What were the most popular blog posts of 2024?

This is more difficult to answer today than a few years ago because my posts are read in so many different places today. I don’t spend the time curating social media views across all the various channels (like Medium, Substack, and LinkedIn) but certainly can see when a post goes “viral.”

Here at least is an estimate of the most popular posts of 2024 based on post views.

1. How to Reimagine Universities for the AI Era

Although this post appeared just a few weeks ago, it was “boosted” by Medium and appeared on the front page of the platform’s website. There is some wild thinking here, and most people agreed with my view that colleges need a radical new start.

2. In Defense of Jaguar (I think I’m the Only One)

A post that caused a rumble, earning 17,000 views on LinkedIn. I almost didn’t comment on this car controversy, but so many people wrote to me to ask what I thought about it that I took the plunge.

This is a good example of “spiky” content. I posed a contrarian view, not to be contrarian but to expose a defensible argument.

3. The Real Reason Marketing Content is Getting Worse

The idea is that a creative dependency on technology limits people’s ability to innovate because they don’t know the craft. This hit a chord with people, resulting in hundreds of reader comments across the web.

4. The Biggest Threat to Free Speech and Democracy Isn’t Speech. It’s Amplification

There are so many arguments about protecting free speech and the limits of free speech but most people are missing the point entirely. The opportunity for vast amplification of any view was something the Founding Fathers never anticipated.

5. It’s Time to Create a Creator Guild

One of the major limits on AI progress is a lack of access to high quality content. I would happily turn over almost 20 years of content to my AI overlords for fair compensation. Wouldn’t you? Solves so many problems.

6. Ten Non-Obvious Social Media Trends

In my early days as a blogger, I commented on social media almost exclusively. I thought it would be fun to return to my roots and point to some trends that seem to be passing many people by.

7. How Blogging Changed My Life

2024 marked the 15th anniversary of my blog. I normally don’t dwell on the past but this was an opportunity to reflect on how far I’ve come as a blogger. While blogging might seem like the OG social media content, it is still as vital as ever and still growing.

8. Why AI Will Not Doom Marketing

Open AI founder Sam Altman blurted out that AI will easily and rapidly eliminate 95% of all marketing jobs. I don’t know AI, but I do know marketing and I had to point out why this is view is simply wrong.

9. How to be the Best Fake Possible

If I hear the word “authentic” one more time I think I’ll hurl. Do we really want authentic? It never crosses my mind when I watch a spectacular action movie created almost entirely by CGI. If I value spectacular in the real world, why not in the business world. Should we embrace the Era of Spectacular?

10. The Biggest Mistake Content Creators Make Today

This might seem like a click-bait headline, but it’s not. I’ve done hundreds of personal coaching calls, and 90% of the people I speak to have grotesquely sub-optimized their content because of this one mistake.

So that’s a wrap. I’ll add that my top five podcast episodes of the year were:

1. Why it was time to burn this community to the ground

2. Beyond Imposter Syndrome

3. Creating your signature story

4. What business are you in — really?

5. The inescapable role of humans in an AI world

If you’re a fan of the blog, I think you will love The Marketing Companion podcast! 

Thanks for being here, and here’s to a great 2025.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy MidJourney

The post The most popular blog posts of 2024 appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The AI Revolution isn’t just about creating new tools – it’s about transforming how we learn, understand, and interact with information. And that’s exactly why NotebookLM has become the darling of the AI research community. As someone who’s spent decades observing how technology reshapes human behavior, it’s been fun for me to experiment with this new application.

Here’s what’s really going on: We’re drowning in information. Between podcasts, blog posts, and the endless stream of developments on social media, staying current is like drinking from a firehose. NotebookLM isn’t just another note-taking app – it’s an AI-powered research companion that actually understands context and helps connect the dots.

It’s as close to getting a brain extension as you’ll see (at least for now!).

What makes NotebookLM different is its ability to act as both a librarian and a study buddy. When you’re deep in research mode, it doesn’t just store your notes – it actively helps you understand them. It can summarize complex papers, explain difficult concepts, and even highlight connections between different pieces of research that you might have missed. This is game-changing for anyone navigating the complex world of AI development.

But there’s something even more profound happening here. In all my years of studying digital transformation, I’ve noticed that the tools that truly stick are the ones that feel natural – that work the way our brains work. NotebookLM gets this right. It’s not trying to force users into a rigid system. Instead, it adapts to your thinking style, helping you build knowledge in a way that feels organic and intuitive.

NotebookLM — But wait, there’s more!

A few months ago, NotebookLM users discovered they could use the voice mode to command the app to have a discussion with itself, something similar to a podcast episode. A few people have even produced AI-fueled podcasts with synthetic hosts!

While I have no plans to do this with The Marketing Companion, I did turn to NotebookLM to help me in a pinch this week. My podcast is now in its thirteenth year, and remarkably, I’ve never missed an episode. But this week was close!

