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

My story starts with Walter Isaacson.

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

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

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

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

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

The essential importance of curiosity

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

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

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

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

Connecting the dots

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

Here is my input to Claude:

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

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

The results

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what can’t it fake?

Stakes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop performing authenticity. Start risking something.

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

Did this produce wisdom?

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

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

Ouch!

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

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

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

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

Now we get to the critical insight:

So what can’t it fake? Stakes.

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

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

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

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

Am I a genius now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Google Gemini.

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My friend Joe Pulizzi attended my Uprising retreat and was so moved by the experience that he wrote a beautiful lesson about it in his newsletter for content creators, The Tilt.

Joe and I are aligned on most marketing ideas, and his conclusion at the end of the post was profound and eloquent: “You don’t start with the room.”

He was reinforcing the idea that nobody just starts with a premium event, a smash YouTube channel, or a must-read newsletter. You have to earn that “room.” Or, in the case of my retreat, literally a room.

He wrote this so elegantly that, with his permission, I’ve quoted some of his highlights here. I think you’ll love his wisdom:

Last week I spent three days at Mark Schaefer’s The Uprising marketing retreat in Tennessee. It was small, around 40 people, and that was the point.

The room was filled with smart marketers, entrepreneurs, authors, consultants, and creators. But what stood out was not just the intelligence in the room. It was how quickly people became useful to one another. Helpful. Honest. Shockingly vulnerable.

That does not happen by accident. It happens when the right people are brought together around the right idea, with enough trust already in the room for something meaningful to happen.

Over three days of conversations, presentations, sidebars, meals, and big questions about where all this is going, one idea kept coming back to me.

In the next 12 to 18 months, small, trusted communities will matter more than ever.

Not because community is trendy. And not because AI is going to destroy everything tomorrow.

Because uncertainty is rising.

Search is changing. Discovery is changing. Content is exploding. Trust is harder to earn and easier to lose. People are overwhelmed, distracted, and suspicious. At the same time, they are desperate to find other people who understand what they are dealing with. That is where community becomes incredibly powerful.

But there’s a problem.

Everyone now wants to “build a community.”

That sounds wonderful. It is also mostly wrong.

Community Is Not the First Step

You do not build a community first. You build the reason a community should exist. That’s the part most people want to skip.

They launch the group. They open the Slack channel. They create the Discord server. They announce the membership. They schedule the webinar. They build the event page.

And then they wonder why nobody shows up.

The mistake is simple. They built the campfire before anyone had a reason to sit down in front of it.

A community is not a Facebook group. It is not a LinkedIn group. It is not a membership site. It is not a monthly Zoom call. It is not an event. Those are containers.

The community is the trust inside the container.

It is the shared language, shared struggle, shared progress, and repeated interaction. It is the feeling that says, “These are my people.” It is the sense that if you disappeared, someone would notice.

Mark Did Not Start With a Room

This is what made The Uprising such a good reminder.

Mark did not just rent a space, invite some people, and magically create a community. He had already done the work.

For years, Mark has published, spoken, written books, shared ideas, challenged assumptions, and built trust around a clear point of view. People came to The Uprising because they already had a reason to believe the room would matter.

The event was not the beginning of the community. It was an expression of the community. It’s where the community happened to be at that particular moment.

This is what so many people miss. They see the outcome and copy the container. They see the event, but not the years of trust. They see the membership, but not the audience.

Back to me.

Joe and I preach from the same hymnbook when it comes to community and its importance in the AI Age.

So how do you get there?

There is a process. It is not quick. It is not easy. But it works. This is the process I teach in my personal branding master class:

1. Where do you fit in your industry or marketplace?

Figure out your unique angle. What problem do you solve, and how do you uniquely solve it?

How do you finish this sentence: “Only I …”

That might seem intimidating but I’ve never had a class participant where we haven;t been able to figure that out. There’s still a big world of opportunity out there.

2. Find Your Space

Now you have the story to tell the world?

Joe was also very specific on this advice: Pick One Main Platform

“This is where people get overwhelmed,” Joe wrote. “They think they need a podcast, newsletter, YouTube channel, LinkedIn strategy, Instagram Reels, TikTok presence, webinar series, book project, and community all at the same time. Do not do that. Pick one main platform. One.”

To stand out, you have to be great. And you can’t be great in 12 places.

3. Stick to a Consistent Schedule

If you take my class, you will hear one word more than any other — “consistency.”

Consistency is more important than genius.

Once you begin, give yourself 18 months at least to see if it’s working. You can build your “room,” but you have to keep showing up. This also has powerful SEO and AI visibility advantages, of course.

You’ve implied to your audience that you’re going to help them solve a problem.

“The promise does not need to be clever, ” Joe said, “It needs to be clear.”

Over time, you become part of your audience’s weekly routine. Your goal is to become a habit.

4. Build Your Audience

Joe advised, “Audience building is not just publishing. It is relationship building. This is the part that gets missed because it is not scalable at first.”

He offered specific advice:

Make a list of 20 people who matter to the future of the audience you want to serve. They could be peers, customers, readers, event organizers, authors, podcast hosts, niche experts, future collaborators, or people already gathering the audience you care about.

Then help them. Share their work. Comment with substance. Interview them. Send the useful email. Introduce them to someone. Buy their book. Attend their event. Meet them in person when you can.

The future may be AI-powered, but trust is still built person by person.

5. Audience Precedes Community

Most creators miss the biggest opportunity. Once they build an audience, they stop there. But the most value, the most fun, the most connection comes through a community.

A community differs from an audience in three ways:

1. There is communion. People know each other and become friends.
2. There is a shared purpose.
3. There is a shared direction (which might change over time as the community pulls you forward).

This is the room. This will matter the most in the AI Era.

How do you know you’re ready? Do you have a few super fans? It doesn’t have to be a big group. Maybe 5-10 people who just want to know more. They comment on your posts. They ask questions. They’re excited about your ideas.

If you want to know a whole lot more about community-building, please take a look at the book Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.

Build the Reason First

I’ll let Joe Pulizzi take us home on this post. Here are some of his concluding comments:

I keep thinking about that room at The Uprising.

The trust. The conversations. The openness. The willingness to help. The feeling that the people there were not just attending another event, but participating in something that mattered to them.

That is rare. I believe more of us are going to need that.

The people who have real trust with a specific audience will have an advantage. The people who have direct relationships will have an advantage. The people who are known for something will have an advantage.

Start with the person you want to serve. Start with the problem they are embarrassed to admit. Start with the one platform you can commit to. Start with the 20 people you can help. Start with a promise you can keep every week.

Do that long enough, and the community has a chance to appear.

Build the reason first. The campfire comes later.

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 Content creators don’t start with “the room” appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I feel desperate to try again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Give in to the bots.

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

Protecting our content from AI has become a global obsession.

