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

My story starts with Walter Isaacson.

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

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

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

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

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

The essential importance of curiosity

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

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

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

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

Connecting the dots

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

Here is my input to Claude:

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

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

The results

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what can’t it fake?

Stakes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop performing authenticity. Start risking something.

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

Did this produce wisdom?

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

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

Ouch!

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

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

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

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

Now we get to the critical insight:

So what can’t it fake? Stakes.

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

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

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

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

Am I a genius now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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Too short for a blog post, too interesting to ignore, here are a few snippets on what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Content creator angst

I am finding it harder and harder to post on social media. I feel like it has become a performance. People are trying to out-vulnerable each other.

I just want to do good work. Spending one second of my life editing a Reel seems like a waste of a second that will never come back.

Perhaps this is why I like writing. Create. Let it sit. Make it sing. And it doesn’t disappear.

There’s no schtick to it.

Content you can create in your underwear. Now that’s livin’.

Content creator angst part deux

My friends and colleagues are constantly debating any system tweak that pleases the LinkedIn algorithm. The major theme is to post stuff that generates comments. LinkedIn wants conversations.

I generally do not write for comments, but sometimes I stumble into it.

A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of myself sleeping on a bench in the Amsterdam airport after canceled flights and a hotel foul-up. It received more than 82,000 views.

The following week, I posted a helpful, original article reflecting on Peter Drucker’s unique wisdom and how his “five questions” remain relevant to marketing today. This post, which took about four hours to write, received 2,000 views, or about 3% of the airport post.

This suggests that the key to engagement on LinkedIn is goofy personal photos. But before you follow this path of least resistance, keep asking yourself — for LinkedIn and ALL social media activity — “to what end?”

Engagement is largely a vanity metric. You can engage yourself broke. Marketing is about creating customers.

It’s all about the feeling

New research shows that 42% of teens say that talking about their feelings is important to them, and brands are responding. McDonald’s new “Draw How You Feel” Happy Meal boxes trade the classic red for a blank canvas. This ties into a broader trend of experiential and wellness-driven packaging.

Built around the finding that 85% of teenage girls aren’t meeting recommended physical activity guidelines, Nike and Spotify launched Make Moves to encourage girls to move to just one song a day, using music to make physical activity more joyful and emotionally accessible. A UK pilot with 700 girls showed a 20% improvement in confidence and a 19% decrease in regular feelings of anxiety.

Experiential marketing is such a huge opportunity and is largely overlooked.

More about experiences

My new book, How AI Changes Your Customers, details six ways AI is rewiring human psychology.

Chief among these is cognitive offloading, addiction, and a trend to form trusting emotional connections with chatbots.

But pay attention to the news. There’s a backlash trend emerging.

Young people are rediscovering the joy of gathering. I’ve recently seen articles about young people watching movies together, listening to vinyl albums straight through at parties, and a surge in the popularity of board games:

How can your company help bring people together like this and be part of this trend?

Keeping pace with AI

The AI world is changing so rapidly. I think there are three key strategies to keep up:

1. Schedule time to dabble every day. Most platforms have a free or trial version. Push the envelope and experiment.
2. Subscribe to at least one podcast, newsletter, or video series commenting on the latest updates and releases. I really love the Artificial Intelligence podcast hosted by Paul Roetzer.
3. Join a community of like-minded people who are experimenting and can teach you by association. One option for marketers is RISE. You can’t stay relevant on your own.

We need to find new channels

Here’s another reason why looking at alternatives like experiential marketing and word-of-mouth makes sense: Social media use appears to be in decline. A roud-up of research I’ve seen:

• A 2025 Deloitte consumer trends survey of more than 4,000 Brits found that nearly a quarter of all consumers had deleted a social media app in the previous 12 months (inclund one-third of Gen Z)
• Social media use has steadily declined since time spent on the platforms peaked in 2022, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries by the Financial Times and digital audience insights firm GWI. Globally, adults 16 and over spent an average of two hours and 20 minutes per day on social platforms by the end of 2024, down almost 10% since 2022. The decline was particularly pronounced among teens and 20-somethings…
• Young people who are deleting their social media platforms cite the increasing pressures of being online as well as damage to their mental health as causes. Deloitte’s consumer survey found that nearly a quarter of respondents who deleted social apps reported that these apps had negatively affected their mental health and consumed too much of their time.

Implementing AI in your company

Long ago, I led a Fortune 100 company into the digital age.

The marketing world faced the same distractions — lots of sexy opportunities to make a splash on social media, with easy-to-measure “Likes.”

I was more successful than almost any competitor in my space by staying strictly focused on one thing: Digital applications that could directly make us money or save us money.

And, like today, measurement with absolute attribution was difficult. But you know what great managers pay attention to?” Stories, like “hey, a customer just raved about how easy it is to do business with our new eCommerce system.”

I think this is still an effective implementation playbook: 1) Focus tightly on making money and saving money instead of vanity metrics; 2) Look for qualitative measures like comments and stories as a success indicator, at least at first.

Thanks for reading along with me today. I never take you for granted!

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

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The most important time of my professional work life was studying under Peter Drucker when I pursued my MBA at Claremont Graduate University. Peter Drucker is considered one of the most influential management thinkers of the 20th century. He was also a kind and generous teacher and mentor.

Dr. Drucker would come into class on a Saturday morning and talk about his books. It was impossible to outline his lectures! His lessons danced and darted around as he talked about the ideas that created modern marketing and management as we know it.

But one of the most interesting lectures was about a book he had yet to write. He gave us a preview of what has come to be known as Drucker’s Five Questions. Many of Dr. Drucker’s lectures are burned in my mind, but this lesson, which was published posthumously as a book in 2008, is always part of my consulting strategy.

