Jaguar has been an easy target for critics after the company re-branded itself with a foppish, silly ad and a strange new logo. However, I am not one of those critics. Today, I’ll explain why I’m the only marketer on earth defending the Jaguar strategy. In fact, they are on the only reasonable path for the brand.

Let me be clear that at this point, I am separating the ad/logo from the strategy. In fact, I hate the ad, which seems like an AI fever dream of what “creative” is supposed to be:

I also abhor the logo re-design because Jaguar had one of the coolest logos on the planet and they ruined it.

Why am I pro-Jaguar? Because I think the strategy is brilliant, even if the execution (so far) seems disastrous.

Why Jaguar needs a new strategy

Beyond the disdain of the brand creative, there are three main criticisms of the Jag re-brand:

1. Ignores a legacy of “Britishness” and performance / luxury
2. The ads didn’t feature a car
3. Targeting a creative customer base seems like nonsense.

Let’s break down each criticism:

1. Ignores a legacy of “Britishness” and performance/luxury

I would probably be considered a potential Jag customer. I have owned a luxury car for decades, primarily Audi or BMW. But I have never considered a Jag. In fact, I’ve never known a person in my life who has owned a Jaguar, which, in hindsight, seems remarkable.

Jaguar is not even in the top 10 of luxury car brands. In terms of market strength, it is a has-been, an unprofitable, forgotten also-ran. When was the last time anyone said, “Man, I can’t wait to get my hands on that new Jag!” Right. Probably somewhere between bell-bottoms and Beta video tapes.

In addition to style, research shows there are two big considerations when deciding among luxury cars: performance and maintenance costs.

How does Jaguar stack up? Automotive engineering is dominated by Germany, Japan, Italy, and America these days. To most, Jaguar means frequent break-downs and high maintenance costs. Am I rolling old tapes? Maybe. But that is the brand’s image and it would cost a lot to change people’s minds about that. Is the classic image of James Bond driving a British car relevant for young buyers today? Is it worth holding on to? Do you really want a mercurial British car as your first choice in a luxury car?

I put Jag in the same category as another recent brand rebel — Nutter Butter. Nutter Butter is Jaguar’s brand chaos soul mate — an also-ran in the cookie business with no strong brand meaning. Creating bizarre, unsettling TikTok videos upends cookie marketing tradition and any brand heritage. But who cares? Nobody was talking about Nutter Butter, and now they are.

Could Oreo go down this road? No. They’re the leading brand and have spent millions to develop “meaning” with its customers. BMW can’t suddenly start acting like a TikTok influencer on a sugar rush. Mercedes can’t go full re-brand gonzo. They’ve got too much to lose.

But Jag isn’t a leading brand. It’s a losing brand. So why not shake it up in a bold and conversational way? The content of the advertisement is a red herring. We’re looking at Jaguar for the first time in decades.

2. The ad didn’t feature cars

One of my favorite ad campaigns in recent years never featured a product. Never even mentions it.

A Chick-fil-A employee sits on a red couch with a customer and talks about how the employee met a special customer need. For example, an employee learned sign language to serve a customer who was deaf. Another bonded with a child who had a heart transplant.

What does this have to do with chicken sandwiches?

Brand marketing is about creating an emotional expectation between you and your customers.

To illustrate this in my speeches, I’ll ask the audience to shout out what they think of when I say “Coca-Cola.” Without exception, they say “polar bears.” There was the one time when a guy in the front row said “sadness,” but that’s a story for another day.

My point is that Coke has spent billions to move your mind away from brown sugar water to playful, happy Christmas bears. Coke is a feeling. 

Chick-fil-A has its critics, but it is more than fast food to its raving customers. It’s a warm and happy feeling reinforced by food-less commercials.

So I don’t dismiss the Jaguar ads just because they are car-free. Will you buy a luxury car for its engine dimensions and gas mileage or because it actually means something to you? Jaguar’s brand meaning before last weak was as thin as Earl Grey Tea.

Finally, let’s address the target market strategy, which is aimed at …

3. Designers and Creatives

Years ago, I worked on an influencer marketing project with a luxury automotive brand. The company was introducing a stylish new car and wanted to host events nationwide for social media titans.

