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}.

If you haven’t heard of Angine de Poitrine, you probably soon will.

The duo is the most viral musical meme on the internet (by far). Today, I’m making an important and fascinating connection between their success and the reality of effective modern marketing. To get us on the same page, watch at least a few minutes of this video, which has had millions of views in just a few weeks:

Pretty crazy, right?

Now, there are many technical nuances to this band that make them interesting, such as a musical style described as “micro-tonal math rock.” And of course, their outfits are over the top. How do they even play those instruments?

But today I want to show how their success is right out of the playbook I described in my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. This is a relevant and inspiring case study for every marketer — even if you hate the music!

Let’s set the scene.

In the book Audacious, I provide evidence that the world of marketing is BORING. Very boring.

Research shows that about two-thirds of marketing and ad campaigns elicit a negative or neutral emotional response from customers, whether B2B or B2C. And AI is making it worse, creating a pandemic of dull.

The same thing is happening in the music industry.

In the last few months, music critics like Ted Gioia and Rick Beato noted the lack of innovation on the current music scene. Beato compared 2025 Grammy-nominated songs to songs from 1986 and noted that eight of the top 10 songs last year were remakes of old tunes. 1986 featured timeless songs from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Lionel Richie, to name a few. Both critics pointed out the horrible impact of AI slop on the quality of today’s music innovation.

So, just like the marketing world, music fans are begging for something new in a boring world.

And, when something like Angine de Potrine finally comes along, magic happens!

Where did this band come from?

Before I plot out the marketing formula that propelled the band, it might be useful to know a little background.

Angine de Poitrine is a two-piece band from Quebec. They seemed to appear from nowhere, but Khn (guitar, bass, looping) and Klek (drums) have played together since their early teens. That’s around 20 years of musical partnership before the world caught up with them.

In early February 2026, Seattle indie radio station KEXP uploaded footage of Angine de Poitrine performing at a festival in Rennes, France. In two weeks, the video passed 3.5 million views. Excited reaction videos flooded in.

Why did it spread so fast? There is actually a method to their madness.

The repeatable creative formula that works

I’ve been obsessed with discerning how humans will thrive in an AI-dominated world. For two years, I trotted around the globe talking to the most acclaimed creative geniuses in search of answers.

In my discussions, a pattern emerged. The best marketing and advertising work leveraged one, or more than one, of these strategies:

• Disrupt the traditional story or narrative
• Disrupt where the story is told
• Disrupt who tells the story

The book provides hundreds of ideas on how to do this, but the formula really is this simple.

A small example: I uploaded the book to AI. An agent created abstract art images based on the stories in the book. The only thing on the book cover is a QR code. If you hover over the QR code, the book cover endlessly changes as the AI-generated images form an “infinity cover.”

Why is this an innovation that rises above the noise (and receives mainstream news coverage)?

• I told the story of the book in a new way — through AI abstract art.
• The story was told in a new place — a book cover.
• I disrupted who told the story. There was no human involved. The book told the story!

Now, let’s examine how this same formula worked for this band.

The Angine de Poitrine edge

In a sea of sameness, Angine de Poitrine disrupted its niche. And it did it precisely along the Audacious formula.

1. Disrupting the story

Today’s music is a sea of sameness. While the Angine de Poitrine hints at prog rock tunes from the past, it is wholly unique by combining noisy riffs with undeniable grooves that keep you engaged.

Commenting on the band, Rick Beato said: “Amazing. This is what I imagined the future of music would be. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

This is a man who has been around the industry for decades. and he was hearing an entirely new “story.”

Disrupting the medium

While the band is still going viral on common channels like YouTube and Instagram, the story is narrated in a different way.

The guitarist plays an instrument that is both lead guitar and bass. And he is manipulating the music and the two instruments by controlling pedals with his bare (polka dotted) feet. This is far from any mainstream approach to playing music.

Microtonal music utilizes alternative tuning systems that create new harmonic colors and are foundational to many non-Western traditions, including Indian, Turkish, and Arabic music. So they are mashing styles and cultures together.

Even the band’s rhythms are bizarre yet mesmerizing. It seems like the musicians mindfully disrupted every single way they could tell their story.

Disrupting the storyteller

This is the most obvious innovation. Even if you didn’t know anything about music, the costumes, the strange symbols, the dancing, and their made-up language demands attention. This is even beyond the personas of David Bowie or KISS.

The story is being told by strange polka-dotted aliens … who shred.

The marketing lesson of Angine de Poitrine

A few months ago, I wrote an article about unhinged marketing and why this is a timely and important trend. Brands like Liquid Death, Nutter Butter, and Duolingo seem to be breaking every marketing norm with their nightmarish campaigns.

But really, they’re not. Great marketing is not about conformity. It’s driven by non-conformity. They aren’t succeeding by telling everyone how great they are, pumping the next holiday sale, or search engine optimization. They’re lovable, relatable brands because the world desperately wants something to talk about.

Arguably, Angine de Poitrine is the Liquid Death of music. It’s a good product, but that is secondary to the unhinged brand image.

Finally, we have a musical act that makes you pay attention. What about your brand? Who is stirring up the shit in your industry? Is it time for a little audacity?

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 audacious marketing genius of Angine de Poitrine appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

More than a decade ago, I predicted that the surge in digital content would trigger a content arms race. I called this Content Shock. To stand out amid this tsunami of posts, podcasts, and Reels, it would require higher levels of investment in creative resources or promotions, and likely both. I forecast that as content niches became saturated, it would be impossible for many businesses to compete.

While this sounds like common sense, at the time, this was probably the most controversial marketing blog post ever written. The idea sent a chill down the spines of content marketing service providers, and I became a target of derision.

Of course I was right. Today, Content Shock isn’t a theory. It’s a daily reality made worse by this relentless barrage of AI content.

Is there a strategy to overcome Content Shock today?

Yes, but we are about to take an unexpected turn.

I want to be very direct about your future and your content, whether you are creating for a company, a customer, or a personal brand.

There have been many posts about AI taking over our marketing jobs. I won’t sugarcoat things. I think that is probably true. Follow the money. Companies have to make an ROI from AI investments, and the unfortunate first place they’ll look is headcount.

The hopeful marketers out there opine that truly “authentic” content will save our jobs. That is not enough. Bots can be pretty convincing.

I believe there is a permanent place for human content, but success requires a radical new mindset. Let’s get into it.

Reaching toward Springsteen

I recently listened to AI-generated songs that mimicked Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. In fact, the sound was indistinguishable.

But would  I ever pay money to see a computer in concert? No. I want to see the man. The Boss.

Why? Isn’t music just music?

The difference is, Bruce means something to me because he’s an artist. He communicates in a very raw, intimate way, interpreting our human experience.

