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}.

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}.

I have a confession to make.

I just hosted the 2025 edition of The Uprising, my annual marketing retreat. During this event, I became so intensely focused on the content and the conversations that I forgot to take notes. Happens every year. So, it’s quite a struggle writing a blog post without notes!

This is a great opportunity to ask for an AI assist, and the combination of resources that went into this write-up is impressive.

First, Daniel Nestle and Brian Piper used a recording technology called Plaud to instantly transcribe the live sessions. Brian then took these transcripts and the session slides to build a Custom GPT based on the event. I could then query the AI to help me fill in the blanks and present a representative sample of what happened at this electric event!

First, let’s set the stage …

What is an Uprising?

I don’t like big marketing events. They’re crowded, overwhelming, and generally boring. They are iterative — how to make slight improvements on our Facebook ads or improve our SEO — while the field of marketing is going through a cataclysmic transition right in front of our eyes.

The Uprising solves four problems in marketing events today:

1. It’s limited to 30 people. You have real conversations and make lifetime friends.
2. The focus is the future. What is coming next, and how do we get ready?
3. It’s safe and honest. My proudest moment was when people said, “I want to push back on that.” When do you see THAT happen at a marketing event?
4. It’s co-created. Everyone has an opportunity to participate at their comfort level. So we use the brains in the room! And … it’s a lot of fun! It is a retreat, after all.

Almost everyone who attends will tell you the same thing: It’s difficult to describe. This combination of a wooded lodge, generous people, great food, big brains, and relaxing fun ignites people and takes them to a new level of competence and confidence.

The Uprising has always been about digging beneath the surface, about meaningful connections and bold ideas. But this year, it felt different. More urgent. More human. More audacious. It was the best one ever.

By the way, The Uprising was inspired by my call-to-action in Marketing Rebellion to bring people together. You can’t have a rebellion without an uprising!

Now … what happened this year? Here are the voices, the visions, and the visceral truths that made this gathering unforgettable.

How AI is changing our customers

I kicked things off with a two-part presentation: 1) data on how AI is changing humanity (our customers!), and 2) how humans fit in this new AI-dominant ecosystem. It became a community-driven revelation of what it means to be a marketer in the age of synthetic intelligence.

This was a rallying cry. As AI seeps into every pore of our professional lives, I challenged the group to zoom out—to don’t obsess over AI’s creepy parts. Look at how we must evolve as marketers and serve these changing customers.

Drawing on my research for Belonging to the Brand and the newer Audacious, I painted a stark picture of the near future. We are stepping into a world where content is infinite, synthetic, and indistinguishable. AI won’t just change how we work. It will change who our customers are. Their expectations. Their behaviors. Even their identities, which I covered in this blog post.

Throughout the event, we discussed eight seismic shifts AI will bring to humanity: cognitive decline, emotional intelligence, a search for truth, moral judgment, human agency, creativity, meaning, and critical thinking.

And yet, there is hope. If we understand what makes us irreplaceable — our ability to form community, to inspire, to provide comfort, safety, and hope — we can thrive.

We live in a world where people may not care if the content is human or AI. My urgent plea was to MAKE THEM CARE. That phrase echoed through every session, becoming the unofficial motto of the event. It’s not about resisting the machines and more about embracing what is going to keep us relevant, including the personal brand, brand communities, and content that transcends this pandemic of dull.

Decoding Authenticity by Generations

Dr. Mara Singer revealed some new, original research on how emotional needs shift by generation. With her six pillars of authenticity—accuracy, connectedness, originality, legitimacy, expertise, and integrity—she deconstructed the most overused word in marketing.

She didn’t just talk about the importance of authenticity; she showed us how different generations construct it. For Gen Z, legitimacy and consistency matter more than you’d expect. For Boomers, expertise and accuracy still rule.

In a time when AI can mimic tone, replicate imagery, and fake just about everything, authenticity becomes your only real differentiator. Mara’s message was clear: authenticity is not a style. It’s a strategy.

One jaw-dropping reality is how children as young as six or seven are becoming TikTok influencers as they swarm Sephora stores to try skin care products. Another counter-intuitive fact is that older people place little value on originality in brands and marketing.

The Joy of Prompt Engineering

The brilliant Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media delivered an exquisitely practical talk. His rapid-fire breakdown of the seven levels of AI proficiency was like a map through the AI jungle. Starting from basic prompt writing to full-on multi-step automations, Andy gave us the tools to turn AI into a creative ally.

One of his themes: “Every prompt is a draft. Iterate. Improve. Reuse.”

He reminded us that AI doesn’t diminish creativity—it redefines it. And with the right mindset, we can all become architects of reusable, scalable, and deeply impactful content systems. Andy’s generosity in sharing his prompt playbook turned his session into an instant classic.

Navigating the Infinite Content Abyss

Brian Piper, with a futurist’s eye and a practitioner’s rigor, pulled back the curtain on what’s coming next in content.

He warned that we’ve moved from a world of content scarcity to Content Shock. And AI is making the goal of visibility even more difficult. In this new landscape, human-made content may soon be just 10% of what exists online.

His advice? Build communities. Focus on content that builds trust and emotional connection. Optimize not just for search engines, but for AI discovery systems, voice platforms, and emerging interfaces.

And most critically, become known. Not viral. Not famous. Known. Because in the chaos of AI, trust will be our last currency.

The AI-influenced customer journey

Dr. Matt Wilkinson brought PhD-level clarity to the AI conversation. Once a skeptic, now a strategic believer, he emphasized that AI is not a savior, but the powerful new influence on the customer’s decision process.

What stood out most was his call to reimagine the customer journey. With 80% of it happening before a human contact, AI is already deciding which brands get seen, which stories get heard.

His warning? Don’t get stuck in the past. The “how-to” blog post era is dying. We need to evolve into trusted guides, thought leaders, and distinctive voices that resonate even when we’re not in the room.

The Invisible Labor of Great Content

Ann Handley’s fireside chat with me was a masterclass in emotional resonance. She reminded us that meaningful work requires emotional fortitude. Every sentence you sweat over, every nuance you consider—it all matters.

She spoke of the importance of creating a body of work that endures. Of using ephemeral platforms to build something lasting. And of showing up with your whole heart, not just your content calendar.

Her insight? The journey is the outcome. And in a world chasing outcomes, that’s a radically beautiful stance. Ann and I talked about Phronesis — the ancient Greek concept of practical wisdom gained through hard work. In a world optimized for speed, maybe our greatest rebellion is thoughtfulness.

Ann gave us a glimpse of her upcoming book and captivated everyone wither her bold and honest answers to questions about her career and writing process.

The Future of Social Media

Kami Huyse took us on a journey from 2005 blogging panels to today’s fractured, frenetic social landscape. Through it all, one truth remains: community is the constant.

Her viral quote summed it up: “The first rule of social media is everything changes. What doesn’t change is the community’s desire to connect.”

