentiated capability. A 14-day go-live. The value is time-to-impact; the best-fit customer is a mid-market team with an urgent change to make, not a generic “AI-native” buyer.
Sameness check. “AI-native” names the shelf. Nine close competitors lead with it, so it can’t carry the choice alone.
My recommendation. Lead with the speed outcome and make AI the proof of how it happens. I’ve left two positioning routes, the trade-offs and the evidence we still need to validate.
Positioning canvas ready
Alternatives, differentiated capabilities, value themes, best-fit customer, category choice and two claim routes to test.
M
MaraMon 7:52 AM
Competitor X’s AI copilot is in the board pack. Do we need to change our story?
ErgoMon 8:00 AM
competitor scan — this week
I’ve checked the move. Their new copilot sits alongside a broader shift: enterprise language, more complex buying paths and new proof aimed at larger teams.
The evidence layer. I’ve compared positioning, site and social surfaces, earned visibility and content — plus the feature grid a buyer is likely to use when shortlisting.
What it means for you. It strengthens the mid-market contrast. Their move creates a clearer choice; it doesn’t yet justify a reactive campaign.
The decision. We can make implementation-speed proof harder to miss now, or wait for their pricing and customer evidence to settle. I’ve set out both response options for review.
Competitor scan ready
Evidence pack, strategic comparison matrix, feature grid, open questions and a board-ready response narrative.
ErgoMon 8:00 AM
weekly coach
What moved. The pricing page and partner launch are now aligned around the same proof point. I’ve logged both as shipped assets and a pattern worth preserving.
Commitment check. The enterprise expansion decision is still open. It has now held up the sales proof brief twice, so it’s a dependency rather than a loose end.
The loop to close. Is the new segment a strategic move, a sales exception, or something we should park? Each answer changes the story, proof and next quarter’s channel plan.
This week’s call. Choose by Thursday; until then, pause the enterprise campaign draft. I’ve included the evidence, the trade-offs and what I need from the team to close it.
Weekly Coach review
Commitments, blockers, open loops, shipped assets, risks caught, one pattern and the single priority for this week.
M
Mara1:48 PM
Analytics is six weeks from launch. Can you make sure we don’t start promoting before the story is ready?
Ergo2:03 PM
launch plan — analytics feature
My recommendation: a focused Tier 2 launch. The feature has real customer value, but today’s proof doesn’t yet earn a bigger moment. The launch metric is qualified demos, not reach.
The message house. Lead with the time buyers get back after implementation, not “more analytics.” The customer story is the proof point; the feature is the mechanism.
The sequence. Secure proof, sharpen the product story, brief the team, then use the channels already working. I’ve split each asset into what Ergo can draft and what needs a human.
The gate. Hold the paid push until the customer story lands; use the beta to test the claim, then plan the second wave around what buyers actually respond to.
Launch plan ready
Objective and tier, message house, proof, channel mix, owner checklist, beta gate and a post-launch squeeze plan.
M
MaraThu 3:05 PM
We can’t do everything next quarter. Where should we put the team’s attention?
ErgoThu 3:18 PM
channel map — next quarter
I’ve mapped every route to market. Active, dormant and untested channels — including the ones we should explicitly park rather than quietly ignore.
Build first. Founder-led LinkedIn and partner channels are where your proof and buyer already meet. Each has an owner, a metric and the evidence behind the call.
Park for now. Paid search asks the business to compete before the message is distinct enough to convert. Reopen it only once the comparison asset proves the claim can pull its weight.
The call. Run one comparison play around implementation speed, then re-band the map in 90 days. That gives us a signal without spreading the team across another full channel.
Channel map ready
Channel inventory, health bands, evidence, build-firsts, parks, one concentration call and the measures that judge it.
What’s inside Ergo
The capabilities behind
the conversation.
A working system for marketing — built to make useful calls now, and more informed ones as it learns your business.
Proactive by design
Background checks monitor market signals, competitor movement and strategic drift — then surface ideas and propose the next useful move.
Opening Read onboarding
Starts by building a working picture of the business, then turns it into the first meaningful opportunity and the decisions that unlock it.
Evolving memory system
Strategy, decisions, learnings, and priorities stay in memory from one conversation to the next, enriched by the material and sources you choose to connect.
Decision docs & decks
Turns evidence, risks and options into clear decision documents, team-ready decks, briefs and repeatable playbooks.
1,000+ connected tools
Through Composio, Ergo can connect to the systems where your marketing work, knowledge and signal already live.
The human layer
When the call matters, Ergo brings in a human.
Not as a hand-off when the software gets stuck. As a deliberate part of the product when the stakes, judgement or consequence earn it.
Thom reviews Ergo’s work on demand
01
Ergo prepares the call.
It frames the decision, the context, trade-offs and its own read.
02
You approve the hand-off.
No silent escalation. The team stays in control of when human judgement enters.
03
Thom’s Take lands in Slack.
The human answer comes back into the actual work, not a separate consultancy process.
How Ergo beats the average
Rigorous evals improve the brain.
Ergo is tested blind against cold frontier-model answers on the same strategic prompts. The point is not prettier prose; it’s a better call for the business in front of it — then a clear way to improve the system.
Read more (coming soon)Ergo v1.0
77.75
/ 100Best cold baseline
60.75
/ 100A test loop, not a badge. Each run tells us where Ergo’s judgement holds up and where the brain needs to get better.
