If you haven’t heard of Angine de Poitrine, you probably soon will.

The duo is the most viral musical meme on the internet (by far). Today, I’m making an important and fascinating connection between their success and the reality of effective modern marketing. To get us on the same page, watch at least a few minutes of this video, which has had millions of views in just a few weeks:

Pretty crazy, right?

Now, there are many technical nuances to this band that make them interesting, such as a musical style described as “micro-tonal math rock.” And of course, their outfits are over the top. How do they even play those instruments?

But today I want to show how their success is right out of the playbook I described in my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. This is a relevant and inspiring case study for every marketer — even if you hate the music!

Let’s set the scene.

In the book Audacious, I provide evidence that the world of marketing is BORING. Very boring.

Research shows that about two-thirds of marketing and ad campaigns elicit a negative or neutral emotional response from customers, whether B2B or B2C. And AI is making it worse, creating a pandemic of dull.

The same thing is happening in the music industry.

In the last few months, music critics like Ted Gioia and Rick Beato noted the lack of innovation on the current music scene. Beato compared 2025 Grammy-nominated songs to songs from 1986 and noted that eight of the top 10 songs last year were remakes of old tunes. 1986 featured timeless songs from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Lionel Richie, to name a few. Both critics pointed out the horrible impact of AI slop on the quality of today’s music innovation.

So, just like the marketing world, music fans are begging for something new in a boring world.

And, when something like Angine de Potrine finally comes along, magic happens!

Where did this band come from?

Before I plot out the marketing formula that propelled the band, it might be useful to know a little background.

Angine de Poitrine is a two-piece band from Quebec. They seemed to appear from nowhere, but Khn (guitar, bass, looping) and Klek (drums) have played together since their early teens. That’s around 20 years of musical partnership before the world caught up with them.

In early February 2026, Seattle indie radio station KEXP uploaded footage of Angine de Poitrine performing at a festival in Rennes, France. In two weeks, the video passed 3.5 million views. Excited reaction videos flooded in.

Why did it spread so fast? There is actually a method to their madness.

The repeatable creative formula that works

I’ve been obsessed with discerning how humans will thrive in an AI-dominated world. For two years, I trotted around the globe talking to the most acclaimed creative geniuses in search of answers.

In my discussions, a pattern emerged. The best marketing and advertising work leveraged one, or more than one, of these strategies:

• Disrupt the traditional story or narrative
• Disrupt where the story is told
• Disrupt who tells the story

The book provides hundreds of ideas on how to do this, but the formula really is this simple.

A small example: I uploaded the book to AI. An agent created abstract art images based on the stories in the book. The only thing on the book cover is a QR code. If you hover over the QR code, the book cover endlessly changes as the AI-generated images form an “infinity cover.”

Why is this an innovation that rises above the noise (and receives mainstream news coverage)?

• I told the story of the book in a new way — through AI abstract art.
• The story was told in a new place — a book cover.
• I disrupted who told the story. There was no human involved. The book told the story!

Now, let’s examine how this same formula worked for this band.

The Angine de Poitrine edge

In a sea of sameness, Angine de Poitrine disrupted its niche. And it did it precisely along the Audacious formula.

1. Disrupting the story

Today’s music is a sea of sameness. While the Angine de Poitrine hints at prog rock tunes from the past, it is wholly unique by combining noisy riffs with undeniable grooves that keep you engaged.

Commenting on the band, Rick Beato said: “Amazing. This is what I imagined the future of music would be. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

This is a man who has been around the industry for decades. and he was hearing an entirely new “story.”

Disrupting the medium

While the band is still going viral on common channels like YouTube and Instagram, the story is narrated in a different way.

The guitarist plays an instrument that is both lead guitar and bass. And he is manipulating the music and the two instruments by controlling pedals with his bare (polka dotted) feet. This is far from any mainstream approach to playing music.

Microtonal music utilizes alternative tuning systems that create new harmonic colors and are foundational to many non-Western traditions, including Indian, Turkish, and Arabic music. So they are mashing styles and cultures together.

Even the band’s rhythms are bizarre yet mesmerizing. It seems like the musicians mindfully disrupted every single way they could tell their story.

Disrupting the storyteller

This is the most obvious innovation. Even if you didn’t know anything about music, the costumes, the strange symbols, the dancing, and their made-up language demands attention. This is even beyond the personas of David Bowie or KISS.

The story is being told by strange polka-dotted aliens … who shred.

The marketing lesson of Angine de Poitrine

A few months ago, I wrote an article about unhinged marketing and why this is a timely and important trend. Brands like Liquid Death, Nutter Butter, and Duolingo seem to be breaking every marketing norm with their nightmarish campaigns.