Kami reminded us to follow the people, not the platforms. And more importantly, to co-create with them. Whether it’s a tweet, a TikTok, or a town hall, if it doesn’t resonate with your community, it’s noise.

Orchestrating Word-of-Mouth in a Scalable World

Sarah Neely, at her fourth Uprising, delivered a lesson in modern magic: scaling the unscalable. Word-of-mouth may feel spontaneous, but Sarah showed us it can be engineered.

She started with a deeply personal story of hauling plywood at muddy event sites and rose to architect campaigns that helped brands like Red Bull infiltrate Major League Baseball. Her framework? Activities. Goals. Targets. Story.

In that order. If you want people to talk about your brand, you must understand what they do before they buy and then intersect with those behaviors. Her message: Viral isn’t magic. It’s math. It’s emotion. And it’s a story worth sharing.

A Modern View of Metrics

Kyle Akerman led a session on modern marketing metrics. He identified common measurement problems all marketers face, including having too much data, having data in too many places, and focusing on vanity metrics.

Marketers spend very little time on measurement (one hour or week, or sometimes just one hour a month). So the challenge is, how do we make the most of that time?

Kyle said we should create (and document) a simple measurement plan. It should include the questions you want to answer, the data you need to answer the questions, and the actions you will take based on the data.  A good plan also includes the KPIs (with time-based targets), and key user segments (because aggregated data hides the important insights). 

Most companies can effectively measure marketing performance using Google’s “Holy Trinity” of free tools: Google Analytics (where data is stored), Google Tag Manager (the measurement implementation), and Looker Studio (visualization tool). Many marketers also benefit from the free heat mapping and session recordings provided by Microsoft Clarity.

A powerful reframe for measurement – it’s how we “listen” to the conversations happening on our websites.

The Audacious Workshop: Wine, Grit, and Bold Storytelling

The heartbeat of this year’s Uprising was the Audacious Workshop. With a real-world brand (Nicole Hayden’s Indiana Daylily Estates Winery) and a room full of brilliant minds, we put the theories of my book Audacious to the test. With the help of a new Audacious workbook (available here), we twisted her startup brand by having three teams brainstorm ways to disrupt the story, the media, and the storyteller.

From “our wine slept with your beer” to corn mazes ending in wine tastings, this was a ton of fun that resulted in a real marketing framework!

The Human Renaissance

As we wrapped Uprising 2025, one truth emerged above all: we are not just marketers. We are artists, connectors, philosophers, and warriors of relevance in turbulent times.

People described the event as unforgettable, magical, and inspirational. But most of all, I think every person walked away with a new sense that the human connection we all experienced makes all the difference. Even when AI dominates the marketing scene, we can still make them care.

I hope you will join me at the next Uprising event, which will be April 21-24, 2026. Space is extremely limited and registration is open here.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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Twice a year, I host a marketing retreat called The Uprising. It’s not unusual for people to call this “magical” or “transformational” as it blends actionable marketing ideas, meaningful new relationships, and a connection with food, fun, and nature. I created this event out of my own frustration that marketing conferences were overwhelming, impersonal, and focused on iterative, small thinking. This retreat is limited to 30 people and focused on the future and our relevance as marketers.

I’ve captured a few highlights from this intimate gathering. The major themes were:

• Artificial intelligence
• Personal branding
• Future of the brand
• Word-of-mouth marketing
• Megatrends

These priorities were pre-determined by the participants. Here are some highlights:

Artificial Intelligence

Of course, this theme was woven throughout the retreat. I kicked off the discussion with high-level observations about the near future, including:

• Navigating the rapid pace of change
• AI Agents and their impact on work
• Implications of relying on AI as an “external brain”
• How generative AI will lead to even more addictive behaviors

In a world where AI increasingly curates our content, there is a marketing opportunity to introduce serendipity and surprise into customer lives.

Dr. Lisa Palmer gave a stunning presentation about the “AI legal storm.” What happens when AI can produce mass complaints, employee claims, and destructive comments against an organization? The current legal system will be overwhelmed, and it’s happening now.

Robbie Fitzwater, a university lecturer and entrepreneur, provided practical tips for integrating AI into our lives and businesses. He is achieving massive productivity gains by building AI into repeatable processes like quality checks on his emails and social media posts.

Daniel Nestle and Tyler Stambaugh led open discussions on AI business integration.

Personal Branding

Before each Uprising retreat, I survey the participants to observe their educational priorities. For the first time, “personal branding” came out as number one.

Lauren Colbert of Filament led the group through a hands-on workshop on determining where each person fits in their business eco-system. One exercise encouraged participants to create a personal brand “haiku” by naming:

• Whom do I serve? (in five words)
• What do I do for them? (in seven words)
• Why does it matter (in five words)

The group also had a unique opportunity to hear the inspirational personal branding story of Amanda Russell, who discussed the evolution of her career from elite athlete to pioneering YouTube star, entrepreneur, consultant, academic, thought leader, and author. For me, there were a few lessons:

• Amanda’s intense tenacity in the face of life obstacles.
• How she was able to assess her strengths and deploy resources at each stage of her life to get to the next step (as a broke college grad, she mailed companies old running shoes as a sign of her work ethic!).
• How she was able to view her “shit jobs” as a path to a achieve a greater vision.
• How she demonstrated courage to say “no” to financial opportunities when they were not aligned with her values.

A key theme of the personal brand discussions was considering the feeling or emotion your brand elicits in others. Think beyond functional relevance.

By building meaningful connections and providing valuable, empowering experiences for audiences, creators can sustainably monetize content and thrive in a changing world.

Future of the brand

We were honored to have Claudia Sciarretta, Global Insights Director of Pepsico, return to The Uprising with views on connecting customer research with brand strategy. Claudia gave a fascinating talk that included insights on:

• Using customer data to discern changes in “slow trends” (like values and basic needs) versus “fast trends” that might represent short-term opportunities. One of her biggest challenges is figuring out which trends will last, and communicating that to Pepsico’s many brands.
• When we heard from Claudia two years ago, she talked about the end of the brand “bonfire” as companies focus on being relevant in cultural moments. This year, she talked about brands actually changing culture – a bold and interesting idea.
• She described how she is integrating AI into generating and unlocking insights, especially when it comes to micro trends in different countries.

Sara Wilson debuted a new talk on the community-powered brand. Her premise is that consumers are increasingly barricaded in “digital campfires” outside traditional social listening platforms. Somehow brands must earn their way into these communities.

Strategies included:

1) IRL (in real life) events
2) Media and Brand Partnerships
3) Creator Collaborations
4) Social content

To achieve success, brands must be clear on what they stand for, identify organic communities relevant to their customers, and activate within the communities.

