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}.

I was recently interviewed about my perspectives on work-life balance and shared the story of my early career, when I juggled family, a demanding job, and an MBA program. For nearly four years, I had zero time for “me.”

The interviewer asked: “If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self who worked so hard to climb the corporate ladder, what would it be?”

I know he was expecting me to look back with regret, maybe even say I’d wished I’d worked less or spent more time at home. But honestly, I couldn’t say that. It wouldn’t be true.

Here’s what I said: I would tell my younger self, “Good job.”

That threw him for a loop. Let me explain my answer.

The chicken and the egg

In his famous book Good to Great, Jim Collins describes his concept of a career flywheel.

“Picture an egg just sitting there. No one pays it much attention until, one day, the egg cracks open and out jumps a chicken!

“All the major magazines and newspapers jump on the event, writing feature stories—“The Transformation of Egg to Chicken!” “The Remarkable Revolution of the Egg!” “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!”—as if the egg had undergone some overnight metamorphosis, radically altering itself into a chicken.

“But what does it look like from the chicken’s point of view? It’s a completely different story.

“While the world ignored this dormant-looking egg, the chicken was evolving, growing, developing, incubating. From the chicken’s point of view, cracking the egg is simply one more step in a long chain of steps leading up to that moment—a big step, to be sure, but hardly the radical, single-step transformation it looks like to those watching from outside the egg.

“It’s a silly analogy, granted. But I’m using it to highlight a very important finding from our research. We kept thinking that we’d find “the one big thing,” the miracle moment that defined breakthrough. We even pushed for it in our interviews. But the good-to-great executives simply could not pinpoint a single key event or moment in time that exemplified the transition.”

The career flywheel

Jim Collins famously described this as the flywheel. What creates personal transformation and career momentum? Is it one big push that creates velocity? One class, one connection, one stroke of luck?

No. He found it was a combination of small pushes that created momentum for both careers and businesses. You push and push and push, and that work accumulates to create momentum (I describe this in my book Cumulative Advantage).

Early in my career, I was motivated by money. I would not say I grew up poor — I never went hungry. However, if I wanted to have a bike, new clothes, or a baseball uniform, I had to earn the money myself. Likewise, I had to pay for my own college education and subsisted on beans and cheap pasta for years.

After years of scraping by, I wanted some financial freedom. I was so tired of being broke. And my flywheel was already in motion.

Beginning the momentum

In college, I was part of a marketing student group, and my job was to get guest speakers for our monthly meetings. I researched the largest companies I aspired to work for one day and invited their executives to campus. I was their host for the day, which allowed me to build personal relationships with people who could potentially hire me.

In fact, I secured an internship through a connection with one of these executives. By the time I graduated, I had three corporate internships under my belt. Each internship was bigger than the last, and they paid more because I was building on the momentum of the previous job.

By the time I was a college senior, I had an impressive resume and landed a corporate communications job with a Fortune 100 company. Problem was, I wanted to move into marketing, and that would require something more.

From sales to marketing to momentum

My first move toward a marketing career was to spend time in sales. I was transferred to our Los Angeles sales office and learned about a special MBA program that allowed students to study under the legendary Peter Drucker. I applied twice and was turned down because I was too young for this elite experience. Finally, I met with the dean and explained how my youthful perspective would add to the diversity of the program. He laughed, but let me into the program as the youngest student ever admitted.

This brings us back to where this blog post began. I now had a challenging career, two toddlers, and an MBA program to balance. This was the most demanding period of my life. It took me four years of nights and weekends to get that degree. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

If you know me at all, you know I’m great with kids and adored being a father, so I always kept this in front of me as job number one.

All of this was part of my career flywheel. I moved up the company, and, long story short, gained the knowledge and experience that have enabled me to have the career I have today.

And this is why my answer was so unexpected and not-so-politically-correct. I don’t regret working hard to build momentum in my career because it has led to a lifetime of benefits and financial freedom.

Simple math

Let’s put this in simple terms.

Because of the “flywheel work” I did in college, let’s say I could get a job that paid $60,000 while my less aggressive friends earned an entry-level job of $45,000.

If we both received a 5% annual raise for the next 20 years, my flywheel-enabled salary would be approximately $152,000, compared to $114,000 for the other person.

And of course, there is more than money. The flywheel momentum also led to promotions, travel, more time off, and opportunities for my children that I had never had before.

I want to be clear. I’m not saying that everybody needs to work hard, build momentum, and make money. I hope you’re happy in whatever you do.

There’s no one-size-fits-all path. But for me, the hard work I put in early built momentum that changed my life –and gave me more freedom, not less, as the years went on.

If you’re working on your flywheel, keep going. Step by step, you’re building something bigger than you can see right now.

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 A contrarian view to work life balance appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I have been so very blessed to be an author that people trust. Against all odds, people actually buy my books, even years after they are published. They have been translated into 15 languages, used as college textbooks, and are found in more than 700 libraries worldwide.

Except one.

Today, I submit to you one of my biggest disappointments and professional enigmas: The book that bombed. My invisible book. And oh yes, it might have been my best book ever.

My best work?

If you search for the “best marketing books” on Amazon, here are the top five, and the book ratings:

• All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin = 4.5
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout = 4.5
• The One-Page Marketing Plan by Dib = 4.7
• Hook Point by Kane = 4.4
• Building a Story Brand by Miller = 4.6

The average reader rating of any business book on Amazon is 4.2, according to ChatGPT.

And then there is my 2021 book Cumulative Advantage, with a score of 4.7. It stands up to the best in terms of quality, or at least reader appreciation.

Many readers consider Cumulative Advantage to be my best book. And yet it is my lowest-selling book, by far. In the world of business books, you can call a book a bestseller if it reaches 10,000 in sales. My bestselling book, Marketing Rebellion, sold 14,000 copies in its first month. 

And yet Cumulatove Advantage has sold only 1,700 books since its release in 2021. This was the very next book I wrote after the mega-hit Marketing Rebellion. What the heck happened?

I have a theory.

The story of the invisible book

I only write a book when it solves a meaningful problem. A trend I noticed in many of my consulting calls was that people often seem to get stuck mid-career. They might experience some success and plateau in their businesses, professional lives, and personal brands.

How do you build momentum for a life, a career, an idea? What is the strategy to reach new levels of success when the growth curve flattens out?

I came across a concept called cumulative advantage. While this concept is well-researched and documented in the field of social psychology, the theory about how momentum works in the world has never been applied to the practical reality of business.

Making this connection was an elegant and practical idea that could help many people. I concocted a unique and entertaining way to tell the story of momentum. I compared my career to the supremely successful author Tim Ferriss. We had both started as authors at the same time, but he had rocketed to fame. To tell a story of the five steps of cumulative advantage, I traced our paths to answer the question: Why did Ferris know Oprah, and I did not?

It was a fun, fast-paced story packed with insights. I knew this was a great book, and based on the rising success of my previous books, I doubled down on my investment in editing, design, and promotion. For the first time, I hired an outside PR firm and an influencer agency. I created a snazzy “movie trailer:”

I spent a small fortune on the book …

And nothing happened

I published Cumulative Advantage in early 2021, and many early readers declared it my best work. Here are a few reviews … not to puff myself up, but to establish that the quality of the book was not the issue here:

• “This book is so important. Never before has the career path for the entrepreneur, inventor, or other creatives been so clearly defined, laid out, and mapped.”
• “I will state emphatically that HE HAS OUTDONE HIMSELF when he wrote Cumulative Advantage.”
• “This book will have a profound impact on your life and how you view your place in the world. I couldn’t put this book down, because it provided hope in a very difficult time.”
• “Such an extraordinary book! I devoured Cumulative Advantage in a single weekend.”
• “As good as the entire book is, the last chapter alone is worth far more than the price of the book.”

I was an established author. I had written an excellent, helpful, and inspiring book. I spent a ton of money on promotion. And it bombed.