I’ve loved Brice since I was a kid, and I will always love him, no matter what happens with AI. Likewise, there will be poets, painters, and even podcasters I will always love, even if AI overwhelms us with fantastic content tailored to us (which is already happening).

So this is the key idea. If you are competent, you’re a commodity. You’re ignorable. Your content must approach the level of Bruce, or at least what would be considered star-quality in your industry. Your content must approach the emotional level of art.

I’ve never heard a content marketing strategy explained this way before, but it is a new day, and this demands new rules.

If you’re chunking out blog posts and podcasts because you’re afraid not to, your time is up. Even “human” storytelling can be effectively mimicked by bots. But there is one place we will always own — our human vulnerability.

The advantage in vulnerability

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog post about accomplishing a great lifetime achievement and then feeling completely empty … even depressed.

I told the people in my RISE community that I was afraid to write a blog post about this — wouldn’t I come across as a jerk? Here is a dude who is so successful he’s depressed. Sheesh.

But I have this internal signal. Whenever I am afraid of something, I do it. That’s how I grow.

So I wrote the post and received a massive outpouring of positive comments. Why? I’m convinced it was the unexpected vulnerability. In other words, I was providing an interpretation of my human experience. That is art.

I had a human point of view. AI does not have a point of view. If you prompt three AI platforms to create a movie script, you will get three of the same movies based on successful formulas from the past. If you put this same prompt in the hands of three directors, you’ll get three entirely different movies based on their human experience.

As we move forward with our “human content,” vulnerability is usually the missing factor. We can’t just slap a stock photo of people in an office on our content and call it “human.” Where is the human experience? Where is the point of view?

The only way we’ll be different from the bots is by digging deep and having the courage to share our human experience. That small difference elevates content beyond the bots.

Turning vulnerability into business benefits

Roxana Hurducas is an acclaimed B2B branding expert and co-founder of Drivion. She recently told me an extraordinary story of how sharing her life experience on a Facebook page laid the foundation for her business success:

“Ten years ago, building a personal brand wasn’t on my radar. Yet, looking back, I realize I was laying its foundation brick by brick, without even knowing it.

“At the time, I worked as a marketing and PR manager for a courier company. It was my name and face, not a faceless corporate logo, that responded to client issues and concerns on Facebook. I answered from my personal account, treating every message with empathy and honesty. People really loved that human touch, though sometimes, I’ll admit, it was overwhelming.

“Later, after a very public life event—a brain surgery I openly shared about—I stepped into a new level of vulnerability with my audience. Sharing my life reality, not just my business wins, built even more trust and a genuine connection.

“As my personal life evolved, I realized I wanted to separate my family’s stories from my professional updates. I started a new account, “The Untraditional Family,” where I was radically honest about topics like raising my kids, navigating divorce, and even my third marriage. At first, I thought these stories would interest a different audience, but something surprising happened.

“Whether they first ‘met’ me through business or family stories, my audiences began to merge. People who knew me as the marketing manager followed my personal account. And those who followed my family journey became interested in my professional activities. The reason? Vulnerability, authenticity, and honesty. By sharing both the challenges and the joys of my human experience — the parts of life most people hide — I became not just a brand or a professional, but a fully relatable person.

“Now, when I meet people at events, they already know me. They trust me, not only as a communications professional, but as a woman, a mother, a partner, and a human being who owns her story. That trust, hard-earned and real, extends to every business relationship I have.

“If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: people need stories, especially stories they can relate to. And allowing your audience to see the real, unfiltered you — beyond your résumé — can become your strongest professional asset.”

How is Roxana’s storytelling different from that of any great artist? Like our favorite artists, painters, and poets, she is bravely connecting to an audience through her interpretation of life and its meaning.

And AI can’t touch that.

Art from anybody

I recognize that Roxana’s level of personal sharing is unique and may be uncomfortable for many people. But just showing any humanity at all can give you an edge in a boring, buttoned-up field.

I recently had a coaching call with a well-known gastrointestinal surgeon. He was building a new business and recognized an opportunity to create content on his website.

“I don’t have a human story, he said. “I’m a scientist. I talk about facts. I talk about fiber in your diet. How is this anything that approaches art?”

My suggested content:

“I was sitting at my kitchen table with the sun streaming through the window on a beautiful day. My wife came to the table with a plate of hot, homemade cinnamon bread. Yes, this was a wonderful treat. But it was also a gift of life. My wife knows how important fiber is in our diet, and she makes a special point of preparing meals high in fiber. She plans our meal around fiber. You might be wondering exactly how much fiber you need, so let’s talk about that today …”

“OK,” the physician said, “I get it!”

My point is, whether you are in B2B, B2C, or a doctor writing about fiber, everyone has a human story for human readers.

The creator versus the Content Artist

Some of the following ideas were inspired by the work of Scott Belsky.

Here’s a comparison of the content creator who AI will replace versus the Content Artist who will persist.

The Creators of today …

Creators trade quality for speed. They’re only trying to get a good-enough video cut, or they’re flooding the zone with TikTok posts to meet a schedule and hit an engagement goal.

Creators must conform to algorithms, which makes their content ephemeral.

The entry barriers to being a Creator are low. Prompt-driven, generative AI tools lower the floor so that anyone can be a Creator of some kind.

For Creators, the content is the means, not an end.

The Content Artists … 

Content Artists are never willing to trade beauty for speed. Sure, artists do quick sketches and explorations, but these exercises serve to explore the full range of possibilities.

They require creative control, and giving it up to a prompt-based generative tool is like a sculptor working without their hands.

Only Content Artists craft the meaning-infused stories that thrill and break us. While their work may not be fast or optimized for clicks, their stories teach us about ourselves and advance our understanding of the world.

Content Artists make units of culture.

That’s why we will always love the artists. And that’s what it takes for an audience to love you, too.

People conflate what enables creators with what might replace artists. People see the “AI slop” capabilities of new generative models and then declare the “end of fine art” and “RIP Hollywood,” as if the founding of McDonald’s would kill our desire for fine cuisine.

You still matter. But you must become an artist.

Overcoming Content Shock in an AI World

Here’s the great enigma of this reality.

Content Artists need time, freedom, and space. They need patience and reward for the risks they take. They need control of their workflow and pace.

This list of needs would be laughed out of most boardrooms eager to harvest human capital from AI investments.

So this is an opportunity, isn’t it? Great marketing is about non-conformity, not conformity. If everyone is zigging toward AI slop, maybe the most audacious move is zagging away from it.

Content Shock is nothing new. Let’s be honest. Does it really matter if we have a hundred competitors or a million of them? We’re not going to win by creating more AI slop that just adds to the problem.

As content creators use AI to flood the zone and grab our attention as cheaply and efficiently as possible, consumers will still crave more crafted, deeply human stories. As creating content becomes easier, the bar for what makes an extraordinary and unforgettable story will rise to the level of art.

