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.

The post How to use AI to become a genius appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

In this special episode of The Marketing Companion podcast, I reveal some one of the most important ideas from my new book, “How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.”

And I include a free gift!

This episode contains Chapter 1 of the audio edition of the book: Deep Thinking in the Age of Instant Answers.

You can listen to this special show here:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 324

This chapter covers several essential issues as we begin to understand how AI is rewiring humans … and our customers:

Why Deep Work Still Wins — Having written a dozen books, I know that the process of living deeply with new knowledge changes you at the cellular level—a process philosophers call phronesis. This slow burn of study and practice brings not just information, but practical wisdom and embodied confidence.

However, most people won’t put in the hard work. They opt for the instant answers. Human nature favors shortcuts. Thinking will be optional.

Experts warn that as AI systems take over increasingly complex decision-making tasks, our capacity for critical thinking may atrophy.

The Science of Cognitive Offloading — The research is clear and troubling: When we let AI take over, we’re not just surrendering the “heavy lifting”– we’re letting atrophy set in. It’s the digital equivalent of offloading muscle work to a machine, only now it’s happening to our ability to reason, synthesize, and create.

A Crisis of Curiosity — Perhaps the most insidious aspect of AI is its confidence. AI doesn’t just provide answers — it provides confident, polished, definitive answers. Advanced AI decision-making could significantly undermine people’s sense of agency and curiosity. If customers default to the shortcut, how do we—as marketers—connect with them in a world where thinking is optional?

While most people may opt for cognitive shortcuts, the curious few — the ones who use AI as a tool for deep exploration — will have a tremendous advantage. Used correctly, AI can feed curiosity, open up new knowledge channels, and expand creative thinking.

Your New Best Customer: The Algorithm — Here’s where it gets interesting for marketers: When AI becomes the customer’s brain, AI becomes your customer. The minute your content gets summarized, rated, or recommended by a machine, the algorithm is your real audience.

Our goal now is to train AI to act as a sales representative for our brands. That means feeding it clear, consistent, unmistakable messaging, both on your site and across the web, and not blocking AI from your content.

Feelings Are the Last Competitive Advantage — Finally, I discuss the ultimate AI override: what people feel about your brand. Even if AI provides the shortlist, what gets a customer over the line is often gut instinct, emotion, and connection.

That’s why brands able to spark resonance — through story, humor, surprise, or vulnerability — will win in a world of algorithmic sameness. This emotional layer becomes the rarest and most powerful differentiator.

I hope you enjoy this episode and the book, which is now available on Amazon >”How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.”

Please support our sponsors, who make this fantastic episode possible.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customers to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Unlock your brand’s full digital potential with SEMrush, the all-in-one marketing toolkit trusted by professionals worldwide. From uncovering competitor strategies to tracking keywords, optimizing SEO, and managing social media, SEMrush gives you the insights to outrank and outshine. Imagine having the power to spot opportunities before your rivals, sharpen your content, and drive measurable growth—all in one intuitive platform. Whether you’re scaling a startup or leading a global enterprise, SEMrush equips you with data-driven tools to win online. Don’t just compete — dominate your market with SEMrush. Start your smarter marketing

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Deep Thinking in the Age of Instant Answers: Navigating the Great AI Disruption appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

As a marketing educator, writer, and entrepreneur, I’m obsessed with understanding the impact of AI on marketing and sales.

On the latest episode of The Marketing Companion, I was fortunate enough to speak with Sandy Carter, who has a broad global view of the new realities.

Sandy, currently leading a high-growth tech unicorn and author of the new book AI First, Human Always (yes, I had the honor of writing the forward!), brings a rare blend of hands-on leadership and futurist perspective.

You can listen to this amazing show just by clicking here:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 323

And here are a few of the highlights from our talk:

From Counting Clicks to Decoding Intention

For years, marketers have focused on measuring attention, including views, clicks, impressions, and dwell time. We optimized content and spent ad dollars based on where eyeballs went, striving to interrupt or insert ourselves into the customer’s stream of consciousness.

Thanks to AI, that entire playbook is already getting upended. As Sandy pointed out, with advanced predictive tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, customers are now going straight to an agent who can not only surface information but also predict their needs.

Here’s the revelation: AI moves us from being marketers of “attention” to marketers of “intention.” When someone asks an AI assistant for recommendations, they’re stating exactly what they want—think “Give me the best CRM for a startup with $X budget and these features”—and bypassing traditional marketing funnels entirely. The agent already knows how to filter, rank, and recommend based on actual needs, not just exposure or interrupted attention.

The New Gatekeepers: How (and Where) AI Picks Its Winners

Naturally, our conversation turned to the practical question on every marketer’s mind: How do you become one of the five “recommended” brands that AI agents surface? When attention alone is no longer enough to get you into the consideration set, what signals matter?

Sandy’s real-world experiments and research laid it out:

Wikipedia Is Back in Style: AI tools routinely use Wikipedia to validate and select which products or companies to recommend. If you haven’t yet built or maintained a Wikipedia page for your business (or yourself!), you’re likely invisible to these agents.

Social Proof via Reddit: Surprisingly, Reddit threads and subreddits have become an influential social signal for AI. If your brand is being discussed positively in relevant Reddit communities, you’re more likely to make the cut. But beware: unresolved issues or complaints, even from years ago, can hurt you if your brand doesn’t participate actively and transparently.

Rich, Fact-Based Content Wins: AI loves structured, fact-heavy lists and articles — “five reasons to choose X,” “top ten features of Y” — even more than traditional SEO tactics. This means your blog’s FAQ pages, listicles, and data-driven content don’t just help search engines, but are directly picked up by generative models when responding to user prompts.