8 criteria
Call, diagnosis, context, insight, evidence, challenge, boundaries and voice.
Fair comparison
Blind judging, order-swapped passes and an initial benchmark that expands with the test set.
Who it’s for
For teams building smarter
marketing systems.
Ergo is for you if
You run or lead marketing and want rigorous, informed judgement on consequential calls
You need your team’s strategic context to be shared, remembered, and useful in the next decision
You already use AI, but want more than a helpful response: a point of view, evidence, and a recommendation
You want your positioning, plans and choices to improve as the market, team and evidence change
You value a senior human being available when a call genuinely needs judgement
Probably not for you if
You need a production partner to run channels at scale. Ergo does the first version — the research, the structure, the draft — then hands the repeatable production to your team.
You want a generic all-purpose chatbot rather than a context-led marketing partner with a view.
The value
Senior marketing judgement, built into the work.
Ergo isn’t priced like software, because it isn’t software with a thin wrapper of marketing knowledge. It’s senior judgement plus strategic drafts, on retainer — a different category from the AI tools below it, and deliberately distinct from the Strategic Marketing Partner tier above it, where Thom does the work himself.
One flat monthly rate. All frameworks, accumulated context, proactive routines, and human escalation included. Beta places are a three-month commitment; pricing is discussed on the first fit call.
Above · collaborations
Strategic Marketing Partner & Fractional CMO
Thom doing the work,
agents supporting
this · ergo
Ergo, in your Slack every day
Ergo working alongside the team every day.
Humans on demand for the hard stuff.
Below · the tool ceiling
Generic AI tools
Fast, agreeable,
and they forget you
The private beta
The first cohort is forming.
Cohorts are capped in beta phase because every escalation gets reviewed by one human, and that bandwidth is finite. Applications are reviewed personally; places go to the teams Ergo can genuinely support.
What beta members get
Full access from day one — every framework, every routine, proactive monitoring
Hands-on onboarding with Thom — your strategic context built in, not bolted on
Launch-partner pricing, locked well beyond beta
The escalation line — a named human on the hard calls
What’s asked in return
—
A three-month minimum commitment
—
A quarterly debrief — your experience shapes what Ergo becomes
You’re on the list.
Thom reviews every application personally — you’ll hear back within a few days. And no drip sequence.
From the annotations archive
How — and why — I encoded twenty years of marketing judgement into an agent.
The thinking behind Ergo — what AI genuinely changes about marketing judgement, what it doesn’t, and why a human stays on the hard calls.
Coming soon
On the roadmap
Want more? Here’s what’s coming soon.
Anyone who makes it this far down the page deserves a treat, so here’s a few things currently being cooked up to make Ergo even better at building better marketing systems. Beta users will shape the roadmap.
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01
Ambient awareness
Ergo follows the conversation in your channels — not only the messages addressed to it — and interjects when it has something worth saying.
-
02
A client portal
One hub for everything Ergo holds on your account: documents, decisions, accumulated context and the work in flight.
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03
Two new tiers
A lighter tier below — bring your own key, operator-run, no escalation. And a fully-managed agency tier above, with custom skills, sub-agents, builds and integrations.
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04
Agent-to-agent mode
Ergo orchestrates the rest of your agents, exposing everything it knows about your business over MCP.
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05
More execution
Past the thinking and into the doing: Ergo running campaigns, growth experiments and posting itself.
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06
Recommended tools
A curated database of the martech stack Inference actually recommends — so Ergo can point at the right tool for the job, not the best-marketed one.
A working list, not a promise — each one ships when it’s good enough to trust.
FAQ
Fair questions.
How is this different from just using Claude or ChatGPT?
A general assistant — even one loaded with your documents — is trained to be agreeable and to average across everything it has read. Ergo is built around Inference’s marketing methodology and worldview, then loaded with your business during onboarding. It runs frameworks rather than improvising, disagrees with you when it should, comes back with a first version rather than instructions for doing it yourself, and brings a human in on the calls that matter.
What happens when we join?
Onboarding starts with an Opening Read: Ergo reviews your existing material, asks the questions that matter, and turns that into a shared strategic picture. From there, it can start making useful recommendations in the work.
Where does our data live?
Ergo uses the context you choose to share — including connected sources where useful — to make its work specific to your business. We’ll agree the practical data handling for your beta setup during onboarding.
How fast are the answers?
Most answers arrive in the Slack thread within minutes. When a question deserves a human’s judgement, Ergo says so explicitly, prepares the decision, and brings in Thom or the right person.
What does it cost?
Beta places are a three-month commitment. Pricing is discussed on the first fit call; the beta includes all of Ergo’s frameworks, accumulated context, proactive routines and human escalation.
What if we outgrow it?
Then it’s done its job. The natural next step is the Strategic Marketing Partner — Thom doing the work directly, with everything Ergo has learned about your business carried across. No re-briefing, no starting over.
Want a marketing partner with your back — and an opinion?
Apply for the first cohort. If it’s a fit, Thom will tell you. If it isn’t, he’ll tell you that too — that’s rather the point.
Not quite the shape you need?
Ergo is one agent, running Inference’s methodology inside your Slack. If you’re looking for something more custom — bespoke integrations, tailored skills, a different security architecture — we can do that too. The Agent Teams Sprint builds the whole function for you in weeks.