But I found that every car company was going after the same small group of luxury car influencers. It was nearly impossible to get their attention. So I started researching adjacent demographic markets. What other categories of people talk a lot about cars?

I discovered two groups obsessed with cars: technology geeks and creative directors. That makes sense, right? Cars are about tech and style.

Tesla has probably cornered the market for techno geeks. But what car brand has a special and unique appeal to creatives? There isn’t one. I think Jag studied the market data long and hard and saw a seam they could own. Brilliant. Early feedback shows creatives applauding the brand.

And by the way, the “copy nothing” appeal to creatives is a direct line to the Jaguar brand heritage.

The holistic strategy

Jaguar prototype

An ad is not a strategy. A logo is not a strategy. So what else do we know about the re-brand?

• Jag has built a radical new electric car that will sell for roughly double the price of current Jaguar vehicles. The car is expected to debut soon at the Miami Art Show. In an interview with Automotive News, Jaguar Land Rover CEO Adrian Mardell said the still-secret Jaguar GT will make people “salivate” when they see its styling.
• They are targeting young, wealthy, design-minded people. After the internet / AI boom, there are a lot of young millionaires out there wanting to make their own statement.
• The new all-EV Jaguar cars will be positioned as “exuberant,” “modernist,” “compelling,” and all about “fearless creative.” The strategy is spearheaded by an experienced and respected auto brand marketer, Gerry McGovern. So this re-brand is not the whimsical idea from some GenZ agency. There is data and insight behind the strategy. By the way, McGovern already turned the Range Rover brand around. So I am willing to give him a pass on the ad fumble.
• The company is overhauling its dealership network which will also feature high-end art and cusine. That is a BOLD reinvention of the auto dealership.

Jag is re-imagining the whole automotive experience through the lens of the creative class. It’s ludicrous to judge the entire strategy based on one ad.

Let’s give it time.

I just finished writing a book about disruptive marketing (“Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World” available in February 2025). I see the underlying logic of what Jaguar is trying to do. Jag might be a competent brand. But competent doesn’t cut it. Competent = commodity. Competent doesn’t create conversations. My book explains how the world’s best creatives are breaking through the noise by disrupting the:

• Narrative
• Medium, where the story is told
• Who is telling the story

From what we know about the brand’s holistic strategy, Jag is completely upending the luxury car narrative. This is exactly what they need to do. 

The risk? There is none. You can’t kill what’s already dead. The only risk is continuing to be forgettable.

They’re in that sweet spot where “nothing to lose” meets “everything to gain.” They’re in the perfect position to pull a Nutter Butter — to be so outrageous, so unexpected, that people can’t help but notice.

The new car is supposed to be introduced in a few weeks. If it’s as sleek and cool as it is rumored to be, if the dealerships become something more than a place where people hate to shop, if Jaguar creates a story that truly connects with a creative class longing to be understood … Jag will be newly relevant.

Perhaps it’s already on the way. After all, when was the last time we spent this much time talking about Jaguar?

Exactly.

Update: Jaguar has now introduced the car. The first look:

Here is the introduction video:

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 Jaguar

The post In defense of Jaguar (I think I’m the only one) appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

What a world.

Who could have dreamed that parents would be fearful of a phone?

Is there any other conversation so vital right now? Should our children have a smart device? How do we monitor it? Keep our children sane and safe?

This is one of the essential topics Paul Roetzer and I cover in the new episode of The Marketing Companion. Paul has created a new resource.

In Kid Safe GPT for Parents, an online safety advisor to help parents understand and manage risks their kids may encounter online.

The GPT’s goal is to educate parents on the risks associated with digital interactions—from gaming to social media—and provide proactive guidance to help parents protect their children’s mental health and safety.

Kid Safe GPT offers practical advice, empathetic support, and tailored strategies to encourage healthy digital habits for families.

(And, it’s completely free to use with a ChatGPT account.)

In this show we also cover:

• AI literacy for marketers
• The future of art and creativity
• The magic of NotebookLM

You won’t want to miss this! Just click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 302

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!

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I’m a big fan of Rick Beato (one of his 4 million subscribers!). He is a passionate, intellectual YouTuber who dissects and explains much of the music that I love.