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)

There was synergy between all of the presentations at The Uprising, but the connection to WOMM was particularly strong throughout the retreat. There is a recognition that as customers become unreachable by traditional media,  we need to connect in new ways. While trust in companies and the media might be in decline, we still trust each other – a strong business case for WOMM.

Sarah Neely is a word-of-mouth marketing expert with extensive experience with brands like Red Bull, Major League Baseball, and Chipotle. She led a workshop to help each participant explore WOMM opportunities for their own businesses.

While WOMM success can be a complex cocktail of research, data-informed strategies, and identification of customer groups, Sarah helped participants focus on the authentic, relevant, and helpful story elements most likely to create word of mouth success.

I debuted a new speech that will accompany the ideas of my book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. While not strictly a word-of-mouth marketing book, Audacious describes a path to disruptive marketing that will help businesses stand out in a world swamped by AI content. All of this ultimately fuels WOMM, the purest and most trusted form of marketing.

I opened the presentation with data showing why marketing is so boring today. I then provided lively case studies that illustrated three paths to disruptive marketing:

Disrupt the story narrative

• Start with wrong
• Leverage anxiety
• Break taboos

Disrupt where the story is told

• Add awe
• Mix the media
• Lean into customer signals

Disrupt who tells the story

• Critical importance of UGC
• The math behind WOMM
• Social objects

Mega trends

It’s always an honor to host Jola Burnett, SVP of Ipsos, and learn her views of the critical mega-trends impacting our world. Jola focused on several key areas:

Consumer confidence in the economy, which is high and growing in the U.S. and other places in the world.

The AI threat to news and how this will negatively impact consumers. The lines between news and entertainment have blurred, leading to a decline in journalistic integrity. Most people cannot discern disinformation. Trust issues spill over. Most of the issues facing news and journalism apply to your brand messaging, too.

Cookies can quantify how many times a digital ad appears onscreen (“viewable impressions”). But more powerful brand tracking frameworks can evaluate campaign performance over time in recognition, emotion and retention, which Ipsos calls “memory currency.”

By focusing on memory currency, marketers can go beyond whether an ad was simply viewable. They can craft more influential attention-getting ads while centering their real target: human impact.

Most employees want to be more creative at work. There is workplace tension about having a creative outlet versus working in a “sea of sameness.” Generative AI could be a release valve for this tension.

Ipsos sees marketing becoming much more visually-oriented, driven by easily-accessible AI capabilities.

Jola showed data illustrating that most people are not worried about AI. My view is that they’re not worried because they don’t know!

Over the next few years, marketers will be challenged to navigate authenticity alongside the explosion of AI-generated and hyper-personalized content.

Jola concluded with a fascinating talk about the future of parenting, including the impact of AI, shifts in values, mental health, climate anxiety, and rising financial costs. A major opportunity is for brands to help buffer this stress of parenting:

• Help me be fully present at the key daily and life moments of my kids
• Help me seamlessly shift between work mode, parent mode and elder caregiver mode
• Prevent me from missing out on anything important (work promotions, kids’ milestones, unexpected curveballs, etc.)

The Uprising Conclusions

As you can see, The Uprising was quite an intellectual goldmine. But this is only a fraction of the professional value of the event.

Most of my “a-ha” moments came from the group discussions connected to each of these presentations. For example, I realized that AI algorithms and exposure to social media might be depressing creativity, risk-taking, and fun. Jola’s talk opened my eyes to the vast and complex new needs of parents. A talk I had with Uprising friends led me to realize the unexplored new roles for employees in word-of-mouth marketing.

That is the true beauty of The Uprising. We don’t think out of the box. We combine boxes for breakthrough ideas.

And lest you believe that all we did was hurt our brains with all these new ideas, we also had plenty of time for relaxation and fun, including hikes, meals, reflection time, and a private concert.

The Uprising is an extraordinary experience that I hope you’ll experience for yourself one day soon. Registration is now open for the next retreat. Hope to see you there!

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 future of marketing happens here appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Just experienced my favorite week of the year — The Uprising — and I thought I would share a few learnings from this exceptional marketing retreat (year five!) with you.

The retreat featured the legendary Sandy Carter (IBM, AWS), Ed Keller (father of modern word-of-mouth marketing), tech pioneer Robert Christiansen, LinkedIn guru Richard Bliss, branding expert Evelyn Starr, and my genius friend and podcast co-host Keith Jennings.

I attend a lot of events and they’re almost always iterative—”how to do better on Facebook ads,” etc. Meanwhile, in the next 12 months, we will not even recognize the field of marketing. The Uprising is designed to address these cataclysmic changes NOW, build a plan for relentless relevance, and form a cadre of people to support our career journey.

The Uprising marketing retreat is distinctive in many ways:

1. It’s not focused on “information” — you can get that on Google. It features insight from industry-leading thought leaders. Meaningful, relevant, competitive advantage you can get nowhere else.
2. The event is co-created. You don’t sit through lectures and pitches from sponsors. We explore the future of marketing in a way that leverages the wisdom of everyone in the room and builds powerful new perspectives.
3. We learn, but we also refresh. There is time set aside for nature, food, music, conversation, reflection.
4. The last point of differentiation is difficult to understand unless you’ve been here. I limit the event to 30 attendees. The Uprising creates a bond. When you walk through the door of the forest lodge where we have the retreat, you might feel nervous and even alone. When you walk out at the end, you’ll feel energized, inspired, and supported by 30 new friends. Some have even used the word “transformed.”

From a personal perspective, this is my greatest career accomplishment because I know this event sends ripples of positive change and hope through the people who attend.

To capture some of the key moments from this marketing retreat, I asked Daniel Nestle (who attended his third Uprising) to join me on a bonus podcast episode. Daniel is a renowned corporate communications executive and host of the Trending Communicator podcast. He also co-presented at The Uprising with me on harnessing AI for personal relevance.

We based this new show on the topics covered at the event:

• Personal relevance and AI (Schaefer + Nestle)
• The personal branding journey (Aaron Hassen + Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez)
• The future of branding (Starr)
• Megatrends from Davos with Sandy Carter
• Hacking the LinkedIn algorithm (Bliss)
• From success to significance (Jennings)
• Word of Mouth Marketing in the Digital Age (Keller)
• Building brand communities (Alice Ferris + Jason Blanchard)
• Future of content marketing and social media (A. Lee Judge + Natchi Lazarus)
• Becoming a resilient leader (Christiansen)

Covering this event in a short podcast unfortunately captures just the tip of the iceberg. Much of the value from The Uprising comes through 1:1  conversations and connecting the dots with the help of 30 new friends over a BBQ in the country, a hike through the forest, or big laughs during the trivia competition.

I hope you’ll experience this remarkable retreat for yourself soon. The next Uprising, held near Knoxville, TN, is October 21-24, 2024. Let me if you’d like to talk to me and learn more.