Will you rise with it?

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post How to overcome Content Shock in a world of AI slop appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

For more than 15 years, I’ve studied and written about “rising above the noise” — how a business or individual can be seen, heard, and discovered amid the overwhelming wall of content competition.

Since I wrote about Content Shock more than 10 years ago, the total number of hours each day that consumers spend watching, listening to, reading, and interacting with content has barely grown. At the same time, technological innovations in production and distribution, the rise of user-generated content, and the proliferation of premium content have created a dizzying array of new choices.

This is Content Shock on steroids. There are 50 times more amateur uploaders than professionals on Spotify, 25,000 times more hours of content produced last year on YouTube than on all traditional television networks and video streaming services, and AI has flood the zone and is now the dominant source of web content.

So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered a new McKinsey Research report that offers an important new clue about how content actually cuts through effectively.

The breakthrough idea in this report is that most businesses focus on the time spent on content and the size of their audience. This overlooks a more important issue: the quality of time spent.

Not all consumer attention is created equal. Consumption and monetization vary widely across the content marketing spectrum, and the quality of the attention is the reason for that variability.

Let’s dive into this today and learn about how to measure and optimize the quality of attention on your content.

The drivers of attention value

Backed by an in-depth survey of 7,000 consumers worldwide, McKinsey developed an “attention equation” that reveals the full drivers of attention value. Attention doesn’t simply equal the amount of time spent; it equals the amount of valuable time spent, driven by focus and intent. 

Using a new equation, McKinsey measured the value of consumer attention across 20 media channels. Not all content types are created alike. The value of an hour of consumption ranged from:

$33 per hour for live sports,

$17 per hour for live concerts

$7.18 for movies

$0.37 for books

$0.25 for social media posts

$0.12 per hour for digital music

$0.05 for podcasts

This is common sense. If you’re attending a live sports event or a concert,  you’ve paid a lot of money for that “content.” You’re committed!

But looking at the “lower tier” of content we usually produce — social media posts and podcasts — there’s a massive difference McKinsey describes as an “attention quotient.”

The attention quotient consists of two primary components: 1) consumers’ level of focus, or how actively they’re engaged with the content, and 2) the job to be done, or why they are consuming the content. Taken together, these components have significant predictive power on monetization.

Let’s look at these two factors — level of focus and the job to be done — more carefully to see how this might work in practice in our own companies.

Level of focus

McKinsey’s research revealed several insights about where and how consumer focus differs across media:

• In-person experiences elicit the highest level of focus.
• Books (digital and physical) engage audiences to a comparable degree with live experiences
• Console and PC gaming is the only digital medium that gets close to live levels of focus
• Community events create a high level of focus, even in digital, where group activities elicit higher focus than more solitary activities.
• Younger consumers aren’t less attentive; they just pay attention to different media. Gen Z consumers and baby boomers report the same average level of focus, but it’s split across different media: Gen Z consumers are highly focused when playing video games, while boomers prefer reading.
• Overall, the more focused consumers are, the more likely they are to spend. Across consumers, a 10 percent increase in average focus paid across media is associated with a 17 percent increase in consumer spending. Consumers in the top quartile of focus spend twice as much as those in the bottom quartile.

The job to be done

The second factor builds on a famous framework created by Clayton Christensen. When a person consumes your content, what are they “hiring it” for? What is the job to be done?

The primary “job to be done” of media consumption falls into one of five categories (from most to least valuable):

1. To enjoy something that I love. In-person experiences—including live concerts and music festivals, theme parks, sporting events, and movie theaters—dominate this category. Physical books and (to a far lesser extent) audiobooks are also consumed primarily for love.
2. For education and information. This is the primary job to be done for newspapers, magazines, and podcasts.
3. For social connection. This is the primary job of social media sites (Facebook more so than others). Social video (including Instagram reels and TikTok but not YouTube), live events, and video games overindex on this role.
4. For light entertainment and relaxation. This is the primary job of cable television, video streaming, social video, and mobile and console gaming.
5. For background ambience. This is the primary role of radio, digital music, podcasts, and cable television.

Adding these two factors to our content analysis begins to shed light on why not all marketing-related content is created equal:

Implications for demographics

The research also allowed McKinsey to tease out three distinct customer groups based on their high level of economic value:

Content lovers

Entertainment omnivores represent 13 percent of all consumers. Curious and passionate, they spend 2.4 times more money on content and consume 1.7 times more content than the average consumer. They’re the superfans, casting their consumption nets wide to see the movie franchise, watch the spin-off show, ride the themed roller coaster, and buy the items advertised at every step.

Interactivity enthusiasts

The immersion seekers (16 percent). Competitive and lively, they love video games, sports, online betting, and comedy. They prefer endorsements to advertisements, overindex in user-generated content, and spend a reasonable amount of time on online message boards such as Reddit. Although eager consumers, they find the modern media landscape confusing, difficult to navigate, and overly expensive.

Community trendsetters

The culture creators (10 percent). Extroverted tastemakers, they seek out large communal events such as concerts, movies, and theme parks. They’re active on social media and drive online culture and fandom, often with outsize spending on their hobbies and interests. They enjoy advertisements more than any other segment, and when they’re not setting the cultural conversation, they’re shopping.

The report clusters the remaining 60 percent of consumers in groups with lower attention value, and thus lower economic value.

Implications for marketers

The competition for consumer attention has long been measured by audience size and time spent. This view misses the whole story (a point I made in my 2017 book, The Content Code).

It also reinforces the basic idea behind Content Shock: you’re probably going to have to pay more for the content types that cut through the noise.

The attention equation helps clarify what the winners in that competition have suspected: Quality and relevance, not just quantity, of attention go a long way in determining success. In a media environment defined by abundance, fragmentation, and distraction, marketers must ask themselves:

• Is my content designed for high focus or low focus?

• What job am I really being hired for?

• How can I elevate the focus or shift the job?

Think about this practical example: Google wanted to shine a light on the Nobel Prize-winning work of its genius AI leader, Demis Hassabis.

Most companies might put out a press release or a blog post — very low attention value. But Google produced a full-length documentary called The Thinking Game. It already has 14 million views on YouTube alone.

According to the McKinsey formula, this film is already worth more than $100 million in attention. Let’s say it took $5 million to make the film. This would break most content marketing budgets, but within the McKinsey model, that is a bargain. And that return on attention that will only grow as the movie is viewed over time.

Implications for strategy

This research tells us something I’ve been circling around for years: the brands that win aren’t the ones who shout the loudest, but the ones who create moments that matter. Attention is no longer a game of volume. It’s not about hacking the algorithm or flooding the zone. It’s about earning focus and aligning with the deeper job your audience needs you to do in their lives.

That’s the frontier now. Not more content … but higher-quality attention.