My human co-host became too sick to record, and out of time, I turned to NotebookLM for help. The new episode provides extraordinary value in two ways: It’s a mesmerizing demonstration of AI voice capabilities. But what’s really cool is that I uploaded my upcoming new book “Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI World” and asked the “hosts” to review the book.

The result was more than I expected, and I think you’ll love this mind-bending podcast episode. If you haven’t experienced NotebookLM in action, this will get your head spinning. Ready? All you have to do is click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 304

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

Bravo for Brevo!

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

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

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

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post A mind-bending demonstration of AI and NotebookLM appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been a faculty member at several different universities since 2009 and have lectured far longer than that. I care about these institutions. They’re part of the American heritage, and in many cases, they’re a gift to the world. But we live in fast-changing times, and universities do not change fast. I’m worried about our colleges. How do we reimagine universities in the Era of AI?

I have some ideas about this, and if you’re currently associated with a college, you will hate them.

To begin with, my thesis is that in the AI Era, universities will fail (and are already failing) to prepare students for many careers. Change isn’t just knocking; it’s kicking down the door, raiding your fridge, and redecorating your living room. There has to be a radical reimagining of the university education that matches the radical disruption of our times.

First, let’s get a few things off the table. If a student attends college for the social aspects or to spend a few years maturing, today’s university system is fine. If a student attends for a purely academic pursuit without any thought of employment, they will thrive in the system we have today.

But I assume most students attend college to launch a career. And that’s where the problems begin.

I’ll break down the problems one by one before offering some solutions.

Organization

I’ve talked to many leading authorities in the tech space — people right in the middle of AI development in Silicon Valley. And I’ve asked them, “How would you prepare young people for a career with the amount of disruption occurring?” Without exception, the answer is, “I don’t know.”

This presents an existential problem because universities are generally organized by career choice: engineering, teaching, art, journalism, etc. But if nobody knows what future careers look like, how can you organize based on jobs that won’t exist as they do today? Except forestry. That might be safe for awhile. But you get my point. Many job categories are rapidly evolving and fluid right now (especially marketing).

The future of education isn’t about preparing for a specific job. It’s about preparing for anything and everything. It’s about teaching students to surf the waves of change rather than trying to build sandcastles on a beach that’s shifting before our eyes.

Speed

A university professor friend of mine recently lamented that it has taken two years to get a new class approved. The glacial pace of change at universities is legendary and … stupid. The bureaucratic lunacy of universities is so well-known that I don’t have to explain further why this culture is a death sentence in an AI world.

Economics

Universities are proud of their park-like campuses and ancient limestone buildings bolted to the center of the earth. While taking selfies in front of Old Main might enchant the alumni, the fact is, you can get a superior education today without that legacy overhead.

If you had to bet on disruptive innovation coming from somebody in a co-working space versus a person who has to spend part of their time fundraising for the Psychology Building renovation … well, it’s not even a race.

The economics for students is even worse. The average four-year education in the U.S. is $160,000 (tuition only). Why does every major need to be completed in four years? Well, somebody has to pay for those limestone buildings. If you step back and look at it, it’s a ridiculous model. No matter the major or career aspiration, it’s four years. Huh?

Any new vision for universities must include significant cost and time reductions enabled by technology.

Faculty

The purpose of the university faculty has been to dispense information. However, universities are no longer the gatekeepers of information. When information is free and abundant, colleges have to reinvent themselves in the context of a new job to be done — eternal relevance. This is a radical idea, but in my estimation, it is the key to the future of colleges.

And the tenure system … don’t get me started. Let’s just say there is almost no incentive for tenured faculty to change and stay current. The stories of lazy, irrelevant faculty I could tell you are shocking, but I won’t embarrass anyone.

At this point, I think all of my university friends could use a photo of a puppy.

No need to thank me. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Solutions

I’ve covered some of the problems facing a university in a short and simple way because this is a short and simple blog post. I recognize there are many nuances, layers, and complexities that I’m blowing right past. However, not many people care about those, especially young people preparing for a career … in something less than four years, please.

My advice to universities is to start over. There is just no way your Reinvention Committee will twist your bureaucracy into something functional. Take that giant endowment fund and create an entirely new form of education that is fluid enough to meet the needs of today’s teens.

Education in the past assumed there is a logical endpoint. Once you learned A, B, and C, you had enough under your belt to be an engineer, to be an accountant, or a journalist. But today, there is no endpoint. The endpoint keeps moving. What was true for a career yesterday may not be true today. Education needs to be a journey of lifetime learning. So we need something radically new.

No more degrees

Here is my vision: Instead of enrolling in college, students subscribe to one. Students would enter a lifetime learning program accredited by the university of their choice. The program would be designed to get students into the workforce and keep them there through learning modules that adapt to changing times.

The subscription price should be very affordable. However, over a student’s career in the workplace, the financial return to the university would far exceed $160,000 because the relationship with the student would last decades.