He recently created a video called The Real Reason Music is Getting Worse, and as I listened to his reasoning, I felt as though he was talking directly to me as a marketer in the AI Age. If you haven’t discovered Rick and you’re a music lover, I hope you’ll check him out. But in the meantime, let’s see what he says about making music in the AI Age and discover if this speaks to you, too …

Music, and Marketing Content is getting worse

Here are the notes I took from Rick’s video:

Technology makes the act of making music too easy. It’s difficult to play an instrument, and it’s really hard to record it well and produce a record. Rick received this note from a fan: “I wrote this song using AI, and I think it’s pretty good, but I literally know nothing about music.” Music has been commoditized.

Technology allows you to save a lot of money and take shortcuts, but the artistry and soul are stripped from the music. He compared an original recording of John Bonham drumming to a loop of the drumming, and it’s a hygienic version.

A creative dependency on technology limits the ability of people to innovate because they don’t know the craft.

When everyone relies on the same tools, you create a homogenized sound and a lack of diversity in the music. Music today is formulaic because people follow trends of certain types of sounds that are in style in the moment.

Ease of production speeds up the process, creating an oversaturation of music and making exceptional work harder to find. AI songs will make the level of saturation even worse as record labels produce their own AI songs instead of using original artists. One new song is added to the streaming catalog every second.

Finally, he explained why human creativity is undervalued. In the golden age of music, you would have to have a job to make money to buy a record album. You had to expend energy to find, buy, and consume the content. There is no sweat equity needed to enjoy music today. You can pay $10.99 per month and have access to any song ever published. So music becomes value-less or at least under-valued for many people.

A record bought for your collection became part of your identity, part of your history. A record was something shared among friends. We would read the album cover and learn about who made and produced the music. The creator and creative team had value.

Lessons for the AI Era

See, I told you he was speaking to marketers. This is EXACTLY  the problem we face when AI churns out content at lightning speed. We risk drowning in a sea of mediocrity. The craft of marketing — the human touch, the unexpected twist, the soul — is in danger of being automated away.

AI presents many existential issues, but here is the one that haunts me the most: When we eliminate all the entry-level jobs, how will young people learn their craft? And if they don’t learn a craft, all we’ll have is “auto-tuned” perfect content, stripped of artistry and soul.

Like artists, will we become so dependent on the same technological tools that everything becomes homogenized?

Here’s what will drive AI adoption: cutting costs. Sorry, that’s the way of the world. So it seems inevitable that we’ll experience an AI pandemic of dull as every possible task moves to a machine.

The other day, I picked up my car from the shop and the technician had tuned my radio to a pop station. I don’t normally listen to current pop music, so I listened for a few days. The music today is truly awful, and I’m a person who embraces new musical ideas.

But here’s what excites me. True artistry still breaks through. I recently saw Jon Batiste in concert and no AI on earth will hold that man down.

As a marketer, you’ll have to be that Jon-Batiste level outlier to swat back the AI. Create work that no AI could dream up. Be so good they can’t ignore you.

There is still room for the crazy ones who push boundaries—there always will be. Start pushing, my friends.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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There was one moment in my career that was a defining line between having a human existence and having an inhuman corporate career.

Perhaps you don’t remember a time before cell phones and laptop computers, but it was glorious because you could hide from your boss. Now, I was a hard worker and a responsible employee, but before the digital revolution, if you needed a mental health break, you could simply hide for awhile. If I was on the road, the only way for my boss to contact me would be over a pay phone some place. So I could just be “out of reach” for a little bit if I needed a breather.

Then there was this moment that I will never forget. I received my first laptop computer, and a report was due to my boss. I was living in California, so I was working at night so he would have it when he arrived in his office on East Coast time. And I had strep throat. I was so sick I could hardly be upright but there I was, typing out this report at my kitchen table. And my wife said, “What are you doing? The doctor said you had to be in bed!”

And in that moment I realized there was no more hiding. There was no more personal independence. I was now tethered to technology, bound to my work in an unavoidable way that introduced a new level of stress to every moment of the day.

Some time in my 30s, I began to realize that I had to make different choices. I was working in a way that was making me sick and taking too much time away from my family. So I started removing myself from the rat race and began mindfully pursuing a path of personal peace. I made choices for contentment over money, and started working for myself 17 years ago.