The companies that embrace this shift will stop measuring the wrong things. They’ll stop obsessing about impressions and start designing for immersion. They’ll stop producing noise and view content as nourishment. And in a world overwhelmed by Content Shock, that will be the ultimate competitive advantage.

I also want to connect the dots between the Attention Equation and a post I wrote about ethically-sourced marketing. If we turn our focus to higher-value content, it could reduce the social media “litter” that drives up energy costs and funds online hate and bullying.

Make something worth hiring. Make something worth focusing on. Make something worthy of the precious, finite human attention that has become the most valuable currency in the world.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Nano Banana

The post Research points to the “Attention Equation” behind measurable content success appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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

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

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

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

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 323

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

From Counting Clicks to Decoding Intention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brand: The Ultimate “Override” in the Prompt Era

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

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

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

Marketing to Machines (and Machine Influencers)

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

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

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

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

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

So, Where Do We Go from Here?

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

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

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

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

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The introduction of AI as our friend / co-worker / companion / enemy has heightened the emotion in our marketing discussions, but perhaps nothing has fanned the outrage more than the idea that AI survives by stealing our content. Protecting our content from AI has become a global obsession.

One company just posed a solution that raised eyebrows. Cloudflare, a technology company that helps websites secure and manage internet traffic, introduced a new permission-based setting that enables customers to automatically block artificial intelligence companies from collecting their digital data.

The company, which handles about 20 percent of all internet traffic, has seen a sharp increase in AI data crawlers on the web. It has proposed setting up “toll roads” where AI companies would pay to access content.

A cry of “YEEESSS!” undoubtedly echoed through the halls of many publishers and authors. Finally, the mighty economics of this revolution are tilting in our favor. But has it?

Before you sign up for this sheath of protection, consider the big picture.  If the crawlers refuse to pay for your content, do you want to be out of the search index? We gave away our content to appease Google. Now we have to do it again to make the AI overlords happy. I, for one, will not adopt the Cloudflare policy.

Two years ago, I published an article that now seems prescient: Protecting Your Content from AI: A Contrarian View. The insight from this post bears repeating in light of these important developments, so here is a re-cap:

The Contrarian View

There has been a flurry of panicked posts about protecting your content from AI. There have been lawsuits, probes, and new software that prevents sites like ChatGPT from accessing your content from being absorbed into large language models. Within 14 days of the availability of code that can prevent AI data scraping, nearly 20% of the top 1,000 websites in the world began using it.

What should you and your business do? Should you keep AI away?

My advice today seems counterintuitive. Maybe when AI comes to suck up your content, you should say, “suck away.” Actually, we need to come up with a better phrase than that. But you know what I mean.

Let’s pause, take a deep breath, and rationally examine the issue of protecting your content from AI in the context of your future business success.

Acknowledging complexity

First, I must acknowledge that this is an insanely complex and evolving issue. The legal, ethical, and economic considerations for large enterprises, newspapers, movie studios, and other media companies are unique.

When it comes to protecting your content from AI, any individual artist, author, or other creator may disagree with me, and I honor their right to make their own decisions.

My post today specifically aims at content creators, entrepreneurs, and businesses trying to rise above the noise and achieve business benefits from their content marketing.

The bottom line is that I believe more business benefits will accrue to you by NOT protecting your content from AI, even if it is copyrighted. To understand why, let’s begin by reviewing an important content marketing philosophy …

Unleash your content

Here is a fundamental truth: The economic value of content that is not seen and shared is zero.

Chances are you’re working hard to create amazing content. You post on social media and engage with fans to build your audience. All good. Now, your job is to get that content to move through your audience and beyond, and that means focusing on content transmission (This strategy was the subject of my book The Content Code).

I’ve been against gated content, and the ridiculous notion that you shouldn’t publish on “rented land.” Of course you should. My view is, publish your content everywhere your audience could possibly find it, consume it, and share it! Unleash your content!

The first consideration: If you protect your content from AI — a technology that is becoming the foundation of search and content discovery — and your competitors don’t, will you be better off? Probably not.

An old dilemma

The argument about protecting your content from AI is strangely familiar. This is the same debate we had in the early days of content marketing — “What??? You want me to give away my content and best ideas for free?”

Yes, we all had to do that because if we didn’t provide free and helpful content, the competitor down the street would. Their content would be highlighted by search, discovered, and shared … and we would lose.

Publishing free content was a radical idea. Before the internet, many businesses generated revenue from their proprietary content. Research firms built profitable businesses by selling original reports for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That business model is now nearly obsolete. For better or for worse, information flows freely on the web. Once you publish anything, anywhere, it will probably find its way to the open waters of the web.

Let’s get specific about what’s happening to copyrighted content today, with or without AI. I put tremendous effort into my books, and making money from a business book is no easy task. Every month, I discover some nefarious group selling illegally digitized versions of my books. There are even sites that sell my blog posts as aids in writing student term papers.

For a while, I tried to fight back. But it’s like that arcade game Whac-A-Mole. Every time I try to take a whack, another illegal site pops up somewhere else. If people truly want to access and share your content, there is no recourse, no stopping it.

So, even if you create a wall around your content, it will probably seep into the AI machine anyway. If you use software defense against AI, what would prevent someone from manually cutting and pasting it into an LLM?

Let’s put the issue of attribution aside for a moment. If you’re not freaked out by Google using your content for free, why are you freaked out about AI using it?

My first business from AI

A few months ago, I secured my first consulting contract from ChatGPT.

A new client found me by searching for “top 10 marketing experts.” I tried this myself, and the list would shuffle on each query, but I was usually in the top 10. Friends tried this in Europe, and the same names came up.

Let’s be honest. Am I one of the top 10 marketing experts in the world? No, I’m not. I could easily name 10 people in my circle of immediate friends who are smarter than me!

How did I make that AI-generated list? It’s the same way I show up on “best-of” blog lists and Google search results — I’ve had the tenacity and courage to put my content into the world with fierce consistency for 15 years.

AI is the future of search — it’s called Search Generative Experience (SGE). It’s already incorporated into Google.

My new client found me because I’m present on the web, and now I’m also present on AI. I believe that will serve me well as search evolves.

The cost of invisibility

Beyond revenue, there is an implication for impact and influence.

One of the organizations fighting AI content practices is The New York Times. This news organization is arguably the newspaper of record in the United States and one of the most important news sources in the world. As more students, researchers, and others turn to ChatGPT and other platforms for knowledge and research, is it in the best interest of The New York Times to remain unaccountable?

If you’re protecting your content from AI, you’re no longer part of the public conversation, at least as it is represented on ChatGPT and other AI platforms. Your view is invisible. What do you risk when you and your business are unaccounted for?