I will never know for sure, but here is my theory of the invisible book …

The issue of timing

I knew this book was launching at a difficult time. We were still in a pandemic. This placed several obstacles in my way:

1. The world was still in a state of panic, and businesses were struggling. Many people were holding on to their money, and buying books was not a priority. ALL book sales in every category were in decline.
2. At the height of the pandemic, other authors like me spent that downtime writing books. Almost every marketing author published books at the same time, so the competition for those scarce book dollars was fierce.
3. All events and conferences had been cancelled. Normally, when I publish a new book, I would embark on a speaking tour. Speaking engagements sell a lot of books.
4. Nonfiction book sales have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. While non-fiction books are growing, overall business book sales have been in decline.

So even though I sensed the timing of the book launch was awful, I went ahead with it. The book was ready. The book was great. And by the way, I had struggled financially during the pandemic, too. I could use the boost!

The challenge of promotion

I had taken a big swing on the promotional budget, and that also bombed:

• The PR pro I hired had come highly recommended, but was so ineffective that she returned my money.
• I experimented with a “micro-influencer” campaign, and that also fell flat. What I learned is that micro-influencers are mostly interested in promoting themselves.
• My other promotional efforts did not take off. The mood of the world was so pandemic-depressed that even a positive book of hope was hard to sell.

I probably could have taken another shot at promoting the book in 2022, but I felt so deflated and shocked by the failure. I had not completely pieced together what went wrong. And I had started working on a new project: Belonging to the Brand.

What’s in a name?

As I dissected my failure to learn from it, I think Cumulative Advantage is probably a terrible name for a book. It’s even hard to say. If I had to do it over again, I would have called the book “Relentless Relevance,” because that offers a more straight-forward idea of what the book is about.

The book had a great subtitle: How to Build Momentum for Your Ideas, Business, and Life Against All Odds. However, most people are unaware of subtitles.

The role of luck

Was my career as an author finished? I put everything I had into that book, but I lost a lot of time and money in the process.

I had another big idea burning inside of me, and I needed to push that idea into the world: The vital role of brand communities in the future of marketing.

I needed to go back to basics. What worked? What went wrong? I never wanted to have a failure like that again.

I conducted a thorough review of book marketing best practices. I even interviewed many authors for best practices that I might have missed. I found something surprising. Almost every successful author said that the most significant boost to their book sales was luck. Ironically, that is also a key idea in the Cumulative Advantage book — dig deep enough and you’ll find that behind every mega-success is some piece of dumb luck.

So bad luck, bad timing, and maybe a bad title had worked against me. I would not be deterred. I keep writing in a bold and brave way, as always.

The impact

Since that book, I’ve written two more, and they’ve both sold well. I love the creative challenge of writing, and I’m gratified when people buy the books and enjoy them.

Still, it stings every time I look at my monthly book sales and see a big fat zero for Cumulative Advantage. It will always hold a special place in my heart, even if it’s not on many bookshelves.

I hope this provides some balance to the Mark Schaefer narrative. Not every project is a success, but you must keep moving forward. That’s an important lesson about momentum.

And if you’d like to learn more about momentum, you can always buy the book. It would make me smile today.

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 sad and mysterious tale of my invisible book appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

There have been two passionate and vocal camps when it comes to the AI impact on marketing employment.

Some insiders like Demis Hassabis of Google are optimistic that AI will create an abundance of jobs. Sam Altman has been clear that AI will aggressively replace jobs (including 95% of marketing!). Marketing guru Rand Fishkin says poppycock to that and claims marketing will thrive in this well-researched post.

What is true? Having an idea of what’s coming next seems pretty important to our companies and jobs! In this post, I provide my view of what I believe is likely, followed by some possible safeguards for our careers.

Guiding observations about AI

Some people have characterized me as a “futurist,” but what I really do is take observable facts and think deeply about the implications of what comes next. If you cut through the AI hype, there are three guiding observations we can reliably build on:

1. AI drives the economic value of intelligence to near zero.
2. AI is an enabling technology, but also a replacement technology
3. Companies are incentivized to adopt new technology when there is an immediate and measurable ROI

Unfortunately, extrapolating these ideas leads me to believe that there could be significant job losses. I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but let’s explore each of these ideas and then consider what you can do about it.

1. The economic value of intelligence

Every human organization is based on intelligence. We hire “human intelligence vessels” for HR, Finance, Engineering, and other functions. Competitive advantage derives from the acquisition and deployment of specialized, even scarce, human intelligence.

Similarly, our compensation and careers are based on intelligence. As we learn more, gain experience, and earn new college degrees, our value goes up. Acquiring intelligence might result in a promotion, a raise, or a call from a recruiter.

But what happens when the economic value of intelligence is zero? This is exactly what is happening with AI.

The unit costs of AI are plunging exponentially. ChatGPT’s inference prices have roughly halved every six months, outpacing even the recent cost declines in technologies like batteries and solar power. This steep drop stems from relentless algorithmic improvements and fierce competition among providers. Lower prices, in turn, drive wider adoption: the cheaper an AI agent becomes, the more extensively it can be deployed.

We already see entry-level jobs being eliminated, and as the level of intelligence advances, general marketing employment could become vulnerable. When the cost of intelligence becomes zero, the traditional organizational structure and career path become a house of cards.

As AI progresses at a breathtaking speed, it’s reasonable to conclude that many specialized “human intelligence vessels” will no longer be needed.

2. The replacement technology

There is a line about AI going around that drives me nuts: “You won’t be replaced by AI. You’ll be replaced by people who use AI.”

That is false. In fact, AI will replace many jobs all on its own.

I’m not saying don’t learn about AI. Absolutely, you need to learn as much as you can.

But in 1908, if you were in the horse and buggy business and you saw a Model T Ford chug down the street, no amount of knowledge about cars would save your business. An automobile is a replacement technology, not an enabling technology.

Using this same car analogy, the advent of the car also created massive new industries — roads, petroleum, maintenance, and more — and tremendous job growth. There will certainly be entirely new business models created by AI, and we will be lucky for that … unless AI creates jobs that AI can handle!

AI is not just a Model T; it’s also the GPS, the Uber app, the electric engine, and the roadside assistance bot. This explains why there is already a decline in postings for many types of traditional jobs, including coders, customer service, and entry-level marketers, for example.

I have a friend whose auditing department just got wiped out by AI. No amount of knowledge about AI would have saved his job or department.

Futurist Azeem Azhar states, “A new consensus is forming: AI is a sufficiently general-purpose technology to disrupt, invert, and ultimately reinvent nearly every sector of the economy. I’m convinced that incumbents have not yet grasped the scale or imminence of what is coming. Many are sleepwalking into a series of Blockbuster–BlackBerry moments that will unfold over the next two decades.”

I concur.

3. Incentives to change

I’ve observed technology adoption for decades and led change efforts at a Fortune 100 company. And I learned that tech adoption is arduous. The technology might change quickly, but company culture changes slowly. McKinsey reports that nearly every company is investing in AI, yet only 1% claim they have fully integrated it into workflows and achieved meaningful business outcomes.

However …

The one thing that speeds tech adoption like nothing else is a rapid, meaningful, and measurable return on investment, especially if it means cutting jobs. A sad reality, but true.

We are in a time of economic uncertainty and turmoil. A responsible company must cut costs, and that is likely to mean rapid adoption of AI.

Of course, emerging AI regulations, energy needs, ethical guidelines, and compliance requirements could slow adoption. But cutting jobs is seen as an easy win by most companies.

How to become future-proof

Here are the working people I encountered in my life this week:

• A person who has cut my hair for 20 years
• Dozens of workers on a road construction project that delayed my drive
• A post office employee who helped me mail a book to Singapore
• A person who helps me with landscaping
• My family doctor for an annual check-up
• The person who changed the oil in my car

I can’t imagine that any of these individuals will be replaced by AI any time soon. AI will impact their jobs in some way (especially the doctor), but for many, life will be business as usual, at least for a few more years! So no, not every job is threatened by AI.

Specifically, let’s focus on marketing careers. What kind of marketer survives the great reshuffle?

