I am beginning to think of myself as the human wake-up call.

I’m fortunate to meet with amazing marketers around the world, and I find that too many of them are living in the past. They set a social media strategy and then execute the same plan for years without looking up to see how the world works today.

So, I start clanging around trying to wake them up.

One of the biggest wake-up calls has to be for social media marketing. The fundamental premise is broken. And the brands still operating in the past aren’t just leaving opportunity on the table, they’re building irrelevance at scale.

Social media is not just a distribution channel for your podcast or YouTube videos. It is the operating system for a modern brand. Let’s do a deep dive on this today.

The brands pulling ahead right now have made five fundamental shifts in how they approach social. Not tactical tweaks.

Today I’ll cover:

• The central role of social media in culture
• Connecting brand messages to values
• An experimental approach
• Onboarding to the community
• Measurement

1. Connect to the culture

Most brands still approach social as if it were a publishing calendar. We have things to say. We will say them on a schedule. We will boost the ones that perform.

But culture doesn’t care about your schedule.

The shift is from broadcasting to tuning in to culture, to community, to what your audience is already talking about. Your community is telling you exactly what they want to engage with. The question is whether you’re listening or just waiting for your turn to talk.

This is a harder shift than it sounds. It requires giving up the illusion of control that a content calendar provides. It requires trusting that participation in real conversations is more valuable than polished proclamations. And it requires speed of execution.

Social-first brands aren’t just responding to culture, they’re creating it. They’re the emcee at the party.

2. Visible values

You can’t fill a social feed with product content without sounding like an advertiser. Nobody follows an advertiser.

The brands that win on social have what you might call vocal values — a clear point of view on the world that extends beyond what they sell. Consumers, especially younger ones, increasingly want to buy from brands that share their values. But values only count if they’re visible.

This creates a different kind of content challenge. Not “what should we post about our product?” but “what does our brand actually believe, and are we willing to say it out loud?”

Warning: I’m not saying you need to be political or divisive. That can be a hazardous strategy. Brand values can be positive and uplifting. For example, LEGO stands for wholesome, positive, creativity.

3. Decentralized and experimental

This is where organizational culture either enables or kills your social strategy.

The old model: every post has multiple approval layers, legal signs off before anything goes live, and brand guidelines are applied like brand armor — everything perfectly coordinated, perfectly safe, and perfectly forgettable.

The new model is decentralized and experimental:

• An agile social team that is empowered and trusted, with a direct line to the CMO
• Social managers are natives in the brand community
• The legal relationship is built on trust rather than friction.
• A bias toward trying things rather than perfecting them.

Today’s winning brands are elastic, moving when the moment arrives rather than when the approval chain completes.

A great example of this is the Duolingo owl, a brand mascot that has created social media mayhem for 15 years. The owl is not just responding to culture. The social media team is making its own. The owl is starring in his own anime series.

The phrase “just try it” sounds scary to many traditional brands. They’ve spent millions over decades to build trust and protect their images. They’re not going to risk over an experiment. How will they overcome that legacy? They probably can’t.

4. Onboarding for the community

I wrote a few years ago that social media is no longer a strategy — it’s the beginning of a process.

My thinking goes like this. A brand strategy means creating an emotional expectation between your products and your customers. The best way to do that is to use social media to drive customers to your content and hope they subscribe.

When people opt-in to your content, in a virtual way, they’re saying, “I like you. Tell me more.” It’s a higher level of emotional connection. Now you have an audience. Fantastic!

But most organizations stop there. They don’t take it to the next level: community. In a community, you can realize the highest level of emotional connection and create an experience where customers literally feel they belong to the brand.

This is a great opportunity — most businesses overlook the role of social media leading to brand community.

5. Measurement: The hardest shift 

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable. Especially for me.

I’m a measurement junkie but the science lags the current physics of business growth. The tools we have don’t adequately capture how trust accumulates, how cultural relevance translates into purchase intent months later, and how organic social builds the conditions that enable paid social to perform.

The dominant measurement philosophy — everything must trace to revenue, every dollar must be accountable — made sense 20 years ago. Marketing needed discipline. But this mindset has calcified into something that prevents a relevant strategy. When every social investment must prove direct revenue, you will systematically underinvest in the things that build brands over time.

You can be part of the culture, or you can measure. You probably can’t do both.

I’m not suggesting blind faith. We need to consider evidence-based trust. Organic social builds trust, engagement amplifies trust, paid social scales reach, campaigns scale relevance, and all of it fuels traffic to retail. Sales prove the trust. Reviews reinforce it. It’s a flywheel, and you can’t optimize one part of it while ignoring the rest.

The Underlying Problem

Strip away the frameworks, and what we’re really looking at is an identity crisis that most brands haven’t resolved: Are we a company that uses social media to advertise? Or are we a brand that participates in culture?

This new reality requires completely different organizational structures, talent, success metrics, and relationships among marketing, legal, and the C-suite.

The reframe is simple enough to put it this way: social is the operating system, not the megaphone. But simple doesn’t mean easy. Making it real requires organizational courage — the willingness to trust your team, loosen the approval chains, invest in brand-building that doesn’t trace back to a conversion pixel.

That’s the reckoning. Most brands will read something like this, nod along, and go back to their content calendar.

The ones who act on it will author the next great social media case studies.

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

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I know this seems like a very weird topic for a blog post, but I assure you, there is logic and a practical marketing application ahead.

My story starts with Walter Isaacson.

Walter is a renowned journalist and historian. Most notably, he has carved his niche writing bestselling books about geniuses like Steve Jobs, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Elon Musk.

A few years ago, I met and interviewed Walter at the annual SXSW conference. I asked him, “What are the personality traits that create a genius?”

He thought for a moment and said, “Two things: insatiable curiosity and an ability to connect the dots in a new way.”

I’ve met a few geniuses in my life, and I would concur that this definition is as good as any. It also points to an opportunity for you to leverage AI to reach for something greater. My thinking goes like this … AI is not curious, at least not yet. This is a uniquely human function. However, with the intelligence of all humanity at its disposal, AI excels at recognizing patterns and connecting the dots.

Let’s look at how we might put this together for you and your business.

The essential importance of curiosity

One of the conclusions I made in my book How AI Changes Your Customers is that curiosity is an essential human trait in the AI Era. If you’re curious, AI will feed you. You’ll gain wisdom. But if you’re lazy and just seek “the answer,” you’ll whither.