I have met a few geniuses in my life, and they all have the same trait. They can distill incredible complexity into an essence. And so it is with the timeless nature of Peter Drucker’s Five Questions.

And yet, so many of my students and customers have never heard of them before. I thought it was time I shine a light on them once more, if for no other reason than to use this post as a reference for my future classes!

Drucker’s Five Questions are:

1. What is our mission?
2. Who is our customer?
3. What does the customer value?
4. What are our results?
5. What is our plan?

Drucker’s five questions and marketing today

When it comes to marketing, these five questions are still highly relevant and can be used to help develop effective strategies. In fact, they are at the foundation of my process and I pull these out constantly with my clients.

1. “What is our mission?”

This question helps define the overall purpose of the organization and the goals that it is trying to achieve. This is important for marketing as it helps to ensure that the marketing activities are aligned with the organization’s mission and goals. It also helps to define the target market that the organization is trying to reach and the message that it is trying to communicate.

The answer to this question is not as simple as it may seem and more relevant than ever. In my book Belonging to the Brand, this is a central idea when defining the purpose of community-based marketing. You can’t move forward without it!

This is also relevant for personal brands. A personal brand is not about you. It is about serving others. What is the mission?

One of Drucker’s amazing insights was that a company had to be about more than making money. This was a radical idea in his day but obviously important to consider in today’s consumer environment.

2. “Who is our customer?”

This question helps identify who the organization is targeting with its marketing activities.

This is critical as it helps to ensure that the organization’s marketing efforts are focused on the right audience and that the right message is being communicated. Knowing the customer also helps to inform marketing activities such as pricing, positioning, and promotion.

Again, this question is deceptively simple. Even with sophisticated social listening and other analytical tools, I see companies fumbling with their assumptions about customers!

I don’t trust any data before March of 2020. If you haven’t assessed how the pandemic changed your customers, go out there and re-discover them.

3. “What does the customer value?”

This helps zero-in on the needs and wants of the customer. Knowing what the customer values helps to inform the organization’s marketing activities and ensure that the message being communicated is relevant and meaningful to the customer.

One lesson I learned from Dr. Drucker, was “never mistake what you’re selling for what the customer is actually buying.”

Another important step when answering this question is to evaluate how competitors might be already serving these needs. You can’t offer a me-too product.

4. “What are our results?”

Now it starts to get complicated!

One of Dr. Drucker’s most famous quotes is, “You can’t manage it if you can’t measure it.”

We need to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s marketing activities. Obviously, this is important as it helps to identify which activities are working and which are not, leading to more informed decisions about future marketing activities.

However, with the speed of change in the world today, we may have to act before we have the measurement fully figured out. Remember, Dr. Drucker’s ideas were forged in the 1980s. Even though he was a true visionary who foresaw the gig economy and many of the realities of today, I do believe he would encourage us to respond to cultural changes with relevant marketing ideas.

“The purpose of a business is to create customers,” he would say. Creating customers today is a jerky process that may elude easy measurement in some cases.

5. “What is our plan?”

The final part of Drucker’s Five Questions is, “What is our plan?” helps to develop a comprehensive strategy for the organization’s marketing activities. This ensures that the organization has a clear plan in place and that the marketing activities are coordinated and effective.

Marketing strategy might seem overwhelming today, but it’s not if you make it through Drucker’s Five Questions. Here’s my secret: If you do the work to answer these questions thoroughly, your marketing strategy becomes obvious. You probably don’t have as many options as you think! If you evaluate the competitive landscape, you only have so many cards in your hands to play.

Beyond Drucker’s Five Questions

Dr. Drucker is still the most quoted business guru in history. I am completely blown away by how prescient his work is. If you don’t know this great man, here are four books among the dozens he wrote that are quite meaningful to me:

Classic Drucker — A compilation of famous essays from Harvard Business Review. A good place for inspiration!

The Five Most Important Questions — An essential book for strategy that I mentioned in this post.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship — This is a book I have read 10 times. It was originally published in 1985 yet provides a fresh and realistic framework for institutionalizing innovation in a company culture.

Post-Capitalist Society — Dr. Drucker was way ahead of his time and this book projects a world of capitalism out of control and what can be done.

Essential Drucker — A summary of sixty years of his most influential writings

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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In my job, I am honored to interact with leaders from around the world, and the general view of the business world right now is somewhere between “uncertain” and “chaos.”

How does marketing change in uncertain times?

Here are three marketing truths to hold on to when stormy seas are rocking your boat.

1. Never jeopardize trust.

Like most business leaders, I’ve faced rocky times. I’ve had the opportunity to cut corners, but I’ve always operated on one principle: Always do the right thing, even when it hurts.

Pain is temporary. Trust is forever.

Sometimes the role of marketing is to protect the brand. Never let your business make a move that jeopardizes trust.

Build strong brands as a steady anchor in turbulence.

2. Focus on the immediate business priorities.

There have been many times when I’ve had to abandon bold marketing plans amid cost-cutting and business crises.

When turbulence strikes, there is no time to cower or hold on to pet projects. Be a team player. Go all-in with the power of your experience to drive rapid customer acquisition and cash flow.

With ongoing economic pressure, proving impact is essential. A business crisis is an opportunity to build credibility and trust that will serve you well in the long term.

Last year I discussed the tension between performance marketing and brand marketing with a creative director at a major New York agency. She said, “It’s all performance marketing.”

Marketing creates customers. Let that be your guide when times are tough.

3. Conquer fear to grow.

One theme I explored in my book Audacious is how fear inhibits creativity.

We’re afraid of disrupting a routine, being turned down by the legal department, or jeopardizing our reputation. And yet, the only path to growth is change, especially when we are under the threat of replacement by AI.