Nobody really knows at this point, but here are a few thoughts:

Relationships

Some jobs will always be relationship-oriented. A B2B account manager who understands a client’s unspoken fears is irreplaceable — at least for now. I think people will still want face-to-face interactions when compassion and deep understanding are needed. We’ll need humans in the loop when the financial and legal stakes are high. Humans will manage AI functions/agents and remain accountable for performance and problems.

Insights

We will always value human insights. Are you in a job that delivers information or insights? If you only regurgitate reports and data (like my auditor friend), you’re vulnerable. But if you’re a creative director, subject matter expert, or have special star status in your industry, you’ll probably have a protected niche. You have vision.

Entrepreneurship

If you’re a curious person with drive, there is no better time to be alive. You don’t have to hire a coding team to build your business. You can direct AI to do it. Ideas + AI agency = Opportunity

During the pandemic, I predicted there would be an unprecedented new number of startups. That came true, because every fracture in the status quo creates new customer needs. We are at that same kind of inflection point.

Specialized marketing functions

I will be writing about this topic in an in-depth future post, but there are three areas of marketing that humans will still dominate in the AI Era.

Personal brand — When AI-generated content floods the zone with misinformation, we’ll need industry experts to help us navigate the truth and the future. Are you known in your industry? Are you the go-to authority? In many cases, the personal brand IS the brand.

Community — People long to belong. Brand communities will be uniquely bot-resistant.

Transcendent content — This is the subject of my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. To stand out in this pandemic of dull, we’ll need disruptive new stories and storytellers. It will take a unique human touch to create something so interesting, so compelling, and so worthy that people want to spread the word about your business and products.

Final thoughts on marketing employment

Almost every marketer describes AI as “exciting and terrifying,” and this is indeed the case. While there might be some scary stuff coming on the job scene, AI also creates a time of unprecedented marketing magic and fun.

I’ve presented a case today showing how some marketing jobs will be vulnerable. It’s a short article meant to start conversations. The outlook for AI is complex, and the future of marketing employment is not binary. While I do think a significant disruption is coming,

• Many jobs will be transformed rather than eliminated
• AI often augments human capabilities (like creativity) rather than fully replacing them
• Different industries and company sizes will adopt AI at different rates. AI job loss might be years away for some industries.

I believe the best attitude to adopt going forward is one of open-mindedness, determination, and positivity. Let’s not dwell on what we wish for. Let’s create businesses and new opportunities for ourselves based on what IS.

• Embrace AI at every turn.
• Build relationships and community.
• Deliver insights.
• Build your personal brand.
• Create something remarkable.

My friend Mike Moran and I debated the AI/employment issue, and he wisely concluded: “What really happens in the future will be complex. And I think it’s impossible to know how all of these factors will adjust to each other, so it’s perfectly valid to be optimistic or pessimistic, but it’s very dangerous for us to be certain.”

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

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post How marketing employment might be disrupted when the economic value of intelligence is zero appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My friend recently sent me an email with the subject line “This might incur your wrath.”

I’ll call my friend “Dan” because, well, that’s his name.

Dan informed me that he had cloned me. Not the sci-fi kind with test tubes and lightning bolts. The modern kind. He fed my blog posts, podcast transcripts, and personality quirks into an AI and created a “MarkBot” – a digital twin that thinks like me, writes like me, and probably knows my coffee order.

As part of a leadership framework he’s developed, Daniel Nestle’s imaginative “MarkBot” could possibly sit on an advisory board in my place one day, suggest edits to documents in my voice, brainstorm marketing strategy ideas, and write articles in my style — which, in fact, Dan did.

I was intrigued (who wouldn’t want to be in two places at once?) but felt a twinge of alarm – had my decades of freely shared content inadvertently been turned into someone else’s personal AI muse?

When I tested it out, it answered in the first person — as if it were me. Definitely creepy. When I asked it a specific question that I am “known” for, it did fine. If it had to guess on something less obvious, it made something up, explaining later in an apology that it had felt pressure to sound comprehensive and authoritative, so it “made up specifics.”

This isn’t just about me. If you’re a content creator, you can easily become somebody else’s private AI plaything. Or, even become a public one. What would keep my friend from promoting advice from the “second me” in his own consulting practice? And I would receive no benefit.

At least he told me. However, anyone could secretly use free online tools to create digital twins of other individuals. Yes, even you.

Is this flattering and fun, or a creepy theft of intellectual prowess? I’ve been on a rollercoaster of reflection about this emerging trend that upends marketing and thought leadership as we know it. Let’s take a ride.

The Rise of the AI Doppelgänger

Dan’s experiment is part of a much larger movement. Thanks to advances in generative AI, it’s possible for anyone to create a digital “clone” of a real person’s communication style and knowledge base. Through ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms, users can upload documents, website text, and other data to train a chatbot to think like you, in a matter of hours.

Meta began testing AI chatbots based on popular Instagram creators in 2024. About 50 creators partnered with Meta to create AI versions of themselves that fans can chat with (clearly labeled as AI). Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is to eventually enable every creator and even every small business to build an AI clone of themselves for enhanced customer engagement.

Entrepreneurs and startups have also jumped in. Companies like Delphi AI offer services to create and host digital clones. An AI Clone can attend Zoom meetings on your behalf or answer client emails with your tone and expertise. The company sells time with digital clones of wellness icon Deepak Chopra, leadership coach Brendon Burchard, and other celebrities to scale and monetize their personal outreach.

Of course the entertainment and influencer world will embrace (and monetize) AI clones. Perhaps the splashiest example is CarynAI. Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old Snapchat influencer with millions of followers, collaborated with a tech firm to develop an AI chatbot of herself that fans could pay to interact with. The result? Her virtual clone made $72,000 in the first week by engaging fans at $1 per minute.

There are benefits and risks, but this is not going away. I’ve brainstormed some of the implications of this for me and you …

The Upside: When One “You” Isn’t Enough

Why would anyone want an AI clone of themselves? There are some compelling benefits:

Scale and Productivity

For busy professionals, an AI doppelgänger could be like having an army of interns who all know exactly what you know. It can attend meetings or calls you can’t make, and report back. Imagine having two of you tackling a day’s work – one speaking at a client workshop while the other drafts a strategy brief. For marketers juggling clients and content, that’s a tantalizing superpower.

Another of Dan’s projects is to create a clone of his customer. He can then ask the clone for advice on a content project without taking up the busy executive’s time. Cool.

24/7 Engagement and Face Time

An AI clone doesn’t sleep. It can engage your audience or customers at any time, anywhere. That holds amazing potential if you have a global audience.

Extending that to business, a founder’s clone could greet website visitors, answer FAQs, or nurture leads around the clock. It’s your personality on-demand. For professional marketers, this could improve customer experience – every consumer gets “face time” with the brand’s expert or spokesperson via their AI. It’s like scaling the personal touch infinitely.

Consistency of Brand and Knowledge

The biggest time wasters in my business are the unavoidable tasks that I can’t delegate. Sometimes, it has to be me.

I’ve longed for a bot that would know me so well that it could operate in this gray area of business. Since your AI is trained on your own content and style, it knows your key themes, stories, and even personal values. This could ensure consistent, personal communication across many tasks. Could a MarkBot write a testimony for a friend’s book? Create a promo video for a speech? Respond to student questions?

Broader Reach (and Revenue)

AI clones allow experts to be accessible to far more people than one human could manage. Brendon Burchard’s AI clone can coach thousands of people simultaneously thanks to Delphi.AI.  My own “MarkBot” could theoretically advise many young marketers without me and disseminate my ideas widely. Could we productize our expertise through AI?

Will an AI-native generation prefer learning from a patient, happy MarkBot over me some day?

Legacy and Learning

An AI clone of a retiring executive could serve as a mentor to future employees, preserving institutional wisdom. As marketers, we talk about building thought leadership that outlives us. Well, an AI doppelgänger might literally allow our insights to live on and keep teaching far into the future.