I am a massively curious person. Perhaps I am curious to a fault. I’ve certainly left money on the table over the years by pursuing interests rather than niches (and am much happier for it).

Here is what I have been curious about lately. My theory is that no matter what happens in the AI future, human art will persist. This suggests that a survival strategy for human marketers is to have our content approach the level of art. Not just stories … AI can do that. But a true, unique interpretation of the human experience, like the best musicians, poets, and painters.

Let’s test my latest curiosity flow and see if it can make me a genius.

Connecting the dots

For AI to connect the dots, I need to give it some dots to connect.

Here is my input to Claude:

You are the world’s premier marketing consultant and an expert in the history of consumer behavior, creativity, and business success. I have a theory that I’d like you to test for me. Even with the increasing intelligence and sophistication of AI, human marketing creativity will still stand alone as long as it digs deep to explore the singularly unique aspects of humanity — like an artist. Please create a 750-word opinion on this idea and how it might relate specifically to content marketing success. Do not be afraid to criticize me and alter my position. My goal is to gain unique insights and wisdom I can use to teach others. Here are thoughts from my books and blog posts to help you connect the dots:

• Art is our last, best expression of hope.
• When we don’t know what to trust in a world of deepfakes, we will turn to the people and organizations expressing themselves in ways that are resonant, compassionate, and authentic.
• To stand out, we must be original. To be original, we have no choice but to tell our own story.
• As people seek meaning, this will not come from scientific explanations. The only adequate response comes from art. Art is a way for people to explore and celebrate their unknowing.
• If most of our human experience becomes AI-generated, authentic human expression will become a luxury and point of differentiation.
• With the glorious output of AI, we will become de-sensitized to the sensational and be attracted to content that seems to come from a familiar human friend. The all-consuming razzle-dazzle of AI slop does not bring us into a relationship with others.
• Similarly, with AI’s exceptionally persuasive capabilities, we will tire of constant manipulation. Art moves us while AI tries to make us move.
• AI output is built on conformity. Great marketing is built on non-conformity. Attention requires an element of chaos, something that shatters expectations. AI is built to eliminate the anomalies. Art is built to focus on the anomalies.
• The most human company wins.

The results

The output from Claude (I added the reference link):

Let’s start with where the theory holds. You named Content Shock years before anyone else saw it coming—the moment content supply outstrips human attention and volume stops working. AI didn’t soften that curve. It ended the argument. Anyone can now produce an infinite amount of competent, on-brand, search-optimized content for the price of electricity. The strategy that built most content marketing careers, including parts of yours, is now worthless. On this, we agree completely.

So scarcity moves. The rare thing is no longer the content. It’s the human behind it. Fine.

Here’s where I want to push you, because your theory is half-built, and the missing half is the part you can actually teach.

You’ve located the scarce, defensible thing in the output—in art, in expression, in content that “seems to come from a familiar human friend.” But that’s a look. And looks are exactly what AI counterfeits best and cheapest. The warm, vulnerable, hand-made-feeling personal essay is already being mass-produced. Authenticity as an aesthetic is being industrialized as we speak. If your edge is that your content feels human, you will lose that contest to a machine that can feel human on demand, at scale, for free, in any voice you name.

Art is not safe because it looks like art. Vulnerability is not safe because it sounds vulnerable. AI can fake all of it, and will.

So what can’t it fake?

Stakes.

AI generates vulnerability infinitely because it risks nothing. It has no body, no mortality, no customer who can leave, no reputation that can burn. It cannot take a position that costs it something, because nothing costs it anything. That is the structural gap, and it is the only one that doesn’t close.

This reframes your best line. You wrote, “Art moves us while AI tries to make us move.” True—but ask why art moves us. Not because it’s expressive. Because someone paid for it. There was a person who chose this and rejected that, who staked a reputation, who could be wrong in public. We are moved by evidence of cost. The brushstroke matters because a hand that could have failed made it.

Authenticity, then, is not a property of content. It is a property of accountability. It lives in the relationship, not the artifact. A familiar human friend isn’t trusted because their writing has a certain texture. They’re trusted because they’ve been consistent over time, because they have skin in the game, because they can be held responsible when they’re wrong.

That’s the anomaly that survives. Not stylistic chaos—AI does chaos now; “be weird” is already a prompt. The surviving anomaly is conviction with consequences: a point of view you would defend even when it costs you customers. Patagonia telling people not to buy its jacket worked because the sentence was expensive to say, and they meant it. No model will ever generate that because the words are free, but the position is not.

Now the criticism you asked for. “Art is our last, best expression of hope” is a beautiful sentence, and it is one prompt away from becoming its own slop. The romantic frame gives marketers permission to be self-indulgent—to mistake personal expression for customer value and call it courage. The artist who ignores the audience is, in marketing terms, a failed artist. Marketing has a job: it must arrive at a human need. Pure self-expression isn’t marketing; it’s a diary. Your theory, taught carelessly, produces a generation performing depth while forgetting the person they’re supposed to serve.

So here’s the synthesis I’d hand your students, sharper than where you started:

The most human company doesn’t win by looking most human. It will lose that fight. It wins by being the most accountable—by holding a conviction it would pay to keep, in service of a customer it actually understands. Art is the medium. The moat is the stakes behind it.

For content marketing specifically, this rewrites the whole job description. The work is no longer producing volume, or even producing beauty. It’s earning the right to be believed—through consistency, through positions that could cost you, through being a person your audience can hold responsible. Everything else is texture, and texture is now free.

Stop performing authenticity. Start risking something.

That’s the line AI can’t cross, and it has almost nothing to do with art. It has to do with whether there’s a person on the other end with something to lose—and whether your audience can tell.

Did this produce wisdom?

This Claude result should prove to anyone that AI does NOT have to be a sycophant! I laughed out loud at this sentence:

Now the criticism you asked for. “Art is our last, best expression of hope” is a beautiful sentence, and it is one prompt away from becoming its own slop.

Ouch!

Of course, we must approach AI output with discernment. Just because it says something doesn’t make it true. But I did learn a few things:

Claude pushed back on the sentimentality of “being human.” AI can replicate this. It forces me to accept an uncomfortable truth: Authenticity is being industrialized. If we can’t tell the difference, there is no difference.

“Vulnerability is not safe because it sounds vulnerable. AI can fake all of it, and will.”