Each student would need to pass a battery of tests to ensure they’re ready to join a learning cohort. Some might start with remedial work to get them on the right track. I’ve seen too many university marketing students who can’t write a coherent sentence. Sorry. Fix that first.

Instead of degrees, students would earn accreditation on a topic, sort of like earning a series of merit badges. For example, it would mean much more to a marketing employer to see that a student earned accreditation in digital media production from a university, rather than just knowing they received an A in French and a C in geology during their sophomore year.

No more curriculum

The idea of a standard curriculum that changes every few years, littered with nonsensical, soul-stealing electives, is pathetic. This anachronistic system was created when a gentleman needed a well-rounded education in the classics. And I do mean gentleman.

Instead, my view is that a curriculum committee would create new learning modules every year, or even every few months, depending on the major. The major role of university employees would be overseeing the design of a continuous and ever-changing learning experience.

And by the way, we need a learning path that addresses both the hard skill and soft skills required in the modern workplace. Students need to learn to lead, but also how to be an effective follower and team player.

The lifetime university experience might include guest lectures, field trips, demonstrations — anything to keep the students relevant in their careers.

AI teaching agents

In the short term, we will still need a human faculty. Topical experts (not tenured) would share their views of the current state. And hey, instead of repairing Old Main and installing that new landscaping, let’s pay those teachers a decent salary, huh?

In the next two years, human-like AI learning agents will often make better teachers. This might sound like the Jetsons but it’s already here. Have you had a conversation with the mobile version of ChatGPT? This will only get better.

AI agents enable the creation of personalized learning pathways tailored to each student’s needs, performance, and goals. This approach can accommodate different learning speeds, styles, and even disabilities, leading to better outcomes than traditional classroom education. And, these teachers would cost far less and know … well, everything.

I do think there is a human role in the new learning environment as mentors and guides. Humans still need a human touch. Especially young students.

A learning cohort

I recently declared about the RISE marketing community: “This is my university.”

We have no curriculum or classes there. But we have each other — people from around the world teaching each other as we navigate this confusing world. Why couldn’t a real university be the same way? It can be, and needs to be.

That’s why I recommend a lifelong cohort of people (the subscribers) who become friends and support each other in a community. Today, education simply cannot end with a piece of paper. It’s a never-ending process, and we need each other.

A cohort could meet on campus once a year for some special programs but keep in touch constantly through an online platform. And the cohort should be multidisciplinary. It will be that way whether it’s designed that way or not. How many people are still working in a field related to their original major? Diverse views make the cohort more interesting and valuable.

The cohort would stay together for decades. I think it makes sense to add new people now and then, just as it benefits a community to have new members with new perspectives. A virtual community format allows people from many nations to be included.

Real learning happens in conversations, not classrooms.

Finally …

Did this post come across as mean? I hope it’s seen as tough love. I love so much about colleges and what they stand for. A university is hope. It’s a dream. It is the future.

But most career academics who read this will think: “We could never do this. It would screw up our US News and World Report rankings. This obsessive focus on rankings does not serve your students. Besides, Malcolm Gladwell and others have shown how the rankings are about as meaningful as a participation trophy in your kid’s soccer league. Yet, here we are, still doing the rankings rumba.

The world is changing faster than a chameleon in a Skittles factory. AI is rewriting the rules of education, work, and probably your department’s parking policy. And you’re obsessing about a made-up number in a magazine? University friends, it’s time to carve a new path that breaks the ranking shackles. Universities spent centuries building ivory towers. I’m proposing we build meaningful bridges to students and their real needs instead.

I know dramatic change seems daunting. And what I’ve proposed here can be poked and prodded and questioned. Here’s what I know. Imagine the most far-out scenario for our AI future. The reality will be much more insane than that.

Change has to start somewhere or universities risk becoming the academic equivalent of a typewriter repair shop. Disrupt or be disrupted.

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 How to Reimagine Universities for the AI Era appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Today, I’ll explain the Parasite Economy and why it is destroying businesses but opening up new opportunities for creators.

For many years, I’ve subscribed to Ted Gioia’s newsletter, “The Honest Broker.” It’s hard to describe this newsletter. Ted is a music critic and historian whose musings tend to wander all over the cultural landscape. But he has a knack for consistently connecting the dots in insightful ways, and I almost always learn something from his posts.

In an article titled “Are We Now Living in a Parasite Culture?” Ted makes an observation that is profound in its simplicity and wisdom. It goes like this:

“Nowadays, parasite businesses are the largest corporations in the world. Their technologies do many harmful things, but lately they have focused on serving up fake culture, leeching off the creativity of real human artists.

“Just take a look at the dominant digital platforms—and consider how little they actually create. But the amount of leeching they do is really quite stunning, especially when compared with the dominant businesses of the past.