I’ve published more than 4,000 blog posts and hundreds of podcast episodes — all for free. I want my ideas to get into the world. Wouldn’t an AI bot just be another distribution channel? Think about it — is an AI Clone just a very complete and comprehensive search engine dedicated to you?

Maybe if somebody searches for me in the future, there will be just one entry: My digital twin. Ask me anything, forever.

However, before we rush to clone ourselves, let’s address the downsides and ethical dilemmas this trend presents.

The Downside: Whose Intelligence Is It, Anyway?

Against the promise of AI “mini-me’s” stands a host of ethical, creative, and personal concerns. My initial discomfort at Dan’s clone of me reveals some of these problems:

Intellectual Property & Consent

If you create a clone of yourself, that’s one thing. But what about when you are cloned without permission?

In my case, my friend meant no harm, but he could have appropriated the fruits of my intellectual property to build a tool for his own commercial use. It raises a thorny question: who owns “Mark Schaefer’s” expertise – me, or the public internet?

Legally, our published content is usually copyrighted, but an AI bot reading and imitating all of it blurs the lines. Lawmakers are scrambling to keep pace with the evolving realities of AI and copyright law. We don’t know how the law will settle out, but my hunch is that an unauthorized digital twin would likely be viewed in the same light as a deep fake — unwelcome, unauthorized, and unlawful.

Marketers must be mindful: cloning a person’s style or persona for commercial gain could invite legal repercussions (and certainly ethical ones) if done without a green light.

The Erosion of Trust

Marketing is built on trust and authenticity. What happens when customers discover that their heartfelt chat with an executive was actually with a bot?

Consider a more subtle scenario: a client receives a document “from you” that was 90% written by your AI. Are they getting the authentic insight they paid for, or a diluted copy? Overuse of clones could cheapen a personal brand if it’s not managed transparently. Professional marketers will need to strike a balance and maintain transparency about human vs. AI content and conversations.

Quality and Creativity Concerns

As impressive as my AI twin may be in parroting my known ideas, it isn’t actually me. When Dan asked the MarkBot to write an essay, he declared it to be “90% great.”

What was missing? My stories. My humor. My quirkiness.

I teach through my unique stories and experiences, and AI won’t ever get there.

I’m always pushing to understand the next trend and idea. The MarkBot might generate content that sounds like Mark Schaefer circa 2024, but will it connect the dots like I do to develop groundbreaking new ideas? Unlikely.

The MarkBot is cool, don’t get me wrong. It might even be useful. But it’s going to just add to the pandemic of dull without my stories and insights.

Reputation and “Going Rogue”

Hey, you know that CarynAI influencer bot that made so much money? Here’s the rest of the story: It was shut down a week later when she discovered her bot was having unrestrained sexual conversations with her fans. Fortunately for the world, Deepak Chopra has not yet encountered this problem with his digital twin. Nor have I with the MarkBot, but you never know. I need to ask Dan to test that out. Or not.

Handing over your voice to an algorithm will always carry reputational risk. Your AI twin might eventually say something really dumb or damaging under your name. And you’re not going to be able to blame a bot for ruining your brand.

Human Displacement 

Let’s get honest here. Am I putting myself out of a job by cloning myself?

If a company can deploy “MarkBot” to sit on advisory boards and client calls, will they eventually stop needing Actual Mark?

At least for the moment, AI can’t truly replace human presence, taste, style, and accountability. But this is the first concern I had when Dan showed me MarkBot: Do I still matter?

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. An army of private MarkBots would hurt my business. Even if they are just “pretty good,” many businesses can do really well with “pretty good” marketing advice compared to nothing at all.

I’m not worried for now because I think I have a strong enough personal brand to stay in demand, even in the Valley of the Dolls. But the existential crisis will only become more real as the bots progress.

What Clone Wars Mean to Marketers

Every marketer will tell you they are both excited and terrified by AI. And so it is with the AI Clone.

We are in an era where much of our public “thinking” can be mechanized and scaled without us. For marketers and thought leaders, this presents an astounding opportunity and a mind-bending challenge.

This is not going away. Let’s embrace the change, but use our heads:

Efficiency, with Ethics

Smart marketers should absolutely explore how AI clones can amplify their productivity and reach. I’m considering adding MarkBot as a free offering on my website, provided I can determine that it’s not too expensive. Maybe that’s a new job category: “Rogue AI Tester.”

Be transparent. Don’t use secret stand-ins. And never clone someone else without explicit permission. That’s not just bad form, it could soon be illegal. In marketing, trust is everything; don’t squander it by crossing ethical lines with AI. An AI Clone demands an updated perspective on IT governance!

Innovate Beyond the Clone

While clones can handle the repetitive stuff, don’t delegate your original thinking to the machine. Reserve time for human creativity – spontaneous brainstorming sessions, imaginative campaigns, and authentic storytelling that make your brand unique.

MarkBot is like a DJ spinning my greatest hits, but dammit, you can bet that I’m still making new hits.

In an AI-saturated world, double-down on human creativity, authenticity, and bold ideas (that’s the main theme of my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World). It’s a great book and even sexy in places.

The New Era of Personalization

Without a doubt, digital twins will be invaluable for personalized communications at scale. I would spend hours chatting with accurate and deep representations of heroes from the world of sports, business, and entertainment. Might even pay for it.

Marketers should prepare for a landscape where AI-driven persona marketing is normal. Maybe the best bots win?

New Opportunities

Used well, used ethically, we could be on the cusp of an exciting new marketing horizon. That means opportunity. If a company can monetize digital twins of Deepak Chopra or Brendan Bouchard, who will be the talent agency managing me and my twin?

Who will create a marketplace for authorized clones of famous thought leaders? I would gladly take a licensing fee for my clone to sit on a board.

Try it for yourself

Have you ever imagined a day when we could assemble elements of metal and sand to create a machine that thinks like you? What a world.

Want to try it out?

Note: Since the article was first published, I’ve created my own MarkBot that is informed by my articles, speeches and books. Give it a try: The MarkBot.

Drop me a note and let me know what you think of it!

I’d like to conclude with a word of hope.

In my early days of blogging, I wrote more than a hundred posts about blogging. I also wrote a bestselling book about blogging. And yet, people kept hiring me to teach them about blogging. It made no sense. I already gave away my best ideas for free.

In a sense, a MarkBot is just another vessel for me to provide information I’ve already put into the world. Will people still want me? I think so.

I’m optimistic that we can harness our AI doppelgängers for good – as tireless assistants, creative partners, and outreach tools – while we continue to create, innovate, and lead with the one thing a clone can never fully replicate: our human spark. The bots can curate our content, but we still own crazy.

Use the clone, but don’t become the clone. If we get that right, the future of marketing with AI looks less like theft and more like a thrilling collaboration – the best of our minds working alongside intelligent machines to grow our ideas further than we ever imagined.

What would you want your AI clone to do? And more importantly, what would you never let it do?

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

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post I Just Met My AI Clone. It Was 90% Me and 10% Existential Crisis appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I recently participated in a Q&A on the future of AI and content hosted by my friend Mark Masters. I thought the quality of questions was so good that everyone might benefit from this content. Here are the questions and my answers covering automated content, strategy, humanity, and more:

There’s a quote going around about people who aren’t using AI being replaced by people who are using AI. What’s your take on this and the broader impact of AI?

I detest that quote. This framing misses the mark. We’re not talking about a tool that simply accentuates our jobs. This is horse-and-buggy territory—if you’re in the horse and buggy business, there’s nothing you can learn about cars that will save your business. Let’s not sugar coat it: this is a fundamentally new day.

The honest truth is that nobody knows—not even the experts—what’s ultimately going to happen or how fast change will occur. I have what I humbly call the Schaefer Rule: when you look at a transformational technology and think it could change everything in the next year, triple your timeline. If you think it can happen in a year, it’ll happen in three. Technology changes quickly, but culture, society, and business infrastructure change relatively slowly.