Click here to listen to Marketing Companion EPISODE 288

A few photos from the April retreat (photo credit – Alex Ledsma) :

The post Reflections from the best marketing retreat ever appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Each year, a small group of marketing leaders gather at a beautiful lodge in the woods to think big thoughts about the future of marketing. Our aim is to help each other remain relevant in a fast-changing world. The event is called The Uprising (every marketing rebellion needs one, right?).

Although the experience was merely two and a half days, this was an intense immersion in new marketing ideas, natural beauty, and meaningful new relationships.

Honestly, we covered so much ground that it is intimidating trying to capture what happened there. I was literally on the edge of my seat, listening to experts projecting how new customer connections, communications, storytelling, and technologies would revolutionize marketing.

Here are a few highlights. I asked some of the participants to add their own ideas of what they loved.

Relentlessly relevant

The purpose of this event is to support marketers with their personal relevance in a fast-changing world. I set the stage with ideas about strategies about how we need to combine core competencies with “waves” of change coming at us in the world. I encouraged the participants to view the following sessions as possible seams of relevance.

Mathew Sweezey provided insights on his networking strategy that has connected him to some of the top marketing minds in the world.

Reaction: “The most profound takeaway was around trust in the age of AI and this idea of Kinship economy and community as a media. Community will discern the truth and it is becoming an arbiter of media.” — Jola Burnett

“Day one, hour one, Mark mentioned the idea of wearing the crown only you can wear. This struck me in a new way, and allowed me to think about the skills and experiences I can contribute to an organization in a new way.” — Sarah Neely

A new way to look at story and content

Sarah Neely is a word of mouth marketing expert and she discussed new strategies to ignite content to relevant audiences. She provided an inspiring example of how she was able to create conversations about Red Bull in the early days of the product with almost no budget.

I’ve often said that the economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero. Sarah provided actionable examples of ways to take content directly to potential customers. A common theme is to craft content that is Authentic, Interesting, and Relevant.

Reaction: “I talk about story all of the time — crafting it, encouraging it, finding the story. BUT I didn’t really ever consider a brand story being a text between friends. Mind blown — different perspective unlocked!” — Dr. Jules Morris

A new way to connect to customers

Robbie Fitzwater provided case studies on how to “out-human” bigger competitors. By using humor, superior content, and timely email personalization, he showed how smaller retailers can out-maneuver titans like Walmart and Amazon. He provided an example of how an intimate connection strategy more than quadrupled sales for a small equestrian company.

Alex Ledesma provided an update on how brands are beginning to use Web3 and NFTs to unleash new customer value and premium programs that lead to loyalty and new revenue opportunities. While this is still within the domain of larger brands right now, he explained that adoption is growing.

The new world post-pandemic

Jola Burnett is a VP for Ipsos, one of the most important consumer research companies in the world. She provided a far-ranging view of fast-shifting trends. A few highlights included:

• Consumer behavior is influenced by a view of the world immersed in many crises. We are in a polycrisis.
• “Purpose” is growing in importance to consumers as a way to combat problems with their purchasing power. She revealed provocative research showing that there is an expectation that brands should be actively solving global problems.
• Jola led a discussion on the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Being replaced by AI is a massive concern for young people and 64% of Americans say the government needs to take action. We also talked about AI jeopardizing “purpose” as well as jobs. “Trust” will be a rare commodity in an era of deep fakes.
• While most people are currently “meh” about the metaverse, Ipsos research shows massive economic potential and new marketing opportunities by 2030.
• Ipsos believes the most significant opportunity on social media is livestream commerce. This trend is massive in China and picking up speed in Europe and the U.S.
• GenZ is suffering from mental health pressures from multiple fronts. This is creating a move toward core values of wellness, happiness, and less screen time.

Reaction: “My most profound insight (there were many!) was how fast the world and our field is changing and how much AI is going to change our lives in ways we can’t even imagine. I know everyone felt this deeply.” — Heather McKay

Making hope a habit

I love to do is add little surprises to The Uprising experience. This year I hosted my friend Hallerin Hill, a multi-talented writer, consultant, Grammy-nominated songwriter, and philosopher. He connected the dots beautifully between his modest childhood and a relentless pursuit of self-improvement against the odds. He showed us all that we can make hope a mindful and systematic daily process.

Reaction: “I think we were all coming into the event a little stressed. Hallerin gave us the right message of hope at the right time.” — Mandy Edwards

A new way to look at social media

I kicked off a discussion with the view that social media should be viewed as the beginning of a marketing process.

Richard Bliss provided a masterclass on using LinkedIn to dramatically increase reach.

Kimberley Gardiner, CMO of Tractor Supply, showed how she is emphasizing employee-generated content to create human connections with customers.

Daniel Nestle tied the conversation together by showing how all of this work can lead to community — the ultimate emotional connection.

Reaction: “I thought I knew how to use LinkedIn, but his insights from his experience and his consulting has changed forever how I will approach and use LinkedIn.” — Mandy Edwards

A new look at AI and marketing

Dr. Jules Morris, an expert on creativity, gave a whimsical presentation demonstrating how AI alone generally is terrible when it comes to insight and creativity. She led a discussion on how AI can effectively jumpstart idea generation but ultimately the creative spark comes from humans.

Dr. Karine Abbou has been studying AI impacts and opportunities in content generation and other marketing tasks. She concludes that AI will overtake almost all content marketing activities. Humans will focus on insights and personal brand building. She also proposed that AI will overwhelm traditional search strategies, making many current websites useless.

Reaction: “The integration of AI into search means that chat and prompts are replacing keywords and links. This is an important development for SEOs and companies that depend on search traffic, but also a fundamental change in how we access information on the web.” — Heather McKay

A new look at marketing and purpose

Keith Jennings dispelled the notion that marketing strategy starts with “why.” He provided case studies to show that the “who” and “why” lead to the “what” and “how.” He was highly critical of companies with “avowed” values (no action) versus companies that were actually putting their values to work (demonstrating purpose).

Keith went on to explain the difference between “story” and “narrative” when it came to explaining purpose.

Reaction: “My favorite presenter was Keith Jennings. I learned from Keith that to effectively connect Purpose to my Marketing my WHO and WHY must guide my HOWs and WHATs.” — Kyle Ackerman

A new way to look at communicating with customers

Behavioral Science expert Nancy Harhut provided a tour de force explanation connecting technology, strategy, and consumer psychology to expose a new view of marketing effectiveness. Her presentation was divided into three sections:

• It’s not about how we think, but how we feel
• Our choices are less rational and more reactional
• Reliance on auditory cues that are baked into our ancient psychology

Reaction: “Nancy gave so much practical information, that was just incredibly fascinating. She shared material that was relatable and useful.” — Sarah Neely

The highest value of The Uprising

While the content provided during the event was significant and meaningful, the focus on personal interactions and conversations were equally important. I designed The Uprising to be heavily weighted toward interconnection and shared experiences that will provide a lifetime of value.