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

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

3. Universities need a dramatic and immediate overhaul

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

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

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

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

4. Competence doesn’t cut it

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

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

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

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

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

5. It’s time for ethically-sourced marketing

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

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

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

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

6. The False Hope of Content and SEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. Community is the future of marketing.

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

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

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

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

9. Momentum is a process

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

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

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

10. Influencer Marketing is just beginning

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

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

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

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

11. Awe as marketing strategy

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

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

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

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

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

12. The Most Human Company Wins ™

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

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

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

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

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

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

See? There I go again : )

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

Illustrations a combination of prompts from Midjourney and Claude.

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

On every post I’ve written for at least two years, I’ve included a badge that states: “100% Human Content.” And this is, too (as you’ll see) but I used AI to compose most of it. I’d like to use this as a teachable moment on a smart way to use AI.

This post is about my annual Uprising Retreat. Nearly everyone there noted that this event is impossible to describe unless you’re there, but I’ll try. It’s a gathering of curious and brilliant people who openly share and teach one another, creating a bond that fosters career relevance. We also have a lot of fun in a breathtakingly beautiful place.

Now, during this event, I am psychologically and emotionally immersed. There is no way I can capture all the great highlights. This is where AI comes in.

Many of the attendees used the Plaud voice recorder to record and transcribe the talks. Dr. Matt Wilkinson uploaded these transcripts to Notebook LM, where we could all slice and dice the commentary. I used this to create a first draft of a highlight post and then used Claude to massage it a bit and put it in my voice.

So … what you are about to read is fully human content, parsed and assembled by AI.

The gift of uncertainty

Before each event, I send out a survey to let attendees prioritize the agenda. This year, one word kept popping up as they wrote about their careers: Uncertainty. So, I set the tone for the event with a brand new talk called “The Gift of Uncertainty.”

We are living in a “poly crisis.” Not just a hard moment. A genuinely disorienting one, where the norms and traditions and even laws that used to orient us feel like they’re shifting in real time. We are in a world of malignant uncertainty.

I opened the Uprising by saying this isn’t a flaw in the system — it’s our fuel, especially if you’re in marketing. I encouraged everyone to explore the “courage dividends” that come from overcoming fear and acting on opportunity,  even when the outcome is uncertain.

We live in chaos. But that sets the stage for hope. And leaders who can genuinely dispense hope — not spin, not optimism theater, but real grounded possibility — are going to matter enormously in the years ahead.

The agentic economy is here, and most people aren’t ready 

Dan Nestle, Dr. Matt Wilkinson, and Brian Piper built the technical foundation for the event with a live demonstration of what an AI-orchestrated workflow actually looks like end-to-end. They showed how they used Gemini, Claude, and other tools in parallel to explore every angle of a new product launch.

They laid out the technical reality clearly: We are moving from B2B and B2C toward an agent-to-agent economy. Your customers will soon have personal AI agents filtering what they see. You will have agents producing content. The question is whether there’s anything human left in the middle.

Brian introduced what he called the “human-in-the-loop sandwich” — and the image stuck with me. Your unique expertise and stories form the foundation. AI synthesizes and organizes. But human judgment sits at the top, as the final filter. Strip that out and you get what everyone is starting to call AI slop.

Dan made a point I think is genuinely underappreciated: keep your intellectual property separate from your tools. Your brand missions, your frameworks, your SOPs — those belong in a tool-agnostic library you can plug into whatever model is performing best this month. Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT. The models change. Your thinking shouldn’t have to change with them.

Matt demonstrated a system that turns static buyer personas into interactive AI simulations. Impressive. But he noted something that grounded the whole presentation: the real reason people show up to an event is still the humans in the room. No simulation replaces that.

The scariest AI risk isn’t replacement. It’s surrender.

Dr. Jasmine Gruia-Gray named something I think we all feel but don’t say out loud. She opened with a line that landed hard: “One day I couldn’t tell which parts of my thinking were mine.”

She cited a Wharton study where roughly 73% of participants followed faulty AI advice — not because they couldn’t tell it was wrong, but because the model was confident, and they stopped checking. That’s cognitive surrender. AI doesn’t replace your thinking. It keeps you from noticing you’ve already stopped thinking.

Her solution is a Socratic framework she calls BRACED — boundary testing, reversal from stakeholder, assumption surfacing, counter-hypothesis, disconfirming evidence, decision with tradeoffs. The specifics matter less than the principle. She ran it as a live game called Prompt Arena, where the goal wasn’t to get a better AI output. It was to build better thinking habits. That distinction is the whole ballgame right now.

The body knows things the brain ignores

Nicole Donnelly, the founder of Hello Moxie, gave what I thought was the most unexpected talk of the event. She’s been studying the intersection of trauma, workaholism, and leadership — and her argument is that most of our professional systems reward us for managing our bodies like machines. We optimize for output. We suppress the signals that slow us down. And we pay for it in creativity, in empathy, in the quality of our decisions.

We don’t need to move faster. We need to stop long enough to think. Embodiment is the last moat.

You can see her TEDx talk here.

Safe marketing compounds irrelevance

Jason Dressel, CEO of The History Factory, pushed back on what he called “confidence porn” — the performance of authority that substitutes for actual expertise. The market is correcting for that. People are hungry for real knowledge delivered through real stories.

His framework is simple: great stories need purposeful characters, a three-act structure built around conflict, and what he calls touchstones — the specific language and images that make a world feel real. Stories are 22 times more memorable than talking points. That’s not a preference. It’s neuroscience.

John Kowalski of BYK-Gardner Instruments said something I want to stitch on a pillow: safe marketing compounds irrelevance. He told the story of a company whose bear-resistant trash can failed spectacularly in a field test — and turned that failure into an unforgettable brand. The gap between what an industry expects and what an audience actually craves is where brand equity gets built. He called it the Awe Gap. I’m going to keep using that term.

Emotion is the experience. Full stop.

Stacy Sherman of Doing CX Right made a case that I think is more important than ever. As AI ingests public sentiment at scale, every micro-moment in the customer journey builds or erodes a ledger. The failed QR code. The boring hold music. The email that was obviously a form letter. These small failures accumulate, and AI systems are now reading that accumulated sentiment to rank brands.

Dana Malstaff, CEO of BOSS MOM, added a critical nuance on vulnerability — the kind that actually builds connection versus the kind that undermines authority. Her distinction: share your scars, not your wounds. Processed experiences with a lesson attached. Not active pain that you’re still in the middle of. Amen to that!

Dana also led a session on the future of brand communities, driving home the point that the best communities emerge from a dissatisfaction with the status quo. What do you want to change in the world?

Trust is the only distribution strategy that scales

Sarah Stahl, VP Marketing for Lake.com, shared how a startup resort hit $2 million in revenue on a $30,000 budget by out-trusting rather than out-spending. The mechanism was micro-creators with real proximity to real audiences. Sixty-eight percent of consumers trust a creator over a brand. That number should reorganize your marketing budget.