• What does Facebook really create? Almost nothing. It relies on 3 billion users to create content (ugh!—their word, not mine), and then monetizes these people and their unpaid labor.
• What does Google really create? Almost nothing. Just look at how it destroys newspapers, while doing zero journalism itself. The comparison with a parasite could hardly be more apt. It feeds off the news, but never adds to it.
• What does Spotify really create? Almost nothing. The folks at Spotify don’t worry about their lousy app, because they’re so busy sucking blood from the creative economy, to which they contribute not one whit. Meanwhile, their CEO is now richer than any musician in the history of the world.
• What does TikTok really create? Almost nothing. This company relies on one million creators—none of them are employees. Most of them are working for hopes and dreams. TikTok is run like a Hollywood studio, but without cast, crew, directors, scriptwriters, or any creative talent whatsoever. But that hardly matters when you’re just a parasite living off unwitting hosts.

“Consider the case of the woman who attracted 713,000 TikTok followers and generated 11 million views for her videos—and got paid $1.85 over the course of five months. No that’s not $1.85 million—it’s one buck and eighty-five pennies. You can practically hear the lifeblood getting sucked out of the creator economy.”

Ted’s post continues, and he concludes by saying, “For the first time in history, the Forbes list of billionaires is filled with individuals who got rich via parasitical business strategies—creating almost nothing, but gorging themselves on the creativity of others.”

As usual, Ted made me think long and hard. I agree with him, but there is another side of this coin. In fact, the Parasite Economy is the best thing that ever happened to me in my professional life. And it can be for you, too. Today I’ll explain why.

The Parasite Economy’s Poster Child

On the surface, I am the poster child for “Victims of the Parasite Economy.”

I’ve probably added 20 million words to the social web through my blog and podcast alone. Google and its algorithm brotherhood crawl the internet like bugs, chewing my content like termites and then hurling it back out as an indistinguishable paste. The molecular material of my precious content is within everything now—no attribution, no money, no customers.

The years of effort behind this content are now part of the immortal glue that holds AI together. How have I been compensated for my significant content contribution? Nothing at all. I’ve never received one penny from Google, social media sites, or an AI company.

And yet, after 15 years of blogging and 12 years on the podcast, I keep churning out more. In fact, I think I’m doing my best work ever, giving away my most valuable ideas and insights every week.

Through Ted’s view, I should be incensed. But I’m grateful. Here’s why.

The Benefits of the Parasite Economy

While it’s true that I’m not making money from my content, I’ve made millions of dollars over the course of my creator career because I built an audience. You can’t have an audience without awareness, and you can’t have awareness without giving away valuable content.

I can see why Ted or any creative would feel abused because their content is consumed, loved, and shared without compensation. The key to surviving in the creator economy is not counting on your content for revenue. Those days are gone. So go ahead and grieve that reality, but get over it and look for other profitable ways to serve your audience.

I have 24 revenue streams. The most important ones are:

• Keynote speaking events and corporate workshops
• Personal coaching
• Book sales
• Private marketing retreat (The Uprising)
• Online classes

Until last year, I would have had marketing strategy consulting on the list — this was number one for many years. But I’ve been turning down these opportunities due to the wear and tear of travel.

My point is that, purely based on the awareness provided by the Parasite Economy, I’ve reinvented myself in a way that has allowed me to move away from the 9-5 corporate job.

The economics of our world today

I’ve never received a dime from Google or Facebook, but I’ve also never paid them (or anyone) a dime in advertising. So, at least for me, it’s been a fair trade-off.

Likewise, even a media company like The New York Times has been able to reinvent itself by diversifying into new media properties like podcasts, events, books, and speaking (they are building personal brands for their best reporters).

I am NOT dismissing the galaxy of negatives about internet parasites, including many of the good points Ted made in his post.

But I wanted to provide an alternate view that, with some creativity and resourcefulness, a creator can thrive, even under these strange circumstances.

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 of MidJourney

The post The Parasite Economy: An Upside for Creators appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

About a year ago, singer Ed Sheeran partnered with Heinz on a new hot sauce. This is a great lesson literally pointing to the future of influencer marketing, and I kept forgetting to blog about it. But before I get to the dazzling marketing lesson from Ed Sheeran, let’s talk about the marketing problem with soap …

The new influencer landscape

I recently attended a meeting at a CPG company famous for its iconic soap products. They went through a big competitive analysis with profiles of all their traditional global competitors. At the end of the talk, I sheepishly raised my hand and suggested they had completely missed their biggest competitive threat. It isn’t P&G. It isn’t Unilever. It’s a 24-year-old TikTok star.

Influencer marketing has entered a new phase. The biggest stars’ celebrity power commands more loyal audiences than traditional TV networks. Mr Beast has more subscribers than Netflix.

These aren’t just kids shilling energy drinks. They are savvy entrepreneurs who are building their own mega-brands. Here are a few examples:

• Addison Rae – Item Beauty
• Emma Chamberlain – Chamberlain Coffee
• Charli and Dixie D’Amelio – Social Tourist (clothing line)
• Hyram Yarbro – Selfless by Hyram (skincare line)
• Blair Walnuts – Jewelry line
• Michelle Khare – MKfit (fitness app)

And, of course, there is Kylie Jenner, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire who sells her cosmetics in airport kiosks,

These young creators have something the big companies don’t—a credible, authentic voice and a loyal audience that visits them online daily to see what they’re selling next.