Nancy Harhut: “This is where marketers advance.”

Dr. Jules Morris: “The best three days of the year.”

Dan Nestle: “Mark’s 3-day marketing think tank is the most powerful gathering of eclectic thinkers and marketing visionaries in our field today. One hour into day one, your brain is buzzing. By breakfast on day three, you’re on a shared mission with 30 new friends. It’s incredible.”

Kimberley Gardiner: “By far one of the best marketing events I’ve ever attended. I came away with several key actionable takeaways and even better, a connected community of awesome marketers!”

Sarah Neely: “The speakers, the intention, and energy Mark has created, the collaborative environment and the curated group of attendees are all so important to making this event special and intimate.”

Robbie Fitzwater: “Was wild to see this event with basically zero hierarchy. Everyone learned from and with one another in a really powerful and fun way!”

And this kind of sums it up this marketing experience. It was something more. It changed our lives …

I want to invite you to experience The Uprising with me soon.

Want to learn more about the next event? Here are the details > Learn about the U.S. Uprising here.

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

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

The post Reflecting on the most rewarding marketing experience of my life appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve had the most amazing career. For example, I’ve …

• Published ten books that people love.
• Graduated with two master’s degrees
• Earned seven patents
• Worked with amazing companies like Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and Adidas.
• Been a speaker on some of the world’s biggest stages.

But the very best achievement I’m most proud of is how I brought 30 people together for an entirely new way to talk about marketing. A meeting that created a bond.

Does that seem weird? Well, it’s a pretty great story that had its origins in 2010 and is still going strong today.

In this week’s Marketing Companion episode, for the first time, I tell the inside story of The Uprising retreat. I’m peeling back the curtain of a fascinating part of my life that exposes

• The desperate step I took early in my career when nobody would hire me as a conference speaker.
• The reason I canceled a successful marketing event called Social Slam, even after it had grown to 700 attendees.
• How writing Marketing Rebellion changed the direction of my life.
• Why I rented an entire castle in Ireland this year.

I brought some friends along to help me tell this tale!

Chad Parizman was a digital marketing leader for HGTV and Pfizer who now creates and produces branded podcasts through his company Ader Communications.

Samantha Stone is the CEO and Founder of The Marketing Advisory Network. Samantha also launched a new course called Master the Art of Finding and Using Buyer Insights.

This is a fun, insightful, and unusual story, and I think you’ll love it! Ready? Here we go:

Click on this link to listen to hear Episode 265

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Try this! “Alexa, play the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.”
• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe on iTunes
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• Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide

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What a joy it was to gather 30 marketing leaders from around the world to think big thoughts together in a lodge nestled in the woods. That’s my annual event called The Uprising. The world’s best marketing event? I’m not sure what else can compare!

Over two and a half days, brilliant professionals had deep, meaningful, and inspiring discussions about the future of marketing. And we became friends (which is why I limit this to 30 people!).

I can say with authority that is certainly the best marketing event I have attended … and I’ve attended a lot. I regard The Uprising as the best achievement of my professional career.

I hoped to capture some of the highlights for you, but that would be impossible because almost every moment delivered a highlight … from the fascinating discussion topics to the breakout groups and meal-time conversations. We literally co-created a book’s worth of content.

But here are a few points that stood out to me.

The future is community

Fabio Tambosi and I kicked off the event with a collaborative discussion on how brands are leaning into community and a “kinship economy.” Fabio has been an executive with IBM, Nike, Adidas, and Saucony and is one of the most brilliant and visionary marketers I know.

I pointed out that the world is longing to belong — especially now. The more time we spend online, the more lonely, isolated, and depressed we feel. There is certainly a role for companies and brands to play in meeting this need. This was a theme that weaved in and out of the entire event.

Fabio reinforced this idea with a concept he called the “kinship economy” where human relationships are central to a strategy that leads to brand love.

Fabio delivered a profound message that outlined the future of branding — it’s a path to belonging that includes helping people connect to the world, interpret cultural moments through the eyes of the brand, and use the brand as a platform that amplifies human expression and creativity.

A framework for more human-centered marketing

Ruth Hartt is the chief of staff for the Clayton Christensen Institute and she led us through a very engaging presentation on the “Jobs to be Done” methodology. Instead of focusing on brand features and attributes, think through why a person would “hire” your product to perform a certain task.

She provided a dramatic example of a symphony advertisement that promoted music and artists that were probably meaningless to an average person. She then showed a re-worked version positioning the symphony as an antidote to daily stress.

We can help people “belong” to our brand if we connect to their emotional needs instead of beating our chest about product features.

Ruth, an opera singer, also sang for us after dinner one night!

Innovations in marketing measurement

Claudia Sciarreta is the Global Insights Director for Pepsico. She has worked with American Express, Jose Cuervo, Walmart, and other major brands This was just an incredible opportunity to learn of her journey through years of innovation in marketing measurement.

Many of her “secret sauce” observations are something can’t put out in public, but the big takeaway is how Pepsi is mining big data for meaningful micro-trends and then coming alongside consumers in important cultural moments. Very much in line with the ideas Fabio shared with us from the athletic wear perspective.

Claudia said that beginning in the early 2000’s we began to see that straight demographics weren’t the only way … (sad that this is still what is TAUGHT mostly). Companies began to add psychographics and MOTIVATION.

The pandemic accelerated a desire for community. Buyer motivations changed dramatically over the last two years.

Pepsi works closely with psychologists and anthropologists to add depth to the data they obtain from social monitoring, trend tracking, and other technology-driven tools. Values Shift – Marketing is less about demographics—more fluid, not as structured, swarm society (micro-cultures, cultural fabric, topical). Customers are co-creating new products with them.

We also had an interesting discussion about the role of marketing researchers in changing company culture.

Reaching consumers in the metaverse and beyond

Futurist Mathew Sweezey (of Salesforce) challenged our group with a presentation that was simultaneously fascinating and chilling — our consumer future in the metaverse and Web3.

This presentation was a tour de force that I could not hope to capture in any short post but it was by far the most coherent and cohesive that I’ve ever heard on the subject of Web3 implications. Web3 is an exciting, immersive innovation of new places, new products, and new identities.

One thing that helped a lot was Mathew’s explanation of the six possible utilities of NFTs:

Art/collectible –Represents either a piece of art or a collectible that holds value. The NFT proves the ownership of the art or collectible.

Governance — Holding the NFT provides the owner with a vote allowing them to control something. By holding more NFTs, you have a greater voice.

Digital asset — Provides utility in virtual/digital worlds. It could be a game asset, a POAP, a digital twin of a physical product, or a virtual-only product.

Avatar — The NFT is used as a profile picture or avatar, allowing the owner to show their support or status.

Key to access — The NFT grants access to a community, a website, a physical door, content, an experience, media, or anything that can be gated.