Crisis is a time for renewal and reinvention, an opportunity to distance yourself from the competition.

One time, the company I worked for was in crisis and initiated bold moves to change the business. One colleague told me he was going “to hide” until the changes passed over. I embraced the changes and led the effort. You can guess who was rewarded in the end.

Is this the time to push for Gen AI and agentic AI as critical levers for competitiveness? lead the change, experiment at the frontier, and scale before global peers widen the gap.

History shows that the greatest brands distinguish themselves and grow in times of crisis.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

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I recently participated in a research project that gathered input from futurists on how AI will change humanity by 2030. Of course, nobody can foresee what this AI world will be like five months from now, let alone five years from now, but it was a great exercise that yielded some consensus among the experts.

But this pushed my thinking in a different way. If we are to consider how AI is changing humanity, what exactly is humanity?

If we think back to a human existence 200 or 300 years ago, a human adult would have had three primary goals: 1) don’t die, 2) find food/shelter, 3) have babies. Is that how our ancestors would have defined the meaning of humanity?

Today when we think about AI impacting “humanity,” we might reference the impact on our careers, our privacy, or our purpose in life. We might be worried about an AI impact on our schools, democracy, or relationships.

But is that humanity?

Today I want to strip away the pretense of modern life and explore what the intrusion of AI might mean to our humanity, and by extension, our businesses.

What doesn’t change?

In the early days of Amazon, Wired magazine interviewed Jeff Bezos and asked him what new technology excited him the most. Amazon was revolutionizing eCommerce, but Bezos took the interview in another direction.

“Changing technology is interesting,” he said, “but what is even more interesting is what will NOT change, because that’s how you build a business. I find it impossible to consider that in ten years our customers will want higher prices, less selection, or slower delivery. Our success comes from focusing on the factors that never change.”

His insight is even truer today as we face the future with our new AI masters. Instead of focusing on change, the most robust businesses will serve the elements of humanity that will not change.

The humanity that remains

There is certainly a lot of hyperbole around AI and its implications. But I trust the view of an insider like Satya Nadella of Microsoft when he says AI is the most profound development in history — more important than fire, electricity, or the internet.

However, just as important as the power of the change is the speed at which it occurs. The improvements are dizzying. So in this hurricane-force environment, how do you build a durable business?

Let’s take a page from the Bezos Playbook. If we strip away the pretense and pressure of the modern world, what about humanity will NEVER change? Here’s a starter list:

• SAFETY
• LOVE
• CONNECTION AND COMMUNITY
• CREATIVITY
• COMPASSION
• CONTENTMENT / PEACE
• HEALTH
• FAMILY
• SPIRITUALITY / SPIRITUAL LONGING
• CURIOSITY
• RITUAL
• AUTONOMY / FREEDOM
• HOPE

I realize this is an imperfect and incomplete list, but give this grace as a thought experiment.

If your business is serving one of these needs, you’re probably in good shape, no matter what happens with AI. Similarly, if AI were to threaten any of these characteristics, you could create a durable business by preserving these aspects of humanity.

Building a durable business

Let’s put this into practice.

What are the new threats to personal safety?

• Deep fakes
• Cyber attacks
• Attacks on the electrical grid or water system
• Hacks into credit cards and bank accounts

These threats will not disappear anytime soon. Why hasn’t somebody invented a hack-proof credit card that can only be activated by a fingerprint or iris scan? There’s a growing niche industry that provides insurance against cyber attacks. That’s smart. Likewise, sales of back-up power supplies are booming because our concern for our safety will never go away.

Let’s try another one: Curiosity

• Why not package a service where AI can make custom novels based on your interests and favorite characters?
• Open a creator hub where people could take classes in ancient arts like glassblowing or woodcraft all in one place.
• I love my app that helps me identify birds by their songs and calls. But it poses such a limit on my curiosity. Why not turn it into a network that can alert me to new bird sightings in my neighborhood or create gamified bird collection teams?

Another way to look at this is to mash up your current products with human needs to reimagine your business value.

Let’s say you own a bakery that specializes in making unique and delicious cookies. How can you position your cookies to appeal to fundamental human needs, such as love, community, creativity, health, or ritual?

You get the idea now.

Building a durable business relies on serving persistent human needs. Strip away the veneers of social performance that have accumulated for centuries and focus on the needs that never change.

This post was excerpted from my new book How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.

I think you will enjoy this book!

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

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If you’ve been anywhere near a marketing podcast, blog, or LinkedIn stream lately, you know artificial intelligence is everywhere—our conversations, our ambitions, and, yes, even our anxieties. But in our latest episode of the Marketing Companion, I had a revelation with my friend Mathew Sweezy that stopped my “hype train” in its digital tracks. The pressing issue with AI in marketing might not be technical at all. It’s not the software, the models, or even the mysterious “prompt engineering.” The real AI challenge is leadership.

Mathew, who’s leading AI transformation at the global digital agency Monks, dropped a line that every CMO needs to tattoo somewhere within eyesight: AI is a leadership challenge, not a technical one.

Speed: The Underrated Competitive Edge

We started by talking about how corporate mindsets are splitting into two camps. Some are stuck in analysis paralysis, demanding to see hard ROI before dipping a toe. But the game changers—often Fortune 10 juggernauts—see AI as the next electricity. They’re moving decisively, driven by exec teams that understand one truth: if you wait, you miss the moment. AI isn’t about replacing people; it’s about expanding what’s possible and getting there first.

Mathew shared that the primary way companies are unlocking value with AI is simple but powerful: speed. With AI, inspiration in the morning can turn into production by the afternoon. Marketers are going from concept to campaign at a velocity that in the past would have been unthinkable, letting them be genuinely relevant, responsive, and—crucially—competitive. Reduced costs and greater creative output are important, too, but speed is the ace in the deck.