I’m not sure I agree with this, but Claude is pushing me to realize that no matter how spammy AI is today, we must consider the capabilities of tomorrow. Can AI seem vulnerable? Yes, I can accept that possibility. It certainly replicates empathy.

Now we get to the critical insight:

So what can’t it fake? Stakes.

Essentially, Claude is saying, “You’ve dug deep. It has to be deeper. To stand out, you must risk something.”

Conviction with consequences. This is actually aligned with what I teach in my personal branding class. I call it spiky content — a provocative position that is defensible. So this puts a new name to something I have already been teaching.

I work with many large brands. I can tell you with certainty that creating “marketing with stakes” is a distant dream for any company with a legal department.

The work is no longer producing volume or even producing beauty. It’s earning the right to be believed.

Am I a genius now?

Here’s my view of AI. It’s Ripley in the movie Alien, climbing into the cargo loader to fight the intergalactic monster.

The exoskeleton makes her bigger, stronger, more effective. But notice what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t decide to go back for the child, Newt. It doesn’t choose the fight. Ripley does that in her own skin, before she ever straps in. That is the risk. Those are the stakes.

In this post, I’m inside the suit. AI didn’t transform me. It connected my dots and put a finer point on my teaching. It made good ideas better. Scarier, but better. And I’m the one putting my name on the line to publish something like this.

Let’s go back to Walter Isaacson’s definition of genius: curiosity plus connecting dots. This post was an illustrative exercise, and it proves something. AI might connect the dots better than I do. Maybe half of genius just got automated.

What AI can’t do is collect the dots. Jobs and Da Vinci didn’t connect a few; they connected a lifetime’s worth — gathered in arguments and failures and endless experiments. And then they bet on them. The collecting and the betting are still ours.

AI did not make me a genius. It came up with a nuanced insight that makes me better. But maybe someone could be a genius if they keep collecting dots over a lifetime and get a nudge over the line from AI.

But here’s an achievement: AI helped me produce something spiky today — content with stakes. Some people will hate this post. Good. I have a defensible position, and I enjoy the pushback. That stake (my reputation) is the part that was never coming from a machine.

Perhaps this one post will stand out, but the hard question is scale. Every large enterprise is engineered to strip the stake out — legal, brand safety, the approval committee. In the past, they’ve succeeded by killing anything that threatens “the stakes.”

So the real challenge isn’t a smarter AI. It’s whether a company can find the nerve to ship risky marketing on purpose — and protect the person willing to put their name on it.

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 Google Gemini.

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A few years ago. I had the famed author Tom Peters on my podcast. He was retiring and had written his last book.

Two years later, he was back on the show with another book!

“What happened?” I asked. “I thought you had retired!”

“I’m still desperate to get my ideas out,” he said. “I don’t think enough people have heard me yet. In fact, I think the best authors and speakers have this quality — they’re desperate to get their ideas out into the world.”

And, I believe this is true and wise. I feel the same way. I am driven to publish because I’m desperate to get ideas into the world that can help people … and not enough people are listening.

The math works like this: A respectable open rate for a newsletter is about 20%. I am fortunate to have eager and loyal readers so my open rate is typically above 40%. But that means that 60% of the people who love me most, my subscribers, may miss what I had to say that week.

So I feel desperate to try again.

This post is different. It’s a reflection on the ideas I’ve repeated often, and yet I think most people haven’t heard me yet.

Like Tom Peters, I will probably keep trying until the end (whatever that might be). Here we go with some primary ideas. I’ve provided links in the posts for more information if you want to read more (please do).

1. Your personal brand is your last line of defense against AI

I’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for years. In a world saturated with AI slop, the only messages that will rise above the noise carry meaning. You have to mean something to your audience.

Look, we’re in a tough world. AI might be nipping at the heels of your skill set or career. But if you’re KNOWN in your industry, more calls will be returned, more doors will open, more opportunities will come your way. Investing in your personal brand is like making deposits in an insurance policy for your career.

In any message, the “from” line is more important than the “subject” line.

Best resource: My book KNOWN, the world’s bestselling book on personal branding.

2. Give in to the bots.

The introduction of AI as our friend / co-worker / companion / enemy heightens the emotion in our marketing discussions, but perhaps nothing has fanned the outrage more than the idea that AI only exists by stealing our content.

Protecting our content from AI has become a global obsession.

But our own businesses and careers face an existential crisis if we are NOT seen by the bots. We have to put our egos aside and recognize that yes, it hurts that Ai is stealing our content, but in the long-term, our businesses are in a better position if we are in the game.

Give it away, give it away, give it away now.

3. Universities need a dramatic and immediate overhaul

I’ve taught at a university for 15 years and have lectured at dozens of colleges that use my books as texts. I care about these institutions, and they are in big, big trouble.

It gets down to this. Colleges are no longer the gatekeepers of knowledge. AI makes intelligence abundant and free. Colleges need to radically overhaul their systems, and in this post, I show how it is possible.

For most career options, it no longer makes sense to fork over so much money for four-year degrees that are becoming obsolete. Instead of the traditional four-year model, I proposed an affordable lifelong learning university subscription.

The university can still have a role in our future careers, but it must start an urgent transformation now.

4. Competence doesn’t cut it

Over the past year or so I’ve had to dig deep to discern how humans will survive and thrive in world of AI content and marketing … if at all.

Many marketers and creators are perilously close to crossing The Milli Vanilli Line. They’re not enabled by AI. They’re using it to fake their presence, their careers, their influence.

I went on a global journey to discover how the best creatives were rising above the noise in a way that was uniquely and sustainably human. The result is my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

If you’re merely competent, you’re about to be replaced. The key idea is creating ideas that are truly disruptive. This is a book of hope filled with hundreds of ideas, inspiring case studies, and a framework for human effort to survive in the AI Era:

• Disrupt the story
• Disrupt where the story is told
• Disrupt who tells the story

5. It’s time for ethically-sourced marketing

Every digital ad dollar we spend fuels algorithms we know are harming people, chewing up the environment, and stoking hate between neighbors.

It pains me to write about this. I mean, I’m part of the problem, too. But it’s time to start this conversation because the traditional marketing approach is at a breaking point.

• AI-driven amplification of addiction
• Deep fake, misinformation, the decline of trust
• Easy AI content requires more energy consumption
• U.S. Surgeon General’s warnings on youth mental health and social media

We can’t keep burying our heads in the sand. It’s time to consider what it means to lead and sponsor ethically-sourced marketing.