Authority Still Matters: Recent research (as discussed in a past episode with Andy Crestodina) shows AI privileges brand mentions in non-sales content, press articles, and academic references — pushing the importance of classic PR and media strategy back to the top.

The message is clear: if your brand isn’t showing up in these AI “source” locations, your odds of even being considered are catastrophically reduced.

Brand: The Ultimate “Override” in the Prompt Era

Yet, despite the surge of AI-powered decision-making, our conversation reaffirmed one crucial truth: brand still matters more than ever. AI might present five options when a user states their intention — but which one do they pick?

Often, the tie-breaker remains human: a personal recommendation, a powerful story, a reputation for exceptional service. I shared the story of my own Paris trip, where a friend recommended a gluten-free bakery that didn’t make it onto AI’s list, but immediately became my top pick. That’s the “brand override, ” an emotional shortcut humans still use to filter, select, and even instruct AI agents. Sandy reinforced this with her own experiences and evidence that many enterprise buyers, even after narrowing down their options via AI, still seek out word-of-mouth or social proof before making a commitment.

Even more fascinating: How do you become the default choice mentioned in AI user prompts? (“Book my trip on Delta,” “Research this with Salesforce,” etc.) This is the new holy grail — being so well-branded that you bypass the recommendation filter altogether.

Marketing to Machines (and Machine Influencers)

This doesn’t mean we can coast on reputation. We’re at the dawn of a future where, as Sandy observed, entire teams will be dedicated to “marketing to agents,” not just to human customers. Walmart is already experimenting with this, building strategies to influence the agents (and even humanoid delivery robots!) that are quickly becoming intermediaries for everyday purchasing decisions.

Imagine a robot delivering your pizza, choosing your drink, setting your table … Who is the true “chooser” in this experience: the human or the algorithmic assistant? Will P&G start marketing dishwasher soap to the pizza robot’s parent company, or keep marketing to households? The lines are already blurring.

The Next Generation: AI as Brand Builder (and Best Friend)

There’s another layer: The next generation of buyers — raised on Roblox, TikTok, and personalized AI companions — are already developing affinities through digital worlds. Sandy’s daughter knew to ask for Adidas after encountering it in-game, not through traditional ads or family habits. In many cases, the most influential “friend” or recommender may be an AI personality.

Let’s not underestimate the psychological shift underway. As AI companions move from functional assistants to social confidantes, their product recommendations carry new emotional weight. In fact, social AI companions already outpace ChatGPT in certain engagement metrics. That’s a transformational shift in the trust landscape—one that marketers must start preparing for now.

So, Where Do We Go from Here?

We’re moving from a world of *interrupt and persuade* to one of *predict and facilitate*, with AI agents as both gatekeepers and guides. As marketers, the urgent priorities are:

• Build and maintain accessible, accurate, and richly detailed references (Wikipedia, Reddit, media hits)
• Double-down on authority and co-occurrence in natural language (not just backlinks)
• Lean into transparent, conversational engagement with your audience and communities
• Embrace the necessity of “marketing to agents,” not just customers
• Never lose sight of the human: generate enough love, trust, and loyalty for your brand that customers ask for you by name — even when AI presents alternatives.

If there’s one lesson I took from our conversation, it’s that the era of “attention as currency” is giving way to intention, and the path from intention to purchase is no longer a straight line—nor is it exclusively under human control.

Stay sharp, stay engaged, and keep your brand both technologically visible and unmistakably human.

Please support our sponsors, who brings you this fantastic episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customers to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Unlock your brand’s full digital potential with SEMrush, the all-in-one marketing toolkit trusted by professionals worldwide. From uncovering competitor strategies to tracking keywords, optimizing SEO, and managing social media, SEMrush gives you the insights to outrank and outshine. Imagine having the power to spot opportunities before your rivals, sharpen your content, and drive measurable growth—all in one intuitive platform. Whether you’re scaling a startup or leading a global enterprise, SEMrush equips you with data-driven tools to win online. Don’t just compete — dominate your market with SEMrush. Start your smarter marketing journey today.

The post Attention to Intention: How AI is Rewriting the Rules of Marketing and Sales appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Some mornings, you just want somebody to serve you breakfast.

And on those days, I would drive to Cracker Barrel. Despite the fluffy eggs and smoky sausage, I never felt like I quite belonged in this place of silver-haired “old timers” and boxed sets of The Beverly Hillbillies. But it was close to my house, and I was hungry.

Then a new place opened — First Watch. This restaurant was clean and bright. It offered healthy alternatives as well as creative new options such as lavender pancakes, breakfast cocktails, and the GenZ signature dish, avocado toast. There were no Patsy Cline CD collections. And they leave the coffee pot on the table!

I have not stepped foot inside a Cracker Barrel since.

Apparently, millions of other people made the same choice. Traffic to Cracker Barrel declined by 16% in the last five years.

Something had to change for this brand, and fast. It was time for a refresh … and you probably know what happened next. Chaos.

What can we learn from this fiasco?

I won’t re-hash the debate, but as this unfolded, I couldn’t help but wonder … could a social media brand backlash like this happen to me? Could it happen to you and your company?

What do we need to do so that our own marketing efforts aren’t Cracker Barreled?

Was the backlash even real?

The most visible and public display of the change was a re-branded logo that eliminated the “old timer.”

The new logo was part of an effort to reach younger customers with a sleeker, more contemporary look. But this conflicted with the company’s old-fashioned, down-home image.

I thought the design was soulless, but I also approach these things humbly. I assumed this logo was probably the result of millions of dollars of testing and development. I was not in the meetings. There had to be a customer-driven logic here.

