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My career has a clear dividing line.<\/p>\n
For most of my professional life, I was a marketing executive with a Fortune 100 company. To drive the stock price, we needed to make great products and continuously innovate. In my marketing role, I created more customers so we could ship more stuff, more often, at higher prices.<\/p>\n
Act 2 (the dividing line) started when I launched my own company about 17 years ago. Most of my income now derives from earning the attention of an audience through blog posts, podcasts, keynote speeches, and books. This is the promise of the creator economy. Anyone can monetize attention, and I’ve taken full advantage of that opportunity.<\/p>\n
But the days of the attention economy are coming to a close, and we need to embrace a new mindset to succeed in the AI Era.<\/p>\n
Let’s dig in.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cattention economy\u201d is widely attributed to Herbert A. Simon<\/a>, the Nobel Prize\u2013winning economist and cognitive psychologist.<\/p>\n In a 1971 paper titled \u201cDesigning Organizations for an Information-Rich World,\u201d Simon wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cIn an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Blogging pioneers like Chris Brogan<\/a>, Julien Smith<\/a>, and Gary Vaynerchuk<\/a> codified this radical business model: Give away all your best ideas. If you earn attention, the money will come.<\/p>\n This became the foundation of the modern content marketing movement. In 2006, “Inbound Marketing” was coined by Hubspot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The strategy: Overwhelm a niche with relevant content, and it’s game over for competitors.<\/p>\n In 2014, I characterized the downside of this new dynamic as Content Shock<\/a> — once a niche becomes saturated, the cost of winning a content arms race forces some companies to drop out. Content becomes commoditized.<\/p>\n Here we are in the AI Era. The cost of creating excellent content is near zero, or heading that way. The attention economy model, which drove so much success, is nearly obsolete. Marketers are battling:<\/p>\n The cumulative pressure is so severe that even Joe Pulizzi<\/a>, the “godfather of content marketing,” declared:<\/p>\n “Most creators who build audiences that monetize generally take between 18 and 36 months. We may not have that kind of time. The major platforms are bending more to synthetic content (of course, they are and will). Synthetic creators (AI’s) are booming and will continue to boom where they will outcreate humans at an unfathomable rate. It will simply be near impossible (not impossible) for a new creator to break through and build momentum in 2-3 years (I think).<\/p>\n “Synthetic content is going to move from slop to amazing in a very short period of time.And then, our devices will begin to create content on demand for us … original stuff (well, from the LLMs original) that will be like magic. No creator needed for that stuff.<\/p>\n “But we have the now. And right now that hasn’t happened yet. And right now businesses need to be leveraging their employees as creators and building their own personal brands because now it’s possible.”<\/p>\n Human content will survive and thrive. But we’ll need to re-focus and tap into something new: intimacy.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I was in conversation<\/a> with my brilliant friend Mitch Joel<\/a> when we first tossed around this idea. When everyone is chasing attention, perhaps the future is intimacy.<\/p>\n There is a word for that type of intimate content: Art.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n No matter what happens in the world of AI, art will persist.<\/p>\n I will always love the human creator named Bruce Springsteen. An AI song that sounds like Springsteen might be a curiosity, but I will only pay my money to see The Boss, not a bot pretending to be Bruce.<\/p>\n I have an emotional connection to the way Bruce’s songs interpret the intimate human experience. Our content must do the same. It will have to be intimate. It will have to be vulnerable. And that takes courage, especially if you work for a company that is still focused on battles over keywords.<\/p>\n Anyone, or anything, can earn attention. AI created an oil painting that sold for over $1 million, won writing contests, and mimicked the works of our greatest musicians. Tragically, organizations are creating rage farms<\/a> that industrialize attention.<\/p>\n But intimacy … humans can always win that game.<\/p>\n The idea that corporate content must approach the level of art is probably uncomfortable. Maybe this post is the first declaration of this new reality.<\/p>\n But take a hard look at our world. What choice do you have?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n If you’re competent, you’re vulnerable. AI is more than competent, and it will overwhelm you. Worse, if you’re merely competent, you’re ignorable — the worst marketing sin.<\/p>\n But as the world moves inexorably toward AI slop, real, raw, vulnerable human stories will be a luxury.<\/p>\n I don’t see AI as a competitor. The world is already overrun with content. What does it matter if I have a million competitors or a billion? I’m never going to win at SEO.<\/p>\n But I can win with intimacy. I can earn your trust and love, just like Bruce Springsteen. He’s real, he’s honest, and he gives his all. When I publish content for you, there is only one sentence pounding in my brain: “I will never let you down.”<\/p>\n I was interviewed on a podcast this week, and the host — with emotion in her voice — said, “We’ve never met, but I feel like I know you as a friend. I’ve read your content for so long.”<\/p>\n I doubt she will ever gush those words to an AI bot. I have achieved intimacy with her. I am part of the fabric of her life. I am her trusted friend.<\/p>\n Every post I write carries a badge that says “100% Human Content.” It’s my pledge to you that this is me. I am here. You can count on me. And isn’t that rare? Isn’t that the assurance we all want in this world?<\/p>\n Now, how are you going to achieve that intimacy for your business?<\/p>\n Follow Mark on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>, and\u00a0Instagram<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Illustration courtesy Mid Journey<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Competing in the attention economy has been the prevalent strategy for 20 years but AI is changing that. There is a new competitive landscape and intimacy wins the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":91550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,50,40,86,117,43,248,77,23,44,59,63,25,29,253,233],"tags":[251,142,36,252],"class_list":["post-93347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-blogging","category-blogging-best-practices","category-branding","category-business-strategy","category-careers","category-content-distribution","category-content-marketing","category-customer-acquisition","category-economics-of-social-media","category-futurist","category-internet-marketing","category-marketing-best-practices","category-marketing-strategy","category-seo","category-trending","tag-hubspot","tag-joe-pulizzi","tag-mark-schaefer","tag-mitch-joel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
The intimacy economy<\/h2>\n
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“I care less about what everyone else is obsessed with and more about what deepens what I already care about,” he said. “It\u2019s about how deeply one message can land\u2026 and where it leads me next. Content that moves from viral reach to emotional proximity.”<\/p>\nThe imperative for art<\/h2>\n
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Need a keynote speaker?<\/strong>\u00a0Mark 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\u2019s bestselling\u00a0marketing books,\u00a0<\/a><\/em>a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world\u2019s largest brands.\u00a0Contact Mark<\/a>\u00a0to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.<\/em><\/p>\n