A
About — The person behind it

Who's speaking?

A marketing strategist who spends his off-hours reverse-engineering the same persuasion he does for a living, then writes the findings down before he can talk himself out of them.

I'm Ilias Ennajmi, based in Casablanca, working wherever the interesting problems are.

By day I work in marketing strategy: figuring out how to make people want things, and how to get out of the way once they do. It's a craft built on a slightly uncomfortable premise: that most decisions are made for us long before we think we're making them.

That premise is also what I can't stop writing about. Ulysses is where I take the slow road — psychology, behavior, philosophy, the question of why people act at all. Ilias is the louder half — marketing and strategy, who profits when they do. Same machine, looked at from both ends.

This site is where the two habits argue with each other in public. No newsletter funnel, no course, no five-step framework. Just the thinking, built slowly, on purpose.

Casablanca → wherever the work is
Now — July 2026What's current
ReadingSeeing Like a StateScott on how plans flatten what made them work.
WritingFewer, longer piecesCutting the thin ones rather than adding to them.
Working onBrand strategyFor a company that should know better.
Stuck onOne Nina Simone recordPastel Blues, side A, on repeat.
See how this has changed

Nothing archived yet. This is the first snapshot since launch. Real entries land here the next time the block above actually changes, not before.

How I think about itFour working beliefs
01
The default is the decision.

Most choices are settled by whatever required no choice at all. Understand the defaults and you understand the behavior. Everything after is theater.

02
Follow the money, then follow the attention.

Every nudge has a beneficiary. Asking who profits is not cynicism, it is just reading the incentives honestly before they read you.

03
Write to find out, not to look right.

I don’t write things I’ve concluded; I write to figure out what I think. If a piece doesn’t surprise me halfway through, it isn’t finished.

04
Build slowly, on purpose.

No growth hacks, no content treadmill. Fewer, better things, made at the speed they actually deserve.

Say hello.

For work, arguments, or book recommendations.

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Also open to strategy consulting, if the incentives line up. Say so in the subject line and skip the deck. That's not a funnel, just an inbox.

Colophon →Set in Fraunces, EB Garamond & Space GroteskBuilt slowly, on purpose