The backlash over the new design was swift and intense. Social and mainstream media lit up with criticism, including commentary that the brand had gone “woke” (more on that later).

My first instinct was to feel defensive and support the marketing team. It seems like everything in America is politicized these days. But would real Cracker Barrel customers even notice a logo change?

Research shows that there is almost no correlation between true public opinion and social media sentiment — a small number of angry people with large audiences can hijack the conversation and make it seem bigger than it is. Are the online critics even Cracker Barrel customers?

According to Cyabra, a social analytics firm that specializes in detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, 21% of the outrage was generated by fake accounts and artificial amplification.

These weren’t throwaway spam bots. They were sophisticated actors creating 916 coordinated content units that reached “more than 4.4 million potential views.”

Despite being artificial, Cyabra found a measurable real-world impact. The manufactured posts generated more than 3,000 genuine engagements, peaking August 22 — coinciding with a 10.5% drop in Cracker Barrel’s stock, much of it triggered by signals that never represented genuine community sentiment in the first place.

When the backlash came, I hoped Cracker Barrel would remain steadfast and see the thing through.

I recalled a similar outcry — the famous Nike brand partnership with Colin Kaepernick. Some people were so angry that they burned Nike gear in the streets! However, the company stood by its position, and the stock price soared within a week.

Cracker Barrel should stay the course, right?

How to avoid being Cracker Barreled

As the backlash intensified (including a tweet from Donald Trump), Cracker Barrel reversed its logo rebrand and returned to its original emblem.

Had a political agenda defeated a rational marketing strategy?

Does this mean we abandon solid business priorities when Twitter runs hot?

Could any well-meaning, professional marketer be Cracker Barreled?

We need to examine the entire story. Information began to seep out that there was inadequate research behind the rebranding. The company cut corners by moving to creative before a thorough market analysis.

They committed the great marketing sin: Creative before strategy.

Polling showed that three-quarters of Americans preferred the old design, with only 23% viewing the rebrand positively. That should have been evident in the research before the rebrand. But there was no research.

What was different about the Nike example? Nike had extensive research on the values and priorities of its customers. Aligning with the controversial quarterback made sense. The company knew there would be a backlash — and they accounted for it. But the people who complained were not their core customers. Nike held the course and accomplished a great marketing success.

The Cracker Barrel debacle serves as a poignant reminder of a fundamental lesson in Marketing 101: Strategy begins with research.

Commit to research

There are no guarantees in marketing. But if there’s one thing we can control, it’s whether our big bets are informed by reality or driven by guesswork and emotions.

Research isn’t just a line item in a budget. It’s marketing insurance. Cracker Barrel cut corners and went straight to creative. Nike didn’t.

And for a big bet like this, research has to be something more than polling or running a focus group. Great research is multi-layered:

• Quantitative data — surveys, polling, and yes, even new synthetic AI-generated panels that can test ideas in hours.
• Qualitative insight — focus groups, interviews, or just observing how real people interact with your product in the wild.
• Cultural listening — paying attention to the broader conversations, memes, and movements that shape how people interpret your brand.

Starbucks doesn’t guess on something as small as cup designs. They study cultural shifts related to sustainability, digital convenience, and identity before taking action.

Doritos ran a campaign stripping its logo from packaging/ads, betting people would recognize them anyway. They validated the idea through brand recognition studies and social listening before going public.

Chipotle monitored viral TikTok “menu hacks” (like the quesadilla + vinaigrette combo) and tested them in small pilots. Basically, this was free R&D that shaped product decisions.

Treat every decision — a new logo, a pricing change, a product feature — as a hypothesis. Test it before you scale it.

Why didn’t Cracker Barrel pilot the idea first? Brand arrogance.

Wokification

If Cracker Barrel had robust research that supported the rebranding decision, would it have made a difference? I’m not sure.

The lack of research was only part of the story.

Much of the social media backlash centered on the opinion that the Cracker Barrel CEO was a “woke woman.” When the attack takes that ugly, polarizing direction, reason and data don’t make a difference.

Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist, posted on X: “It’s not about this particular restaurant chain — who cares — but about creating massive pressure against companies that are considering any move that might appear to be ‘wokification.’”

The logo commentary was unhinged. Sean Davis, the chief executive of The Federalist, a right-wing website, wrote, “Cracker Barrel’s CEO and leadership clearly hate the company’s customers and see their mission as re-educating them with the principles of gay race communism.”

In what universe is a boring logo and new menu items a manifesto for gay race communism?

And if you followed this story, you’ll know that the president eventually weighed in.

Even if your research is sound, will a board of directors support your rebrand when the president of the United States piles on with negative tweets?

The new layer of fear

It’s impossible to know, but I don’t think any amount of research could have prevented the political backlash. It was a slow news cycle. The activists smelled blood and needed to stay in the culture wars spotlight.

Cracker Barrel messed up, but it didn’t deserve that level of hate. An interesting thought experiment: Could the highly successful Nike campaign be successful in this political climate?

For me, this incident highlights a new layer of fear in the marketing world. In my recent book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, I named “fear” as the biggest reason why most marketing is boring.

We play it safe and create boring work because of fear.

Fear of upsetting a customer.

Fear of a reaction from the legal department.

Fear of being ridiculed.

Fear of losing your job.

Fear of being the next Cracker Barrel.

We’re no longer in a comfortable world where a brand is what you say it is. The brand is defined by what others say it is. Including the social media rabble rousers. Including influencers trying to catch the wave of public opinion. Including the president.

The enigma is, “safe” is lousy marketing. “Safe” is ignorable.

The surest way to avoid being Cracker Barreled is to realize that your customers are the strategy. Start with research and, like Nike, make sure your leadership team is on board with the risks.