My smart friend Aleksandra Pimenides recently commented in our RISE marketing community:

“AI is an important source of knowledge transmission. Teachers take something and pass it on to their students. Libraries have books for people to read and learn. Likewise, LLMs act as an intermediary of transmission. Do Newton’s descendants get paid every time a student is taught the principle of gravity? Do libraries get fined when people go there to read and learn about subjects for free? To what extent should information and knowledge be monetized? Maybe there’s a distinction to be made between knowledge and information?”

A view of the true risk

I think much of the anxiety on this subject comes from an image of some AI bot cutting and pasting your unique content without attribution. That’s not exactly how it works.

Here is an explanation from Benedict Evans, which appeared in his wonderful newsletter (edited slightly for style):

“LLMs are not databases. They deduce or infer patterns in language by seeing vast quantities of text created by people — we write things that contain logic and structure, and LLMs look at that and infer patterns from it, but they don’t keep it. So ChatGPT might have looked at thousands of stories from The New York Times, but it hasn’t kept them. Moreover, those stories themselves are just a fraction of a fraction of a percent of all the training data. The purpose is not for the LLM to know the content of any given story or any given novel — the purpose is for it to see the patterns in the output of collective human intelligence.

“This is not Napster. OpenAI hasn’t ‘pirated’ your book or your story and it isn’t handing it out for free. In Tim O’Reilly’s great phrase, data isn’t oil; data is sand. It’s only valuable in the aggregate of billions and your novel is just one grain of dust in the Great Pyramid. This isn’t supposed to be an oracle or a database. It’s supposed to be inferring ‘intelligence’ from seeing as much of how people talk (as a proxy for how they think) as possible.

“If this is, at a minimum, a foundational new technology of the next decade, and it relies on all of us collectively acting as mechanical turks to feed it, do we all get paid, or do we collectively withdraw? It seems somehow unsatisfactory to argue that “this is worth a trillion dollars, and relies on using your work, but your own individual work is only 0.0001% so you get nothing.” Is it adequate or even correct to call this ‘fair use?’ Does it matter, in either direction? Do we change our definition of fair use?”

In the United States, copyright rights are limited by the doctrine of “fair use,” under which certain uses of copyrighted material for criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research may be considered fair.

As an example, I took a snippet from Benedict’s copyrighted newsletter, provided proper attribution, and used it today to teach. That’s fair use.

Here’s the problem with AI. Think of your copyrighted content as a lovely cake that you baked. It is your original and distinctive work. But inside AI, your work isn’t a cake. It’s an ingredient put into a blender to make a new cake. What’s fair use in that environment?

I dabble in watercolor painting. Seeking credit in an AI model is similar to the maker of my paints wanting attribution credit for this painting:

Even if I used one unique type of paint patented by a supplier, would I give them credit for the painting? No. I actually sold this painting. Should I give part of the revenue to Arches, the company who supplied the paper? I literally could not have made this without the paper and paint yet it is my original work, period.

Attribution

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.” – Voltaire

I think most of the “protecting your content from AI” conversation would disappear if we were assured we get credit for our work, in the case where credit might be important — like a meaningful, original idea. After all, we’re OK with Google scraping our content if we get credit for it in search results, right?

Let’s go back to the current state of the internet for a reality check.

In 2014, I wrote one of the most famous blog posts in marketing history, “Content Shock.” This is not idle bragging. The numbers back it up. “Content Shock” — a phrase I coined — has appeared in books, speeches, conferences, college classes, and millions of pieces of content. If you Google the term, there are 610 million results, like these:

Writing a bold post like this did its job. It helped establish thought leadership and provided thousands of links to my original article.

However.

I assure you that I have not received 610 million links back to my site! Even if I received a million links, that would mean I have attribution on just .002% of all references to my original idea.

Clearly, people are using and abusing my work without attribution. Does this mean I should block Google from accessing my post? Of course not.

As Tim O’Reilly said, data is sand that is only valuable when aggregated into something bigger. My blog post is a grain of sand in the content economy. If you want to be part of that economy, you must put pride aside.

No matter how protective I might feel about my intellectual property, it’s sand. And even if I am credited, who reads the footnotes?

In any case, I believe the problem of attribution will be resolved. It’s already happening. There are academic AI sites and writing assistants that allow you to search with references. I use an AI-powered tool through BuzzSumo that creates writing briefs with legitimate and relevant references. Very helpful, and it leads me to smart new content I can quote with attribution.

The option to learn original sources for attribution will be a more common option across all platforms eventually.

Conclusion

Comparing how content works on the web today versus content integrated into LLMs and AI search enables us to draw a rational conclusion, allowing AI bots to scrape content from our sites, at least for most businesses. AI will be a major component of search going forward.

This is a complex and evolving issue, but I believe that regulations and best practices will favor creators who allow their content to be used in LLMs over time. The attribution problem will likely be solved on many platforms and regulations will adjust to a new framing of “fair use.”

Having an effective presence within AI models and AI search utilities could result in business benefits that outweigh the risks of misusing your copyrighted content.

I’ll say once again that this is a complex issue but for most businesses, I think it makes sense to be part of the machine.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post Protecting Your Content From AI: Not So Fast! appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This headline isn’t clickbait. And I’m not selling you any LinkedIn consulting services! But I just had something really weird happen to me and it points to a few important LinkedIn growth secrets nobody talks about.

The crazy thing that prompted this article was, last week I had a LinkedIn post receive 100,000 impressions (104,833 and counting). On the surface, it looks like I’m killing it. Obviously, there was some luck involved. Nobody can plan viral. However, there are bigger lessons here about LinkedIn success, and I wanted to use this as a teachable moment.

The surprising post

It’s important to start with the actual content, and you’ll be surprised. The post that went viral was under 100 words. It wasn’t an in-depth article — I wrote it in five minutes. It wasn’t controversial. It didn’t have any photos or illustrations. And I posted the darn thing late on a Saturday night!

Before I tell you why it picked up steam, here is the entire post:

I have a sinking feeling of being left behind.

I’m reading about big companies and their AI re-invention and startups being “AI first.”

But here I am as a small business, fully immersed in the smart ideas of AI and using GPT as my sidekick every hour of the day. Yet the foundation of my business is Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and a WordPress blog/website. This is CRUDE.

AI is creating iterative improvements but I am not TRANSFORMING. I am augmenting, not reimagining. I sense that as a small business, I don’t have the ability to really LEAD with AI except to maybe be a little better at prompts than the next guy. Thoughts?

Not that exceptional, right? So let’s see what happened …

The first rule of LinkedIn growth success

First, let’s remind ourselves of the first rule of LinkedIn success — create conversations.

The number of likes doesn’t really matter. The number of shares doesn’t matter so much. Are people leaving lengthy comments? That represents a conversation, and LinkedIn loves that.