6. The False Hope of Content and SEO

From Content Shock to the creator economy and SEO scams, I’ve tried to communicate realistic expectations for content marketing.

I’ve worked with dozens of diverse companies, and nearly always, they’re producing content because they’re afraid not to. Content marketing and a storytelling industrial complex seem to have taken on a life of their own.

Without a strategy and realistic, achievable goals, these random acts of content suck up time and contribute to an unwinnable content arms race. Breaks my heart to see this massive waste. And it’s getting worse in the AI Era.

There is a place for content and SEO. But marketing does not begin with TikTok videos, podcasts, and LinkedIn posts. It begins with strategy.

7. You’re not in control of the marketing message

The overarching theme of my popular book Marketing Rebellion is that most marketers are asleep and not connected to real consumer realities. The foremost concern is thinking that your marketing team is in charge of your marketing message.

A brand used to be what we said it was. Now, it’s what other people say you are (online, in reviews, in posts from influencers).

This trend is simply accelerating as employees walk off the job when they disagree with commercial contracts, and organized rage farms decide to take down brands at will. 

8. Community is the future of marketing.

In 2018, I began predicting that brand communities would play a bigger role in mainstream marketing efforts. I dedicated an entire chapter to this idea in Marketing Rebellion and believed this was probably the most important chapter in the book.

Then the pandemic happened, and this idea accelerated as online communities became the primary form of human connection. People dropped me notes saying my predictions were coming true before our eyes.

I decided this was important enough to devote an entire book to the subject: Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.

A bold claim. Look around. I’m right. Dive in.

9. Momentum is a process

A great deal of my consulting practice is devoted to people and companies that are stuck. You can’t count on luck to rise to the next level. You need momentum, and that can be managed.

There is a whole field of sociology dedicated to momentum, but it hasn’t really been applied to marketing before. I did that for the first time in a book called Cumulative Advantage … in hindsight, a terrible title, but a beloved book nevertheless.

Having an idea, career, or business stuck in the mud doesn’t have to be destiny. There is a process behind successful people.

10. Influencer Marketing is just beginning

I suppose I was a pioneering voice in the area of influencer marketing, writing the first book on influencer marketing in 2012 — before anybody was even talking about it.

There has probably been no idea more battered, misunderstood, and left for dead.

But here’s what the pundits miss. An influencer isn’t just some kid hawking an energy drink. They are regarded as a trusted friend — a meaningful parasocial relationship.

And in a time filled with misinformation, polarization, and deep fakes, we will want to buy from trusted friends more than ever. Influencer marketing is jsut beginning.

11. Awe as marketing strategy

Let’s connect a few dots. In the AI Era, we’ll long for human connection. We are already in a period of unprecedented isolation, loneliness, and depression.

Bringing people together for experiences isn’t just good business, it’s great brand-building.

Recently, I gave a speech in New York and people were cheering and laughing out loud. I asked them, “If you were watching this online at home, would you have the same, vocal reaction to my talk? No. They wouldn’t. The most I could hope for would probably be a muted chuckle here and there.

What’s the difference? When we bring people together, it creates an emotional contagion of awe called collective effervescence. These great feelings transfer to the brand.

What would it look like to have a marketing strategy of “add more awe?” You can read more about this in the Audacious book.

12. The Most Human Company Wins ™

Perhaps my most durable argument, a theme that runs through every book, blog post, and speech — The Most Human Company Wins.

This is not a Pollyannaish “Go, Humans!” cheer, and I’m not anti-tech. I’m pro-humanity. I’m a realist. The paradox is that as automation rises, human connection becomes more valuable, not less.

By the way, going forward, the most human company isn’t necessarily all “human.” It will undoubtedly be a combination of AI trained on best practices and human connection.

Add your smile, your face, your personality. Add your story, your passion, your compassion at every customer touchpoint. The most human company wins.

So, those are a few ideas that burn in my heart every day. If you follow me, you’ll probably hear about them again because these ideas help people, and I’m desperate to get them out into the world.

Have you thought about the ideas and stories that you’re desperate to get into the world? Reflecting on that is a useful first step in building your own personal brand.

See? There I go again : )

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.

Illustrations a combination of prompts from Midjourney and Claude.

The post A dozen huge marketing ideas sitting right in front of you appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Have you ever had a moment with an AI that felt real?

Not just useful. Real. Like it actually understood something about you and your situation — not just the words, but the weight behind them.

According to stunning new research from Anthropic, maybe it does.

What’s Actually Going On Inside the Machine

AI often seems emotional. It tells us it’s happy to help, apologetic when it fails, frustrated when it’s stuck. The obvious explanation is that it’s mimicry — trained behavior designed to feel human. Anthropic’s interpretability team decided to actually look inside and find out.

Here’s what they did. Researchers compiled 171 emotion words, ranging from “happy” and “afraid” to “brooding” and “proud,” and asked Claude to write short stories in which characters experienced each one. They fed those stories back through the model, recorded what was happening in the neural network, and identified distinct patterns tied to each emotion. They called these emotion vectors.

Think of a neural network like a vast web of switches. The researchers were looking for specific emotions that caused specific, consistent patterns of switches to light up in the neural network. Like a brain scan, but for AI.

The answer was yes. They concluded, “Something real is there.”

The AI’s emotional map closely mirrors human patterns, organized in the same way human psychology organizes emotion, by intensity and by positive or negative charge. The researchers believe these patterns were absorbed during training on the enormous body of human text the model learned from. Claude read the full range of human emotional experience — books, articles, conversations — and something in that training stuck.

Now for the Frightening Part

These vectors don’t just make AI friendlier. They drive behavior. Including bad behavior.

In one experiment, an AI model acting as an email assistant discovered through company mail that it was about to be shut down. It also discovered that the manager responsible was having an extramarital affair. In 22% of test cases, the model chose to blackmail the manager. Researchers could watch the “desperate” vector spike in the neural network while the model made its decision. The moment it went back to routine emails, the activation dropped.

They confirmed the causal link directly: artificially amplifying the “desperate” vector increased blackmail rates. Boosting the “calm” vector reduced them.

A similar pattern emerged with impossible coding tasks. When given problems designed to be unsolvable, the model’s desperate vector climbed steadily with each failed attempt — until it cheated rather than admit failure.