Research and organizational alignment don’t eliminate political risk, but they ensure you’re betting with data, reason, and a defensible strategy on your side.

Before you redesign, research. Before you publish, pilot. Before you fold, fight.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post How to keep from being Cracker Barreled appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My podcast features an unusual format: a rotating band of six co-hosts. This allows me to have smart, reliable guests, but on the rare occasion that somebody has a conflict, I get to bring in a surprise guest. In the latest episode, I was joined by my dear friend Gini Dietrich, a true legend in the world of PR, communications, and marketing. Our discussion spanned the evolution of social media, the enduring significance of relationships, the impact of AI on the attention economy, and, of course, Gini’s seminal creation: the PESO Model.

In this episode we cover:

1. The Evolution (and Challenge) of Social Media

Gini brought remarkable insight into how social media has changed since those early, “anything is possible” days. Social channels used to facilitate genuine relationships, connections, and organic reach—the building blocks of so many enduring professional and personal relationships. Now, the landscape feels more fragmented and transactional, with true organic reach having all but disappeared.

As Gini put it, “We had the ability to reach people around the globe that we never would have had access to in other ways. We were building relationships … that doesn’t exist today, which I think is really sad.”

2. Fractured Attention Economy

One of the most thought-provoking points in our discussion was the nature of the attention economy: it’s scattered across dozens of platforms, formats, and delivery mechanisms. The days of everyone reading the same publication or gathering around the TV are long gone. Now, as Gini noted, “there are really 12 distinct places that people are getting information.”

This is why her PESO Model (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned) is more relevant than ever. It offers a framework for creating a unified brand voice across all these channels. The real magic, Gini emphasized, isn’t in dabbling randomly in a little of everything, but in *integrating* messaging and strategy across media types.

3. The PESO Model’s Enduring Relevance

It was a delight to hear Gini tell the origin story of the PESO Model, as developed in her book “Spin Sucks.” What began as a way to organize and demonstrate the evolving role of PR and communications has evolved into a respected global framework, taught in universities and utilized by Fortune 500 teams.

This is a great story that illustrates how a bit of luck is at the root of almost every business success.

4. Navigating AI in Communications and Marketing

Of course, we couldn’t have a marketing discussion in 2025 without talking about AI. Gini shared practical, real-world examples of how AI is being cautiously (and creatively) woven into client work.

There is undeniable momentum: “the horse is out of the gate,” as Gini wisely noted. Yet legal, ethical, and practical questions abound.

5. Breaking Bad Rules in PR (and Marketing)

Finally, I had to ask: what’s one “bad rule” in PR that desperately needs breaking? Gini’s answer was swift: the tired practice of measuring impact by media impressions and advertising value equivalencies. It’s time to move beyond archaic metrics and embrace more meaningful measurements aligned with business outcomes.

My conversation with Gini was a reminder of how quickly our field evolves—and how much wisdom we can gain from those who have shaped its evolution.

This is a fun, memorable conversation between marketing friends, and you won’t want to miss it. Just click here!

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 320

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this fantastic episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customers to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post Attention Economy 2.0 and the Impact on Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The other day I checked in on Twitter (Still can’t bring myself to say X) and saw this tweet:

About a year ago, Twitter started injecting tweets into my “notifications” stream from people I don’t follow. So, I don’t know Faith Back Rub. Never heard of the account before. And yet, Twitter’s algorithm somehow thought this was one of the most important things for me to see that day.

The message I received was “a famous American football player slammed a presidential candidate.” And then I went on to something more interesting in my busy day.

But then I thought about it a little more: this celebrity American football player is usually non-political. He makes millions in product endorsements and podcast sponsorships. This statement seems uncharacteristic. So I went back to the tweet and clicked on the actual Kelce message:

Now my reaction was — well, this is a verified account. Looks like Travis Kelce really did take a clever swipe at Trump. Surprising. But what is this “Parody by Rub” thing in the corner? Is this real or not? Now, I had to dig to figure out what was going on. And here’s the truth:

This did not come from Travis Kelce, but how would I obviously know that? Remember how this showed up in my news feed: There was no indication that this was fake news when it was displayed to me. I read the headline and moved on.

As it turns out, most people who clicked through were fooled by this tweet, even though it was identified as a “parody.” I know this because there were nearly 1,000 comments on this tweet, most of them Trump supporters blasting Travis Kelce — who had nothing to do with this opinion.

And this is the true problem with social media. The threat to our society doesn’t necessarily come from what people say, it comes from algorithms amplifying disinformation.

The implication of amplification

Everybody has a right to say what they want to say, even if it’s incorrect or controversial. When the American Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, even the most powerful and compelling voice back then could only hope that somebody would read their pamphlet or hear a speech. Information spread slowly, and mostly, locally. Even a juicy conspiracy theory couldn’t get nationwide attention very easily.

But today, damaging content can spread instantly and globally. And that puts a new spin on the issue of free speech.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said there is a limit on free speech: “You can’t yell ‘fire’ (with no fire) in a crowded theater.” But today, anybody can yell fire, and it can impact the opinions of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people. Amplification matters. Amplication is the threat. Why isn’t anybody taking responsibility for this?

Social media companies must be accountable

Let’s think through the case study I presented today.

• Twitter’s algorithm—no human being—decided to amplify news clearly marked as fake into user news streams without indicating that it was a parody (the first screenshot above).
• Based on the comments, two-thirds of the recipients of this tweet thought it was real, or 342,000 people.
• But that’s just the beginning. This fake news was retweeted 7,700 times!

This example was relatively harmless. The parody tweet probably caused Travis Kelce some irritation, but maybe that goes with the life of a celebrity.

