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.

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One of the highlights of my career was meeting Walter Isaacson. Walter has had a remarkable career as an academic, civic leader, and publisher, but he’s best known for authoring bestselling books on geniuses like Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo DaVinci. There’s no better person who would know what it takes to become a genius.

So … I asked him.

His answer was surprisingly simple.

How to become a genius

Walter explained to me that there are two common characteristics to the geniuses he studied for decades:

1. They have an insatiable curiosity
2. They see patterns and “connect the dots” in a new way

See, I told you it was simple! The Isaacson Genius Formula. But can anybody learn to become a genius? I love questions like that, so today, I’ll connect my own dots and help you think through that puzzle.

Let’s start with step one: Curiosity …

Can you learn to be curious?

“The important thing is not to stop questioning … Never lose a holy curiosity.”

Albert Einstein

Curiosity is more than an element of genius. I regard it as one of the best marketing skills you can have! Curiosity leads to competitive advantage.

I am a naturally curious person. For example, I drive my wife crazy on hikes. I’m always stopping to take photos and look up names of rocks, trees, and plants. If you drive people crazy with your curiosity, you’re good to go. Skip to the next section!

But what if you’re not curious? Can you train yourself to become more curious? When I researched this subject, I came across a great surprise: there is almost no research on this subject! Could be an idea for you. No need to thank me.

The best resource I could find was a Psychology Today article called “Cultivating Curiosity” from way back in 2006. Here’s what the author Elizabeth Svoboda recommended:

1. Reframe “boring” situations.

If you’ve got an inquiring mind, it’s possible to turn even mundane events, like waiting in line at the DMV, into something meaningful. Look for details others might miss, and seek to learn more about them. For instance, try turning to another customer in line and saying, “I noticed the Purple Heart pinned to your jacket. What war did you serve in?”

I practice this all the time. I might be in a meeting room, and I’ll look carefully for clues about a person or a company based on what is in the room.

2. Don’t let fear stop you from trying something new.

If you’re curious about something, it acts as a positive counterweight to anxiety and fear. Exercising your curiosity won’t wipe out doubt, but it may help you focus on the likely positive consequences of a new venture (learning to execute a perfect swan dive) rather than the negative ones (doing a belly flop and surfacing to the sound of laughter).

3. Let your true passions shine.

A key component of curiosity is what Boston College psychologist Ellen Winner calls a “rage to master”—whether that involves accumulating rejection slips from The New Yorker or spending hours in the basement learning banjo fingerings. An intense focus on specific interests or goals invites the state of mental immersion called “flow,” which in turn elicits feelings of accomplishment and well-being.

I’ll add a tip of my own:

4. Ask “why” continuously

Explore the “why” behind things: Rather than accepting things at face value, delve into the underlying reasons and explanations behind phenomena, events, or decisions. This analytical approach encourages curiosity and the search for deeper understanding.

When I was in the corporate world, I was trained in the Toyota Production System. There was a technique called the “seven why’s.” It’s not hard. You just ask “why” seven times in a row to get to the root of a problem. Somebody probably made a million bucks off that. But it really does work.

I think these are good tips. Anybody could focus on these ideas and probably make curiosity more of a habit.

Let’s explore the second part of the Isaacson Genious Formula. To become a genius, you also need to see patterns and connect dots in a new way.

Patterns and Dots

“I became a genius because I see patterns in new ways.” Steve Jobs

I totally made that quote up.

Here’s another word to describe making sense of patterns / connecting dots — insight. That is a key to genius — providing insight instead of information. This is one of my favorite things to write about. Insight is the key to professional career success these days, and I know of three ways to do that.

1. Connect the past.

One of my favorite ways of creating insights is to apply an experience from the past to a situation in the present.

Here is a universal truth. If you’re reading this post, you have a past and you have a present … so you should be able to do this!

An example of how to do this comes from my Marketing Rebellion book. I wanted to make a point in the book that cultural change in a company has to come from the top of the organization — there’s no such thing as a grassroots cultural change.

I thought back to points in my career and remembered a very dramatic cultural change that occurred through the visionary CEO of our company. I explained how he made a change in the safety culture through his entire company presence and led by example in dramatic ways.