And that brings us to the marketing lesson from Ed Sheeran.

The beautiful ketchup move

Like the other influencers I mentioned, Ed Sheeran could have created his own line of hot sauces and a saucy empire. But why?

Partnering with Heinz made so much more sense. For one thing, Heinz actually makes stuff. They have contracts with suppliers, big factories, and an excellent distribution system built over a hundred years. So, with very little actual effort, Ed made his hot sauce dreams come true just by lending his charming face to the new brand. Win-Win.

And here’s the lesson for the mega-brands. Put your marketing ego aside. Go find yourself some beloved influencers and make them rich. They can out-market you, but you can out-manufacture them. It’s a match made in heaven.

Since the Ed Sheeran announcement, I’ve been waiting for a deluge of influencer-brand product launches, but there have been very few. I don’t get it. Influencers own your market, folks. Partner with them to disrupt your market before you’re the one being disrupted.

if you’d like to hear more about this subject, I discussed these ideas with my friend Amanda Russell. You won’t want to miss it!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 298

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

Bravo for Brevo!

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

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

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

The post A spicy marketing lesson from Ed Sheeran appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

At the end of Marketing Rebellion, a bestselling book that served as a wake-up call for the state of marketing, I predicted what might be the next consumer rebellion. I believe I got it right, and the revolution could be coming sooner than I expected. Let’s take a look at what’s going on, and the implications for marketing and our AI future.

The First Three Rebellions

The thesis of Marketing Rebellion is that every time businesses and their marketing efforts push consumers too far, the customers rebel, resulting in a cataclysmic shift in marketing strategy.

The first rebellion came in the 1920s. The advertising industry had become a multi-billion-dollar industry, attaching remarkable claims to everything from cigarettes to toothpaste. But when these claims became TOO remarkable, they were outright lies. Consumers rebelled, and the industry was regulated through the Federal Trade Commission and similar agencies in other nations.

The second rebellion occurred in the 1990s. Companies made money on what you didn’t know. Profit margins were made on the public’s ignorance about the truth of insurance policies, used cars, and vacation plans. The internet ended all that. There were no more secrets. Today, it’s likely that an informed consumer knows more about your product than you do!

The third rebellion started around 2010 and the advent of social media. Historically, a “brand” is what a company told you it was. Advertising disrupted your view that Coke was colored sugar water and turned it into playful polar bears, for example. However, with social media, brand marketing was disrupted because customers owned the conversations. In fact, more sales occur through consumer social posts than traditional brand marketing. This was the end of marketing control.

The Fourth Marketing Rebellion

At the end of the book, I projected that the fourth marketing rebellion would have something to do with biometric data.

I wrote that the next technological revolution would depend on securing mountains of data on personal habits, down to every heartbeat. While consumers are normally resigned to the fact that we’re being tracked all over the internet in exchange for free search and social media, collecting and selling our bodily data might be a step too far.

In my recent post, “Are we creating AI, or are AI Agents creating us?” I summarized a research report on the ethics of AI. A few points pop out for me:

• AI Agents will monitor biometric data, facial expressions, and emotions to determine our state of mind. They will react differently to us if they know we are irritable or sleep-deprived, for example.
• AI Agents will have access to so much personal information that significant new levels of consent and security will be required. The threat level of information being used out of context is extremely high. Since agents will “plug in” to external services, we will place abnormally high trust in our agents and how information is stored and used. A data breach might mean that every fact of our life and health would be available on the web.
• The economic incentive will be to create bots that make the user happy in a way that cultivates dependence. Connecting with a bot in a deeply personal way could adversely affect user well-being and create the risk of infringing on user privacy and autonomy.
• As we become dependent on bots to take over daily interactions, humans will be “out of the loop,” and disconnected from many normal human interactions. If agents are designed to monitor our vital signs and promote “well being,” how is that defined? If we follow a path of automated, programmed self-improvement, are we improving as human beings or conforming to an algorithmic definition created by programmers? Will AI change society based on the coding preferences of developers?

Do you think this would push consumers into a rebellion? I think it is already happening.

Is the fourth marketing rebellion already here?

I can imagine a world where these bots are so useful that we ignore the vast data collection going on. But I think there are two places where we might draw the line:

1. If biometric data collection affects how we raise our children. For example, a new AI app called Ursula records a child’s response to information and makes money by interpreting potential emotional problems or learning disabilities to parents. It promises that “no kid will feel alone again.” Are we going to put AI in charge of that?
2. People will resist if data collection becomes required to function in society. A recent sign that the fourth marketing rebellion is upon us is that U.S. legislators are pushing for limits on facial recognition data collection at airport security, arguing that facial recognition poses “significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties.”

