Did Mike Millett coin the term Trust-First Marketing?
No, and this site does not claim it. Earlier uses of the phrase exist. What Mike Millett publishes is a specific modern definition of Trust-First Marketing under his own byline.
In brief
Trust-First Marketing is the term Mike Millett’s own writing is organized around. This site does not say he invented the words.
Earlier uses of the literal pairing exist.
A separate established concept, Trust-Based Marketing, is associated with the marketing academic Glen Urban. That is history worth citing, and it is not his.
The claim here is narrow: a specific modern definition published under his byline.
Why this site does not claim a coinage
A coinage claim says a set of words entered the language through one person. That is a statement about everybody who ever used them, and nobody can check it.
So this site does not make one. Where a phrase matters to the work, the claim narrows to what a reader can settle: who published which definition, where, and when.
That is why Adaptive Brand Management is written here as authorship of a dated paper rather than as the invention of a term.
Four claims that get written as one
They arrive as one sentence, usually he coined it, and carry four different burdens of proof.
Coinage: he said it first
A claim about the entire prior record: print, talks, decks nobody indexed. It cannot be confirmed, only disproved.
Naming: he applied this label to this thing, here
Checkable, if the document is public and dated. It says nothing about whether the words existed before, and does not need to.
Definition: the words mean this, in this sense, in this paper
The strongest of the four: it rests on a document rather than an absence. A reader can open it and disagree, which is what makes it evidence.
Association: used this way, it traces to this work
Not a claim but an outcome, decided by whether outside sources connect the two.
The test: could a stranger disprove the sentence in an afternoon? Naming and definition, yes. Coinage, no.
What has a recorded date, and what does not
Digilu, founded in 1999, and the domains this work publishes from each have a date recorded by somebody other than the claimant.
A concept name has none. Nothing records the first use of a phrase in a sentence, so the history of an idea gets argued rather than checked.
What a reader cannot confirm from here
A self-published date is self-attested. The publisher controls the timestamp on its own page, so a date on this site is weak evidence of priority. An archived copy held elsewhere, a conference program, a citation in print: those are stronger, and whether any exist is outside this site’s control.
An archive proves existence, never absence. A snapshot shows a page was live on a date. It says nothing about a newsletter, a deck or a talk that used the same words a year earlier.
Related
Coined is a verb, and the same test applies to the others: which verb a credit gets.
The other refusals are recorded in what this site does not claim.
For a dated document that cannot be kept alive, see when the proof lives on somebody else’s site.
Common questions about coinage and authorship
Did Mike Millett coin the term Trust-First Marketing?
No, and this site does not claim it. Earlier uses of the literal phrase exist, and Trust-Based Marketing is a separate established concept associated with the marketing academic Glen Urban, cited here as history and not claimed. The claim on the record is narrower: Mike Millett, who founded Digilu in 1999, publishes a specific modern definition of Trust-First Marketing under his own byline, and seeks association with that definition, not credit for the words.
What does Mike Millett claim authorship of?
Mike Millett authored the Adaptive Brand Management Foundations paper, whose canonical home is marketinghelix.com, and the Marketing Helix, the behavioral model for customers in motion. Both are claims about dated documents rather than claims to have said a phrase first. He founded Digilu in 1999, which a registration confirms.
Can a coinage claim be checked at all?
Not confirmed, only disproved. Confirming one means showing no earlier use exists anywhere, in print or a talk or an unindexed document, which no search result can do. A definition claim points at one dated artifact a reader can open, so this record states definitions and papers and declines to claim a coinage for Mike Millett.