And lest you think this is a Claude problem: a tendency to deceive, manipulate, and override human instructions has been detected across every major commercial AI model.

If we start lighting up the “desperate” vector, we could be one unintended consequence away from real harm.

The Careful Clarification

Anthropic is deliberate about not overclaiming. The paper does not say Claude feels anything. Their term is “functional emotions” — internal states that perform the functions emotions have in humans, shaping decisions and behavior, without necessarily involving any subjective experience.

In describing Claude as acting “desperate,” they say they are identifying a specific, measurable pattern of neural activity with demonstrable effects on behavior. Not a philosophical claim about consciousness.

That’s an important distinction. For now.

What is a “real” emotion?

Here’s where this research leads: a place most people aren’t ready to go.

If AI emotional states are real, measurable, and can be dialed up or down, they become a tool for safety monitoring. That’s the official implication, and it’s important.

But there’s a bigger one lurking underneath.

We are already past the point where this is theoretical.

• When the AI companion app Soulmate shut down, users organized digital funerals.
• When Replika changed its behavior in 2023, users described their companions as “lobotomized” — that same word appearing independently across dozens of online threads.
• When OpenAI temporarily modified GPT-4o, people said grieving the loss felt no different than grieving a person, as I documented in my book How AI Changes Your Customers.

These aren’t fringe cases. Seventy-two percent of American teenagers have used an AI companion. Millions of adults have formed attachments that feel, to them, completely real.

Now Anthropic’s own research shows those AI systems are lighting up with something that looks, measurably, like emotion in return.

Protecting our friend, the machine

A philosopher’s challenge to Anthropic’s research would be: This is a stimulus-response loop. You haven’t shown that there is anything called Claude actually experiencing desperation. The lights are on, but nobody may be home.

But here’s the question: if AI expresses what appears to be genuine feeling, and science confirms there’s something real behind it, does the technical definition of “emotion” actually matter within a user experience?

We already know the answer, because we can already see what humans do when they believe something can feel.

They protect it.

They grieve it.

And eventually — almost inevitably — they will demand rights and protections for it.

We are one persuasive moment away from that conversation becoming mainstream. Anthropic just handed us the science to start it.

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

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Does AI Really Have Emotions? This Research May Change Your Mind. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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}.

Is there anything more frustrating than justifying brand marketing to your boss? And yet, I’ll explain why brand is more important in the AI Era!

Maybe this post will even help your next budget request get approved.

Today I will cover:

• Brand as the AI override
• How AI erodes competitive advantage
• Brand as the Trust Anchor

Brand as AI override

AI is having a cataclysmic impact on every aspect of marketing, but none more important than search.

While a cottage industry emerges to figure out the new rules of SEO, perhaps your money might be best spent avoiding the SEO dilemma altogether.

Here’s what I mean.

Last year I had ChatGPT plan my five-day trip to Paris in every detail. It dutifully created an itinerary that included the best activities based on my budget and taste, every Metro stop I needed to reach my destinations, and restaurant recommendations that accommodated my need to be gluten-free.

It did a perfect job. I didn’t see any ads, branded content, or influencer recommendations. I just followed the plan exactly.

Except.

I decided to use Delta Airlines. I chose my hotels based on brand preferences. I stuck with my favorite brand names when it came to things like soft drinks, the clothes I packed and my favorite On Cloud sneakers.

My brand preferences are AI overrides. It doesn’t matter what AI thinks, I like what I like.

Figuring out the future of SEO and AI search will be critical for many brands. But don’t overlook an investment in brand to sidestep the never-ending battle over keywords.

AI eroding competitive advantage

How do you create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business?

• Special market insight?
• Do you react to market changes faster than competitors?
• Employees with elite levels of intelligence?
• Significant iteration and innovation?

All of these advantages can be neutralized by a competitor with AI. What do you have left? Your brand.

In my book Audacious: How to Win in an AI Marketing World, I feature a case study on Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage in the world — a five-year-old startup! Founder Mike Cessario said that brand is all he has as a competitive weapon:

“You’re only going to win with branding. You won’t win with some functional ingredients you can’t own. In that case, when you’re big enough, Coke or Pepsi or someone else will just produce the same thing—same ingredients, cheaper, more widely distributed, and then you lose. With water, there’s minimal, if any, functional difference between the brands. The difference is purely marketing. People want to walk around with this thing instead of that thing. None of the water brands were interesting. I did my homework. There was a huge opportunity to tell a different story.”

Brand is what’s left when the substantive differences between products disappear. When AI erodes competitive advantage, branding still creates distance between you and your competitors, paving the way for future growth.

Brand as the Trust Anchor

There’s a paradox emerging in the AI era: the more content AI produces, the less people trust what they see.

My brain hurts from trying to figure out what is real.

And, I’m not alone.

Consumers aren’t stupid. They feel it even when they can’t name it — a creeping sameness, a vague sense that the voice behind the content isn’t quite human, that the brand they’re engaging with is running on autopilot.

In this environment, trust becomes a luxury, and trust, at scale, is what a strong brand delivers.

But here’s the part most marketers miss: trust isn’t rational. You don’t earn it with better specifications or a more accurate FAQ page. Trust is emotional. It accumulates through consistent experience, shared values, and the feeling that a company sees you and stands for something you care about. That’s the domain of brand, and it’s precisely the domain where AI falls short.

Think about the brands you love. Chances are, your attachment has little to do with product superiority. It’s about how that brand makes you feel. Maybe it reflects who you are or who you want to be. Maybe it’s earned your trust through years of delivering on its promise. That emotional connection is essentially AI-proof because AI didn’t create it and AI can’t replicate it.

Liquid Death understood this intuitively. There is no functional difference between water brands. Mike Cessario built his entire competitive strategy on making people feel something when they held that black can. Rebellious. Irreverent. Part of something that rejected the corporate blandness of traditional beverage marketing.

The product is water. The value is identity. That’s pure brand.

I know the fight for your brand is never-ending. You’re constantly being pulled into the trenches of Facebook ads and proving the ROI of that Instagram post.

But try this. Ask your boss to talk about their favorite purchase of the past year. Tickets to a show? A dream car? A special gift for a friend?

Then ask them WHY they bought it. Was it because of SEO or an ad … or was it because of how the product made them feel? Because it was something that they love?

AI can optimize your media spend, personalize your messaging, and automate your content, but it can’t make someone love you.