The AI Challenge Nobody Wants to Talk About

But here’s where things got interesting. AI isn’t the bottleneck with campaign launches anymore. People are. Most large organizations are still shackled by review cycles, legal approvals, and old-school processes. AI can generate a multi-channel campaign—TV spot, emails, the works—in a week. Yet, review and approval can drag on for weeks or months.

Why? Because big brands have far more to lose than gain by being fast. The old guard doesn’t want to risk a misstep, so speed grinds to a halt at the legal gate.

Mathew challenged me—has the balance of risk and reward shifted enough that we need to rethink the human review step? Increasingly, AI models can ingest prior review feedback and act as diligent gatekeepers themselves. At some point, more human reviews might not add value—they could just add friction. I didn’t agree with him. Maybe friction is exactly what we need right now!

Who Owns the Brand Brain?

Here’s another mindbender: With agencies deploying AI “agents” to create assets at scale, who owns the “brand brain”—the central agent capturing brand knowledge, style, and sensibility? Is it the brand’s to develop and guard, or does each agency make their own? Matthew predicts we’ll see brands taking sharper control, centralizing that “brand brain,” and letting agencies access it securely. This protects data, ensures brand consistency, and makes knowledge learning truly scalable.

And don’t worry, creative people: AI doesn’t spell the end. In these new agentic workflows, creative directors are still calling the shots, just now with a team of digital “specialists” who never tire, second-guess, or run late for a meeting.

A New Era for Creativity

This all points to a future where a marketing department isn’t just a mix of strategy and creative, but a system that learns, iterates, and rebuilds itself on a weekly—or even daily—basis. The wall between “art” and “machine” is coming down. Matthew—who’s also an artist—envisions exhibitions where artists create entire galleries in a day, reimagining the scale and pace of creative production.

Like me, he sees the symbiotic relationship between artist and machine as amplifying, not diluting, creativity. Suddenly, your limitations as a creator—whether they’re artistic, logistical, or even emotional—become machine problems, not human ones.

The Takeaway

So, where does this leave us? For leaders ready to accept the risk, AI can transform not just your marketing output but your whole organization’s metabolism. For those still clinging to the old ways, the real risk is getting left behind by brands who see “speed” as non-negotiable.

This isn’t a time to be timid. It’s a time for bold leadership, creative experimentation, and a willingness to reprogram the very rules we’ve always followed. AI is here. The question isn’t “should we use it?” It’s “how fast can we lead?”

Every conversation with Mathew is a mind trip, and you won’t want to miss this  new episode of The Marketing Companion:

To listen in, just click here:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 318

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I know this headline is confusing. Maybe counter-intuitive. Let me explain.

Once upon a time, companies controlled their brand message through carefully crafted advertising, PR campaigns, and corporate communications. Today, that control has slipped through their fingers. Consumers now wield immense power, shaping brand perceptions through social media, online reviews, and digital communities. A single viral tweet, an influencer’s critique, or a wave of user-generated content can redefine a company’s image overnight—for better or worse.

This is not just a regrettable evolution. It’s actually great for business. Nobody believes ads any more. But they believe their friends, neighbors, and co-workers. They believe their favorite influencers.

So the ideal marketing strategy is to hand the mic to your customers and fans … with a script if possible!

In this era of consumer-driven narratives, can companies still exert control over their brand message? The answer is yes—but not in the traditional, top-down way. Instead of trying to wrest control from consumers, brands must rethink their approach and strategically guide the conversation.

One brand manager said to me: “I know we need consumers to carry our message. But how do we control it?”

I thought this would be a good thought experiment to explore. Are there options for brand influence when consumers own the megaphone?

Here are five ideas.

1. Build an unmistakable brand message

This is a trick I use when working with a new client on a marketing strategy. I bring the leaders around a table and ask them to finish this sentence: “Only we …”

Nine times out of ten, every person in the room provides a different answer. If the company leadership can’t articulate their brand story, how can they expect consumers to do it?

If your brand’s story is weak, consumers will rewrite it for you. A brand narrative isn’t just a tagline—it’s a deeply ingrained truth about why you exist, what you stand for, and how you deliver value.

• Clarify Your Core Values: What does your brand stand for? If this isn’t clear internally, it will be incoherent externally. Define your values and ensure they are reflected in every touchpoint.
• Create a North Star Message: This is the unshakable core of your brand that remains consistent, no matter how conversations shift.
• Anticipate Challenges: Proactively address potential criticisms before they become crises. If you sell sustainable products, for example, ensure your supply chain is truly ethical and be transparent about it.

A well-defined brand narrative makes it harder for others to misrepresent you.

2. Dominate owned media channels

If you don’t control your own platforms, you’re at the mercy of algorithms and external opinions. Companies must become their own media powerhouses.

• Content as a Shield: Invest in high-quality content that tells your brand’s story across blogs, podcasts, YouTube, and social channels. The more credible and consistent your content, the less influence a negative review or rogue influencer will have.
• SEO and Thought Leadership: Ensure your brand’s narrative is what appears when people search for you. Publish authoritative content that dominates search results.
• Community Building: Own your audience through email newsletters, private communities, and forums. The stronger your direct relationship with consumers, the less reliance you’ll have on third-party platforms where you have little control. And, if something goes wrong, your community is likely to defend you!

3. Cultivate an army of brand advocates

Consumers trust each other more than they trust corporations. Smart brands don’t just rely on corporate messaging; they empower loyal customers and employees to carry the message forward.