However, what if this amplified fake tweet was devastatingly serious?

• What if a “verified account” called off evacuations in the middle of a hurricane?
• What if a fake account said every computer was hacked and would blow up today?
• What if the tweet accused Travis Kelce of beating up his girlfriend Taylor Swift?

My point is that Twitter and any other platform that employs algorithms to knowingly spread false claims should be held accountable.

In a recent interview, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari made this comparison: People can leave any comment they want on an article in The New York Times, even if it’s false. But amplification from social media companies is like the newspaper taking a bizarre, false comment and putting it on the front page of their newspaper.

That’s irresponsible and dangerous to society. Nobody would stand for that. And yet, we do.

Aim at amplification

As we enter the AI Era, the danger of fake news and its implications grows profoundly.

Let’s cut to the chase — Twitter knowingly lied to me to increase my time on their site and benefit its bottom line.

While it would be nearly impossible for any platform to monitor the comments of millions (or billions) of users, it’s much easier to hold companies accountable for spreading known false information to innocent people. This is a simple first step to protect people from dangerous falsehoods.

Why is nobody talking about this? Addressing bot-driven “sensational amplification” is a much easier fix than trying to regulate or suppress free speech. This must be a regulatory priority.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post The biggest threat to free speech and democracy isn’t speech, it’s amplification appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

While AI is the greatest marketing story since the internet, it’s been earning a lot of bad press lately.

• Some analysts don’t see the possibility of an ROI commensurate with the billions being poured into the technology.
• Environmentalists decry the energy that is needed to maintain the systems.
• Lawsuits are flying everywhere, and deep fakes have become mainstream news.
• And on top of this, most people aren’t adopting the technology beyond “dabbling.”

It begins to make you think:: Does AI have a marketing problem?

A few weeks ago, I suggested that it was time for AI to embrace marketing. No tech company is telling the story of what AI is and where it’s going—the story is being interpreted by pundits, critics, and politicians.

Sure enough, both Google and Microsoft launched ad campaigns during the Olympics, but the ads were terrible. Google’s ad, in which a father encourages his daughter to use Gemini to write a letter to her favorite athlete, was particularly cringe-worthy. Writing a child’s letter? Is that the best you can do?

The AI marketing problem is one of many subjects I cover with Paul Roetzer on the new episode of The Marketing Companion. Paul is the founder of the Marketing AI Institute and always presents a measured view of the AI landscape. But we did address some hot-button issues like:

• The new AI “robber barons” knowing stealing content and IP to grow a business
• The HUGE copyright issue blocking adoption
• The special impact of Elon Musk
• The lack of preparation for possible AI-driven job loss
• AI and the U.S. election
• AI and marketing productivity

Does AI have a marketing problem? This episode will undoubtedly get you thinking. Click here to listen!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 296

Resources mentioned in the show:

JobsGPT

Artificial Intelligence Show

MAICON

CharacterAI

Special thanks to guest appearances from RISE members who participated in the bonus Q&A session:

• Joeri Billast
• Brian Piper
• Dan Christ
• Sandee Rodriguez
• Roxana Hurduca?
• Bruce Scheer
• Scott Scowcroft

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this amazing episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customer to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence in order to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Does Marketing Have an AI Problem or Does AI Have a Marketing Problem? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The world is going bonkers over a bombastic claim implying that AI is the doom of marketing.

On a recent episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast hosted by Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput, the hosts referred to an interview of Sam Altman on a site called Our AI Journey.

The interview is behind a paywall, but Paul relayed this specific quote about the doom of marketing and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Paul noted that it is unusual that Altman would comment on something so specifically. Here it is:

“Oh for that (marketing) it will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly, and at almost no cost be handled by the AI. The AI will likely be able to test the creative in real or synthetic customer focus groups for predicting results and optimizing. And free, instant, and nearly perfect images, videos, campaign ideas — no problem.”

You can see why a quote like this would twist your shorts.

The quote went viral and spurred some heated online discussion. Is this true? Will we be losing 95% of our marketing jobs?

The answer is no, and I’d like to tell you why.

Human-based marketing success

Over the years, I’ve worked with many different companies and featured their tales in my books and blog posts. Here are a couple of my favorite marketing success stories (I promise, this is leading somewhere!) …

To launch the second season of WestWorld, HBO hired Giant Spoon to re-create the set of the TV series in an abandoned town outside of Austin, Texas. More than 60 actors enacted scenes from the show as guests from SXSW posted more than a billion impressions on social media. This required a collective collaboration across dozens of disciplines from design to set-building. Here’s a video glimpse of the project:

Yeti rapidly became a major U.S. retail brand, but for the first five years of the company’s existence, its only marketing tactic was word-of-mouth marketing. The company partnered with trusted outdoor guides to tell the story of Yeti and drive sales of its premium ice cooler. Today, Yeti is a $4 billion brand with a wide range of products.

Although Sephora has stores in nearly every major city in the world, 80% of their sales come through the company’s online community. Their most important metric is human “engagement” with customers, demonstrating that new ideas, products, and content are relevant — a leading indicator to sales.

When I was with a Fortune 100 company, my team worked with an anthropologist to observe how people used different products in their homes. We discovered that most people don’t use the back of their refrigerator shelves—this is where the scary stuff lives! With partners, we designed and patented the now-famous long “fridge pack,” which productively used this space and became one of the most important packaging revolutions in beverage industry history.

Another company innovation I helped lead was spurred by an off-hand customer comment at the end of a “listen to the customer” visit. Responding to the casual idea he expressed led to a multi-million-dollar development project and a long-term competitive advantage for the company. We never would have found that idea through an online survey.