Advanced dynamics — Unique abilities available only to NFTs such as; Staking, Coupon, Propagation, Airdrops, Generative, and/or De-FI.

Purpose and your brand: A rational view

This thrilling session was led by Keith Jennings, Erin Esensee, and Carlos Oramas.

“Purpose” and aligning with shared meaning is one of the few ways left to earn customer loyalty.

Should your brand be generous and minimize harm to the planet? Yes?

Should you focus on purpose and take a stand? Maybe.

Your “who” and your “why” guides your “how” and your “what.”

What is your core business and your origin story? This will guide you toward your purpose.

Story of GEMS Group — Carlos started in sales and vowed to never “sell.” We need to serve. GEMS Group was founded to create smiles, which is the purpose of flowers. PS — If you want a guaranteed smile, click on the GEMS website!)

Erin is the business unit director for H-E-B Blooms and has partnered with GEMS for purpose-led marketing. “We don’t sell flowers, we sell emotions and we want to serve those emotions and special events. Nobody is more passionate than us about that.”

Carlos and Erin provided an amazing case study showing a business partnership based on purpose. They started a brand (Lonestar Living) based on bringing happiness and deep emotions to their community. A company should step in and be the hand, not just lend a hand in tough times. Send out a message during a crisis — who needs a smile? They routinely deliver bouquets to

• Women of distinction
• Military moms
• Nurses and frontline workers during the pandemic

“We work on this because we know that it’s right.”

Simply being kind and generous has created incredible marketing visibility as customers tell their stories. Sales have taken off like a rocket ship.

The personal brand beyond KNOWN

Before each Uprising, I poll participants so they can vote on what we should cover in the limited time of the event. Developing a personal brand was very high on the list.

… as it should be.

Lauren Fast and I teamed up for this discussion. Instead of teaching everybody the KNOWN process (I gave everybody a copy of the book), I focused on the business and cultural challenges of our day that make the personal brand an imperative.

• Insurance for your career — Having an effective personal brand might be the only strategic leverage we have as individuals.
• Protection against bots/fake news — Establishing your authority can cut through disinformation.
• Increasingly, personal brand IS company brand — We don’t trust most companies and brands, but we do trust each other.
• Community begins with personality/trust — Building on the community theme, I provided examples of how community often starts with a trusted person.
• Authority versus SEO — SEO is becoming less accessible for many companies. Instead, we can earn an audience through authority.

Lauren explored the reasons why people have trouble working on their personal brand, which led to introspective small group discussions.

Falling in love with AI for marketing

Samantha Stone is a well-known marketing researcher and she’s been looking at the impact of Artificial Intelligence on consumers.

Overall, consumers are OK with AI responses as long as they KNOW it’s a bot and the conditions are not too emotional. Any situation with high emotions demands human intervention.

Samantha provided a number of inspiring examples where AI creates very personalized, tailored experiences that lead to business benefits. Examples included design, travel, cooking, and hospitality.

She also cautioned all of us to be on the lookout for bias creeping into AI services.

The future of social media

We took a team approach to think about the future of social media marketing.

Chad Parizman presented a very bright future for audio content. He said that audio is the most “reusable” content.

Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez made a strong case that video content was the most human approach to marketing, connecting this to the deep connection and emotion that can be created.

Jon Briggs touched on Discord as an important community consideration. He’s rapidly built a community to blow up an NFT franchise called Battle Bunnies.

Lisa Apolinski emphasized the distinguishing importance of truth in the future.

Now … how about you?

My wish is that everyone in my community has a chance to experience the best marketing event, The Uprising.

Inspiring content.

Uplifting people.

Amazing food in a beautiful, wooded setting.

Music, hiking, yoga, and games by the fire pit.

Won’t you join us next time?

I’m already planning for next year with an eye toward the week of April 18, 2023, for an event in Knoxville, TN and a possible event in Europe for September or October of 2023. You can learn more and get on our mailing list for future events by clicking here.

The post Highlights from the world’s best marketing event appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

None of the people in this photo exist. They’re all deep fakes generated by a site called This Person Does Not Exist. Refreshing this site to see new pictures of made-up people is harmless fun. But what happens when these realistic fakes become moving images with voices and opinions?

What happens when one of these images is … you?

I host a small marketing leadership retreat called The Uprising. At our last online event, we had a mind-bending presentation from Nina Schick, the author of “Deep Fakes” explaining the implications of this emerging trend.

This discussion had a profound impact on the participants and I thought this was so important that I wanted to share it with a broader audience. You need to know what is going to be happening in our very near future.

Here is my video interview with Nina as well as a transcript of our talk.

Get ready. The world is about to go synthetic …

Mark: Nina you’ve done an amazing job positioning yourself as an expert in this emerging technology. What we all know is a threat, or is it an opportunity — or even a nightmare? Tell us a little bit about the premise of your book.

Nina Schick: My background is in information warfare and geopolitics so I saw this thing emerging which really is going to be a paradigm change in not only the way we communicate but also the way that humans perceive the world and perceive themselves … and I am talking about AI-generated synthetic content, the ability for AI to manipulate or wholly create content that is fake. It can be a video, it can be a picture. It can be a piece of text, it can be a piece of audio. This is a nascent technology which is only been emerging for the last three years, it really is due to the revolution in deep learning.

AI is now getting to the point where it can actually generate synthetic media. This is going to be immensely valuable for a whole plethora of creative industries.

It’s going to rewrite the future of everything from fashion to film to corporate communications because AI is actually going to democratize the ability for anyone to generate synthetic or fake content with no skill and no money needed.

It is also going to become a very, very powerful weapon of mis- and disinformation. Misinformation and visual manipulations have been around for many decades. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was a great proponent of doctoring photographs for visual disinformation. But what AI can do is far more sophisticated than anything we’ve seen in the past.

It’s also going to be accessible to anyone so while you’re creating this paradigm change in the future of all content production and human communication, which is going to be terrifically exciting. This technology is undoubtedly also going to be weaponized by bad actors.

“The future is synthetic”

Mark: I’ve written a lot about that. Where corruption can occur, corruption will occur, of course. One of the things that was so interesting in your book, and I’m going to get this all wrong, because I’m not a technologist. But you said that one of the fellows that developed the face-swapping technology created two AI systems that competed against each other, trying to fool each other to get better and better and better. Absolutely fascinating stuff. And the technology is magnificent. 

What are some of the non-obvious things that you’re seeing? Maybe some unintended consequences that people should be aware of.

Nina: For anybody who’s a marketing professional, the future is synthetic. I have no doubt that within the next five to seven years it’s going to become increasingly evident that all content, we engage with is going to be either wholly or partially generated by AI.

This is why I make this important distinction at the beginning of my book that the taxonomy around this field really hasn’t been decided yet, but this is a technology like all other powerful technologies in the past. It’s merely an amplifier of human intention. So just as there are going to be misuses, there will be many incredible applications.