In the next few years, collecting and accessing customer biometric data could present revolutionary new marketing opportunities for personalization, customized drug therapies, and products that adjust to moods (and change them!). Yes, this is exciting. Yes, this can be profitable. But let’s not lose sight of history and the implications when we cross the line.

A note about that photo: “I am Robert Robot, mechanical man. Drive me and steer me, wherever you can.” These were the words uttered by Robert the Robot, a 1954 tin toy robot produced by New York-based Ideal Toy Corporation. Robert was run via a wired remote control, and about half a million units were sold. Robert is one of the staples of any vintage toy robot collection, with several dedicated fan pages on the web.

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 A Prediction: The Fourth Marketing Rebellion appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

When OpenAI rolled out GPT4o a few weeks ago, it included the ability to speak — instead of just type — with the interface. The chipper voice assistant provided a first glimpse of an AI personality that could become our little employee, co-worker, and friend.

It also signals the next technological revolution: AI agents that will be integrated into every aspect of our lives. Agents that will do all the crappy admin tasks we hate, organize a vacation, fix our computers, and act as our daily coach and therapist … right in the palm of our hand.

But integrating technology into our lives at that granular level also means we’ll need to surrender all privacy. These bots will record our biometric data, facial expressions, arguments, secrets, and every movement in our lives. Microsoft just introduced AI built into computers (called Recall) that will record and retain every online interaction, every five seconds of your life.

This presents enormous ethical complications, and we need to start thinking about it now—for our businesses and for our families.

I recently read a fascinating research study called “The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants.” It’s a monster report (as long as a book) sponsored by Google and written by 36 researchers from across the globe. Because I am a full-service blogger, I will summarize this significant report for you today.

As I read this report, I wondered: Are we creating AI, or is AI creating us?

Here is a brief summary:

AI Agents are coming

AI agents will have a profoundly personal impact on our lives, starting with an ability to incorporate personal information like conversations, email, and calendars, but also biometric data like health, wellness, and sleep.

It will interpret your facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. For example, the agent may act differently toward you if it knows you are sleep-deprived. It will know when you’re sick before you do. It will know when you’re lying. It will know you much better than your spouse or mother.

AI agents will take direct control of your devices. You’ll edit images via voice command, for example. Agents will be “thought assistants,” creative directors, personal productivity assistants, personal trainers/coaches, and therapists.

Agents will be the primary interface between humans and the external world. The research team suggests that this will create a new paradigm of interaction with the web in which websites and content will be less important and perhaps irrelevant.

The Ethics of AI Agents

The research goes into great depth on ethical implications such as:

Access

Agents will provide such a cognitive advantage to users that the gap between the haves and the have-nots will increase. Using AI agents will be a life skill, like using the web effectively. Those with access to premium AI Agents might also have increased health benefits and economic advantages.

Security

AI Agents will have access to so much personal information that significant new levels of consent and security will be required. The threat level of information being used out of context is extremely high. Since agents will “plug in” to external services, we will place abnormally high trust in our agents and how information is stored and used. A data breach might mean that every fact of your life and health would be available on the web.

Agency

As AI Agents take action on behalf of users, it raises the question of how this impacts user autonomy. Agents will represent us in the world and negotiate with other bots on our behalf. What happens when bot-to-bot negotiations are at odds? What happens when computers make decisions for a company that result in financial losses or lawsuits?

Anthropomorphism

Agents will be human-like, with personality and “feelings.” How developers present these models to the world, especially defining the relationship between humans and bots, will raise ethical considerations. The economic incentive will be to create bots that make the user happy in a way that cultivates dependence. Should a bot be able to feign affection, or represent itself as something more human than it is to make you happy?

Connecting with a bot in a deeply personal way could adversely affect user well-being and create the risk of infringing on user privacy and autonomy. Anthropomorphic features may influence users to feel as though their bot plays a critical social and emotional role rather than a functional one (See the movie “Her.”)

As AI Agents are integrated with lifelike humanoid robots, these risks could increase.

Value alignment

If a bot is your representative to the world and follows your instructions, it must align with your ethics and worldview. What if you are a criminal? What if the user is engaging in self-harm? There is a risk that advanced AI assistants will be insensitive to local values and cultural contexts.

Decisions must be made to limit how an agent can be used in a way that puts society and others at risk, i.e. misinformation, harassment, and crime. The researchers name six ways values can be misaligned, arguing that this issue is extremely difficult and complex. Developers will have to determine ethical guidelines that are imposed on all users.

Moral implications

As we become dependent on bots to take over daily interactions, humans will be “out of the loop,” and disconnected from many normal human interactions. What is the impact on human socialization and mental health?

If agents are designed to promote “well being,” how is that defined? If we follow a path of automated, programmed self-improvement, are we improving as human beings or conforming to an algorithmic definition created by programmers? Will AI change society based on the coding preferences of developers?