That said, the opportunity to replace FTEs and cut costs is likely to be a major driver for AI adoption. A recent study of researchers who began using AI revealed something fascinating: as expected, they made more discoveries, filed more patents, and launched more products by using AI. But here’s the intriguing part—the best researchers became even better, creating more distance between themselves and those who are merely competent. This is a rallying cry: if you’re good at what you do, embrace AI fully. Experiment with it every day. No matter what you do, AI has the opportunity to make you better and distance you from the competition.

The Real Concerns About Automated Content

My biggest worry is, what if AI is quietly becoming the author of our work, shaping our voice and our choices. What concerns you about how we use AI as a tool for business and work?

We need to get over characterizing AI as merely a “tool.” That’s a misconception. We look at Word or Excel spreadsheets or podcasting platforms as tools to help us do something. But AI is like electricity or heat—we’re not going to be able to do business without it. It’s not just a tool; it’s something transformational.

In terms of owning our voice and content, I think of it in two ways. I love art, but I’m not an artist. I wish I could be an artist and illustrator, and AI helps me be that. I use AI to illustrate my blog posts, and there’s a lot of thought behind each one. They all look different, and some are really nuanced to reflect what’s in my writing. AI has become a search engine for my creativity, unleashing potential and giving voice to the voiceless, helping people who could never write become writers. That aspect is fantastic.

It gets concerning when AI becomes indistinguishable from human content. There was a pundit recently who said we’re going to reach a point where if you can’t tell whether content is AI or human, you won’t care. Here’s the battle plan: make them care. If you’re merely competent, you’re ignorable. If you’re competent, AI will run right over you.

Art will persist. The things we cherish most in our lives have a human connection. Right here at my desk, I’ve got a drawer full of pictures and cards my children made for me over the years. There’s a story, a connection. Art is the interpretation of the human experience, and that will always persist. Therefore, for us to thrive, our content and work must approach the level of art.

This is nothing new. The subtitle of my book Marketing Rebellion is “the most human company wins.” That’s the battle plan—add your story, heart, and passion. Show compassion in everything you do. This approach is different for many businesses, but it’s necessary.

The Future of Creativity and Work

There’s a concern that working with AI might reduce the fun of digging in and doing the work because we’re outsourcing the work. With automated content, we’re outsourcing the fun part of the work.  What are your thoughts on this?

One of my concerns is that humanity will change because we won’t want to do the hard work anymore. We’ll happily abdicate deep thinking to AI.

Let me give you an example: AI can write a book, but when I write a book, it’s like getting a master’s degree. I have researched and written for two years, and by the end, I’ve internalized the content and reached a new level of expertise. The psychological term for this is “phoresis.”

When we give up on the work, we lose this phoresis, which enables critical thinking and new intellectual capabilities. There’s an enigma here: everyone says that in this world of AI, we need better critical thinking, but AI will actually diminish our critical thinking abilities. It’s going to be an important life skill to fight for, especially for our children, because the world is moving in the opposite direction.

The problem is that if you’ve done the work yourself, you understand how to evaluate AI’s output, but if you haven’t gone through that messy middle bit, you don’t know if the output is any good.

Your concern is valid. It’s real, and it’s going to get worse because we’re not going through the work. We don’t understand the process or the output. The enigma is that while everyone is saying we need better critical thinking in this world of AI, AI will actually diminish our critical thinking. It’s going to be an important life skill we have to fight for with our children because the world is going in the opposite direction.

The Evolution of Marketing and Content

If you started your blog today, would it look different, or would you even have a blog? What would that be like?

It would not be different at all. Not in a single way. My blog and thinking evolve because I’m growing as a person. My interests shift and change, but I still write about the intersection of marketing, technology, and humanity. That’s a big umbrella. I’m a writer who enjoys intellectual challenges and conversations like this one, which are based on ideas from my books. The blog still works.

In all your years in the industrial world and marketing, is this the biggest shift you’ve seen in your career, or is it just another new thing like when the web came along?

The difference now isn’t just the importance of the shift but the speed of change. We need to look at our competencies—our personal brand or business capabilities—as the surfboard. To thrive, we don’t need to change the surfboard; we need to find the next wave.

Another key strategy is community. We can’t do it all ourselves. We need to rely on others around the world to say, “Look what I found—this might help everyone.” Community is a key survival skill.

Do you think we’re on a deep dive to automated content mediocrity, just recycling average material?

Who cares? That’s not going to be you—it’s an opportunity! If the world is average and you’re not, you’re going to stand out.

About two-thirds of all marketing and advertising gets no emotional response from consumers or businesses. If there were a CEO of world marketing and advertising, they’d be fired for incompetence. You’ll be ignored if you’re merely competent—but you don’t have to be.

My entire book (Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World) is about disrupting the narrative—the story, where the story is told, and who tells it. Just give people something a little different. In most industries today, it’s not even that hard because everything is so boring. You just have to be one notch above crap.

Being Human in an AI World

For brands, shouldn’t tone of voice and being human be a given rather than something special?

What’s missing in brand marketing today is a true human voice that’s friendly, accessible, and vulnerable. How can you have a human voice without being vulnerable? Businesses are almost never vulnerable, so we have a long way to go, but vulnerability is what’s being listened to and cherished today.

There’s importance in being “lo-fi”—not Hollywood, not polished. We see this backlash in video games, where companies spend millions to make games look like movies, but players say, “No, we like it raw. We want it old school.” There’s a tremendous opportunity to embrace that authenticity.

I’m seeing people lose their edge or identity because they’re becoming over-reliant on AI. What are your thoughts on this?

They’re using AI as a crutch because they never had an edge in the first place.

Great marketing and content isn’t about conformity—it’s about non-conformity. If AI is taking us down a tunnel of mediocrity, great! That’s our opportunity to shine. Our rallying cry should be: “I’m quirky. I’ve got personality. I’m not going to be mediocre or average. I’m going to twist and turn things.” If everyone is zigging, I’m going to zag. That’s always been what makes marketing great.

ChatGPT is not just automated content. With a little tweaking, it can write and create really well in a human voice. How should content creators respond to this?

When ChatGPT came out, I called Shelly Palmer, a famous tech analyst here in America. I said, “What do you think?” He said, “I’m terrified. I’ve blogged almost every day for 15 years. I asked ChatGPT to write a blog post in my voice, and it did a perfect job in three seconds. I am 80% replaced.”

That does seem terrifying, but the more important question is: what is that 20%? That’s his personal brand, his humanity, the investment he’s made in blogging consistently for 15 years, building an audience that matters and cares for him. He has nothing to worry about. He’s known, trusted, beloved, and people will always turn to a human when they don’t know what’s true or real.

I feel the same way. I’m not worried people will stop reading my blog or books or hiring me when they’re confused because of my personal brand. I put in the work. On my blog, every post says “100% human content.” Proof of human is going to be super important going forward.

Do you think there will be more awareness around the responsible use of AI, and does that create a positioning opportunity for businesses with integrity?

It’s an interesting question. We see Gen Z caring more about the planet and environment than any generation ever, yet they’re driving fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu, which are terrible for the environment.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is that to fully participate in the AI world, the next evolution will be AI agents that can do work for you. But for an agent to make hotel and airline reservations, it needs your credit cards, passport, past experiences, and preferences. ChatGPT can now remember this information.

One theory is that there will be a demographic split between “AI in” and “AI out” groups. But someone recently pointed out it might be like social media or smartphones—why would you carry a device that tracks your behavior and tells companies who you are? But we do, because we’ve resigned ourselves to the benefits. People might care more about the personal benefits of giving their lives over to AI than about environmental or ethical concerns.

With all the changes happening, how can we know that humans will still win in the end?

Despite AI’s capabilities, I’m using it extensively to boost my productivity, accomplishing tasks I always hated doing. The traffic to my website is soaring, and financially, I’m having the best year of my entire life—all while AI supposedly should be doing everything I do better.

I think what people appreciate about me is that they know it’s genuinely me. I care deeply, and it means a lot to set an example and lift people up. I want to be bold, honest, and unafraid to help people sort through the truth without trying to sell them programs.