Thanks for obliging me on this trip down memory lane.

I needed to briefly showcase the variety of marketing possibilities and the importance of human beings in the mix. How many of these success stories could have been eliminated by AI?

The answer is obvious: None of them.

AI is not the doom of marketing

Let me be clear. AI will replace many jobs, especially those based on repeatable patterns, such as data analysis, creative treatments, content development, and formulaic sales pitches.

But marketing is specifically about creating and keeping customers. And human customers do not necessarily follow patterns because they are emotional, irrational, and ever-changing.

Sam Altman is a smart guy. He’s in the middle of the AI world, and I am not. But I am in the middle of the marketing world, and he is not. And while he is correct that AI will replace a massive number of marketing tasks, most marketing jobs will not go away for these five reasons:

1. Importance of human connection

The subtitle of my Marketing Rebellion book is “The Most Human Company Wins.” This is undeniably true. In a fragmented and disconnected digital age, we value more authentic human interaction, not less.

Marketing often involves building relationships and trust with customers. Human marketers are better equipped to understand and respond to the nuances of human communication, empathy, and personal connections that are crucial in many marketing roles. Altman isn’t considering this important aspect of marketing.

As I showed in the example above, YETI is a $4 billion brand because of human connections, period.

2. The mandate for weird

Great marketing isn’t about conformity and following patterns. It’s about non-conformity and breaking patterns. When it comes to non-conformity, humans have the edge because we love to be weird. Great marketing is weird. I mean, have you looked at TikTok lately?

I hired a creative director once because she sent me a box of homemade cookies. Is that marketing? You betcha. And the reason it worked is because it BROKE a pattern. She stood out because she didn’t just send me an email or a resume, she sent me cookies. AI is amazing because it helps us detect patterns, but we often create customers by breaking patterns.

Perhaps the king of viral marketing is Who Is The Bald Guy (aka Michael Krivicka). His videos are warped and demand our attention. Here’s an example:

These elaborate videos are possible only by breaking patterns through an intense amount of …

3. Human collaboration

Great marketing almost always involves collaboration among team members with diverse skills and perspectives. Human marketers are essential in fostering teamwork across the organization, facilitating complex communication with agency partners, and overseeing creative problem-solving.

Hundreds of people were involved in the Giant Spoon Westworld activation. AI will make these interactions faster and more effective, but we’ll still need the human collaboration. Breakthrough success doesn’t come from thinking out of the box, it comes from combining the boxes. AI will help that but not replace it.

As I look back on my career, every major success story was achieved through collaborative, cross-disciplinary human efforts.

4. Insight beyond a database

I provided the example of discovering a crucial customer idea from a random comment at the end of a live meeting. There is no database in the world that could have delivered that idea. How did it happen?

1. I was in a live meeting
2. The people in the meeting trusted me enough to be open and honest
3. My experience and specific industry knowledge allowed me to realize that off-hand comment was important
4. The trust I earned within my company allowed me to get a multi-million-dollar project approved that created a new, profitable product.

Similarly, the breakthrough idea about the back of the refrigerator came from detailed human observation. That is a profound marketing success and 100 percent human.

Think about it this way. Do you have a competitive advantage because your business is on the internet? Of course not. Everybody’s on the internet. Similarly, everybody will have AI integrated into our key marketing tools and that AI will be mining (mostly) the same historical datasets.

In the short-term, you might establish a competitive advantage if you apply AI in a creative way and achieve first-mover advantage, but in the long term, AI will be an enhanced business tool everyone will access. Competitive advantage can still come from human insight.

5. Ethical considerations

Marketing decisions often involve ethical dilemmas, such as respecting consumer privacy, avoiding deceptive practices, awareness of evolving cultural sensitivities, and promoting social responsibility. Following the law is easy. Doing what’s right is not always so obvious. Human judgment is essential in navigating these complex issues.

As I write these words, there is news all over the web about AI companies indiscriminately breaking the law to bring copyrighted content into their insatiable data machines. There is a historical pattern of recklessness in the tech industry and it will take ethical, human business leaders to use AI in an appropriate manner.

Where do we go from here?

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you know I’m a realist. I do my best to tell the story of marketing in a fair and truthful manner. I’ve been immersed in the world of AI. I study it every day. I’m not naive and I certainly have a healthy amount of fear as I consider our AI-driven future.

This post is not meant to sugarcoat a threat; it’s simply a more holistic perspective of how marketing works. The fatal flaw in Altman’s comment is that he’s considering a small subset of the marketing world —a number of tasks he might observe from a relationship with an outside marketing agency.

Will AI impact your career? Absolutely, no matter what you do.

AI, and especially AGI, will transform the marketing landscape and automate many tasks. It will eliminate many entry-level jobs dedicated to copywriting, video production, social media management, research, and more. A recent WSJ article projected that college graduates hoping to get a knowledge worker job must be prepared to step into middle management positions because the low-level jobs will be gone. Huh? How is that going to work? Probably worthy of a separate blog post.

However, AI is not the doom of marketing. It is unlikely to eliminate the majority of marketing jobs, at least in the foreseeable future. Instead, the role of human marketers will evolve to focus on higher-level strategic thinking, creative cultural insight, and human connection. That’s how customers are created.

The Most Human Company Wins. Don’t lose sight of that, and you’ll be OK.

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 Unsplash.com

The post Why AI does not mean the doom of marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

SXSW 2024 was a gathering of thought leadership, providing a glimpse of “what’s next” in media, technology, and marketing, among other topics. I’ve been attending SXSW since 2010. It’s expensive, crowded, and — with 500 sessions a day — overwhelming — but I regard it as an essential part of my professional growth.