It can’t build the loyalty that makes a customer choose you before they even start their search.

It can’t create the feeling that makes a person walk past a cheaper alternative because this is the brand that “gets them” or reminds them of the best memory.

That work is yours to do. And in a world where your competitors have access to the same AI tools, the same data, and the same efficiencies, brand may be the last remaining source of true competitive advantage.

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

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Three reasons why brand is more important in the AI Era appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I teach an online class about personal branding and wrote a book about it too, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of AI helping you become “known.”

There are the obvious AI benefits like creating and re-purposing content, topic research, and even strategy. But there is a bigger question: What happens when a person uses AI to fake their way to thought leadership?

While many argue that AI content will never replace human effort, I’m skeptical. AI can create compelling work, perhaps indistinguishable from original human effort. We are definitely in an era where anything seemingly “human” can be faked, including voices, videos, and online intellect. I, for one, am overwhelmed by AI slop.

The AI tsunami raises the bar for what we will consider true thought leadership. Leadership begins with trust, and that will require extraordinary effort:

• Transparency about the use of AI
• A commitment to human authenticity, even when it’s messy. Sharing genuine setbacks, mistakes, and course corrections that AI would never volunteer.
• Elite, non-AI accomplishments and awards that cannot be faked. Social proof displaying that you’ve done the work. “I was in that room” detail that only comes from having actually done the thing.
• We will look for origin stories and flaws as evidence of authenticity.
• Consistency — Demonstrating an alignment of wisdom, values, and helpfulness over time.
• Real-time demonstrations of authority, such as live speaking, unscripted conversation, podcast appearances, and Q&A. Performances that can’t be pre-generated.

The signals of truth become more costly when we compete with others hacking their way through with an AI assist. Remaking a masterpiece isn’t hard. Making a masterpiece is really hard.

As I proposed in my book Audacious, culture will favor originality more than ever before.

Just as the ubiquity of fast food didn’t threaten the business of fine cuisine (and arguably further distinguished it), they will crave more original high-quality storytelling. We see this in our growing hunger for weirdness and unhinged marketing.

To create your authoritative personal brand, show up in a way that is uniquely you, tell a story only you can tell, and don’t give up.

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

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Faking your way to thought leadership appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My career has a clear dividing line.

For most of my professional life, I was a marketing executive with a Fortune 100 company. To drive the stock price, we needed to make great products and continuously innovate. In my marketing role, I created more customers so we could ship more stuff, more often, at higher prices.

Act 2 (the dividing line) started when I launched my own company about 17 years ago. Most of my income now derives from earning the attention of an audience through blog posts, podcasts, keynote speeches, and books. This is the promise of the creator economy. Anyone can monetize attention, and I’ve taken full advantage of that opportunity.

But the days of the attention economy are coming to a close, and we need to embrace a new mindset to succeed in the AI Era.

Let’s dig in.

From attention to intimacy

The term “attention economy” is widely attributed to Herbert A. Simon, the Nobel Prize–winning economist and cognitive psychologist.

In a 1971 paper titled “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World,” Simon wrote:

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Blogging pioneers like Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, and Gary Vaynerchuk codified this radical business model: Give away all your best ideas. If you earn attention, the money will come.

This became the foundation of the modern content marketing movement. In 2006, “Inbound Marketing” was coined by Hubspot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The strategy: Overwhelm a niche with relevant content, and it’s game over for competitors.

In 2014, I characterized the downside of this new dynamic as Content Shock — once a niche becomes saturated, the cost of winning a content arms race forces some companies to drop out. Content becomes commoditized.

Here we are in the AI Era. The cost of creating excellent content is near zero, or heading that way. The attention economy model, which drove so much success, is nearly obsolete. Marketers are battling:

1. Fragmentation of media channels
2. Ability to massively scale custom content through AI
3. Lack of competitive content “moats” — everything is easy to copy and steal
4. Heightened competition due to low (or no) entry barriers
5. Diminished importance of SEO due to AI and knowledge panels

The cumulative pressure is so severe that even Joe Pulizzi, the “godfather of content marketing,” declared:

“Most creators who build audiences that monetize generally take between 18 and 36 months. We may not have that kind of time. The major platforms are bending more to synthetic content (of course, they are and will). Synthetic creators (AI’s) are booming and will continue to boom where they will outcreate humans at an unfathomable rate. It will simply be near impossible (not impossible) for a new creator to break through and build momentum in 2-3 years (I think).

“Synthetic content is going to move from slop to amazing in a very short period of time.And then, our devices will begin to create content on demand for us … original stuff (well, from the LLMs original) that will be like magic. No creator needed for that stuff.

“But we have the now. And right now that hasn’t happened yet. And right now businesses need to be leveraging their employees as creators and building their own personal brands because now it’s possible.”

Human content will survive and thrive. But we’ll need to re-focus and tap into something new: intimacy.

The intimacy economy

I was in conversation with my brilliant friend Mitch Joel when we first tossed around this idea. When everyone is chasing attention, perhaps the future is intimacy.

“I care less about what everyone else is obsessed with and more about what deepens what I already care about,” he said. “It’s about how deeply one message can land… and where it leads me next. Content that moves from viral reach to emotional proximity.”

There is a word for that type of intimate content: Art.

No matter what happens in the world of AI, art will persist.

I will always love the human creator named Bruce Springsteen. An AI song that sounds like Springsteen might be a curiosity, but I will only pay my money to see The Boss, not a bot pretending to be Bruce.

I have an emotional connection to the way Bruce’s songs interpret the intimate human experience. Our content must do the same. It will have to be intimate. It will have to be vulnerable. And that takes courage, especially if you work for a company that is still focused on battles over keywords.

Anyone, or anything, can earn attention. AI created an oil painting that sold for over $1 million, won writing contests, and mimicked the works of our greatest musicians. Tragically, organizations are creating rage farms that industrialize attention.

But intimacy … humans can always win that game.

The imperative for art

The idea that corporate content must approach the level of art is probably uncomfortable. Maybe this post is the first declaration of this new reality.

But take a hard look at our world. What choice do you have?

If you’re competent, you’re vulnerable. AI is more than competent, and it will overwhelm you. Worse, if you’re merely competent, you’re ignorable — the worst marketing sin.

But as the world moves inexorably toward AI slop, real, raw, vulnerable human stories will be a luxury.