Specifically, when you first post content, LinkedIn only shares it to a small percentage of your followers. It wants to see if people are interested … do they comment? So those first few hours are key. If conversations (meaningful comments) happen, LinkedIn shares it to more of your followers, and if the comments continue, it might even get shared beyond your audience. Open waters!

Why did people start leaving comments on my post? Because I ended the post with a question. People just love to answer questions. If they leave the post without answering the question, it seems like the interaction is incomplete.

The post itself was honest, relevant, and vulnerable, something rare for LinkedIn, where everybody seems to be only interested in selling stuff. So, interrupting the flow with a short vulnerable post ending in a question started the conversations. And the first rule of LinkedIn success is, START CONVERSATIONS.

The other key is that I responded right away. This encouraged other people to converse, and then the ball was really rolling.

The viral moment

I’ve had many posts on LinkedIn create conversations and earn 30,000 views and more, but I think tipping 100,000 was a record for me. I can only guess why, but here is my theory.

1. First, it was short. There seems to be a trend on LinkedIn toward exceedingly long posts, but who has time for that?
2. It was a sincere cry for help that hit a nerve. It was unusual in its raw humanity.
3. It was timely. Let’s say I posted a little rant about an algorithm change that happened a month ago. Nobody wants to hear about it. It’s old news. But at this moment, much of the world is feeling a little stressed about AI and keeping up. So my timing was right. Be current.

The outfall

On several occasions, I’ve written that “engagement” is a lousy metric, and this viral hit was proof. With more than 300 comments, this would be deemed a major success by most businesses, but answering even most of them in a meaningful way was a distraction for my business. I’ve often said that you can engage yourself broke.

I tried my best to keep up because I always do. It’s an honor to earn a person’s attention and I don’t take that for granted. But another part of LinkedIn success is, don’t be fooled by engagement as a meaningful metric. There is no research I can find that correlates engagement to profitability or loyalty.

The responses were pretty evenly divided into:

• You’re doing OK as you are
• You’re doing it all wrong
• Let me sell you something

The business benefit

I had a viral success. What was the business benefit?

I certainly earned some awareness and about 1oo new followers. But the true benefit is unknowable. Allow me to explain.

I once had a client who told me, “Blogging doesn’t work.”

I asked him why.

“Because I wrote three blog posts in 2017 and nothing happened.”

Well of course not. Creating content that leads to a powerful personal brand is the long game. I teach a Personal Branding Master Class and I repeat over and over that “consistency is more important than genius.”

The LinkedIn post that went viral was not an act of genius. It was act of perseverance.

If this was my first post on LinkedIn, or my fiftieth, it would not have gone viral. But I have been publishing several times a week for 20 years, and I always provide helpful, quality content. I’ve built an audience who looks for my content and is ready to respond. That takes time.

The long-game nature of LinkedIn growth

Let me conclude with a final thought about benefits of content over the long term.

Many years ago, I received an email from a person who said he had been reading my content for three years. And based on his affection for my articles, he bought one of my books. He just wanted to tell me that this was the best business book he had read in 10 years. I didn’t know this person. As far as I knew, this had been my first contact with him, and the email was signed with his name and title — he was the CMO of a Fortune 100 company.

About two years later, I heard from him a second time, He wanted to hire me to help him re-organize his corporate content marketing effort. I didn’t have to bid on the contract. After reading my content for what was now five years, he knew I was the right person for the job and I just named my price.

And that’s how it works.

There is no get-rich-quick scheme for LinkedIn. You build an audience. The audience trusts you, and they become your customers.

The greatest secret of LinkedIn growth is perseverance.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post The LinkedIn growth secrets nobody talks about appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I recently participated in a Q&A on the future of AI and content hosted by my friend Mark Masters. I thought the quality of questions was so good that everyone might benefit from this content. Here are the questions and my answers covering automated content, strategy, humanity, and more:

There’s a quote going around about people who aren’t using AI being replaced by people who are using AI. What’s your take on this and the broader impact of AI?

I detest that quote. This framing misses the mark. We’re not talking about a tool that simply accentuates our jobs. This is horse-and-buggy territory—if you’re in the horse and buggy business, there’s nothing you can learn about cars that will save your business. Let’s not sugar coat it: this is a fundamentally new day.

The honest truth is that nobody knows—not even the experts—what’s ultimately going to happen or how fast change will occur. I have what I humbly call the Schaefer Rule: when you look at a transformational technology and think it could change everything in the next year, triple your timeline. If you think it can happen in a year, it’ll happen in three. Technology changes quickly, but culture, society, and business infrastructure change relatively slowly.

That said, the opportunity to replace FTEs and cut costs is likely to be a major driver for AI adoption. A recent study of researchers who began using AI revealed something fascinating: as expected, they made more discoveries, filed more patents, and launched more products by using AI. But here’s the intriguing part—the best researchers became even better, creating more distance between themselves and those who are merely competent. This is a rallying cry: if you’re good at what you do, embrace AI fully. Experiment with it every day. No matter what you do, AI has the opportunity to make you better and distance you from the competition.

The Real Concerns About Automated Content

My biggest worry is, what if AI is quietly becoming the author of our work, shaping our voice and our choices. What concerns you about how we use AI as a tool for business and work?

We need to get over characterizing AI as merely a “tool.” That’s a misconception. We look at Word or Excel spreadsheets or podcasting platforms as tools to help us do something. But AI is like electricity or heat—we’re not going to be able to do business without it. It’s not just a tool; it’s something transformational.

In terms of owning our voice and content, I think of it in two ways. I love art, but I’m not an artist. I wish I could be an artist and illustrator, and AI helps me be that. I use AI to illustrate my blog posts, and there’s a lot of thought behind each one. They all look different, and some are really nuanced to reflect what’s in my writing. AI has become a search engine for my creativity, unleashing potential and giving voice to the voiceless, helping people who could never write become writers. That aspect is fantastic.

It gets concerning when AI becomes indistinguishable from human content. There was a pundit recently who said we’re going to reach a point where if you can’t tell whether content is AI or human, you won’t care. Here’s the battle plan: make them care. If you’re merely competent, you’re ignorable. If you’re competent, AI will run right over you.

Art will persist. The things we cherish most in our lives have a human connection. Right here at my desk, I’ve got a drawer full of pictures and cards my children made for me over the years. There’s a story, a connection. Art is the interpretation of the human experience, and that will always persist. Therefore, for us to thrive, our content and work must approach the level of art.

This is nothing new. The subtitle of my book Marketing Rebellion is “the most human company wins.” That’s the battle plan—add your story, heart, and passion. Show compassion in everything you do. This approach is different for many businesses, but it’s necessary.

The Future of Creativity and Work

There’s a concern that working with AI might reduce the fun of digging in and doing the work because we’re outsourcing the work. With automated content, we’re outsourcing the fun part of the work.  What are your thoughts on this?