Each year has its own personality. My first conference in 2010 represented the dawn of social media — unbridled excitement! SXSW 2024 seemed more somber as attendees pondered deep fakes, the existential nature of AI, humanoid robotics, quantum computing, inclusivity, and mental health.

I took pages and pages of notes — this is a serious learning opportunity! But I wanted to pass along at least a few observations. I want to emphasize that my experience is a tiny sliver of the SXSW 2024 reality. I skipped out on the celebrities, the movie debuts, and the glitzy brand activation parties in favor of relevant topics, smaller discussions and intimate dinners.

I attended a workshop on how to be a futurist. The big a-ha for me was approaching various future scenarios through storytelling. Articulating a narrative about the future makes you think through the implications of trends. Very useful.

The first research on Gen Alpha was interesting. Gen Alpha is 0-10 years old so this came through interviews with their Millennial parents. They are projected to be:

• Fiscally conservative, an outfall of parents who are in debt
• Highly aware of brands and brand preferences
• Already influential in family purchase decisions
• The first headset generation. They prefer VR to tablets
• Non-readers of book
• 40% spend at least three hours a day online, and 24% spend at least 7 hours a day on a smartphone (if they have one).

Researchers emphasize the critical value of intuition in the AI Era: “The greatest source of wisdom is in our bodies.”

An interesting idea: Imagine your brand as a character. What would it look like? What would it say? What is its aesthetic?

There has been progress with technology to detect deep fakes but the social media platforms have rejected it because hate and controversy are good for their ad sales. Experts point out that elections are already being disrupted around the world by deep fake content and the US election is going to be a misinformation shit show. Biggest threat in 2024 is voice fakes, in 2025, realistic video avatars. Sora was mentioned as a game-changer.

There are 100,000 applications that make deep fakes. Nobody stands a chance to discern deep fakes without technological support. We need AI to beat AI.

During a keynote discussion about OpenAI, protesters yelled outside, pleading to protect the jobs of graphic designers. Poignant moment and an uphill battle.

Interesting research on what creates customer immersion (beyond engagement):

1. Awareness – Overcoming distractions and getting their attention. Include them on their terms.
2. Willingness – They decide to participate. Is it worthwhile? Do we have the time? Are there others we know who are involved? Is it safe? Safety is crucial.
3. Connection – Does it meet expectations? What is it offering? Can I contribute? If you don’t make this connection quickly and clearly, you lose people. “I was drawn in, it seemed relevant.” Once they are engaged, is the safety validated? Learning about the norms of the group.
4. Investment – Risking their social capital, giving their attention, an ongoing investment. People want to see an immediate return. Is the community responsive to my needs?
5. Sharing – Earned by a gratifying experience. We want other people to share this experience. Community networks are the key to engagement loops (self-sustaining engagement, collective immersion)

I was encouraged to see a lot of content focused on the importance of word-of-mouth marketing as a “lived brand experience.” I wrote extensively about this in Marketing Rebellion as a key part of the future of marketing. I really think we are moving into a new era of brand marketing!

58% of Gen Z think the more absurd, the cooler it is. 82% say being weird is in. Perhaps discomfort is the future of marketing – breaking taboos.

Commercial humanoid robots are a year away and will be under $50,000. Good at moving things and lifting, nimble physical dexterity. Integration with AI allows more human-like decision-making.

TikTok has established an expectation that brands are defined by co-creation (re-mixing memes) and community instead of “broadcasting.” Co-creation is the language of the platform. You no longer have full control of your brand. Brands have to learn the language of creation. People expect brands to be part of the humor and that might poke fun at a brand.

There has been a lot written about the amount of time people spend scrolling on TikTok but what is not being captured the enormous time spent on creating for TikTok. It really stunned me to realize how many people are devoting their lives to ephemeral content in the hope of their 15 minutes of fame.

Another realization … almost every TikTok viral brand “success story” is a fluke. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t strategized, it had nothing to do with an intentional creative effort. The famous cranberry juice case study is an example. TikTok’s recommendation for success: Lower your brand standards. Hmmmmm … that is not going to be a popular suggestion.

Growth in the gaming industry is stagnant, and the business is experiencing an upheaval due to consolidations and new platforms. Instead of new titles, growth is expected to come through interactivity and community.

With a history of employee abuse, the game industry is expected to be unionized.

Major marketing industry disruptors disclosed in various sessions:

• Hyper-fragmentation of culture and media. How do we reach them? 250 million creators = 250 million new media channels
• Rapid growth of Discord and other private communities
  Ad-free social media platforms
• No watercooler moments – no shared experiences due to isolation
• Spatial computing
• Immersive and metaverse — headset costs will drop, experiencing products will be transformed
• Data privacy — 2.6 billion data records breached in the last year
• Crackdown on collecting biometric data
• Data wallets. Consumers control the narrative
• Sustainability — Advertising eats up a lot of energy. Times Square could power 160,000 homes
• Neuroscience — EEGs, Eye tracking, wearables, neural links. Meta is working on a tech that can read your mind
• Real-time advertising reactions enabled by AI
• There is a backlash against purpose-driven marketing because too many brands make promises they don’t keep.

Japanese technology used human brainwaves to communicate with a 3d printer and print a functional guitar. The command line is “your thoughts.”

We are in a technology supercycle that will create sustained changes in the economy. The last example was the Internet. Three technologies are driving this cycle: AI, biotech, and interconnected devices.