The first thing to note is that I talked about synthetic media as AI-generated fake content that is viable commercially applicable and deep fakes, as its misuse as mis- and disinformation so when we talk about synthetic media, for example, I think we’re increasingly going to see that for content creators, the ability for even a YouTuber to have the same kind of effects that are only accessible now to Hollywood Studios with multi-million dollar budgets and teams of special effects artists. It’s going to mean that creativity is going to go through the roof! A lot of people who I speak to, who are on the startup side when it comes to generating AI-generated artificial media say you can’t even imagine what the future is going to look like.

Virtual Worlds, targeted marketing — it’s going to be a huge boon for creativity.

The second consequence is that it is going to pollute an already corrupt and broken information ecosystem because for the past 10 years we’ve already been dealing with this huge crisis of misinformation, which increasingly has taken the shape of visually manipulated media.

But when AI-generated fake media gets into this polluted information ecosystem, the noise is going to get a lot busier and the ability for us as consumers to distinguish between truth and noise what’s authentic is going to become increasingly difficult, especially because these AI-generated fakes, are going to be from a fidelity perspective, just like the genuine items.

No shared reality

Mark: As you are explaining this Nina, I thought of an article I read that said we are increasingly polarized because we no longer have a shared reality.

And what I mean by that is, 30 or 40, years ago, the shared reality was created by the daily newspaper, and a couple of news networks. Everybody kind of watching the same thing. There were certain standards for content.

Certain commentators and curators and reporters were trusted and at least you had a shared reality for discussion and debate. Today it’s so hard to even recognize what’s true. And I think what you’re pointing out here is, it’s going to get worse by some magnitude.

Nina: Absolutely. This is already a trend that has been going on for a long while and has been accelerated in particular with the technology of the information age, the ability for anyone to kind of exist in a silo when it comes to receiving their information forming their worldview. Even an objective reality becomes a purely subjective experience.

We are already in a culture when people talk about things like “your truth or my truth.” There is an objective reality but our ability to agree on what that is becomes increasingly partisan. In order to protect ourselves from deep fakes or AI-generated fakes, one of the first steps is inoculating the public so they know this kind of high-fidelity fake content exists before the fake content becomes ubiquitous.

One of the consequences of that is this phenomenon is perversely known as the “liar’s dividend,” because if people believe that anything can be faked — so seeing is no longer believing — then everything can also be denied and even authentic media can be decried as fake. The corrosion of reality and objective truth only becomes even more profound.

The emergence of deep fakes

Mark: So what’s holding this back right now? You mentioned this could be five to seven years away. One expert in your book said it might be three to five. But some of the examples that you give in your book, which I looked up on the internet, are quite compelling! What’s keeping this from prevailing in the next 12 to 24 months? 

Nina: Experts debate on how long that’s going to be. But I think we’ll definitely start seeing changes within the next three to five years.

This technology is so nascent. It’s only been about two and a half years since the first deep fakes started emerging from the cutting edge of AI research. It has grabbed so much public attention that there’s sometimes been a tendency to overstate how good deep fakes already are. There’s been a lot of headlines written about deep fakes going to end democracy etc. But that’s only because it’s such an interesting topic.

We’re not there yet, because the barriers to entry are still quite high, but they’re coming down rapidly. This technology is already being wrapped up in very accessible interfaces, like apps on smartphones, and I have no doubt that within the next five years, they’ll be far more abundant.

There are many startups, a lot of investment, focusing on the generative side of getting AI, creating AI-generated fakes. So I think that it’s inevitable that it’s coming fast. I can’t actually even tell you where we’re going to be in 12 months, let alone in three years.

The positives of synthetic content

Mark: In my book, “Marketing Rebellion,” I emphasize that in the consumer world of today, the customer is the marketer. They’re the ones who are carrying our stories forward. So on the positive side, it’s kind of exciting to think about what if our consumers are telling, big stories, Hollywood-level stories, about their experiences with our products and our services. So that’s certainly exciting.

You can also think about some of the problems that could come from marketers and business professionals as company content becomes held hostage by some of the corrupt people out there. So from a marketing perspective, there could be both positives and negatives that emerge.

Nina: Well, first let’s tackle the positives.

Some of the earliest applications we’ve seen for synthetic media is applications to creative advertising. There was a State Farm ad, which was basically promoting the Netflix documentary “The Last Dance” on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 90s. They took a piece of original ESPN archive footage and used AI to manipulate that original clip to make it seem like the commentator was a fortune teller.

This shows the tremendous potential of synthetic media to be used not only in an advertising capacity but also for marketing.

Can you imagine creating personalized video content for every consumer? This is something that sounds as though it is in the realm of science fiction but it’s probably within this decade.

Another opportunity is the licensing of brand images. So for example, AI is very good at generating the likeness of celebrities or any human. Someone like Michael Jordan could just license his brand and marketers could use his image to deliver personalized content to consumers. The possibilities are endless.

When it comes to the negative side, the corroding information ecosystem filled with disinformation means that every brand and every business is also going to become a potential target of a disinformation campaign. And we’ve already seen how famous brands have been corrupted by being put in a negative context. Every single brand needs to have a crisis plan. Not only social monitoring of what’s going on but a plan for crisis communications in the event of a disinformation attack, which may include synthetic media.

How do we fight back?

Mark: Just as you could license these images in a legal way for positive entertainment purposes, it can be an act of terrorism as well. One of the things that was quite moving to me in your book is the example you provide of celebrity images being abused in horrible ways. Scarlett Johansson said “Look, it’s impossible. There’s nothing you can do. I give up.” And my heart just sank thinking how an innocent person doesn’t deserve this sort of abuse … and this could happen to anybody if somebody has a grudge against you.

My favorite part of your book Nina was the last part where you talk about fighting back and some of the positive things that can be happening to protect us. I hope your next book is about blowing up that one chapter because that’s what we really need to start working on. What are some of the things that you’re encouraged by that could help us focus more on the positives? What are some of the things that we can be looking forward to in the next couple of years that are hopeful?

Nina: Well the good news is that there are many groups, organizations, and individuals already working in this space, trying to shore up the information ecosystem.

I think that the first step is conceptualizing the problem — How is Russian interference related to fake news, related to AI-generated synthetic media, related to a failed coup in Gabon. All of that exists within the wrapper of this corroding information ecosystem. Once we understand that the consequences, it’s easier to talk about how to fix the problem.

Broadly that falls into two categories. There’s a lot of technical solutions that will detect fakes, as well as technology that could be embedded in your devices that will prove the provenance of authentic media. It will be increasingly important for brands to somehow watermark content from its inception to show that it’s not a fake.

Next, you have to talk about building society-wide resilience That is really a broad discussion because it relates to policy, it relates to regulation. It relates to a networked approach between synthetic media creators, policymakers, and big tech companies.