One of my concerns is that humanity will change because we won’t want to do the hard work anymore. We’ll happily abdicate deep thinking to AI.

Let me give you an example: AI can write a book, but when I write a book, it’s like getting a master’s degree. I have researched and written for two years, and by the end, I’ve internalized the content and reached a new level of expertise. The psychological term for this is “phoresis.”

When we give up on the work, we lose this phoresis, which enables critical thinking and new intellectual capabilities. There’s an enigma here: everyone says that in this world of AI, we need better critical thinking, but AI will actually diminish our critical thinking abilities. It’s going to be an important life skill to fight for, especially for our children, because the world is moving in the opposite direction.

The problem is that if you’ve done the work yourself, you understand how to evaluate AI’s output, but if you haven’t gone through that messy middle bit, you don’t know if the output is any good.

Your concern is valid. It’s real, and it’s going to get worse because we’re not going through the work. We don’t understand the process or the output. The enigma is that while everyone is saying we need better critical thinking in this world of AI, AI will actually diminish our critical thinking. It’s going to be an important life skill we have to fight for with our children because the world is going in the opposite direction.

The Evolution of Marketing and Content

If you started your blog today, would it look different, or would you even have a blog? What would that be like?

It would not be different at all. Not in a single way. My blog and thinking evolve because I’m growing as a person. My interests shift and change, but I still write about the intersection of marketing, technology, and humanity. That’s a big umbrella. I’m a writer who enjoys intellectual challenges and conversations like this one, which are based on ideas from my books. The blog still works.

In all your years in the industrial world and marketing, is this the biggest shift you’ve seen in your career, or is it just another new thing like when the web came along?

The difference now isn’t just the importance of the shift but the speed of change. We need to look at our competencies—our personal brand or business capabilities—as the surfboard. To thrive, we don’t need to change the surfboard; we need to find the next wave.

Another key strategy is community. We can’t do it all ourselves. We need to rely on others around the world to say, “Look what I found—this might help everyone.” Community is a key survival skill.

Do you think we’re on a deep dive to automated content mediocrity, just recycling average material?

Who cares? That’s not going to be you—it’s an opportunity! If the world is average and you’re not, you’re going to stand out.

About two-thirds of all marketing and advertising gets no emotional response from consumers or businesses. If there were a CEO of world marketing and advertising, they’d be fired for incompetence. You’ll be ignored if you’re merely competent—but you don’t have to be.

My entire book (Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World) is about disrupting the narrative—the story, where the story is told, and who tells it. Just give people something a little different. In most industries today, it’s not even that hard because everything is so boring. You just have to be one notch above crap.

Being Human in an AI World

For brands, shouldn’t tone of voice and being human be a given rather than something special?

What’s missing in brand marketing today is a true human voice that’s friendly, accessible, and vulnerable. How can you have a human voice without being vulnerable? Businesses are almost never vulnerable, so we have a long way to go, but vulnerability is what’s being listened to and cherished today.

There’s importance in being “lo-fi”—not Hollywood, not polished. We see this backlash in video games, where companies spend millions to make games look like movies, but players say, “No, we like it raw. We want it old school.” There’s a tremendous opportunity to embrace that authenticity.

I’m seeing people lose their edge or identity because they’re becoming over-reliant on AI. What are your thoughts on this?

They’re using AI as a crutch because they never had an edge in the first place.

Great marketing and content isn’t about conformity—it’s about non-conformity. If AI is taking us down a tunnel of mediocrity, great! That’s our opportunity to shine. Our rallying cry should be: “I’m quirky. I’ve got personality. I’m not going to be mediocre or average. I’m going to twist and turn things.” If everyone is zigging, I’m going to zag. That’s always been what makes marketing great.

ChatGPT is not just automated content. With a little tweaking, it can write and create really well in a human voice. How should content creators respond to this?

When ChatGPT came out, I called Shelly Palmer, a famous tech analyst here in America. I said, “What do you think?” He said, “I’m terrified. I’ve blogged almost every day for 15 years. I asked ChatGPT to write a blog post in my voice, and it did a perfect job in three seconds. I am 80% replaced.”

That does seem terrifying, but the more important question is: what is that 20%? That’s his personal brand, his humanity, the investment he’s made in blogging consistently for 15 years, building an audience that matters and cares for him. He has nothing to worry about. He’s known, trusted, beloved, and people will always turn to a human when they don’t know what’s true or real.

I feel the same way. I’m not worried people will stop reading my blog or books or hiring me when they’re confused because of my personal brand. I put in the work. On my blog, every post says “100% human content.” Proof of human is going to be super important going forward.

Do you think there will be more awareness around the responsible use of AI, and does that create a positioning opportunity for businesses with integrity?

It’s an interesting question. We see Gen Z caring more about the planet and environment than any generation ever, yet they’re driving fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu, which are terrible for the environment.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is that to fully participate in the AI world, the next evolution will be AI agents that can do work for you. But for an agent to make hotel and airline reservations, it needs your credit cards, passport, past experiences, and preferences. ChatGPT can now remember this information.

One theory is that there will be a demographic split between “AI in” and “AI out” groups. But someone recently pointed out it might be like social media or smartphones—why would you carry a device that tracks your behavior and tells companies who you are? But we do, because we’ve resigned ourselves to the benefits. People might care more about the personal benefits of giving their lives over to AI than about environmental or ethical concerns.

With all the changes happening, how can we know that humans will still win in the end?

Despite AI’s capabilities, I’m using it extensively to boost my productivity, accomplishing tasks I always hated doing. The traffic to my website is soaring, and financially, I’m having the best year of my entire life—all while AI supposedly should be doing everything I do better.

I think what people appreciate about me is that they know it’s genuinely me. I care deeply, and it means a lot to set an example and lift people up. I want to be bold, honest, and unafraid to help people sort through the truth without trying to sell them programs.

I’m not worried about AI. I see this as the most fascinating time ever. Embrace it, have fun with it, but keep your eyes open about what’s coming next—and rely on your community.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Finding Your Edge in a World of Automated Content appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few months ago, I viewed a demonstration of a new ad agency “operating system” that showed how AI could take one piece of blog content and distort it endlessly into a nearly infinite number of variations to serve every platform and every language. It made me feel ill as the copy of a copy of a copy gradually lost any connection to its human origins.

An AWS study showed that already a shocking 57.1% of all the content on the web is an AI-garbled dumpster of poor quality re-purposed content. And as AI inexorably scans the web for more information to learn and grow, it’s now training on its own crappy content.

In one respect, this ocean of meh might seem intimidating. Wasn’t it hard enough to stand out in this world — and now we have bots flooding our niches with so much crap that we’ll never be found?