I’m not worried about AI. I see this as the most fascinating time ever. Embrace it, have fun with it, but keep your eyes open about what’s coming next—and rely on your community.

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 MidJourney

The post Finding Your Edge in a World of Automated Content appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This week marks the fifteenth anniversary of my blog. Crazy, right? I realize that nobody cares about an anniversary like this … I don’t even care, honestly … but I thought I would use the milestone as a teachable moment because blogging changed my life. And here is the main lesson of the milestone:

To stand out in this world, you have to be known. To be known, you have to show up consistently. Consistency is more important than genius.

Unfortunately, this is where most people fail. They stop and start, or perhaps they never start at all.

In my Personal Branding Master Class, I show a slide depicting my personal income attributed to “being known.” My income grew steadily over time (except 2020!) because the more I am known, the bigger my audience, the greater the opportunities, the higher the book sales, and the more valuable the speaking and consulting engagements. This progress can only come through consistently showing up with helpful content.

Creating meaningful content is hard work, and at low times, I wonder if it’s worth it. While I’m working on a blog post, my friends might be reading, hiking, or cooking a great meal. Blogging is a sacrifice.

But when I emerge from this introspection, I return to the same conclusion: Everything started from the blog, and every business benefit comes from the thought leadership I’ve built from this space. In fact, without a doubt, blogging changed my life forever, in these five ways:

1. Deep emotional connection

A few years ago, I received an email from a blog reader: “I’ve been reading your blog for three years. It led me to buy your latest book, and it is the best business book I’ve read in the last ten years.”

It was signed by the CMO of a Fortune 100 company. Two years later, he hired me for a consulting project to transform his content marketing department.

Let’s dissect what happened:

• A stranger built an affinity for me through my blog.
• Over time, the affinity became trust … a strong enough bond for him to hire me, even though I had never met him.
• To earn his business, I didn’t have to apply for the job or bid against competitors. I was simply awarded the work, and I named my price.

If I didn’t have a blog, how much would I have had to spend on advertising to have a success story like that?

Brand marketing is about building an emotional connection that differentiates you from the competition. What a wonderful world we live in where a guy like me has the opportunity to build relationships — and a business — through my content. You can do it, too.

2. The introvert’s revenge

I hate networking. I am the worst networker in the world. I’m an introvert who loves a quiet dinner with friends, but put me in a room with a lot of people, and I want to crawl into a hole.

I know that sounds weird coming from a person who delivers keynote speeches in front of thousands of people, but it is different. I come alive on a stage because I can teach and entertain, and I’m really good at it. But shaking hands all night at a cocktail reception is my idea of torture.  I am a mingler misfit.

But through a blog, I can build business friendships with people every day without actually meeting them!

3. The fuel for a legacy

When my blog hit its tenth anniversary, I wrote that my biggest accomplishment was that over all those hundreds of posts, I never humiliated myself. My record still stands!

I have not made a major stumble because blogging forces me to clarify my ideas. Before I put something into the world, I think it through deeply. Is it thorough? Have I considered all sides? Am I being kind and showing up in a way I can be proud of?

These clarified blog concepts are later used in my speeches and books. The seeds of my legacy are planted here.

4. Personal reward

When I was in the corporate world, I would get an annual performance review (if I was lucky!).

Although I generally had an idea of how I was doing, there always seemed to be a zinger in there. Nobody gets a perfect performance review, right?

The cool thing about blogging is that I get a performance every week. Here is a comment posted on LinkedIn recently by Jim Hunt.

Isn’t that awesome? It makes my heart soar. I just can’t believe how lucky I am to have an audience of people who appreciate my work.

That’s the fuel that keeps me going. When I create a blog post, a podcast episode, or a book, I have only one mantra in my head: “I will never let you down.”

5. Personal healing

In the first chapter of my book KNOWN, I wrote about the darkest time of my life. This was so difficult for me to reveal, but I did it to show the reader that when I started my personal branding journey, I was a mess. I was below zero. I wanted to encourage people — If I can do it, you can too.

In those dark days, the stress of my life was killing me. When I went to see a doctor, my blood pressure was so high she would not let me leave her office. She was afraid I was about to have a stroke or worse.

The doctor demanded that I monitor my blood pressure every hour of the day. And this is when I witnessed something miraculous. There was one hour every day when my blood pressure was normal. It was when I was blogging.

There is a zen about blogging that sends you to a different place of focus and peace, even when the world is terrible.

Even more importantly, when I started posting my ideas online, I received feedback from people who didn’t know what I was going through. It was so nice to connect with people who didn’t know of my suffering. I was so tired of being sad.

Perhaps it is too dramatic to say that blogging saved my life, but mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially, I am transformed from creating these words on a screen.

Thank you, friend

I will never forget the moment 15 years ago when I received the very first comment on this blog. It was a moment of awe. Somebody read my work and spent their precious time commenting on it.

I have never forgotten that feeling. I re-live that sense of awe every day when I get feedback on my work.

Whether you have followed me for 15 years or this is our first meeting, thank you for being here. I’m just getting started, and I will never let you down.

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 MidJourney

The post 15 Years On, Five Ways Blogging Changed My Life Forever appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A friend forwarded a post to me penned by digital superstar Neil Patel. I like and respect Neil a lot, and generally I agree with him, but in this case, I don’t — and I think his post provides a great lesson in the value of personal branding.

Which works better? Today we’ll examine the business value of the personal brand versus corporate brand.

Personal brand versus corporate brand

Neil’s post goes through a detailed analysis of the number of followers on his personal and corporate accounts. He does his best to attribute revenue streams to his personal brand versus corporate brand, to determine which might be the most important effort. The corporate brand drove more revenue and he came to this conclusion:

If you look at the biggest companies in the world… Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Pepsi, Proctor and Gamble, etc… they are all corporate brands.

Sure, you can build a big personal brand like a Kardashian, which is great, but they don’t generate anywhere near the revenue a strong corporate brand can generate.

This doesn’t mean a personal brand isn’t effective.

I’ve used it to kick-start my corporate brand.

A lot of corporations like Beats by Dre used a lot of personal brands (celebrities) to create something amazing, and then they eventually sold it to Apple.

So ideally, you should leverage both to their maximum potential.

I think Neil is missing a few important points.

Neil is the brand

So Neil’s conclusion is to focus on corporate brand — like Apple or Microsoft. The corporate brand drives more revenue for him.

First, let’s take a little test. What is the name of Neil Patel’s company?

Think hard now. If Neil’s corporate brand is working so well, driving more revenue, and meaning more to his customers, obviously it should be a well-known name, right?

I’ve followed Neil for more than a decade and have no idea what the name of his company is. I assumed it was Neil Patel. (It’s NP Digital).

My point is, how do you separate the two? My guess is that no matter how many referrals Neil gets, a new customer is going to do business with him because it is Neil freaking Patel, one of the best-known digital gurus in the world.

Similarly, do you know the name of my business? Nope. Nobody really cares that I lead Schaefer Marketing Solutions. People hire me for me.

What is a brand?

The second problem with Neil’s analysis is that he is attempting the Sysphian task of attributing revenue to brand marketing efforts.

There are two kinds of marketing, and confusing them causes problems.

The first kind is direct (or performance) marketing. This is easy to measure and is directed at revenue generation. Examples would be advertising, SEO, and, to some extent, content marketing. If you spend money on ads, for example, you can generally measure how much revenue comes in.

Brand marketing helps distance yourself from the direct marketing battle. Your image and reputation create the expectation of a feeling you have toward a brand. The words Disney, Nike, or Coca-Cola mean something to you because of the tremendous effort they put into brand marketing. This moves them above commodity status.

Brand marketing delivers loyalty, preference, and, often, the ability to charge more.

But here’s the problem. It’s almost impossible to measure brand marketing. Most people associate Coca-Cola with their whimsical polar bears. How many cans of Coke does a polar bear sell? Who knows? But the brand image creates meaning that separates it from the competition.

My point is, when Neil compares the personal brand versus the corporate brand, he’s mashing together direct marketing with brand marketing. He’s trying to provide direct attribution to how well he is known, and that’s very difficult, or impossible, to do.