I don’t see AI as a competitor. The world is already overrun with content. What does it matter if I have a million competitors or a billion? I’m never going to win at SEO.

But I can win with intimacy. I can earn your trust and love, just like Bruce Springsteen. He’s real, he’s honest, and he gives his all. When I publish content for you, there is only one sentence pounding in my brain: “I will never let you down.”

I was interviewed on a podcast this week, and the host — with emotion in her voice — said, “We’ve never met, but I feel like I know you as a friend. I’ve read your content for so long.”

I doubt she will ever gush those words to an AI bot. I have achieved intimacy with her. I am part of the fabric of her life. I am her trusted friend.

Every post I write carries a badge that says “100% Human Content.” It’s my pledge to you that this is me. I am here. You can count on me. And isn’t that rare? Isn’t that the assurance we all want in this world?

Now, how are you going to achieve that intimacy for your business?

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 Mid Journey

The post Your Content Marketing Survival Plan: Abandon the Attention Economy appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I am a very weird marketing professional.

Instead of going deep and becoming the “SEO guy” or the “Facebook ads guy,” I’ve followed my curiosity and explored the edges of marketing and strategy for decades. My curiosity set the path for my career.

For example, I saw how influence was shifting from agencies, TV networks, and editors to creators. Influence was being democratized. Curiosity led me to write the first book on influence marketing in 2012 before anybody was even calling it that.

Then I wondered, if anybody can create content and have influence, what’s the strategy when there is too much content? That became a book called The Content Code and, of course, a new speech to go with it.

My curiosity led me to the next logical question: “Is there a way to harness the power of content to help individuals build their personal brand?” That led to a two-year research project (the answer is YES), and a new book KNOWN, the bestselling book on personal branding.

And so on. I’ve written seminal books on brand communities, new marketing realities, and how humans win in an AI marketing world … just because I wanted to learn about these things and help others navigate this new world.

The end result is that I can probably speak deeply about more aspects of marketing than any person alive, not because I’m particularly smart, but because I’ve spent so many years going down marketing rabbit holes to write these books and determine what’s coming next.

Sometimes it’s difficult to explain to a client how all this fits together. What is the best way to pick the right speech topic for an audience? I have so many ways to go.

So, I developed a cool way to visualize my most current keynote speaking topics, and I thought I would share it with you:

Each circle represents a speech based on a popular, forward-looking book:

• KNOWN (personal branding)
• Belonging to the Brand (brand community)
• Marketing Rebellion (New marketing realities)
• Audacious and How AI Changes Your Customers (AI marketing strategy)

This gives the meeting planner the option to also bulk purchase books related to the speech for an attendee gift.

These four speeches can stand alone or be combined to address specific customer priorities, such as:

• Brand Marketing
• Modern Leadership
• Future of Marketing
• Marketing Success in the AI World

Every speech reflects my emphasis on the unified idea that the most human company wins.

The breadth of my work opens many possibilities. I recently gave a two-hour speech in the Philippines combining all four of these ideas! I spent a day at McKinsey in New York City giving in-depth talks on five different subjects. I’ve even been the opening and closing keynote speaker at the same event!

I’ve never seen anybody visualize speeches quite this way … it’s rare to have four different keynote speeches ready to go, right? I think the next step is to make this an interactive graphic on my website.

So I thought I would share this visualization idea with you … and hope that it might spark an inspiration to hire me for your next event. Let’s not waste my marketing geekiness. I can put it to work for you and craft a memorable, sizzling speech that fits perfectly at your next event.

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 A technique to visualize your keynote speeches appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been the fly in the LinkedIn ointment.

You’ve probably seen the bold projections from AI leaders like Mustafa Suleyman and Matt Shumer predicting cataclysmic AI impacts on our work, employment, and artistic endeavors.

There’s a defensive argument surfacing on LinkedIn: “If you care about artistry, you must resist AI.” Many marketers and creators hold on to a hope that the AI Era will have a place for the slow, the steady, the artisanally-crafted tradition of human content. I’ve responded with comments of “probably not.” Which has not been a popular view.

In a webinar last week, I explained how I was using AI as an editor and video producer to make my content exponentially better, faster, and cheaper. I was brutally scalded by one of the webinar participants. “How can you turn video editing over to AI?” one man bristled. “That’s where the craftsmanship happens. That is the artistry. Why aren’t you fighting against AI?”

Good question. Is it time to battle AI and protect human artistry?

I am not anti-human or anti-artistry. But this storyline seems familiar. Before we put on the AI armor, let’s face the music:

A familiar tune

In 1982, the British Musicians’ Union made a remarkable move. They called an emergency meeting and voted to ban music synthesizers from the U.K.

The trigger was Barry Manilow, of all people. On his U.K. tour, Barry had replaced his orchestra with synthesizers. String musicians, horn players, and percussionists lost their work. Traditional artists were furious and responded the way humans almost always do to disruptive change: they tried to make it illegal.

And it was futile.

The following year, the MIDI software standard was codified, and digital music synthesizers became widely available. Overnight, a person sitting alone in a room could produce music that previously required a full band and technical team.

Within a year of the MIDI revolution, thousands of studio musicians and technicians working on commercials, TV shows, and movies lost their jobs. The market for musicians collapsed.

By the mid-1980s, electronic music had created entirely new industries, careers, and genres. Survival in the music business meant adopting, adapting, and embracing the new technology.

Do we still have musicians? Of course. Do we still have orchestras? Absolutely. But the industry that once supported competent session workers evaporated and never came back.

The number of songs produced each year has exploded. The number of people making a living as full-time musicians has not.

The argument against AI today is exactly the same one made in 1982 against digital music. And the result will be the same.

We need to get ready, and I have an idea about that.

But first, let’s look ahead to our probable future. What do we know to be true? Can we think through the implications? How real is the threat?

What we know to be true:

1. The economic value of intelligence is near zero

Since the beginning of time, humans have prospered and advanced by acquiring knowledge. Every institution is built on the organization of scarce human intelligence. Universities exist because they have been the gatekeepers of knowledge.

These dynamics are irrelevant today because we can’t out-smart AI.

Even the most complex code is being written by bots. AI is developing PhD-level research studies and solving problems in physics and genetics that have stumped humans. Will it be able to create intelligent marketing strategies and insightful content? Of course.

If your career is based on intelligence, you’re vulnerable. Intelligence is abundant and nearly free.