But this is also an opportunity because the real, the human, the content that is surprising and even a little crazy, will feel like an oasis. The content that approaches the level of human art will stand out. The marketing activations that bring people together in shared experiences will be remembered and even celebrated.

But we simply can’t keep doing what we’ve always been doing. Competent doesn’t cut it. Competence doesn’t create conversations. Competent is ignorable.

This new AI marketing reality demands human audacity. So let’s get to it.

The place for humans in a pandemic of dull

Last week, I was given an incredible gift that I want to share with you.

Douglas Burdett, the legendary host of The Marketing Book podcast, came out of retirement to interview me about these topics — the core of my new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. The interview was part of a global livestream (you can see it here).

This discussion was so wonderful that I turned the recording into a special podcast episode for you. We cover:

• What are the strategies for human-based marketing in an AI-dominant world?
• How do humans unleash the revolutionary power of “everyday awe” in our businesses?
• Why AI creates a “pandemic of dull” that can only be overcome by human ingenuity.

… and much more.

It’s an incredibly fascinating show, and I hope you’ll join in by clicking here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 309

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

Bravo for Brevo!

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

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

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Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post How AI is creating a pandemic of dull (and what to do about it!) appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My new book is called Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. It’s a call to action for those who refuse to be left behind, as AI infringes on our work and our careers.

I knew the book itself had to demonstrate the norm-bending path I outlined in the book … but how? The publishing industry is so boring, built on processes that have existed for more than 200 years. There’s not a lot of room for breaking rules in a business like that.

But I did it. The cover of Audacious is a first-in-the-world AI-driven Augmented Reality experience — a book cover that’s never the same twice. Some have compared the cover to an art show or a video game. Click the video to see what it looks like:

This is the story of the “infinity cover” and how the most audacious book cover in history came to life.

The Spoonshot

Over the years, I’ve developed an admiration, and then a friendship, with the founders of Giant Spoon, a marketing agency recently named by Fast Company as one of the most creative companies in the world. Their quirky, norm-busting approach has won them award after award, and of course, that’s fascinating to a marketing geek like me.

I first mentioned Giant Spoon in my book Marketing Rebellion when I described the new momentum toward experiential marketing — a characteristic of much of their work. One of their activations was actually the catalytic idea that started me down the path for Audacious!

I knew I had to knock this new book out of the park. I was confident in my research and writing (my best work!), but I needed to create an experience that would push the boundaries of what a book could be. When I mentioned this to Marc Simons, a Giant Spoon co-founder, he said, “We can help.”

We were about to get a little crazy and launch what the agency calls a “Spoonshot.”

The creative process

It was a lot of fun going through the brainstorming process with Giant Spoon. Early ideas involved my naked body (the world is not ready for that one) and a pen that literally contained a sample of my sweat and blood (representing the work that went into the book).

The idea that rose to the top was an extreme version of the book — something that nobody had seen before. So we scoured the world for ideas and focused on an embossed leather cover. That proved to be far too expensive, and as we explored other techniques like foil embossing, we couldn’t find any idea that was an “oh wow” for a reasonable price.

I wasn’t against spending money, but the margin on book sales is so low so I had to watch the budget. One of the lessons in Audacious is that a big budget can hinder creativity. So we rolled up our sleeves and pursued new concepts.

I had the idea of creating a provocative book cover with nothing but a QR code — but where would the QR code lead?

The original Giant Spoon idea was that it would open a portal to another world populated by the stories and characters of the book — a quest. But this was also going to be complicated and costly.

And then, Giant Spoon Creative Director Ian Grody tossed out an idea that made my heart skip a beat. What if the cover kept changing? What if the book was never the same way twice?

If we could pull that off, we would achieve something that had never been done before! We had our path — on a reasonable budget!

The AI activated book

I did some tests to see how a QR code could be used in various circumstances. Would it work if it was as small as a thumbnail on Amazon? If it was presented on an angle? Would it even be legal within Amazon guidelines for me to publish a cover that was nothing but a QR code?

I determined that it could theoretically work and now we had to figure out HOW! This had never been done before, and it required ingenuity and determination.

Our concept was to upload the completed manuscript into an AI large language model and generate art based on stories in the book. The AI was also “fed” sample art to help us attain a unique, consistent output of abstract images.

It worked — sort of. The early versions were far too abstract and weird!

We learned that we needed to be more descriptive with our prompts for the AI to create something that resembled something from the book. The final results are still abstract but more connected to the stories in the book. You might even see abstract art of me on the cover!

The biggest technical challenge was linking the art to the QR code in a seamless reader experience. The Giant Spoon team found a creative solution — design a custom Snapchat filter that led to the AR experience. This was a breakthrough idea because it didn’t require any special download or passcode for the reader. Just point your smartphone camera at the cover, click to approve the experience, and go!

After a few months of work, we had a system in place!

The cover design

Now that we had an AI activated AR experience, we had to design the actual cover. It had to have a background with enough contrast to accurately display the code and bold enough to stand out as a small thumbnail image on Amazon.

Here’s an early version:

I loved the bold blue design, but it was inconsistent with the color palette of the abstract art in the AR experience. We wanted the cover-to-AR experience to seem seamless. We tried a lot of crazy combinations, including a photo of a plaster wall I took while visiting Italy:

I actually liked this idea … there was a story behind the cover art! But it was too pale to make the QR code stand out. We needed something bolder. I took a photo of a cool color pattern in an architectural magazine and asked the designer to see how it would look as a cover. We were getting close:

This is a great cover and it really popped. But there was one more iteration. Giant Spoon finalized the morphing AI images and suggested a more subtle gradient design that mimicked the tone of the new abstract art:

Voila! This is the final version, and it has the working QR code, so go ahead and give it a try if you haven’t purchased the book yet!

There was one other significant change to this cover: The subtitle. Some of the beta readers (people who provide feedback on the book before it is finalized) didn’t like the original subtitle, “The Rebel’s Guide to Disruptive Marketing.” They didn’t think it encompassed the bold promise of the book.

I kept thinking about one of the lines in the book — “This is a rallying cry for those who refuse to be ignored.” That’s the spirit I wanted to capture. We all need to rally and find a way forward in a world where the bots are creeping in on us. So I landed on: “How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.”

Beyond the AI activated cover

In addition to the standard AR cover, I also created AR experiences for:

• An alternative cover for ads where the QR code leads to the promotional video instead of the art
• A unique AR experience that aligns with the square audiobook cover
• Custom AR experiences for foreign publishers.

As you see, the cover took months of work and innovation. Some times it was nerve-wracking as we pioneered a new concept. But the cover is just the beginning of the book’s surprises. You’ll also find a puzzle within the book, QR codes leading to case study videos, and “Easter egg” surprises.

I hope you’ll buy my book and experience this unique work first-hand!

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

Top photo courtesy of Peggy Bodinaku

The post The story behind the world’s first AI activated book appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.