Instead of merely stating, “culture change comes from the top,” I illustrated this point through a personal example, connecting the dots to my past. This is among the most popular stories in the book.

Statements are boring. Stories deliver insights.

2. Connect the people

I firmly believe you can’t “think out of the box.” By the time we’re 15 years old, we’re wired with a mental framework that essentially persists throughout our life.

Creating insights comes through combining boxes — mashing together mental frameworks. Simply put, go talk to people and build on ideas together.

A person who can create insight consistently this way is Andy Crestodina. If you don’t follow Andy, you should. He is a thought leader because he’s constantly looking at things in a new way.

Every time I see Andy, he’ll start a conversation like this: “Mark, have you ever thought about how content marketing is like a pyramid …” and then we’ll riff on whatever crazy idea he has that day until we have plenty of new ideas (that eventually show up in his blog posts!).

My go-to person for insight-building is Keith Reynold Jennings, one of my co-hosts of The Marketing Companion podcast. Keith will call me up and say, “I have a wild idea for you …” And an hour later, my head will be stuffed with possibilities and new dots that have been connected.

Creativity and insight come through connection, not thinking by yourself in an office.

3. Connect the experiences

My friend Liz Fessenden reminded me of the Japanese kaizen principle of “going to gemba.”

Gemba (also less commonly as genba) is a Japanese term meaning “the real place.” In business, gemba refers to the place where value is created. The most common use of the term is in manufacturing, where the gemba is the factory floor, but gemba can really be anywhere you can achieve customer insight.

This is probably my number one source of insight — seeing the world. For example, I never miss the annual SXSW conference in Austin because it is a festival of ideas and thought leadership. My brain is tossed around and shaken like a James Bond martini. I’ll have a whole year of dots to connect from the people I meet there.

How to become a genius? One more thing …

I hope you’re happy now and ready to become a genius any moment now.

However.

I think something is missing from the Isaacson Genius Formula. If you want to become a genius, there’s one more thing to master, and it’s not easy.

I’ve known several true geniuses in my life, and the greatest of these was Peter Drucker, considered the father of modern management and marketing. He was my teacher and mentor in graduate school for three years.

Dr. Drucker had a magical capability: He could distill complexity to its essence. When something seemed overwhelming, he could filter it down into easy-to-understand components. His lessons were so profound they inform my life today, decades later.

Look at DaVinci’s drawings — they distill complexity into simplicity. Jobs, Einstein, and Franklin did this too. That’s what makes them all so quotable! They look at an insanely complex world and provide a pearl of insight that inspires our minds and hearts.

I don’t think this is easy. Perhaps this is the true gift that makes it rare to become a genius.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling 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 courtesy Unsplash.com

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On the new episode of The Marketing Companion, creative genius Jay Acunzo and I explore the relationship between creativity and money. This is a head-spinning discussion and far-reaching discussion that you cannot miss.

We present this discussion in three chapters: What is creativity like when you’re broke? What is it like when you have some resources? If you won the lottery, how would you spend it to be more creative?

Jay introduces this topic with a fascinating story about the first Rocky movie. Often, more resources means less interesting. Here is the scene. It might be fun to watch it before listening to the show:

A few provocative takes from this discussion:

• 

  Creativity is more about resourcefulness, not resources

• Anything you can suck up into your head can show up as a creative advantage
• Creativity needs deadlines
• Why Jay creates everything at the last minute (an imposter syndrome hack?)
• How much time is spent on writing versus re-writing (this discussion will surprise you!)
• The impact of teams on creativity. Why we need to have people who “punch back.”
• The science of creative constraints. If we don’t have them, we create them.
• Individuals create ideas. Groups make the ideas better.
• Creating ideas versus presenting ideas
• We present our creative “wish list”
• Why the word “audacious” is in our creative future

Just click here to join this enlightening discussion!

Click on this link to listen to Episode 236

Resources mentioned in this show:

• Mark’s Personal Branding Master Class
• Jay’s newsletter
• Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci
• Grammarly
• One, Ten, One Hundred Documentary from Wistia
• Jay’s Unthinkable podcast
• Far Flung Travel Show

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Try this! “Alexa, play the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.”
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• Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide

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