Chad Parizman of Ader Communications entertained everyone with a brief analysis of predictive markets and the potential dangers of addictive betting markets.

His argument was that prediction markets — platforms where people bet on real-world outcomes rather than company stocks — represent an underutilized seam for brands. 8.5 million monthly users, 25 trades per day. The conversations already happening around these markets are data-rich, audience-specific, and almost entirely untouched by brand strategy. The brands that figure out how to own those conversations are sitting on something.

It was the right mix of mind-blowing information and entertainment to end the day.

The future of content marketing

What an honor it was to sit side by side with the legendary Joe Pulizzi and hold court on the future of content marketing. Over the years, Joe and I have not always agreed but we have always been friends. As always, this was a spicy, energetic, and insightful 90 minutes.

Joe and I talked about what he calls the Trust Portfolio — and I think it’s one of the most practical ideas to come out of the event. Don’t bet everything on a single brand voice. Build a diversified network of employee creators. Give them room to be specific, to be themselves, to be a little weird. The marketing team becomes a media operations hub. The employees become the signal that cuts through the synthetic noise.

Our main debate centered around the most likely role of humanity in an AI-dominant content world. Joe thinks the window is closing. I think human art will persist. We’ll have to meet again in a few years to see what happens.

The future of your brand

Sarah Neely of Signal Swell has presented several times over the years and always has a fresh and relevant message. This year, she updated her core word-of-mouth marketing wisdom with a spin for the AI Age. She introduced a new framework — the Five C’s of AI Discoverability.

• Clarity
• Conversation
• Current
• Credible
• Composition

Mary Lague of Pilot 44 ran a foresight exercise that’s worth sitting with. If AI agents are mediating $3-5 trillion in commerce by 2036, and culture has fragmented into hyper-niche communities, what signals should we be watching now?

She hosted an interactive exercise that let every attendee create a vision of their own brand emerging from a set of megatrends such as brand communities and virtual humans.

But here’s the best part

These highlights are only the tip of the iceberg. Most attendees will tell you that most of the learning came from questions and answers, small group discussions (led by Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez, Lauren Colbert, Alice Ferris, and Chelsea Rae Stuck), breakout sessions on branding and personal branding, and late-night conversations at the bar.

For example, here are some takeaways from several attendees:

“I learned to not just embrace uncertainty, but to be grounded in it.”

“The biggest shift wasn’t a tactic. It was realizing that staying still long enough to understand what’s happening is often more powerful than reacting quickly to what’s changing.”

“Growth starts to feel heavy when nothing is compounding. That was the moment I realized the issue isn’t effort, it’s what the effort is building toward.”

Sarah Stahl, Founder, Market Movers

“Community creates the space for people to feel safe enough to move toward the future.”

“What do we hold onto and what do we release — that is our wisdom.”

Brian W Piper, Founder of AIreFlow Solutions

Melanie Borden, Author, “Theatre of the Mind” · Founder, The Borden Group

Mike Carr, Cofounder of John13.org &  Autism Labs

“When Mary Lague said 44% of Gen Z workers try to sabotage their company’s AI, it reordered my worldview. Leveraging AI is far more than mastering prompts and learning tools. It also involves helping people understand and work through massive change, many fear or don’t understand, so they seek to control it, apparently often to the detriment of their employer.”

“As Mark Schaefer said, leaders dispense hope. And when he exhorted us to create pockets of hope, order, and meaning, it landed as a clarion call to action for me and my business.”

Dan Christ, Owner and founder of Dan Christ Digital Services

“It’s possible not to be completely freaked out and overwhelmed about AI.”

Lisa Kohn, International Speaker, LisaKohn.com

“When you can’t tell if you’ve become part of the AI hive mind, you realize you’ve done it to yourself. Jasmine Gruia-Gray’s session on cognitive surrender was a moment that turned the conversation inward. While every other session was about forces changing the world around us and how to respond, she asked what we might be doing to our own thinking in the process.”

“Mark opened by making the case that uncertainty is the entry point for original thinking, and John Kowalski’s awe gap session reinforced it from a different angle. Safe marketing compounds irrelevance. The seam, the real opportunity, is in the unexpected.”

Elizabeth Humphries, Marketing Strategist, Market Your Marketing

“I was in awe of the people in the room at Uprising! Inspiring and engaging. It reminded me of the importance of presence and being fully present at an event like this will allow you to get the most out of your experience. If you’re distracted and disengaged, you could miss something that could change your life.”

Sid Meadows, President of The Collaborative Network and Host of The Trend Report Podcast

“The jaw-dropping moment for me was when I was encouraged to break through a self-limiting belief about what type of speaking engagements I could get paid for. For the first time in 25 years, I saw a path forward to market myself.”

Mike Garrison, founder of Values Based Mindset and author of Can I Borrow Your Car?

“Leaders dispense hope… giving your team, your customers, and your industry permission to believe something better is possible. When you stop selling features and start offering a vision worth following, you stop being a vendor and become the reason people show up.”

“The sheer volume of knowledge, expertise, and insight in this room was mind-blowing.”

John Kowalski, Disruptive Awe Architect, Disruptive Awe

“Our humanity is being stripped from us. Each talk pointed back to specific actions we can take to be more human, including choosing to be hopeful, more discerning, actively cultivating community by creating spaces where people feel valued, and reframing failure as experimentation. The more we lean into these things, the more we will become the trusted leaders and brands of the future.”

“Nanocommunities of 40 or fewer will be the future! This affirmed our company’s strategy. Scale is not always the answer.”

Nicole Donnelly, Founder, Hello Moxie

“Personal consequence is the real work. The breakout conversations are where ideas become valuable because they become personal. The unique element of The Uprising is that we get to intentionally take the time to unpack it and ask: What does it mean for me now?”

“Malignant Uncertainty” looms over livelihoods. The time needed (and spent) to process this feeling, with other smart folks, became the difference-maker.

“The Uprising had a contagion of bravery and a level of openness that elevated everyone.”

Lauren Colbert, Principal—Strategic Facilitator of Strategy, Innovation, & Collective Intelligence at Filament

“The fireside chat between Mark Schaefer and Joe Pulizzi reframed how I think about trust at scale. Mark mentioned that Cisco had trained more than 10,000 employees to speak on behalf of the brand — certified, equipped, and amplified. Joe called this building a Trust Portfolio. Distributed authorship. Distributed trust. Distributed reach. That changes the marketing job.”

Matt Wilkinson, CEO, Strivenn

“In an era of automation, bots, and synthetic content, care becomes premium. People want guidance, reassurance, belonging, support, and human attention. This made me rethink how I show up online and how I position my own services—not just as a consultant, but as someone who helps people navigate change.”

Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez, MBA, Bilingual Marketing Consultant and Founder of Beyond Engagement

“I’m energized by Mark’s idea of ‘uncertainty as fuel.’ It’s a powerful reframe in a time of so much chaos. ‘Negative capability’ is another reframing that speaks to intentionally and patiently pausing to connect new dots. I learned so much over the two days, and I know that I will continue to learn from this circle of smart humans.”