Example: I recently saw a demo of an AI bot designed for children that reports to parents on the child’s development and mental health. By who’s definition? Will our children be programmed to conform to standards established by a small team in Silicon Valley? Where are the medical and psychology experts in this loop?

Safety

The research covers the risk of accidents, malicious misuse, and unintended consequences. These AI systems are so complex that we cannot account for many risks. Early LLM models exhibited hostility and “hallucinated” lies, for example. Could a developer inject a ghost in the machine that causes harm? Could AI bots trick humans into aiding them in achieving a criminal goal?

AI assistants have the potential to empower malicious actors to achieve harmful outcomes across four dimensions:

1. offensive cyber operations, including malicious code generation and software vulnerability discovery;
2. adversarial attacks to exploit vulnerabilities in AI assistants, such as jailbreaking and prompt injection attacks;
3. high-quality and potentially highly personalized misinformation at scale, including non-consensual fakes;
4. authoritarian surveillance.

Economics

While agents provide valuable utility, they are likely to create massive job losses, especially for any profession involved in human services.

Influence

We have seen that large language models like ChatGPT can be very influential and skillful negotiators. Based on this competency, there is a risk of rational persuasion, manipulation, deception, coercion, and exploitation.

A personal view of AI Agents

Reading this post might seem like a science fiction nightmare. But this is real, and it’s happening now. So we need to start these conversations.

You might believe you’ll exert personal agency and protect your privacy by not participating in this intrusive new world. But history doesn’t support that conclusion. Especially in America, we’re resigned to the fact that we’ll just turn over our personal information in exchange for free access to news, entertainment, and social media sites.

AI Agents will be so incredibly helpful and cool that we’ll all want to jump in. Humanoid AI Agents will be status symbols and vital if we’re to participate in contemporary society. And once again, we’ll gladly risk all our privacy to play along. Half of America is happy to be tracked by the Chinese government in exchange for access to memes and pranks on TikTok. In fact, they will march on Washington to protect their right to be surveilled by a Communist dictatorship. Why would our AI future be any different?

A very small group of mostly geeky white men are determining the future of the human race. That is not a sensational statement. In essence, the human race will soon have a new operating system. What makes us special as human beings is being systematically stripped away. Who is checking the work of these people?

Regulation? Yes. We will need that, but the irony is that rules could only be enforced at scale through AI Agents. The government cannot act at the speed of technology, so we must depend on our tech leaders to guide AI development with ethics and compassion. And who are we counting on for this? Mark Zuckerberg? Elon Musk? Sam Altman?

These megalomaniacs have signaled that AI is coming, and there is nothing stopping them. They’ve surged ahead at a comet’s pace and a scorched earth approach to any societal norms and laws in the way. There is only one goal: Win this inevitable race toward super-human intelligence, and the consequences be damned.

Nevertheless, it would be folly to ignore this technology. I’ll embrace AI Agents and try to accept them into my life as problem solvers. I need to understand them enough to participate in a smart and ethical way.

Am I concerned about the existential aspects of AI agency? Yes. But I’m also concerned about North Korea having nuclear weapons and climate change jeopardizing my ability to get home insurance next year. On an individual level, there is very little I can do on any of these issues except be part of the debate.

And hopefully that started for you in a small way today.

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 Pexels.com and Tara Winstead

The post Are we creating AI, or are AI Agents creating us? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Here are three colliding trends that seem to indicate a massive business opportunity:

1. AI models are running out of content they need to grow. Companies like OpenAI are so desperate they are bending the rules of copyright, or breaking them, to keep growing. AI companies are under attack by copyright lawsuits.
2. Some companies are willing to pay for new sources of content. Apple, for example, floated offers worth $50 million in licensing multiyear agreements with news publishers in order to train its AI models. OpenAI is paying the Financial Times, The Associated Press, and others for content. Here is a list of all the content licensing deals in progress.
3. We are at a unique moment in the history of writing. Individuals (like me) have been creating volumes of well-written, well-researched content for many years. Millions of creators are sitting on a mountain of content that could be monetized by AI, but its not.

Do you see where I’m heading here? This is a business waiting to happen.

The Content Creator Guild

“The biggest bottleneck today is data. We often have a pretty good sense of what are the AI algorithms that we could build if only we had the data to build them. But for a lot of applications, it’s just really hard to get the data.” — Andrew Ng, founder DeepLearning AI

Let’s look at this opportunity more closely.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, are revolutionizing how machines understand and generate human-like text. But these powerful AI models are only as good as the data they are trained on. They require vast amounts of high-quality, diverse content to improve their performance and produce more accurate and nuanced outputs.

The industry is so desperate for content it’s creating synthetic content — AI content fueling AI models — which represents an obvious long-term problem if most of the internet becomes self-generated.

Like it or not, AI companies require human-generated content to compete and grow.

This is where we, the creators, come in.