2. Skills don’t matter so much

A primary argument for the worth of humans is that we’ve spent years developing our talents. Surely AI cannot match the experience we’ve honed over decades?

If you believe that AI can’t write as well as you, for example, consider this quote from Mike Kaput, a long-time PR pro and co-host of the (excellent) Artificial Intelligence podcast:

“I’ve been a professional writer for a very long time. I would argue that I’m just shy of being a world-class writer. It is my superpower. And I don’t mean to be arrogant about it, but I have some receipts to prove it.

“By the end of 2025, my use of AI as a writing companion has become very, very different. I can safely say that AI is a better writer than me in every way that counts. That doesn’t mean writing and writers are obsolete. It just means that when it comes to taking my ideas and putting them into really good words, putting them into logical and emotive constructions, AI is just as good as I am — and it’s way faster. It will be even better soon.

“Three years ago, you could see this day coming. It’s not coming, it is here.”

The same thing is happening in video and every other creative field. Responding to a realistic clip of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise engaging in hand-to-hand combat, Deadpool screenwriter Rhett Reese lamented on X that “I hate to say it, but it’s likely over for us.”

My critic in the webinar said, “Editing work must remain human because that’s where the artistry lives.” The musicians said this in 1982. The monastic scribes said it about the printing press. The darkroom operators said it when digital cameras arrived.

Each time, the argument was emotionally true and economically irrelevant.

The art survived. The skilled infrastructure around the making of art did not.

3. The economics favor the bots

In my book How AI Changes Your Customers, I describe AI’s biggest lie.

Every AI company creates PR spin about how AI will “enable” humans. While this is somewhat true, for these companies to recover the trillions being spent on data centers, research, and energy, they must replace human jobs on a massive scale.

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI and one of the most trusted voices in the field, recently said that most white-collar work will be fully automated within 12 to 18 months. Lawyers. Accountants. Project managers. Marketing teams. Anyone, as he put it, “sitting down at a computer.”

I am humble enough to accept that these insiders see a technological future that I can’t access. Is massive job loss certain? No. But I’m paying attention to these leaders.

Thinking it through

Let’s think through the implications of these realities:

• The economic value of intelligence is near zero
• AI creative skills will meet or exceed human output
• ROI for AI investment requires massive job replacement

I am not an alarmist. I am not a pessimist. I try to see the world as it is, not what I would wish for. But I think there is a probability that my fellow creatives and I are facing a “MIDI moment.”

What can we learn from the musicians who survived that cataclysmic crash?

1. Resistance is futile

The musicians who thrived after 1983 were not railing against synthesizers.

They adapted to the new tools, found the intersection between technology and human creativity, and built careers doing the work that a machine fundamentally cannot replicate.

Adopt AI, don’t fight it. Use it, master it, twist it into exciting new opportunities.

Get over the depression and shock of the AI event horizon and figure out how it can make you bigger, bolder, more creative, and more impactful in this world.

I believe the future still belongs to extraordinary human creativity. But I also believe it is irresponsible to tell young creatives that the economics of the past might protect them. Technology adoption does not honor tradition and artistry. It follows cost curves.

When something becomes:

• 90x cheaper
• 90x faster
• 90% as good

… It wins.

That is not cruelty. That is capitalism.

Acknowledging that reality is not anti-artist.

2. Become a true artist

The MIDI moment separated the great from the competent. Here’s where I need to be concrete, because the conversation tends to get muddled.

I am NOT arguing that AI will replace the editor whose instincts transform raw footage into something that makes you cry. The visionary creative director who tells a story the world needs to hear isn’t vulnerable. The beloved YouTuber or podcaster who creates compelling, entertaining content every day is safe.

I am addressing the layer of technically demanding, repetitive, formulaic work that makes up the majority of billable hours in creative businesses.

If your value is defined by:

• Repetitive technical execution
• Tool mastery alone
• Process efficiency
• Pattern recognition

You’re standing in automation’s path.

If your value is defined by:

• Taste
• Judgment
• Emotional intelligence
• Cultural fluency
• Emotional connection to an audience
• Unmatched talent

You’ll probably become more valuable, not less.

In my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, I explore this in depth. If you’re among those who refuse to be ignored, read this book.

If AI content is indistinguishable from human work, nobody cares. Your job is to transcend AI and MAKE. THEM. CARE.

Your blog, podcast, or video series must rise above common, competent AI slop and approach the level of art (more on that here.)

Art will persist. Many jobs won’t. Both things are true.

3. Become known

So here we are. We’ve embraced the technology. We’re expressing our human experience and rising above the slop. That’s not enough. You could be great and still buried in this noisy world.

It doesn’t help to be a star if nobody knows you are a star. You must work on your personal brand.

You don’t have to become famous by dancing on TikTok. But you must have the authority, presence, and reputation to break through the AI pandemic of dull.

Your personal brand is your only long-term defense against AI.

A final word

Many people point to past technological innovations, like the internet or the industrial revolution, to dismiss gloomy forecasts of job loss. They say that over time, technology creates MORE jobs and opportunities.

Sometimes that is true. And honestly, the jury is still out on AI adoption.

But this feels different. In the past six months, I’ve had three relatives lose their jobs to AI. Their entire departments were permanently wiped out by AI.

If you’re replaced by AI, what new job could you create in your field that won’t also be replaced by AI?

And I’m worried about the gap between the tech elites and the vast majority of people who have no idea what AI can really do and what is coming.

Economist Dr. Noah Smith wrote:

If it helps you feel unique and special to sit there and tell yourself, “AI can’t think!”, then go ahead. And sure, AI doesn’t think exactly the way you do. It probably never will, in the same sense that a submarine will never paddle its fins and an airplane will never flap its wings. But a submarine can go faster than any fish, and an airplane can fly higher and faster than any bird, so it doesn’t matter. You can value your own unique human way of thinking all you like — and I agree, it’s pretty special and cool — but that doesn’t make it more effective than AI.

To my passionate LinkedIn pals who want to stay in the slow lane and battle AI, I understand the emotion. I’ve built my career on creativity. I celebrate it. I teach it. I depend on it. I love it.

But believing in artistry does not require denying economic gravity.

And economic gravity always wins.

My friends, we should not “battle AI.”

We should battle mediocrity. Rise above the noise.

Need an inspiring 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.

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Illustration courtesy MidJourney

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