Sarah Neely, Vice President of Strategy at Fuzz and Founder of SignalSwell

“Each courageous moment rewires you to believe in yourself. This is the courage dividend.”

“I appreciated Sarah Neely’s new perspective on the future of discoverability — the S.H.A.R.E. framework (surprising, helpful, authentic, relevant, experiences).”

Jasmine Gruia-Gray, Managing Partner at Strivenn and co-host of A Splice of Life Science Marketing podcast, Product Marketing Tips newsletter

“Courageous actions rewire who you believe yourself to be.’ —Mark Schaefer. I found this particularly pertinent because every time I have taken a leap professionally or personally, it has paid off, and helped me douse some of that imposter syndrome or lack of confidence you get when you’re in a room that you’re not quite comfortable in.”

Stacey Miller, Vice President, Communications at Auto Care Association

“I need more community in my life! (inspiration, empowerment, safety).”

“Trust = safety. Nurture messaging creates belonging.”

Knox Keith, Author of Validated

“I’m inspired by how domain experts forge and build AI solutions. Just as my agency is building AI to address concerns related to accuracy and contextualization, I was so impressed by Dr. Jasmine Gruia-Gray’s work focused on critical thinking and cognitive decline. Her Socratic method-based BRACED framework was excellent.”

“Joe and Mark’s discussion has me completely re-imagining our leaders and employees as characters of our story, and how we tell that story through both company-owned and employee-owned platforms. This will likely be the biggest actionable takeaway in my strategic and tactical shift.”

Jason Dressel, CEO, History Factory

“We shouldn’t treat AI LIKE an audience. AI IS an audience—multiple audiences, in fact.”

“Negative Capability is the skill we need to cope with chaos. Marinate in an issue before acting under pressure to respond, and that’s how insights will be revealed.”

Dan Nestle, Founder and CPIO of Lilypath

“Within the first 15 minutes, I had my first ah-ha moment, when Mark said: ‘Every time I feel afraid, I do it!’ I need a poster of this in my office.”

“We are in the eye of the AI storm, but it also presents so many opportunities. I realized that I don’t have all the answers about how businesses will assimilate or adopt AI platforms, but I do know that the most powerful force in business is still human connection. Spending three days with 39 of the most knowledgeable, forward-thinking leaders in AI and new technologies left me feeling inspired and full of hope. The Uprising was an Executive Education course on steroids!”

Anne Deeter Gallaher, Owner/CEO of Deeter Gallaher Group LLC

“In a world that constantly competes for our attention, we need to ‘control the inputs.’ In other words, be deliberate about how much news we consume, which social media we engage with, whose opinions we give weight to, and how much access the outside world gets to our inner peace. Those inputs shape our focus, our fear, our energy, and ultimately, how we show up at work and in life.”

“We’re living in a time of ‘malignant uncertainty,’ where change isn’t only constant, it’s harder to predict. Companies need to let go of overly rigid plans and pay closer attention to what customers and employees are thinking, feeling, and doing in real time. The brands that earn trust will be the ones that build emotional connection when everything else feels uncertain.”

Stacy Sherman, International Keynote Speaker, Influencer & Podcaster: DoingCXRight.com

“AI is evolving and changing how we operate at a personal and work level faster than ever before. There is opportunity in seeing this ‘seam.’ Uncertainty makes room for me for creativity, growth, and progress.”

Debra Feresten, Debra Feresten Homes

I used to believe more content would grow my business, but now I see that trust is the real currency—and content is just the vehicle to earn it. That changes everything: from chasing reach to building a small, intentional audience that actually cares.”

“My AHA moment was realizing we’re not heading toward a world with better ads—we’re heading toward a world without them. When there’s no ‘skip button,’ only brands that create trust, community, and meaning will survive.”

Yevette Lynn, Kingsport Headshot Photographer and Studio Owner, The Journal

“AI tools become personal. They are like the hammer that a carpenter uses every day. They form to his hand and are customized to his needs. There is beauty in the wear of such tools, but if you were to pick one up, it feels foreign. To use them properly, one must interact with these tools and shape them to one’s personal needs.”

“Being raw in our content gives our community permission to share. But that sharing should come from scars, not wounds.”

“The tension between the obligation to react to the world and the value of marinating in uncertainty is the obligation of leadership.”

Atom Freeman, Founder of Prana DM, Host of Comic Industry Insiders podcast

“Building a personal brand is not a project, it’s a LIFESTYLE.”

“The customer journey is the cumulative effect of every interaction, good or bad.” Every micro moment shapes perception, and people are constantly evaluating, even when you are not thinking about it. What they remember is not necessarily the process, it is how it made them feel. “Emotion IS the experience”, and that is ultimately what defines your brand.

Your most powerful, underutilized influencer channel is already on payroll. Employees are a built-in network of credible, motivated nano-influencers, but only if you replace control with trust and give them a clear, supported way to share. If your own people are not advocating for your brand, why would someone else?

Chelsea Rae Stuck, CEO Craeve, and Host of the Curiously Stuck Podcast

And … back to me.

We can’t stay relevant on our own. Everybody who attended The Uprising has a new set of tools and a professional network to help them navigate the future.

The 2026 Uprising was a call to stop trying to be “safe” and instead build a future where our humanity is our most discoverable and durable asset. I hope you will join us May 04-07, 2027. Registration is open.

Some photographs provided by Yevette Lynn Photography

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 Human Renaissance in the Agentic Age: Insights from The Uprising Retreat appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Over the years, I’ve written about how I think humans will survive and thrive in the AI Era, and today I thought I would pull my main ideas together in one post.

Many people are defensive about AI or skeptical that our marketing jobs are at risk. I believe AI will certainly replace many tasks and even entire organizational roles. But there are four pillars of human dominance that will persist:

1. Personal brand
2. Brand communities
3. Experiences
4. Transcendent content

Let’s explore each one in detail.

1. Personal brand

You can’t love a logo, jingle, or piece of branded content, but you can love a person. In many cases today, the personal brand is the company brand, especially in smaller and medium-sized companies.

In an era dominated by deep fakes and misinformation, we will value humans who are the go-to people pointing us toward truth.

When ChatGPT hit the scene, I called tech analyst Shelly Palmer to get his view. “It’s terrifying,” he told me. “I just asked ChatGPT to compose a blog post in my writing style, and it did a great job. I’ve blogged almost every day for 15 years, and it wrote a perfect post in three seconds. I’m 80% replaced.”

While that “80%” quote certainly seems terrifying, a more interesting question is, “What is the 20% that is NOT replaceable?”

It’s his personal brand.

Shelly is known, loved, and respected. In a chaotic world of misinformation and deep fakes, we will always depend on a human being for insight and truth. Shelly has nothing to worry about. He cannot be replaced by AI because of his powerful personal brand.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve added a “100% Human Content” badge to my posts. I want to assure you that this is me. You can count on me. I’m not going away. I still matter.