• Customer Evangelists: Identify and nurture your most passionate customers (probably in your community?). Provide them with exclusive content, early product access, and recognition so they continue to advocate for you.
• Employee Advocacy: Your employees are some of your most credible voices. I am not a fan of asking them to share corporate content, but I love it when companies train their own influencers (there are lots of examples of this in my book Audacious).
• UGC as a Strategy: Instead of fighting user-generated content, guide it. Create branded hashtags, challenges, and campaigns that encourage positive content creation. An example — e.l.f. Beauty created a music video that was the most-shared video on TikTok in 2023.
• View Influencers as Strategic Advantage: Sure, influencers can activate an audience and grow sales. But they are also a strategic advantage. If they have a positive relationship with you, they don’t have one with your competitors!

4. Engage, don’t just react

Many brands fall into the trap of only responding to negativity when it arises. Instead, brands should be proactive in shaping conversations before a crisis hits.

• Social Listening at Scale: Use AI-driven tools to track online sentiment and spot trends before they escalate.
• Conversational Brand Building: Don’t just broadcast—engage. If people talk about your brand, join the conversation, clarify misconceptions, and amplify positive discussions.
• Influencer Partnerships with Integrity: Vet influencers carefully and build long-term relationships with those who align with your brand values rather than chasing quick impressions. It’s likely the influencer might be the best-known person associated with your company. Hold them to the same standards and expectations as an employee.

5. Turn crises into brand-defining opportunities

Negative publicity is inevitable. Don’t let the panic set in. Brands that handle crises with transparency, authenticity, and swift action can emerge stronger, especially if you have worked hard to build a community of advocates.

• Own Your Mistakes: If you mess up, acknowledge it quickly and genuinely. A defensive or dismissive response only fuels more backlash.
• Turn Critics into Allies: Engage with dissatisfied customers or influencers constructively. Address their concerns and, when possible, turn their experience into a win. The Jay Baer book Hug Your Haters is a great reference.
• Control the Narrative Quickly: When a crisis unfolds, get ahead of the story with direct communication through your owned channels.

Influence, don’t control

In the modern era, the most successful brands aren’t the ones that try to suppress consumer voices. They are the ones who listen, engage, and shape the dialogue while staying true to their core brand message.

Marketing today is much more than spending money on ads. There are massive risks when consumers control the storyline, but even greater opportunities for those companies that adapt to reality and the ideas I’ve presented 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

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

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The debate over AI and its role in creative industries often centers on one question: Can AI ever be as creative as humans? While it’s tempting to philosophize about inspiration and ingenuity, this line of inquiry misses a crucial point for anyone tasked with making practical decisions about content creation: If the audience can’t tell the difference between AI-generated and human-generated content—or if they don’t care—then, for all practical purposes, there is no difference.

The solution to this is obvious — MAKE. THEM. CARE.

There are many ways to do that (outlined in my book Audacious). And last week, I wrote that our marketing content needs to approach the level of art, displaying our unique story and interpretation of the human experience.

But in a discussion last week with the brilliant and ever-so-human Joseph Jaffe, another key principle of this new business reality struck. me: Strategic Imperfection. Sometimes, the most humble human content outshines AI’s polished results. Let’s look at this extremely important lesson.

The Jaffe surprise

Joseph hosts a YouTube show called Joseph Jaffe is Not Famous. He was inspired to create something uplifting and fun in the dark Covid days and never stopped. I’ve never seen a person put more care and craft into video interviews, so please check it out (here is my episode!).

For each show, Joseph digs out obscure “fun facts” about his guests. These tidbits are often embarrassing and always weird to get a rise out of the guest. For me, he discovered that as a young man, I had danced with JonBenét Ramsey’s mother. This is true, and if you make it to the end of this post, I’ll spill the story.

Back to Joseph. He turned to AI to create an image of me dancing with Patricia Ramsey to poke fun at me. As a reference, this is what these two people actually look like:

Here are the AI-generated results of the two of us dancing from MidJourney, ChatGPT, and Grok:

As you can see, none of these images really hit the mark. Joseph became exasperated. He had spent too much time trying to coax AI prompts into something polished and perfect, and out of frustration, just whipped together a crude cut-and-paste image:

This final result looks like something from a grade school art class, yet it is awesome, and a great example of strategic imperfection. It’s funny and foolish and captures the spirit of Joe’s show. It made me laugh out loud.

This is not just a one-off observation about humanity and creativity. The rawness and playfulness of imperfect humans is a significant content trend that can help you cut through the pandemic of dull that is marketing today.

The science of strategic imperfection

This phenomenon of exposing human flaws has deep psychological roots. The Pratfall Effect, discovered by psychologist Elliot Aronson in 1966, demonstrated something counterintuitive: people who are perceived as highly competent become more likable when they make (and admit) a minor mistake. Think about that for a second. The perfection we’ve been chasing might actually be pushing our audiences away.

Research by Baba Shiv at Stanford further suggests that imperfections create cognitive “hooks” in our brains. When we encounter a flaw in otherwise polished content, it creates a moment of surprise that enhances memory and engagement. Our brains, wired to detect patterns and anomalies, pay special attention to these inconsistencies.

In Audacious, I profile the king of viral video, Michael Krivicka, who explained that his key to success was out-of-focus shots, poor audio, and camera dust. It makes his videos look REAL … and he never uses AI.

The trend across media

A fascinating article in The New York Times explained that after years of seeking perfection, developers realized that gamers often prefer low-fidelity graphics. It’s not about the Hollywood experience. It’s about hanging out with friends over a simple and fun game.

Developers are now deliberately stepping away from the hyper-polished visuals that dominated titles for years. Studios like Ninja Theory have embraced imperfect motion capture and raw voice acting to create more emotionally resonant experiences in games like “Hellblade.” The intentional shakiness of the camera, the imperfect lighting – these elements create a sense of presence that polish efforts often fail to deliver.