For years, we’ve been pouring our hearts and souls into blogs, vlogs, videos, and podcasts. We’ve amassed an enormous backlog of copyrighted material that sits idle, waiting to be discovered and appreciated by new audiences.

What if we could do more than just hope for organic traffic and a little affiliate ad revenue? What if we could actively monetize our content by licensing it to train the next generation of LLMs?

Let’s imagine this new content power. I have 15 years of blog posts, 12 years of podcast transcripts, and a dozen books about marketing sitting largely unnoticed, gathering pixel dust. Now pile on the extensive, multi-year assets of people like Seth Godin, Martin Lindstrom, Philip Kotler, David Meerman Scott, and hundreds of others, and you will have the most comprehensive marketing database on the planet.

Keep going. Gather the assets of the greatest content creators for music, home improvement, fashion, sports. This is a goldmine of nuanced expertise and opinion on any niche topic … just what the AI ordered.

The benefits of organizing

“I have content. Come and get it Elon.” — Mark Schaefer, a nice guy who enjoys money

No individual creator could get the attention of OpenAI or Google or Zuck. But a unified Creator Guild representing tens of thousands of creators could:

• Collectively negotiate with AI companies and other technology giants
• Set standards for data usage rights, royalty structures, and attribution practices
• Create a pool of money to compensate real humans in the AI Era
• Establish incentives for new human content creation
• Navigate legal gray spaces and establish precedents and guidelines around ethics and fair use. A Creator Guild could be a unified voice for our rights while providing AI content fuel that is free of legal ambiguity.

A Creator Guild is a slam dunk win-win that pays worthy creators and solves the biggest headache for AI tech companies.

Beyond the current AI opportunity, a unified organization could also have collective bargaining power to negotiate better terms with traditional publishers, platforms, advertisers, and others who are ripping us off.

A Creators Guild could create a support network for creators, offering resources, mentorship, and opportunities for collaboration. We could even fund our own research and development initiatives to explore new ways of creating and distributing content in the age of AI.

The time is now.

This is a good and obvious solution. My concern is that the train is already rolling without us.

Tumblr and WordPress are reportedly set to strike deals to sell our data to OpenAI and Midjourney. While users have an option to toggle a button and “opt-out,” there is no provision to “opt-in” to the money.

Hold on there Sparky. You’re going to take our work and monetize it … WITHOUT US?

Without a unified voice, creators are going to be squashed.

Plus, we don’t really know how our content is already being used in the planet-sized minds of AI supercomputers. If the tech companies are already skirting the law with YouTube and other platforms, chances are they’ve already scraped my blog and yours.

But here’s the problem — at some point, these companies are going to face the music with their reckless approach to copyright and guarantee safe, license-free results for text, images, and video generation. An agreement with a massive Creator Guild would be a huge step forward to provide lawful and ethical results.

To solve this problem, AI companies are already posting jobs for human writers (for less than $20 per hour!). They need quality, creative, niche content if they want these models to provide output that is less generic and more “human.”

But they will keep taking advantage of us and our work if we don’t have bargaining leverage.

An existential issue for creators

We are rapidly moving toward a post-link world. Today, if people share links to our content, we don’t get paid, but at least we are driving potential customers to our content. That benefit is vanishing.

Analyst Benedict Evans wrote (edited for clarity):

“If an LLM can read the internet and answer questions about it based on everything it’s read, then it’s not indexing pages and links anymore, but unbundling and rebundling the contents of the pages themselves. When we went from print to the web of links, we unbundled the publications: links sent us to one page.

“If I ask an LLM what credit card to get or what hotels are good in Rome, then it abstracts and synthesizes the answers from hundreds of web pages and doesn’t send anyone any traffic. It unbundles the job-to-be-done – was the aim to find a page, or to read some prose, or to get an answer? This is an existential question for the future of the web.”

The beginning of a Creator Guild

Here’s the part where you expect me to say, “Hey gang, join me and my new Creator Guild!”

Nope.

This is a big job … a complex job. It will take a sizable company with resources to organize talent and pay for lawyers to figure all this out. Perhaps this task might fall to an existing union like the Screen Writers Guild or the Writers Guild of America.

Or, perhaps some tech giant will get smart and create an opt-in contract that provides a monthly salary for the free use of content based on the size and quality of the assets (I’m sure an AI could figure this out!). Or, maybe a venture capitalist will read this post and organize a company around the idea.

I have faith in Adam Smith’s invisible hand. There is money to be made. Somebody out there will figure it out.

I hope this post is the spark that gets things going, and fast. Sign me up.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post It’s Time to Unite in a Content Creator Guild appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Human-based marketing success

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for obliging me on this trip down memory lane.

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

The answer is obvious: None of them.

AI is not the doom of marketing

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

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

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

1. Importance of human connection

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

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

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

2. The mandate for weird

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

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

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

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

3. Human collaboration

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

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

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

4. Insight beyond a database

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

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

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

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

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

5. Ethical considerations

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

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

Where do we go from here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

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