For the past 10 years, I’ve shouted from the rooftops that your personal brand is the ONLY defense we have against the bots. Are you a trusted and beloved presence cutting through the noise of your marketplace?

It’s not too late to start your personal branding journey. The best place to start is my upcoming Personal Branding Master Class, the finest of its kind.

How do you thrive in an AI world? Your personal brand is your oxygen.

2. Brand Communities

A few years ago, I wrote a book called Belonging to the Brand. It had a bold subtitle: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.

I think I was right. Community was the FIRST marketing strategy. It’s the only marketing strategy people actually WANT in their lives.

SXSW, the largest annual gathering of thought leaders on earth, recently sent me an update that the most popular topic submitted this year was community — even bigger than AI! The need for brand communities and community professionals will increase.

I was recently asked how AI will take over brand communities. I can’t imagine a scenario where that would happen. Community is out of bounds for AI. It is uniquely human, an engine for connection, compassion, and love.

3. Experiences

Over the past 10-15 years, people have been pulling away from one another. We can now entertain ourselves, soothe ourselves, and play games all night long without ever leaving our living room.

But a strong longing for reconnection is evident, and signs of a renaissance in human experience are everywhere. Groups of young people are forming clubs and affinity groups to play board games, watch movies together, and discuss books. The greatest human memories come from shared experiences, not a gaming victory celebrated alone in a dark basement.

Have you ever attended a music event alone? Perhaps it was a pleasant experience. You enjoyed the music.

Now compare that to attending a concert with friends who are singing with you, dancing, and jumping for joy. The difference is a state of awe called collective effervescence, a powerful emotional contagion that occurs when you bring people together in a joyful way.

Businesses can help make this happen. How can we create shared experiences that make people feel our brand in a new way? What would a strategy look like if your goal was to add more awe?

4. Transcendent content

This is the main idea behind my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

Creating content that is “competent” is a losing proposition. You’re a commodity. Worse, you’re ignorable.

But we can create from a place of vulnerability and human truth that AI never can.

There’s a lot of anxiety about AI. And there should be. But when it comes to creating content, I’m not concerned. My posts are filled with insights, emotion, story, and Dad jokes that AI can’t replicate. I interpret the human experience in my own way, and that approaches art.

This is a unique time for human content. Most companies will opt-in to the AI slop. It may check a box. But it won’t win hearts and minds. Amid this AI frenzy, true human content is a luxury.

This is a big topic and an important one. My book teaches three methods to disrupt the pandemic fo dull fueled by the bots:

• Disrupt the narrative
• Disrupt how and where the story is told
• Disrupt who tells the story.

Here’s a simple example. I uploaded my book to AI and instructed it to create abstract images from the best stories. I then linked this to a QR code on the book’s cover. If you hover over the QR code with your phone, you will see an endless display of changing designs — the Infinity Cover!

Through this innovation, which cost alomst nothing, I disrupted how the story is told, where the story is told and even “who” is telling the story (it’s the cover!). This is audacious content that transcends the blah.

We are in for challenging times. But it is also a time of magic and endless opportunity. I’m sure these four areas of traditional marketing will continue to rely on human effort. Did I miss something? I’d love to hear from you if you have other ideas.

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

The post Four Pillars of Human Dominance in the AI Marketing Era appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been blogging for 16 years, giving away all my best ideas and advice. I am continually re-evaluating my strategy and have spent time thinking about monetizing my writing by moving to a subscription model on Substack. What I concluded might surprise you and perhaps guide your own monetization strategy.

Today I’ll cover:

• My current content monetization strategy
• A high-level view of Medium versus Substack
• My in-depth analysis of the risks and opportunities with Substack
• A final conclusion

Allow me to share a little story about how blogging drives my business.

The inbound marketing model

A few years ago, I received this email:

“Hi Mark. I’ve been reading your blog for three years and have become a real fan. I purchased your latest book and wanted to let you know it is one of the best business books I’ve read in the last 10 years. Just thought it was time to tell you how much I appreciate your work.”

It was signed by the CMO of a Fortune 100 company.

Two years later, he hired me to help organize a new content marketing department. I didn’t bid on the job. He just hired me becuase he grew to know me and trust me through my content.

Let’s break this down and reveal the classic “inbound” marketing strategy:

1. This person discovered my content and subscribed. I didn’t pay anything for this connection. It was organic, driven by the helpful content I freely put into the world.
2. After reading my content for several years, a trusting relationship developed. It was one-way, of course, but he grew to trust me entirely through the blog content.
3. Three years into this relationship, he bought a book, his first purchase from me.
4. Five years after he subscribed to the blog, he hired me for my most profitable assignment of the year.

And this is the way the world has worked for me, over and over again.

I’ve never made any money directly from my blog content — no ads, paid links, or sponsored posts. But when people trust my content, they hire me for speeches, workshops, and consulting. They’ll buy my books, purchase a consulting hour, or come to my Uprising retreat.

I’ve had a successful, profitable career by giving away content for free.

But many people are earning significant income on Substack. As I move to a slower pace of life, is it time for me to monetize my content directly and charge for it?

Substack versus Medium

There are many ways to monetize content directly, but the two big ones are Medium and Substack.

So far, my strategy has been to publish content on my website and then publish for free on both of these sites. Since both platforms have millions of subscribers, this allows my content to reach new audiences. For example, I have more than 45,000 followers on Medium. Medium articles also tend to rank well on Google.

Medium has another advantage — you’re paid by the number of people who read your content. By simply re-publishing a blog post on Medium, I average a modest $250/month, which is better than the imaginary benefit of Likes and retweets. And, there was an unforgettable month I made $10,000 on Medium. It’s like hitting that one great golf shot. It could happen again, right?

High-earning posts result from a Medium “boost” that floats your article beyond your audience so many more people read it. When does Medium boost? Who knows. It’s unpredictable and frustrating.

Substack has a smaller user base compared to Medium, but offers a business model with a more reliable income stream. People pay for your content through a subscription, and as long as you provide value, the income flows. You’re in charge of your revenue potential by growing your paid audience rather than relying on an algorithmic  Medium boost.

I currently publish for free on Substack — why not? I’ve attracted far fewer followers there compared to Medium … less than 1,000. And I’ve never made a dime there because to succeed, you must commit to a subscription model and refrain from publishing anywhere else. Many people are making a healthy living on Substack. Is it time for me to finally have a reliable income stream directly from my content?

The Substack life

Focusing on Substack as an income stream would require major changes:

• I’d have to create at least one in-depth post per week, and maybe more (I can do that).
• I would stop publishing original blog content on my own website.
• I’d have to develop and grow a Substack community with bonus events and content to add value.
• I would have to move my current blog/Medium audience to a paid subscription on Substack.