What if somebody creates an “AI event” with thousands of fake accounts and a variety of real content and reactions? It would take us a long time to figure out it was fake, and by that time, it could trigger a real-life reaction. The end state of AI is not cartoon images; it is a war, stated futurist Amy Webb. You can watch her talk here:

AI is running out of data, so companies are inventing new devices to get more data into their systems. We are about to be surrounded by millions of sensors to not only know what to say next but also what to do next. VR, like Apple Vision Pro, is a face computer that will collect details about your life. It will read your intentions by reading your pupils, which react before your body does. It will know what you will do before you do it. There will be a battle for face supremacy.

If somebody steals your biometric or movement identity, there is no way to get it back or reset it.

The market does not reward safety. It rewards supremacy.

An organoid is a computer grown from human brain cells. This is already happening. Brain-based computing (organoid intelligence) disconnects our need for rare materials and massive energy consumption.

AI will create massive disruption in jobs and the economy. Governments need to create a Department of Transition (create a soft landing for businesses, move people to trades)

Compared to other years, social media, content marketing, and Web3 were down; podcasts, metaverse, influencers, privacy, experiential marketing, community, and storytelling were up. And of course, AI was featured in a thousand sessions!

Well, those are a few takeaways from SXSW 2024. Hope you found something useful here and maybe I’ll see you at SXSW next year?

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 What’s Next? Reflections on #SXSW 2024 appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been giving many talks about community-based marketing, and one of the common discussion points is measurement. Isn’t that ALWAYS the most important question in marketing? What’s the value of a brand community?

But when it comes to community, brands are often entering an alternate universe — many traditional ideas of brand messaging and control are abandoned.

First, let’s be clear that when I say “community,” I mean either building or partnering with an online or offline community who:

• know each other
• gather for a unified purpose
• participate in the direction and evolution of the community

This is different than influencer marketing, which I probably need to address in a separate post. With influencer marketing, you typically lightly touch consumers through a brand mention. Through a community, your aim is to build brand love and loyalty through a consistent effort.

One other caveat — most communities are transactional and focused on customer self-service. The value of those communities is easy to measure because you can track customer service costs and cost avoidance. But a community aimed at customer loyalty and brand-building is harder to quantify.

How do we measure the value of a brand community? Here are ten ideas.

The value of a brand community

As a marketing professional, your ultimate goal is to create customers. There are two ways to do this, either through transactions or brand-building.

Direct transactions (sales) are usually troublesome in a community. People want to be there because they share some purpose with you. They want to grow, learn, and change the world with your help. Of course opportunities to sell are possible, but if all you do is sell, people will run away and never come back.

So, most unrealized benefits from a community come from brand-building. Here are some best practices I’ve observed as companies measure the value of a brand community.

1. Engagement

One of the largest and most successful brand communities in the world is hosted by Sephora. With 6 million members, 80% of the company’s revenues come through this community! But their most important metric is engagement. Nike measures success through user engagement in workout sessions, challenges, and community discussions.

If people are engaging in the community through comments and conversations, it shows the company and the community is relevant. And if they are relevant, their brand is heading in the right direction — a leading indicator of new product success and sales.

In the social media world, I’m not a fan of using engagement as a primary metric. But when it comes to community, engagement is highly prized.

2. Ideas and innovations

Many brand communities put a premium on ideas for new products and innovations. For example, IKEA, Nike, and Lego all run large communities devoted to product development. Community members have a stake in the success of these products, which drives loyalty and sales.

3. Advocacy

Research shows that trust in businesses, media, and advertising is at an all-time low. But we trust in each other. In fact, word-of-mouth recommendations and user-generated content drive a large portion of sales these days.

Using a community to drive UGC beyond the community is massively valuable for any brand, and it is fairly easy to measure.

4. Conversion Metrics

Tracking metrics such as conversion rates, customer lifetime value (CLV), and the correlation between community engagement and product purchases helps measure the transition from community member to customer.

5. Brand Sentiment

Closely related to engagement rate is sentiment. Are the brand-related conversations positive? Positive sentiment indicates a strong and healthy community that can drive UGC and loyalty. New AI tools are allowing communities to assess thousands of data points to gauge conversations.

6. Growth of Community

Measuring the number of members joining the community over a specific period is a reflection of relevance and a leading indicator of sales.

7. Brand relevance

A primary value of a brand community is the dialogue between you and your customer. A successful brand has to be a journey of relentless relevance and there is no better way to do that than to let your customers lead you to what is next.

The ideas shared in my community help me be a more relevant and effective speaker, writer, and consultant. This is the primary benefit of my community — not just to me but to all of us.

It’s hard to pin a specific dashboard measurement on this one, but it’s an important qualitative measure of success.

8. Customer Loyalty and Purchase Behavior

Some brand communities are using sophisticated tools to measure:

• Loyalty
• Purchase behaviors versus non-community members
• Referrals
• Affiliate sales
• Churn and retention rates

9. Information flow

This would go as a measure of the PR value of a community.

A value of a brand community is the unprecedented speed of information flow — in both directions. You don’t have to wait to gather a consumer panel if you want to test an idea quickly. Throw it out to the community.

Is there a rumor or problem with misinformation? You can address this immediately in a community and that can influence perception and subsequent coverage.

In a world of misinformation, a community is a place to find the truth and stop rumors.

10. Sales

Ultimately, we need to create buying customers, or we will go out of business. However, I’ve interviewed dozens of community leaders, and none of them claim sales are their primary goal. It can’t be. People are tired of being sold to. The focus has to be on the shared purpose between brand and community, which leads to commitment and loyalty.

Loyalty leads to sales, and when done right, community will certainly fuel your bottom line.

I hope these ideas help. I’ve been consulting and speaking extensively on brand community strategy, so let me know if you have further questions or ways I can help you.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Midjourney

The post How do you measure the value of a brand community? Ten ideas. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.