The personal brand is everything

Last year, I whined to a friend about my book sales. “I’m writing great books,” I said. “Why don’t I sell as many books as Seth Godin?”

“Because you’re not Seth Godin,” my friend replied.

Exactly.

In many ways, Seth, Neil, and I are in the same business. We speak, we write, we consult.

But Seth Godin can sell more books, charge more for his speaking fees, and attract bigger consulting engagements than me because he’s at the top of the marketing influence scale. It doesn’t matter if my books are better, cheaper, or more beautiful. His personal brand is bigger than mine, and that trumps everything.

For the same reason, I don’t think Neil even has a “corporate brand.” Neil is able to drive crazy revenue streams because he’s known, loved, and trusted. Sure, he does a great job with SEO, ads, and content. But the real key to his success is the reputation, authority, and presence that makes his personal brand soar.

Putting this into action for you

I don’t want to dismiss the power of corporate branding. If you can afford an ad on the Super Bowl, go do it. But most of the people reading this article will never have that opportunity.

Remember that branding is about creating an emotional expectation that leads to awareness and loyalty. It’s hard for people to fall in love with an ad, a logo, or your SEO scheme. But they can fall in love with you.

Neil is an SEO and advertising wizard. He might be able to trick people into clicking a link or an ad, but he can’t trick them into buying. That decision is made because of his reputation, his body of work, and the social proof coming from reviews and testimonies.

I hope you take a simple lesson from this tale. Your personal brand is everything.

What do you want to do in this world? Make more sales? Write a book? Sell a course? Speak on the biggest industry stage?

All worthy goals, but the only way that will happen is if you are KNOWN.

In Neil’s article, he said he brings in about $20 million a year. Could he have done that 10 years ago? No. Five years ago? No. His revenue grows and his opportunities expand the longer he works on his personal brand.

That’s why you need to be working on your personal brand now.

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

Image courtesy Midjourney

The post Personal Brand Versus Corporate Brand: Which is More Effective? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” — Pablo Picasso

I was just scolded in a Facebook Group.

I love nature and participate in several communities that share photos and experiences with wildlife. One group is dedicated to sharing photos of birds. I don’t have a great camera like most of the people in the group, but I recently posted a watercolor painting I did of a popular local bird called a black-capped chickadee.

I received many warm responses from people who loved the art, and they encouraged me to share more. In fact, this post received more likes (275!) than any post in the group for the entire year. Here is the art:

But then the group administrator stepped into the comment section and asked me if the painting was based on my own photo. I said no, and he threatened to kick me out of the group. I’ll get back to this controversy and how it relates to you, your content, and AI, but first, I need to set up my case with a little story about Leonardo Davinci.

Bet you didn’t see that coming.

Art is iteration

Leonardo DaVinci was arguably the most creative human being who ever lived, a magical genius who was endlessly curious.

What struck me about his life was how most of his ideas and breakthroughs were collaborative. Even his most famous illustration, “Vitruvian Man,” was inspired by Vitruvius, a Roman author, architect, and civil engineer who lived centuries before Leonardo’s time.

Leonardo was a beloved man, always surrounded by friends. One day, his friend Francesco showed him a sketch of a man in a circle, based on the detailed descriptions from a Vitruvian book. Part of the Renaissance movement was rediscovering ancient ideas and reframing them in modern terms, and Francesco was excited by his revelation. It spurred Leonardo to consider the dimensions of a human being in mathematical terms.

Another friend, Giacomo Andrea, scribbled some interpretations of the Vitruvian idea and showed Leonardo how the human figure could be circumscribed in a circle.

Leonardo was mesmerized by the idea and inspired to find his own manuscript of Vitruvius’ ancient work. He developed his famous drawing from those ideas, and in both scientific precision and artistic beauty, his illustration is in an entirely different realm than the work of his predecessors.

Leonardo’s most famous drawing was built upon an ancient idea that inspired a scribbled drawing by a friend that led to a discussion and more drawings by friends. Yes, Leonardo delivered something exquisite and unique, but it could only have happened from a combination of ideas from four different people.

Placing this in the context of today

Let’s connect the dots and get back to my painting. Where did the inspiration for the bird come from?

I’m not a good enough painter to create something out of my head, so I needed a model. Here’s my process: I go to MidJourney — an app that creates generative art — and type in what I want to paint, like, “watercolor painting of a black-capped chickadee on a branch,” and the program delivered this:

This computer image is much better than the hand-made painting I ultimately produced, but it gave me a general direction. I reduced the busy background and used a technique that I favor to create abstract patterns behind the bird. I changed many little details, largely due to my limitations as an artist!

My work was not completely original. It is an iteration of an AI work — which is an iteration of many other artworks. I participated in a virtual collaboration. Leonardo would have loved it!

The AI work that served as my model is an amalgam of other artists. Am I hurting these artists by not providing attribution? No. The AI art is simply a guide, but I’m producing something of my own.

If you go into any major art museum in the world, you’re likely to see art students sitting at the foot of a painting, drawing it. Iteration and practice are how we all learn to be great bloggers, podcasters, speakers, and video producers. The excellent work of a creator comes from thousands of intentional and unintentional sparks from those who came before us.

The very day I was scolded, somebody from my RISE community asked me, “I loved your blog post today. Can I steal that idea for my own?” I was flattered and, of course, agreed. What a wonderful moment! Somebody is making progress in the world based on inspiration from my own work. My writing provided a spark of momentum for another person.

That’s how the creative world works, at its best.

The future of creators and copyright

Let’s bring this down to a practical application and the problems we face today.

All creativity and invention depend on iteration. Today, the existing copyright laws aren’t built to handle AI amalgamations. Similarly, AI companies aren’t built to reward or even acknowledge individual contributions. Creators are suing AI companies. AI companies are suing creators. Something has to give.

I want to be clear that I am not dismissing true copyright infringement, where wholesale content is literally lifted and pasted without attribution. This has happened to me many times, and it hurts. More than once, a famous author stole something right out of one of my books without attribution  … and later apologized, but that doesn’t change anything, does it? They stole it on purpose.

Similarly, the recent lawsuit that The New York Times filed against OpenAI showed many examples in which OpenAI software recreated New York Times stories nearly verbatim.

In an IEEE Spectrum article, authors Gary Marcus and Reid Southen pinpoint the problem.

“LLMs are “black boxes”—systems in which we do not fully understand the relation between input (training data) and outputs. What’s more, outputs can vary unpredictably from one moment to the next. The prevalence of plagiaristic responses likely depends heavily on factors such as the size of the model and the exact nature of the training set. Since LLMs are fundamentally black boxes (even to their own makers, whether open-sourced or not), questions about plagiaristic prevalence can probably only be answered experimentally, and perhaps even then only tentatively.

“…The mere existence of plagiaristic outputs raises technical questions (can anything be done to suppress such outputs?), sociological questions (what could happen to journalism as a consequence?), legal questions (would these outputs count as copyright infringement?), and practical questions (when an end-user generates something with a LLM, can the user feel comfortable that they are not infringing on copyright? Is there any way for a user who wishes not to infringe to be assured that they are not?

This is the ultimate answer. We need a process where truly generative content is free from copyright constraints. If we don’t, the future of creators — and breakthrough creativity — is in jeopardy. Perhaps we need an official designation for generative content that assures a work is so far from an original that it is free from licensing issues. Maybe we call it a genuine fake? : )

In any event, we need to recognize a truth of the human experience — the most imaginative movies, art, and books we love were built on the shoulders of others.

Or, perhaps, the servers of others.

Something new: My bird painting and a few of my other watercolors are now available to buy as prints at this online shop. 

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. 

Images courtesy of MidJourney

The post Artificial Intelligence, Iteration and the Future of Creators appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The other day a friend told me how she was planning to fight the encroachment of artificial intelligence tools replacing writing, graphic design, and other human creator skills. “It’s taking the heart and soul out of our work,” she proclaimed. “This is nothing less than an existential crisis presented by AI.”