In social media, the rise of “casual posting” and “photo dumps” represents a similar shift. Even celebrities and influencers are posting unedited, unfiltered content that would have been considered unprofessional just a few years ago. The most successful TikTok creators understand that a slightly messy room in the background or an unscripted laugh creates more connection than a perfectly staged setting.

In podcasting, the shows topping the charts often maintain conversational tangents, verbal stumbles, and authentic reactions rather than editing for perfect flow. These “mistakes” signal authenticity to listeners, making the content feel like a genuine conversation rather than a performance. All of my Marketing Companion podcast episodes are done in one take with no editing.

If you want to see a great example of the lo-fi digital aesthetic, check out this website from musician Mabe Fratti. It’s lo-fi, interactive, and WILD.

Strategic imperfection

This trend toward strategic imperfection isn’t just aesthetic – it’s a rational business response to deeper cultural shifts:

1. Trust Erosion: In an era of deepfakes and AI-generated content, audiences are developing a healthy skepticism toward anything that looks too perfect. Visible imperfections signal human creation.

2. Digital Fatigue: After years of curated feeds and polished content, audiences crave the refreshing authenticity of unfiltered humanity.

3. Connection Hunger: Post-pandemic, people are seeking genuine human connection, even through digital media. Imperfection creates intimacy.

Here’s the critical distinction for marketers: strategic imperfection is not the same as poor quality. The most successful practitioners of this approach maintain high standards while selectively allowing human elements to show through.

Apple’s recent “Shot on iPhone” campaigns perfectly illustrate this balance. The photos and videos showcase impressive technical capability while maintaining the slightly imperfect framing and timing of real human photography. They’re professionally imperfect – and that’s the sweet spot.

Proof of Human

In a world where AI can generate seemingly perfect content with ease, human imperfection becomes a powerful differentiator. The subtle flaws in human-created content may soon be the most reliable indicator that a real person was behind it. “Proof of Human” is a significant trend for all of us going forward.

As marketing professionals, our job isn’t to achieve perfection – it’s to create connection. And sometimes, the quickest path to that connection is through the strategic embrace of our wonderfully human imperfections.

The brands that understand this paradox – that flaws can be features rather than bugs – will cut through the noise and build the authentic connections that drive lasting engagement.

Because in the end, we don’t connect with perfection. We connect with humanity. And humanity, by its very nature, is gloriously imperfect.

The rest of the story

Since you’ve made it this far, I’ll reward you with the dancing story.

Patsy Ramsey was JonBenét Ramsey’s mother and a key player in one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history.

But when I knew her, she was Patsy Paugh, a Miss America contestant from my home state of West Virginia.

My mother was involved in community theater and performed in a show with Patsy. She became a family friend and would visit our home. I scored major cool points when I brought Miss West Virginia to speak at my high school.

Somehow my mom dragged me into a community theater Christmas show and I danced with Patsy while we sang “Let It Snow.” I am not a great singer and a terrible dancer, but it was OK because nobody was looking at me anyway.

Once Patsy graduated from college, we lost touch with her and never saw her again. Her life was full of tragedy and pain, but to the teenage me, she was a beautiful, shining star.

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 Why strategic imperfection is your essential strategy to beating the bots appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A common click-bait technique is to write a blog post with “The death of …” in the title. I’ve learned to ignore these, but I’ve seen such an avalanche of headlines with some version of “the end of brands” that it was time to comment. It’s not just a sensationally ridiculous idea, it’s a dangerous one.

I’d like to insert some common sense into the dialogue and explain why brands are more important than ever.

What is a brand?

Let’s take it from the top. A brand is an emotional expectation.

Here’s a little exercise I use in my classes: If I told you Coca-Cola was building a hotel in your city, could you imagine what it looks like?

Your mind immediately starts painting: Red velvet everywhere. Curved, flowing architecture like a bottle. A fountain in the lobby bubbling with happiness. The air smells like vanilla and spice. Even the receptionist’s smile sparkles.

You can see it, can’t you? Feel it? Hear it?

That’s a brand.

It’s not about sugar water. It’s about an emotional promise that’s so strong, so consistent, you could architect an entire building around it.

You can count on this “Coke feeling” in any circumstance, in any place. The trust in this consistency keeps that company at the top of your mind and maybe even at the top of your heart, almost everywhere in the world.

It doesn’t appeal to everyone, especially if you are health-conscious, for example. But the brand means something to enough people to make a difference, and make a profit.

There is no utilitarian advantage of a pair of 20-year-old Nike Air Jordans selling for thousands of dollars in Japan. There are better shoes, even pricier shoes. But this shoe makes us FEEL something and that makes it rise above the fray.

Creating this emotional shorthand isn’t easy. It’s like composing a symphony that plays in people’s hearts every time we see a logo.

But here’s why it’s worth it: When everyone else is competing on features and price, you’re competing on feelings.

And feelings? They’re priceless.

There are a few reasons critics claim brand marketing is in decline (or dead!). Let’s knock those down:

1. The Customer is in Control

One reason critics cite for the diminishing importance of brand marketing is the shift in power between businesses and consumers. In the past, brands held sway over public perception because they controlled the narrative through traditional media channels. Today, the internet has democratized influence, empowering consumers to control the narrative through their opinions, reviews, and posts.

I’ve written about this extensively, most notably in the book Marketing Rebellion, which suggests that nearly all the power to drive sales is in the hands of the customer. This doesn’t mean brand marketing is dead. It means that we can’t count on advertising any more. The new imperative is to create value and experiences so insanely great that people can’t wait to spread the word.