While I can commit to creating great content every week, the other changes represent significant risks. Let’s look at each one.

1. The end of the content on my site

As I researched this opportunity, I looked at the websites of Substack stars. If you click “blog,” you’ll find a link to Substack. There is no web-based blog any more.

There is a serious functional implication to this. Without regular, fresh content on my site, my SEO/AI signals dry up. My website isn’t just a blog; it’s a legacy media asset. It’s a lead generation machine.

If the site goes dormant, I lose:

• Authority signals

• Fresh content triggers

• Long-tail organic reach

• Visibility when AI search dominance arrives

That is just too much to lose. The sensible option would be to create two different posts for my site and for Substack. Double the work? No thanks.

2. Moving my audience to Substack

How many of my free blog readers will pay for Substack content? The research shows it will be 5% or less.

But those “free” readers have fueled my entire business model.

• Book sales

• Speaking leads

• Personal branding classes

• Media invitations

• Uprising retreat attendees

• Word-of-mouth leads

The average annual subscription price on Substack is $96. Assuming that 5% of my subscribers move, it’s probably not worth the financial risk.

And there’s another consideration. What if Substack goes out of business?

3. Building a community

The most successful Substack pros fully leverage the platform’s ability to create community through commenting, special events, and exclusive livestreams.

This would be a major benefit of Substack. But I already have a community called RISE. I’ve poured my heart and soul into that community, and I love the people there. I don’t have the need or bandwidth to duplicate that effort.

So a Substack community has no appeal or financial benefit.

The overarching goal

In summary, I certainly have an opportunity to monetize through Substack, but the risk of losing my SEO value and large audience overwhelms the benefits.

In the end, it comes down to my goals at this stage in my life. Money is less important than it was ten years ago. I want my ideas to spread. I want to help and teach. I want to find interesting projects that challenge me and connect me to cool people. I want to maintain a healthy and profitable speaking career.

A regular Substack income jeopardizes:

• SEO discovery for my website
• Serendipity (that random CMO, journalist, or CEO finding me)
• Long-tail inbound traffic
• A large, loyal audience

Monetizing content directly could actually shrink my economic surface area.

At this point in my life, a wide audience and the highest level of discoverability outweigh the potential of a steady income. I’ll stay the course and monetize through the indirect method.

Drop me a line and let me know if you’ve come up with a different strategy for your content.

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

The post Is it time to monetize your audience through Substack? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

What happens when everyone reaches for the AI Easy Button?

I have a lesson today about an emerging danger of AI and marketing. But to get to the lesson, you’ll have to hear my story. It’s an old story, but it matters a lot. Here we go.

I was the CMO for a large business unit of a Fortune 100 company.

Each year, we sent teams out to visit customers to learn how they were using our products and how we could improve. These three-person teams were well-trained for this activity, and the lessons we learned would inform my marketing and R&D strategy for at least the next 12 months.

This was a long and expensive process — our customers were scattered around the world. We were wrapping up our final trip of the year and saying goodbye to our hosts when one of the customer scientists said offhandedly, “By the way, did you happen to see this preliminary research report on coating ingredients from the U.S. government?”

We had not. When we looked into it, we found the new research could potentially ban a key ingredient that my industry had used in its products for decades. It was still early, but if the research found a problem with these chemicals, my company and its customers would be imperiled.

Changing a fundamental ingredient in an industrial product used worldwide is no easy matter. It would take millions of dollars and years of testing to make a change. But with this early alarm and the potential risk, we proceeded on an R&D path to find a replacement ingredient.

Three years later, the government changed the regulations on this chemical. Our competitors were panicked. We were safe because we had listened, learned, and acted responsibly, thanks to our deep and unique understanding of the market.

And that brings me to AI.

The AI Easy Button

I have a number of friends working in market research. Their workload is drying up because companies are turning to AI as an inexpensive shortcut.

Not only can AI scan the universe for the information you need, but synthetic AI audience panels can simulate what your customers might say in real interviews.

The general feedback is that using AI is about an 85% solution, and that is good enough to justify the cost savings over human effort.

Except when it isn’t.

Let’s go back to the story I told to begin this post.

There is no way we would have found that critical information through an AI scan or synthetic customer panels.

If I used AI for my customer research, I would probably have the same information our competitors had. What good is that?

The real marketing insight and innovation doesn’t come in the 85%. It comes inside the 15% that you get by doing the hard work and digging into unique customer insights.

Challenge and opportunity

The use of synthetic data for research poses both challenges and opportunities for traditional researhers.

Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Research, agrees there is a danger in relying too much on synthetic research. “At some point, the regurgitation of insights will lead to a brain rot like we’ve never seen,” he said. “Folks are going to be craving for authenticity and insight, and that only comes with years of human experience.”

Liz Miller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, told me, “Market research got itself into a bad hole because because 80% of their answers come from the same 20% of the population that answers questions. They then keep renewing the panel with the same people and give them a Starbucks gift card, hoping they will answer the same questions differently.

‘We’re in a disappointing space when it comes to market research, if we’re being really honest with it. So there is a place for AI research, but it also gives traditional researchers the chance to be brave and ask the hard questions, the questions they’ve never been able to have answered before.”

Pause before using AI

I know there are always budget pressures. I’ve been there. I know you have to make responsible decisions abotu your research. But before you hit the AI Easy Button, think hard about what you’re giving up.

Information that transforms your company?

A unique competitive advantage over everyone else opting for shortcuts?

An insight that secures your future?

Maybe your future lies in that 15% that only human experience can pick up on.

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

The post The AI Easy Button imperils the future of marketing research appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Nearly every time I read a marketing newsletter or analysis, I see a reference to something old becoming new again. If you have a brand story to tell, nostalgia marketing seems to be the wave to catch these days.

It’s been a while since I wrote about the power of nostalgia in marketing, so I decided to go down the rabbit hole. I found a new twist. Nostalgia marketing is so resonant right now that even startups with no brand heritage are using 1980s and 90s iconography and aesthetics to promote their products. Does that seem bizarre?

Let’s explore this together today. This article explains:

• Why nostalgia is such an important marketing consideration right now
• The three conditions making nostalgia a sustainable trend
• How modern brands with no heritage are tapping into the positive emotion of nostalgia
• Ten ideas to use nostalgia for your own brand
• What nostalgia might mean to Gen Alpha

Nostalgia marketing is everywhere

If you pay attention to marketing trends as I do, advertising seems to be in a time warp. Throwback products and images are everywhere:

• Fashion: Low-rise jeans, baby tees, butterfly clips, platform shoes.

• Accessories & tech: Digital watches (vintage Casio) are being rediscovered.

• Branding & marketing: Retro logos, reissues, limited “vault” drops from early 2000s design cues. Retro sneakers are the latest trend, as Adidas and Nike drop limited-edition versions of shoes from the 1990s.

• Food: More than 70% of consumers are drawn to childhood-evoking treats. Brands are leaning in with retro packaging and revivals precisely because it translates to sales lift with Gen X and younger shoppers alike.