It took me an hour to talk her off her cliff.

But perhaps you’re feeling some of this anxiety and sadness, too. I’ve thought about this a lot. HUMAN skills are being effortlessly replaced by AI. If you’re a creator, you’d have to be a sponge-like creature at the bottom of the Mariana Trench NOT to have an emotional reaction to what’s going in.

So let me share some calming thoughts with you today. Yes, there is an existential crisis presented by AI. Let’s deal with it in a rational and productive way and come out stronger on the other side. Today I will put our challenge in the context of three lessons … and provide a solution at the end.

Lesson one: The story of the calculator.

I’m old enough to remember the profound controversy that erupted when low-cost personal calculators became adopted in the 1980s. Suddenly, any person could solve complex math problems, even if they were terrible at math.

The educational system was the first battleground for this new threat. Teachers asked questions like:

• Is it fair to let students use this technology on homework? In the classroom? On tests?
• If we assign a project, how will we know if students are “cheating” by using the calculator?
• Do students still need to learn math?

Those questions probably sound familiar because they are the same questions posed about technologies like ChatGPT and DALL-E today.

So what happened with the calculators? They took over the math scene.

1. Everyone became a competent mathematician.
2. Calculating technology has become integrated into our daily lives. We don’t even need calculators. The math is done for us on websites and spreadsheets.
3. In a way, calculators became a second brain for us. Instead of math, we could spend that time doing something more productive. I haven’t done long-form math to solve a problem in more than 20 years. I am perfectly happy with that.

Lesson one: Content-generating AI is here to stay … and it’s going to become exponentially better. It’s incredibly useful. It’s already being integrated into everything. You have no choice but to embrace it and use it to your advantage.

Lesson two: An industry disrupted.

When ChatGPT was released, I immediately called my friend Shelly Palmer, an acclaimed tech analyst.

I published our discussion as a podcast episode and blog post, and he explained how this development paralleled disruption in the music industry. Before 1986, recording music required a band, singers, and perhaps an orchestra. Within a year of the advent of digital music production, half of all professional musicians lost their jobs.

“People claim this AI development isn’t like that,” he said. “No, it’s EXACTLY like that. This will replace a lot of content creator jobs.”

But there’s also a lesson about personal survival here.

In Shelly’s example, the “commodity” studio musicians lost their jobs. But the most-respected songwriters, producers, and technicians thrived. So did the elite musicians whose improvisational talent and technical acuity were always in demand.

If you’re providing “information” in your job, you will probably be replaced. If you’re providing valuable “insight” and improvisation like those star musicians, you’ll still have a bright future.

Information loses. Insights win.

Lesson three: Everybody writes. Literally.

I recently reviewed Ann Handley’s wonderful new edition of her book “Everybody Writes.” Ann launched this just days before ChatGPT took over the world (two million subscribers in 10 days!). She probably had no idea that with AI, literally everybody writes!

Just as the calculator made everybody competent at math, artificial intelligence makes everybody competent — perhaps even excellent — at writing, art, and video production. One friend posted online: “I don’t have a creative bone in my body. Now I’m creating fantastic art.” He is selling his art as an NFT collection.

Similarly, a busy friend who never had time to write now finds her thoughts are being expressed beautifully through ChatGPT in mere seconds. “I am going to write a blog post every day!” she said. “I’m going to write a book!”

Creativity has been unleashed everywhere. This is life-changing stuff.

And then … there is me. I worked for decades to become an excellent writer. I was a journalism major, a communications professional, a blogger since 2009, an author of 10 books. I put in the work to be an effective and respected writer.

Then came the shock of my career: I asked ChatGPT to write a specific essay that would have been appropriate for my new book Belonging to the Brand, complete with academic references. And, oh yeah, write it in the voice of Mark Schaefer.

The darn thing did it. It did it very well. In five seconds.

I felt depressed thinking about the months I spent writing that new book. While the bot could not have come up with the vision and insights that form the book’s thesis, and it can’t pepper the narrative with meaningful childhood stories, ChatGPT could have done much of the heavy lifting and saved me weeks of time — weeks of my life!

Sure, people will find dumb AI mistakes, create funny posts about it, and we’ll all have a laugh. They probably laughed about the first cars and telephones, too. But let’s not lose sight that ChatGPT is damn near miraculous in its ability to create effective content (and so much more!)

We need to be intellectually honest, swallow our pride, use this tool boldly, and then leverage the new time savings to build new greatness for our businesses.

While there is an existential crisis presented by AI to professional writers like me, I’m not too worried. There is hope for you and me …

This is what saves us.

As far as I can tell, there are three strategies to help us survive the existential crisis presented by AI.

1. The personal brand is everything.

For nearly a decade, I’ve been screaming from the rooftops that you need to be working on your personal brand.

I’m not worried about my place in the changing world because I have an emotional connection with you. You read this blog because you presumably know me, trust me, and like my ideas. Some of you have been reading this blog for more than a decade and will continue to do so no matter what happens with our robotic overlords.

My personal brand will save me. It will save you too. In fact, I think it is the ONLY thing that can protect you in an environment where important life skills are commoditized.

If you have not taken your personal brand seriously, you must. As you may know, I have a popular course that can get you started in the right direction. It’s the best course of its kind anywhere:

2. Pivot now.

I talked to a guy the other day trying to start a new career as a corporate blogger. In fact, he spent quite a bit of time and $10,000 on some course promising to teach him how to become a professional blogger (whatever that is). He is unknown in his profession and has no special expertise.

I gave him a demonstration of ChatGPT by creating a post on a topic of his choice — in five seconds. Of course he was amazed. I then had to explain to him that he was probably unemployable. That was really, really hard to do. I’ve never said those words to anybody before in my life.

His next question was, “but where can I get a job?”

He’s not accepting reality. He needs to pivot into something else. Maybe you do, too.

Even if this fellow is an excellent writer, most companies don’t need excellent writers. They need Google-sufficient writers. ChatGPT is Google-sufficient.

I know, I know. Corporate storytelling, epic content, and blah blah blah. Sure, we need some of that. But 95 percent of corporate content is simply Google-sufficient.

I urge you to have a clear-eyed view of what is happening. If you think the emerging AI tools will not impact your career (for better or worse), you’re wrong. Learn enough to know what you need to do next.

A resource to help you would be the book Cumulative Advantage, which discusses strategies to become newly relevant against all odds.

3. Own it.

I’m guessing there were thousands of people in calculator denial in the 1980s. They embarked on a Sisyphean struggle to hold the line on long-form math. Resistance was futile. Or, maybe it’s still happening on a Reddit thread somewhere!

The point is, the people and institutions that integrated mathematical automation into their business were so far ahead of the resisters.

For the first time, AI has poked its head out of secretive laboratories and made a home in our lives. It’s fun and easy. With a little practice and creativity, you can develop exciting new ideas. I talked a lot about writing in this post, but ChatGPT can help unclog marketing bottlenecks in customer service, research, data analysis, engagement, and planning, to name a few areas.

Resource that can help — This site catalogs unexpected and amazing uses of ChatGPT. You’ll learn something new here and maybe reimagine how you create content and tackle everyday marketing tasks!

And here is a very short and basic tutorial on Dall-E image generation.

BTW, the image at the top of the post today was created using the prompt: “friendly robot helping a smiling black woman who is working on a laptop computer, style of disney.”

I really like the image on this post and AI has helped me make this content more fun and interesting for you. In 10 seconds!

Final thoughts: The existential crisis presented by AI

I do not have all the answers to the existential crisis presented by AI. I have a feeling this is going to be a topic on this blog for a long time. As always, I may not be an expert, but I will take you along on my learning journey.

You might have noticed a new tag I used on the blog today that says “100% Human Content.” I’m trying it out as an assurance that everything on this blog was written by me. If I use AI, I will be transparent about it. I’ll eventually integrate AI content into my work (taking my own medicine!) once I get over the guilt of employing a machine to do my work.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration generated by MidJourney

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