The Real Job of Brand Marketing Today:

1. Stop trying to control the narrative (you can’t)
2. Start creating experiences worth talking about
3. Give your customers something so amazing they become volunteer marketers

The customer is the brand marketer. How do we help them do the job?

2. The Rise of Performance Marketing

Over the past 25 years, performance marketing (SEO, targeted ads, etc) gained prominence over traditional brand marketing.  Businesses love how advanced analytics tools can track and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns in real-time. By comparison, assigning sales attribution to brand-building activities can be difficult or impossible.

Performance marketing is vital to many companies, especially early-stage companies that need to fill a pipeline and generate customers fast. But arguably, in the end, the brand is all you have to differentiate yourself.

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

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

A successful company can’t stick with only performance marketing in the long-term. Building brand awareness powers long-term growth. When consumers recognize and trust your brand, performance ads become more effective. Case studies show that smart brand marketing can slash Customer Acquistion Cost by up to 70%.

Branding creates distance between you and your competitors, paving the way for future growth.

3. The Commoditization of Products and Services

Some say that the commoditization of many industries is killing brands.

Perhaps the poster child for this argument is Temu. Temu is an eCommerce company that ships generally non-branded, low-cost commodity products directly from Chinese factories. It is a company that has exploited digital technology and eCommerce psychology to the maximum and pioneered a new way to serve bargain basement shoppers.

Here’s the thing about Temu: They’re not killing brands. They’re just showing us what happens when price is the only story you need to tell.

There has always been a segment of consumers who love to hunt for bargains instead of brands for economic necessity or perhaps just for fun. Temu has digitized the treasure hunt.

Side note: I predict that at some point, Temu will create its own simple, reliable branded products, just as Amazon did. So, brand would matter, even in the commodity sphere.

4. Categories?

A recent exchange on LinkedIn offered an idea that creating “categories” is more important than brands.

Here’s an example: Dude Wipes. This company created a better, environmentally-sensitive way to wipe your rear. I literally never thought I would use those words in a blog post, but there you go.

Let’s break this down, from the bottom-up (pun intended)!

Dude Wipes didn’t just create a category — “premium man-focused bathroom hygiene.” They built a brand that makes guys feel okay about buying fancy toilet paper.

But creating a category without building a brand is like inventing a new sport and not telling anyone about the rules. Being first means nothing if you’re also forgotten first. Your brilliant new category is a sitting duck if you don’t wrap it in brand awareness. Your competitors are watching, waiting, and probably have deeper pockets than you do.

Look at what happened to:

• Friendster (created social networking, Facebook owned it)
• Zune (an early device to carry songs in a small device)
• Palm Pilot (invented PDAs, now a trivia question)

They all created categories. They all got steamrolled by brands that did it better.

Category without brand is silly.

5. The Impact of Social Media Influencers

Social media has fundamentally altered the way consumers interact with brands. Influencers, who often have more authentic connections with their followers, have emerged as powerful voices in the marketplace. Rather than relying on brand-created content, consumers turn to influencers for recommendations, reviews, and inspiration.

Hey … it’s still a BRAND! Whether it’s a person or a product, you’re still creating an emotional expectation. And the influencer is a lot more effective if their audience has heard of the brand!

Branding Forever

There is simply no rational argument for the declining importance of brand marketing. In fact, it is more important than ever, especially in an AI world. Here are a few quick takes:

• Branding alone creates differentiation in a crowded marketplace (like Liquid Death!)
• Brands are beacons of trust in a world of deep fakes and misinformation
• Branding isn’t replaced by “categories” or performance marketing. It enhances these initiatives.
• Loyalty to a brand enables consumer brand advocacy and influencer marketing.
• Brands and brand stories resonate across generations.
• In times of crisis, a well-established brand is better positioned to weather the storm.
• Brand trust and recognition is the fuel of international expansion.

In a world where anyone can make anything, brands are the difference between:

• Trust and uncertainty
• Loyalty and indifference
• Premium prices and commodity status

Declaring the death of brands isn’t just wrong — it’s like declaring the death of trust, loyalty, and human connection.

Need a keynote speaker about the future of marketing? 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 end of brands, or the end of common sense? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Jaguar has been an easy target for critics after the company re-branded itself with a foppish, silly ad and a strange new logo. However, I am not one of those critics. Today, I’ll explain why I’m the only marketer on earth defending the Jaguar strategy. In fact, they are on the only reasonable path for the brand.

Let me be clear that at this point, I am separating the ad/logo from the strategy. In fact, I hate the ad, which seems like an AI fever dream of what “creative” is supposed to be:

I also abhor the logo re-design because Jaguar had one of the coolest logos on the planet and they ruined it.

Why am I pro-Jaguar? Because I think the strategy is brilliant, even if the execution (so far) seems disastrous.

Why Jaguar needs a new strategy

Beyond the disdain of the brand creative, there are three main criticisms of the Jag re-brand:

1. Ignores a legacy of “Britishness” and performance / luxury
2. The ads didn’t feature a car
3. Targeting a creative customer base seems like nonsense.

Let’s break down each criticism:

1. Ignores a legacy of “Britishness” and performance/luxury

I would probably be considered a potential Jag customer. I have owned a luxury car for decades, primarily Audi or BMW. But I have never considered a Jag. In fact, I’ve never known a person in my life who has owned a Jaguar, which, in hindsight, seems remarkable.

Jaguar is not even in the top 10 of luxury car brands. In terms of market strength, it is a has-been, an unprofitable, forgotten also-ran. When was the last time anyone said, “Man, I can’t wait to get my hands on that new Jag!” Right. Probably somewhere between bell-bottoms and Beta video tapes.