• Media: Stranger Things. Need I say more?

Let’s keep running up that hill. Today, I’ll look at why and how you might capitalize on this trend (even if you have a new company with no significant brand history).

Side note: The generation born roughly 1997-2006 (Gen Z) is drawn to “eras before their lifetime” to find aesthetic distance or escape the present. While researching this post, I learned a new word. “Anemoia” means nostalgia for a time you didn’t live through. Don’t assume nostalgia needs to be their memory.

Anything old is new again

My friends at The History Factory created an interesting piece of free research on the new momentum of nostalgia in culture and marketing. Highlights:

• Younger adults are the loudest champions; around 70% of adults aged 18–34 show an interest in heritage.
• 74% of Americans would like to see more retro throwbacks from brands.
• Limited-edition, retro products are the most appealing type of content to Americans (among 12 possible content themes).
• Marvel leads the category for brand heritage storytelling across multiple channels, ranking No. 1 on the Brand Heritage Index with the highest overall score of 84.

So, this trend is undeniable and growing, especially with young people. Why now?

There are three main reasons nostalgia marketing is extremely relevant right now, especially with Gen Z:

1. Comfort in a period of crises
2. Historic media trends aimed at children
3. A search for shared experiences.

Let’s break each down in more detail.

1. Comfort food in chaotic times

Jola Burnett, SVP of consumer research company Ipsos, attended my Uprising retreat a few times. At a recent session, she presented on the most important global trends and said:

“This generation is not living through a crisis. It is living through multiple crises. It is a time of extraordinary economic, environmental, and social strain.”

In this context, a search for “comfort food” makes sense. During periods of unusual stress, people seek emotional regulation and a sense of belonging. The American Psychological Association notes nostalgia boosts well-being, eases loneliness, and restores meaning.

In the words of Dr. Krystine Batcho, it’s “the soothing ointment that helps people manage the anxieties from conflict.”

Nostalgia is an important part of “brand therapy” to get through the blues. And, we have a LOT of blues.

2. Media trends fuel the nostalgia marketing trend

I wrote about the influence of nostalgia in 2020 and noted that the evolution of media helps explain why old is gold.

Up until the 1980s — and the advent of cable programming — there was almost no direct marketing to children. Most of the early children’s television programming, like Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers, was on PBS — no ads. And at prime time, children watched whatever network programming mom and dad had on the tube.

Cable TV introduced fully dedicated channels for youth-oriented cartoons, movies, nature programs, and educational programming. This increased exponentially with the advent of the internet and surged again with the rise of smart devices, when children could watch anything, any time, and anywhere. An entire media ecosystem was created for kids.

Starting about 30 years ago, the golden age of children’s programming and youth-oriented product marketing began. The Millennials who grew up in this era have an incredible abundance of media-driven emotional connections compared to any other generation.

If nostalgia means longing for a happy childhood place or experience, you could say that kids growing up after 1980 have been thoroughly prepped for it.

3. The search for shared experiences

There is a third reason why nostalgia connects now — a search for shared experiences.

Our fragmented media environment means we have fewer common references than we did in the past. Everybody curates their own media experiences alone, through their earbuds.

You can’t have nostalgia without a shared past to return to — and you can’t have commonly understood jokes without a shared understanding, or even, in the truest sense, a shared language. The appeal of nostalgia is that it allows storytellers to set their adventures in the last period where we really did have that shared understanding — before the smartphone shattered our world in more ways than one.

What if you don’t have a nostalgic story?

There are many newer brands and startups that look like they dropped from a time machine. Look beyond your own timeline. Some nostalgia opportunities don’t come from your brand history—they’re cultural overlays you can tap:

• 80s arcade-style visual design
• Early internet aesthetics (pixel fonts, loading bars, Windows 98 UI)
• 90s mall culture
• Y2K chrome gradients and flip-phone culture
• Analog textures and filters (film grain, VHS distortion, cassette labeling)
• A brand pop-up shop that replicates a 1990s bedroom
• A “throwback menu” or “throwback website” for one day

Olipop is an example of a startup connecting to classic flavors and retro design elements:

My grandmother always kept a stash of Cream Soda for me, so I’m all in on Olipop!

Take a look at Vacation Sunscreen. The fast-rising brand created a 1980s world to establish the emotional connection to its product:

Vacation sun lotion even comes with its own “radio station” that plays oldie hits and commercials from the 1980s:

Cereal start-up Magic Spoon has a design that echoes 1980s/90s cereal boxes: mascots, bright gradients, Saturday-morning energy, but with keto macros and adult-friendly nutritional claims.

Many tech companies are adopting a lo-fi, pixelated look reminiscent of early video games. This is from the Nothing Electronics website:

I have suits older than the Graduate Hotel chain, yet when you step inside, it feels like you’re in the 1960s.

Their hyper-stylized retro design borrows from cultural memory, not their own brand history.

• Kitschy vintage colors straight out of a 1960s yearbook

• Plaid patterns, rotary phones, wood paneling, chandeliers, and campy memorabilia

• Guest rooms styled like nostalgic dorm rooms (complete with old-school desk lamps, varsity motifs, and needlepoint art)

• Public spaces that look like mid-century student unions or 1970s rec rooms

• Restaurant and bar concepts that feel like throwback diners, supper clubs, or old campus hangouts

I never look back fondly at my great memories at the good ol’ Walmart. It doesn’t seem ripe for nostalgia marketing. But this video is one of my all-time favorite examples of nostalgic emotions in an unlikely place. A genius commercial that became a viral guessing game:

So, you don’t need to be an old-timey brand to create a nostalgic feeling. Sometimes nostalgia is most powerful as an experience, not a product.

10 Ideas to create your own heritage moat

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying the number of crises in the world won’t diminish any time soon (Hey, AI, I’m looking at you!).

Does your brand have a heritage moat, a story that connects people to a comforting memory? Here are some ideas to put this to use for your brand:

1. Audit your “dormant assets.” Most heritage sits under-leveraged inside a company: old packaging, jingles, slogans, characters, mascots, stores, uniforms, product variants, and past brand partnerships.
2. Explore what your customers are already nostalgic for. Gen Z and Millennials constantly create nostalgia timelines on TikTok and Instagram. Search for people already celebrating a past version of your brand through remixed commercials, vintage packaging collections, and fan communities sharing memories.
3. Celebrate anniversary milestones. An obvious opportunity is taking customers on a trip down memory lane in association with a brand’s birthday. Let’s be honest … nobody cares about the anniversary except your company. But it’s an opportunity to bring back milestone memories that elicit positive emotions with your customers.
4. Don’t be gimmicky. Nostalgia trends are emotional triggers. They work because they connect — so whatever you borrow, ensure the narrative is meaningful and not just surface-deep. Nostalgia marketing can backfire if it feels fake, irrelevant, or neglects how times have changed.
5. Connect it to now. Gen Z cares about authenticity and values, not just the aesthetic. So when leveraging nostalgia, tie it to something relevant (inclusion, sustainability, community).
6. Bring back “lost rituals.” Many industries have rituals that quietly disappeared. Brands can resurrect these rituals digitally or physically. Examples: Burning CDs, Family game night, popping popcorn, the mall photo strip booth.
7. Engage the senses. Nostalgia is multisensory. It can be evoked by sounds, sights, smells, touch, and tastes.
8. Recycle past products. The Coca-Cola Company restocked shelves with a blast from the past—Hi-C Ecto Cooler. Ecto Cooler was first introduced in partnership with the original Ghostbusters movie in 1987, and a movie reboot gave Coca-Cola the opportunity to revive its popular discontinued product.
9. Resurrect old icons. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) hired a series of actors to portray its founder Colonel Harland Sanders since 2015. While actors like Jim Gaffigan and Rob Lowe don the founder’s iconic white coat from time to time, nobody says it quite like the Colonel himself. KFC’s more recent television spots splice together old film of Colonel Sanders or portray him in a modern context.
10. Explore emotional moments. Every brand has a moment where customers fell in love for the first time: “The cereal box toy I kept forever.”
    “The first time I tried a video game.”
    “The shoe I wore during a milestone moment in my teens.”
    “The logo that was on my high school backpack.”

• Identify and map those “first-love” moments. Those are the memories you want to activate.

The nostalgia of the future

I had this thought … what will be nostalgic 20 years from now for Gen Alpha (born 2010-2024)? Is it possible to create nostalgia-worthy brand characters, rituals, and cultural touchpoints today as part of a long-term brand strategy? Are there cultural patterns that seem destined to be beloved and memorable, or is it more random?

Maybe the nostalgia of the future will revolve around TikTok jokes and memes?

Have not really heard of anybody mindfully building nostalgia into a product for the next generation. If anybody is working on a nostalgia-forward strategy, drop me a line. It would be fun to hear about that.

In any event, the power of nostalgia soothes a whacked-out world, and it’s probably an idea to consider, even if you don’t have a historical brand story to tell.

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

The post The heritage moat: Why nostalgia marketing dominates today appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I have a new baby grandson. He is an angel and an extraordinary pooper. So, his talents demand a steady supply of diapers.

The boy is the end customer for any company selling diapers. But of course we can’t market directly to him. Mom and Dad are the decision makers. So, if you’re in the diaper business, you need to create an expert marketing appeal that targets the person between you and the final customer.

A similar dynamic is now occurring with AI and it will impact every business in the world.

Chapter 6 in my new book How AI Changes Your Customers digs into the rapidly increasing trust people place on AI platforms to make decisions for them.

I provided an example in the book where ChatGPT planned a detailed vacation trip to Paris for me, including hotels, restaurants, attractions, and transportation. I used the plan exactly … without seeing an ad, an influencer, or a piece of branded content.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth. When AI becomes your customer’s brain, AI becomes your customer. More precisely, Big Tech becomes your customer.

The moment your content is summarized, rated, or recommended by a machine, you’re speaking to the algorithm instead of a person.

In essence, we’re marketing to an intermediary decision-maker. We’re all in the diaper business now.

The dirt on “diaper marketing”

If you’re in marketing, you already know that AI is chipping away at the search engine business.

For now, Google still reigns supreme. In fact, search on the site is still growing.

But even Google uses an AI-assist that answers at least 20% of user queries.

Another mind-blowing fact is that if your business shows up as a recommendation on ChatGPT, it converts to a sale at a rate 23 X compared to traditional search on Google.**

As more people lean on AI for answers, context, and judgment, their buying decisions will become passive reactions to algorithmic cues. And this is not just for low-risk decisions. People are increasingly using AI to influence major purchases and life decisions.

** I’m sorry I don’t know the exact source of this fact. It was verbally reported at a conference and I could not record the source fast enough!

AI versus SEO

Perhaps the greatest question of our time is: How do we influence this powerful AI recommendation engine?

The answer is evolving day by day but here is one perspective informed by new research and expert advice from Rand Fishkin and Andy Crestodina.

The main themes are emerging day by day, but I think at a high level this is a pretty good summary (please drop me a note if you disagree!).

Top Factors Influencing SEO Success

(In no particular order)

• Backlinks and authority signals – Credible, high-authority websites linking to your content.
• Keyword relevance and intent matching – Aligning with what people are truly searching for.
• On-page optimization – Title tags, meta descriptions, headings, alt text, internal links.
• Relevant, original content – Depth, clarity, and usefulness for the searcher.
• Technical SEO – Site speed, crawlability, mobile-friendliness, proper indexing.

Top Factors Affecting AI Referrals

• Clarity of brand positioning — Easy-to-understand description of what the business does. Extreme detail about what you do.
• Content presence in high-quality sources — Indexed articles, interviews, studies, or reviews that the model can reference.
• Topical authority  — Demonstrated expertise in a niche (books, blogs, media presence). Harmonized messaging across website, social, press, and reviews.
• Reputation and trust signals – Recognized as credible, respected, and reliable. News articles, podcasts, thought leadership citations.

The Intersection!

Both SEO and AI search depend on authoritative brand content, positive social signals (validation), and content freshness (publish regularly!). The latest research shows that AI puts more weight on “newness” of the content.

Every business should be working on this, and by the way, if your internet security system is blocking AI platforms from crawling your site, stop that. I explain why here.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Many businesses will dutifully work on their content and AI signals but overlook the overrides. What is an override? The marketing power that transcends an AI recommendation:

Let’s break these down. Why are these elements of marketing important in the AI Era?

Brand preference — Brand is more important than ever. I might ask ChatGPT to plan a trip to Japan for me, but I might require flights on Delta, or a hotel stay at Hyatt because those are brand preferences. Brand love overrides whatever AI has to say.

Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) — WOMM is the most trusted, purest form of brand advocacy there is. I might consider what AI says, but I will absolutely act on a recommendation from a trusted friend. Now, increasingly that trusted friend might be AI, but that’s a story for another day.

Advertising — Great storytelling through ads can reach through the noise and connect with targeted customers.

Brand communities — About 80% of new business startups rely on a brand community as their most important form of marketing. The reason is simple. There is no stronger form of brand loyalty.

We’re all in the diaper business now

Well, there’s never a dull moment on the marketing scene, is there?

I hope today’s advice was interesting and useful. Please act on it. Think about how SEO played out. The early adopters of SEO strategy likely had an advantage and a premier place in search results.

The window will be closing on AI recommendation preferences in the same way.

Google search is still the most important marketing factor for some businesses but start considering the “diaper sales” mentality that is needed to win in the AI Era.

If you benefited from this post, you will love my new book How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.

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

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post Why every business is selling diapers now. AI versus SEO appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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

The post Strip humanity to its essence and you’ll build a durable business appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.