It’s not something that one government or one part of society can tackle by itself and I think that because it’s so nascent, we still have this opportunity to formulate how synthetic media can be used positively while mitigating against its worst use cases. This technology is incredibly exciting in many ways, and it’s imperative to not throw out the baby with the bathwater, and say it’s all bad.

You and deep fakes

Mark: What can an individual do to learn more about this, to really support you in your activism and take individual responsibility for what might be happening in our future?

Nina: We need to understand the conceptual threat. I think that is the first step. With knowledge comes power. And I really think this is something that is going to have to be a society-led grassroots effort to try and correct the course when it comes to our corroding information ecosystem.

The second thing I would say to all individuals is to be critical — but not cynical — because I think that if you become cynical and just believe everything is fake, then we’ve lost the plot a little bit.

And of course, be vigilant, understand that there are new ways in which your identity can be hijacked, your biometrics can be emulated by artificial intelligence and be used against you in the most heinous ways without your consent, without your knowledge, just from a digital footprint that almost everybody has online. Be vigilant and when the solutions come out to protect yourself with detection tools and provenance tools, implement them. It’s just like installing the antivirus on your computer. This is the next threat coming down the line so protect yourself when you can.

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

The post The hope and peril of synthetic content and the rise of deep fakes appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

We’ve now completed ROUND ONE of the Era of Online Conferences as we adopt new strategies to help live events survive through Zoom.

I’ve been honored to be the keynote speaker at many online conferences over the past nine months and attended a few as a participant.

By now we should be adjusting to these times of crisis but unfortunately, I see too many organizers trying to recreate a traditional conference in a Zoom-like format.

One friend attended a leading marketing event that moved to a digital format and said “It was miserable. They were just trying to stuff all the same content into an online format and it just didn’t work.”

Why do people really go to live conferences?

• It’s an opportunity to see a new city and have some fun … maybe even turn it into a vacation
• There is the appeal of connecting with close industry friends over lunch or drink
• It might be a chance to meet an admired industry leader or celebrity
• The serendipity of meeting like-minded colleagues leads to fresh ideas and new business opportunities.

“Learning something new” is probably down the list of the most popular reasons to attend a live event. That might be the reason we tell our boss we’re going to the conference, but to be honest, if we really want to learn something new, we can probably read a blog post or watch lessons on YouTube.

Online conferences offer almost nothing that can compete with the personal experience of a live conference. So, just stuffing hours of content into endless hours of Zoom fatigue won’t work in the long-run.

But there are some things we can do to be better …

And now for something different in online conferences

The best thing I’ve ever done in my professional life is to create The Uprising, a small marketing retreat for just 30 marketing professionals. Like many other event organizers, I’ve been forced by COVID to put a version of this conference online. But I was determined to spare no expense to make this as close to the amazing live experience as possible.

I took some risks and it paid off. 100 percent of the attendees rated it a 5 out 5 in terms of quality and value. The same person who had complained about the recent awful marketing conference told me that The Uprising was the best virtual experience he’s ever had. 

Hmmmm … what happened here? What was the difference?

Looking over the post-event feedback, I’ll share what I think made The Uprising head and shoulders above other online events. How do you turn online conferences into online experiences?

1. Timing

My event ran 2.5 hours per day for three days. There was an optional 30 minutes at the end of each day for networking and chatting with new friends. This seemed to be an ideal amount of time. Many people in the post-event survey said they “wanted more.” I think that’s extraordinary in this era of Zoom fatigue.

When I go to a real event, I’ll go non-stop from breakfast until late into the evening. But that does not translate when your eyes are glazing over in front of a computer. Serve up your conference tracks in digestible chunks.

2. Interactivity

About two-thirds of the event’s content was co-created by the participants through small and large group discussions. This was a risk for me but it ended up being a big hit. Having a chance to participate in every discussion and contribute made every person an organic part of the experience.

Instead of just a one-way dialogue, there were three days of real conversation and I think that made all the difference. There was also free time to connect and chat with me and other presenters … sort of like hanging around after the talk at a live event.

3. Size

This was a virtual event so I could have opened it up to an unlimited number of people. I intentionally kept it small so that everyone could meet everyone and have a chance to be heard. I turned away dozens of applications — I could have made a lot more money — but the small size made the event work!

The small number allowed for real networking. A few people commented that this was the first online event they’ve attended that resulted in new business connections.

I know many events count on thousands of participants to make the financials work, so this might not be for everybody. But I sacrificed monetary return for quality and at least for me, it worked.

4. Comfort

It’s hard to put my finger on this one as a success factor but several people mentioned it so I think it’s significant. Several people said the event was “friendly and accessible.”

Perhaps It was because I set a bit of a goofy tone and joked around. Maybe it was because we could establish real camaraderie since the group was so small. But the intimacy and friendliness made a difference that sparked conversations and connections.

When was the last time you attended an online conference and thought “that was fun”?

5. Flawless execution

I hired an events-planning expert (my daughter) to handle all of the execution and technical details. Although it was a small event, it was rather complex with multiple speakers, recordings, sound effects, polling, and pre-assigned break-out rooms. Believe me, if the tech had not worked flawlessly, THAT’S what people would remember and talk about.

By the way, we ended up using Zoom. I evaluated several platforms but thought any small incremental advantage over Zoom was negated by the fact that I knew Zoom worked and people were already familiar with it. Any “learning curve” would have been a negative.

I was recently part of a massive tech conference that had severe technology problems. No matter how good the content may be, the tech can disrupt your success.

What about the content?

The Uprising featured forward-thinking thought leaders such as Martin Lindstrom and John Jantsch. So, I definitely delivered on The Uprising promise of providing thought-provoking content about what’s coming NEXT in marketing. But I suppose I consider that table stakes. If I had tried to stuff this great content into the same boring format of other online conferences, I would not have succeeded.

I suppose an analogy is going to a symphony. You’re going to the concert because of the reputation of the orchestra. You know the music is going to be great. But if the concert hall is freezing cold and the person next to you is eating popcorn the whole time, you may never come back.

In this COVID era, the experience is as important as the content. We need to have that experience make up for the fact that we won’t be seeing our friends and hanging out in California or Las Vegas for an event.

An Uprising for you

I’m planning at least one more Uprising Online event in 2021 with the hope of returning to a live format at a lodge in the Tennessee woods on September 14-17, 2021.

But here’s what I’ve realized — Going online has its advantages! We are having a ball with this event.

• I get to include people who may not be able to afford to travel to the live event.
• I can be more creative with the speakers and topics.
• And by recording the event, it may open up new content opportunities.

The first online event was AWESOME and I hope you’ll consider joining me in February. There are just a few spots left and I’d love to have you experience what an online event can be. Click here to learn more about the mind-bending speaker line-up and to secure your own slot.

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

The post Five Ways to Reinvent Online Conferences appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.