But really, they’re not. Great marketing is not about conformity. It’s driven by non-conformity. They aren’t succeeding by telling everyone how great they are, pumping the next holiday sale, or search engine optimization. They’re lovable, relatable brands because the world desperately wants something to talk about.

Arguably, Angine de Poitrine is the Liquid Death of music. It’s a good product, but that is secondary to the unhinged brand image.

Finally, we have a musical act that makes you pay attention. What about your brand? Who is stirring up the shit in your industry? Is it time for a little audacity?

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post The audacious marketing genius of Angine de Poitrine appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Too short for a blog post, too interesting to ignore, here are a few observations from the world of marketing, and beyond.

Talk to me

It seems like everywhere I turn marketers are touting the benefits of personalized marketing, and especially how AI is leading the way. My question is, where is it???

I find marketing as impersonal and intrusive as ever.

Today, a guy left me a message on LinkedIn: “I’m trying to connect on a more human way on LinkedIn and created this personal video for you.” I clicked out of curiosity. It was a cookie-cutter video. He had simply created more spam — only in video form.

Here’s what most companies think personalized marketing is:
“Dear [FIRST_NAME], we noticed you might be interested in [RECENTLY_VIEWED_PRODUCT]…”

Here’s what it actually is: Spam with a smile

The irony is that “personalized marketing”—if it means just slapping a name at the beginning of an email—is still impersonal. It’s artificial intimacy that’s a signal for me to “ignore.”

The technology exists for businesses to be truly helpful and personal, so are we just lazy? The era of true marketing personalization is still ahead of us, it seems.

If you’ve seen examples of true and useful personalization, drop me a note.

Reality check

Loved this quote from Ted Gioia:

In VR, we go into a fake world to interact with real people.

In AI, we remain in the real world but interact with fake people.

That’s not much of an improvement. By my measure, it’s actually a step backward.

Reality is not something to trifle with. It always gets the last laugh.

The core problem with social media

Conflict is the currency of social media. Hate is good for business. Controversy drives engagement and eyeballs. While people exit Twitter-X for Threads or Bluesky or whatever, these patterns of hate will repeat unless the revenue model is based on subscriptions instead of ads and attention.

The job is NOT to create content

Marketing is sick in so many ways right now. However, one of the biggest issues I encounter is that many marketers think their job is to create content. Perhaps it is even to turn their brand into a “media channel.”

No. Your job isn’t to create content. Your job is to create customers. Stop for a minute and look hard at what you’re doing. If you’re not creating customers, stop it, and start over.

This is something I write about in my book “Social Media Explained 3.0.” Too many marketers, especially those working in social media, are sleepwalking. They’re creating and engaging and Instagramming on autopilot and unaware of what they are even doing.

Are you creating content because you’re afraid not to? Because everyone else is doing it? It’s time to be more strategic and thoughtful with your work. Wake up. Create customers.

Bot companies

Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang and others have stated that soon we will have companies entirely run by agentic AI bots.

Analyst Scott Belsky had this forecast:

In such a world, every company will ultimately become a compute + data-centric company. Until now, humans have been the reasoning layer of every organization.

Sure, every company uses technology, but mostly for the purpose of driving productivity and analysis to help humans make decisions and take action. In contrast, the next-generation company will be run by a combination of inference engines (real-time computational reasoning running every function and driving actions across the business), leveraging a variety of pre-trained AI models and a large amount of deep and proprietary data at the center of the company.

This core of data, models, and computational reasoning will all be surrounded by “nodes” – the modern version of every “function” of a company from HR to product to sales – which, together, compose the logic layer that performs every process and operation of an organization.

I think we will see this happen in 2025. Somebody will want to prove this concept — a company entirely (or almost) run by bots. Nvidia is already testing the idea in different departments. Hopefully the first one will be personalized marketing!

In the next year, AI will not be a technology challenge, it will be a leadership challenge.

Are you all-in?

I was lamenting about the difficulty of staying up to date with the rapid pace of AI change in the marketing field, and a friend asked, “Is there a hybrid solution? Can you keep up with just a small part of it?”

A thought-provoking question. My answer was, “No.”

I think focus must be a key strategy for every business, but for somebody like me who is an author, consultant, and college educator, I need to maintain a broad and current view of the AI world. To be relevant, I have to be “all-in,” which is a challenge. To be effective, I can’t be caught flat-footed about a significant new AI revelation … which seems to happen every day.

How do you feel about that? Do you need to be “all-in” to be relevant as a marketer? How do you handle the stress?

Need a keynote speaker about brand communities? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy MidJourney

The post Dear [FIRST_NAME]: Why Personalized Marketing Still Feels Like Spam appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Today, I’ll explain the Parasite Economy and why it is destroying businesses but opening up new opportunities for creators.