In addition to style, research shows there are two big considerations when deciding among luxury cars: performance and maintenance costs.

How does Jaguar stack up? Automotive engineering is dominated by Germany, Japan, Italy, and America these days. To most, Jaguar means frequent break-downs and high maintenance costs. Am I rolling old tapes? Maybe. But that is the brand’s image and it would cost a lot to change people’s minds about that. Is the classic image of James Bond driving a British car relevant for young buyers today? Is it worth holding on to? Do you really want a mercurial British car as your first choice in a luxury car?

I put Jag in the same category as another recent brand rebel — Nutter Butter. Nutter Butter is Jaguar’s brand chaos soul mate — an also-ran in the cookie business with no strong brand meaning. Creating bizarre, unsettling TikTok videos upends cookie marketing tradition and any brand heritage. But who cares? Nobody was talking about Nutter Butter, and now they are.

Could Oreo go down this road? No. They’re the leading brand and have spent millions to develop “meaning” with its customers. BMW can’t suddenly start acting like a TikTok influencer on a sugar rush. Mercedes can’t go full re-brand gonzo. They’ve got too much to lose.

But Jag isn’t a leading brand. It’s a losing brand. So why not shake it up in a bold and conversational way? The content of the advertisement is a red herring. We’re looking at Jaguar for the first time in decades.

2. The ad didn’t feature cars

One of my favorite ad campaigns in recent years never featured a product. Never even mentions it.

A Chick-fil-A employee sits on a red couch with a customer and talks about how the employee met a special customer need. For example, an employee learned sign language to serve a customer who was deaf. Another bonded with a child who had a heart transplant.

What does this have to do with chicken sandwiches?

Brand marketing is about creating an emotional expectation between you and your customers.

To illustrate this in my speeches, I’ll ask the audience to shout out what they think of when I say “Coca-Cola.” Without exception, they say “polar bears.” There was the one time when a guy in the front row said “sadness,” but that’s a story for another day.

My point is that Coke has spent billions to move your mind away from brown sugar water to playful, happy Christmas bears. Coke is a feeling. 

Chick-fil-A has its critics, but it is more than fast food to its raving customers. It’s a warm and happy feeling reinforced by food-less commercials.

So I don’t dismiss the Jaguar ads just because they are car-free. Will you buy a luxury car for its engine dimensions and gas mileage or because it actually means something to you? Jaguar’s brand meaning before last weak was as thin as Earl Grey Tea.

Finally, let’s address the target market strategy, which is aimed at …

3. Designers and Creatives

Years ago, I worked on an influencer marketing project with a luxury automotive brand. The company was introducing a stylish new car and wanted to host events nationwide for social media titans.

But I found that every car company was going after the same small group of luxury car influencers. It was nearly impossible to get their attention. So I started researching adjacent demographic markets. What other categories of people talk a lot about cars?

I discovered two groups obsessed with cars: technology geeks and creative directors. That makes sense, right? Cars are about tech and style.

Tesla has probably cornered the market for techno geeks. But what car brand has a special and unique appeal to creatives? There isn’t one. I think Jag studied the market data long and hard and saw a seam they could own. Brilliant. Early feedback shows creatives applauding the brand.

And by the way, the “copy nothing” appeal to creatives is a direct line to the Jaguar brand heritage.

The holistic strategy

An ad is not a strategy. A logo is not a strategy. So what else do we know about the re-brand?

• Jag has built a radical new electric car that will sell for roughly double the price of current Jaguar vehicles. The car is expected to debut soon at the Miami Art Show. In an interview with Automotive News, Jaguar Land Rover CEO Adrian Mardell said the still-secret Jaguar GT will make people “salivate” when they see its styling.
• They are targeting young, wealthy, design-minded people. After the internet / AI boom, there are a lot of young millionaires out there wanting to make their own statement.
• The new all-EV Jaguar cars will be positioned as “exuberant,” “modernist,” “compelling,” and all about “fearless creative.” The strategy is spearheaded by an experienced and respected auto brand marketer, Gerry McGovern. So this re-brand is not the whimsical idea from some GenZ agency. There is data and insight behind the strategy. By the way, McGovern already turned the Range Rover brand around. So I am willing to give him a pass on the ad fumble.
• The company is overhauling its dealership network which will also feature high-end art and cusine. That is a BOLD reinvention of the auto dealership.

Jag is re-imagining the whole automotive experience through the lens of the creative class. It’s ludicrous to judge the entire strategy based on one ad.

Let’s give it time.

I just finished writing a book about disruptive marketing (“Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World“). I see the underlying logic of what Jaguar is trying to do. Jag might be a competent brand. But competent doesn’t cut it. Competent = commodity. Competent doesn’t create conversations. My book explains how the world’s best creatives are breaking through the noise by disrupting the:

• Narrative
• Medium, where the story is told
• Who is telling the story

From what we know about the brand’s holistic strategy, Jag is completely upending the luxury car narrative. This is exactly what they need to do. 

The risk? There is none. You can’t kill what’s already dead. The only risk is continuing to be forgettable.

They’re in that sweet spot where “nothing to lose” meets “everything to gain.” They’re in the perfect position to pull a Nutter Butter — to be so outrageous, so unexpected, that people can’t help but notice.

The new car is supposed to be introduced in a few weeks. If it’s as sleek and cool as it is rumored to be, if the dealerships become something more than a place where people hate to shop, if Jaguar creates a story that truly connects with a creative class longing to be understood … Jag will be newly relevant.

Perhaps it’s already on the way. After all, when was the last time we spent this much time talking about Jaguar?

Exactly.

Update: Jaguar has now introduced the car. The first look:

Here is the introduction video:

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Illustration courtesy Jaguar

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