For many years, I’ve subscribed to Ted Gioia’s newsletter, “The Honest Broker.” It’s hard to describe this newsletter. Ted is a music critic and historian whose musings tend to wander all over the cultural landscape. But he has a knack for consistently connecting the dots in insightful ways, and I almost always learn something from his posts.

In an article titled “Are We Now Living in a Parasite Culture?” Ted makes an observation that is profound in its simplicity and wisdom. It goes like this:

“Nowadays, parasite businesses are the largest corporations in the world. Their technologies do many harmful things, but lately they have focused on serving up fake culture, leeching off the creativity of real human artists.

“Just take a look at the dominant digital platforms—and consider how little they actually create. But the amount of leeching they do is really quite stunning, especially when compared with the dominant businesses of the past.

• What does Facebook really create? Almost nothing. It relies on 3 billion users to create content (ugh!—their word, not mine), and then monetizes these people and their unpaid labor.
• What does Google really create? Almost nothing. Just look at how it destroys newspapers, while doing zero journalism itself. The comparison with a parasite could hardly be more apt. It feeds off the news, but never adds to it.
• What does Spotify really create? Almost nothing. The folks at Spotify don’t worry about their lousy app, because they’re so busy sucking blood from the creative economy, to which they contribute not one whit. Meanwhile, their CEO is now richer than any musician in the history of the world.
• What does TikTok really create? Almost nothing. This company relies on one million creators—none of them are employees. Most of them are working for hopes and dreams. TikTok is run like a Hollywood studio, but without cast, crew, directors, scriptwriters, or any creative talent whatsoever. But that hardly matters when you’re just a parasite living off unwitting hosts.

“Consider the case of the woman who attracted 713,000 TikTok followers and generated 11 million views for her videos—and got paid $1.85 over the course of five months. No that’s not $1.85 million—it’s one buck and eighty-five pennies. You can practically hear the lifeblood getting sucked out of the creator economy.”

Ted’s post continues, and he concludes by saying, “For the first time in history, the Forbes list of billionaires is filled with individuals who got rich via parasitical business strategies—creating almost nothing, but gorging themselves on the creativity of others.”

As usual, Ted made me think long and hard. I agree with him, but there is another side of this coin. In fact, the Parasite Economy is the best thing that ever happened to me in my professional life. And it can be for you, too. Today I’ll explain why.

The Parasite Economy’s Poster Child

On the surface, I am the poster child for “Victims of the Parasite Economy.”

I’ve probably added 20 million words to the social web through my blog and podcast alone. Google and its algorithm brotherhood crawl the internet like bugs, chewing my content like termites and then hurling it back out as an indistinguishable paste. The molecular material of my precious content is within everything now—no attribution, no money, no customers.

The years of effort behind this content are now part of the immortal glue that holds AI together. How have I been compensated for my significant content contribution? Nothing at all. I’ve never received one penny from Google, social media sites, or an AI company.

And yet, after 15 years of blogging and 12 years on the podcast, I keep churning out more. In fact, I think I’m doing my best work ever, giving away my most valuable ideas and insights every week.

Through Ted’s view, I should be incensed. But I’m grateful. Here’s why.

The Benefits of the Parasite Economy

While it’s true that I’m not making money from my content, I’ve made millions of dollars over the course of my creator career because I built an audience. You can’t have an audience without awareness, and you can’t have awareness without giving away valuable content.

I can see why Ted or any creative would feel abused because their content is consumed, loved, and shared without compensation. The key to surviving in the creator economy is not counting on your content for revenue. Those days are gone. So go ahead and grieve that reality, but get over it and look for other profitable ways to serve your audience.

I have 24 revenue streams. The most important ones are:

• Keynote speaking events and corporate workshops
• Personal coaching
• Book sales
• Private marketing retreat (The Uprising)
• Online classes

Until last year, I would have had marketing strategy consulting on the list — this was number one for many years. But I’ve been turning down these opportunities due to the wear and tear of travel.

My point is that, purely based on the awareness provided by the Parasite Economy, I’ve reinvented myself in a way that has allowed me to move away from the 9-5 corporate job.

The economics of our world today

I’ve never received a dime from Google or Facebook, but I’ve also never paid them (or anyone) a dime in advertising. So, at least for me, it’s been a fair trade-off.

Likewise, even a media company like The New York Times has been able to reinvent itself by diversifying into new media properties like podcasts, events, books, and speaking (they are building personal brands for their best reporters).

I am NOT dismissing the galaxy of negatives about internet parasites, including many of the good points Ted made in his post.

But I wanted to provide an alternate view that, with some creativity and resourcefulness, a creator can thrive, even under these strange circumstances.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy of MidJourney

The post The Parasite Economy: An Upside for Creators appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.