I’ve written about this journey toward personal peace from time to time, including:

The single word that changed my life

Why I stopped growing my business

Mistakes along the way

The meaning of life

But I’ve never talked about this subject on a podcast … until now.

Mathew Sweezey has been on a similar journey, figuring out this tricky balance of peace and the natural stress that comes with work. On this new episode of The Marketing Companion, we compare notes and share our own progress and hurdles as we seek personal peace in a hectic world.

We cover

• The balance between financial security and freedom
• The elusive concept of contentment
• Meaningful work
• How we calm down in the face of stress
• Psychedelics

… and much more. Please click below to enjoy this wonderful conversation!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 294

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!

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My theory is that if you created a word cloud of the most popular subjects on LinkedIn, somewhere between “let me help you skyrocket your sales” and “AI will destroy us all” is imposter syndrome. It seems to be everywhere.

One of the people I follow declared that she is writing a book about imposter syndrome and then decided that she couldn’t do it because of imposter syndrome. It seems to be a ubiquitous subject these days.

On a personal level, I don’t suffer from it much. I figure if I am invited someplace, I belong there. Either the people who believe in me are stupid, or I should be there. And I don’t think people are stupid. I have not met too many people who are immune from imposter syndrome. Why me? I’m not sure but I received a lot of positive reinforcement early in my career that might have helped.

But it’s still a frustration in my business coaching practice. For people I help, imposter syndrome seems common. I can see how worthy and talented they are, and maybe I can get them to believe it for a week, but then they devolve and feel the insecurity a week later.

In the latest episode of The Marketing Companion, Amanda Russell and I talk about different sides of this issue, and she brings up an important idea. In her days as an elite athlete, she underwent “brain training” to help develop the mental toughness to overcome injuries and setbacks. Why wouldn’t we use these techniques in the business setting?

It’s an interesting conversation you won’t want to miss! Just click here to listen in >

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion episode 293

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!

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The post Beyond Imposter Syndrome appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Sara Wilson and I are both obsessed with a similar professional passion: Cutting through all obstacles to reach our customers. Becoming the signal against the noise.

I can argue that this is the most difficult time in history to break through and reach customers — by far. I’ve written about this extensively, but the short story is, our customers have largely become their own ad-free, isolated, curated media outlets.

Another dynamic that is good for consumers but bad for brands is the move toward online communities for connection and information sharing. Sara believes that communities are now the primary online gathering place for customers. That is a radical and profound change from the public forums of social media, a fertile field of data for our social listening platforms.

The latest episode of The Marketing Companion is a show bursting with big ideas and a healthy debate about what’s happening and what’s next as we fight to connect to customers who don’t want to be tracked and found. There are some bold new ideas in the show as Mark and Sara connect the dots on one of the biggest problems facing companies today.

We cover some big ideas …

• Can a hashtag become a community?
• Can a brand truly participate in a community … or is it a person?
• Is the idea of an “affinity group” the key to new social platform success?
• How do we find the nuance and insights that lead to innovation?

This is a mesmerizing conversation and all you have to do is click here to listen in …

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion episode 290

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

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Too short for a blog post, too important to ignore, here are some short takes from the world of marketing and beyond.

Money drives social isolation

Recently I posted about how an unintended consequence of the massive amount of personalized content choices has sent young people into sociological siloes. They consume content in isolation and have fewer shared experiences than their parents.

This launched a debate about why this is happening. I think the answer is simple: Money.

Money drives everything. What are we trying to accomplish as marketers? Personalization. For your business, for any business, it’s about personalization. The more we personalize, the happier our customers are because they get exactly what they want.

There is no “deep state” making us personalize content as part of a master plan to control us. We personalize and segment people because it’s good business. But what one customer wants is different than what you and I want, so now we’re in our own content silos — by choice. We have EXTREME individual choice regarding content and entertainment — in fact, far too many options. But nobody wants to go back to the days of one daily newspaper and three network TV channels, right?

Our individual choices put us in silos because we want content our way, supporting views of the world aligned with our own views. In a weird way, there is a business benefit to social isolation. But personalization in the extreme creates loneliness.

Weird LinkedIn Tricks

All of a sudden, I’m getting LinkedIn notifications that people are responding to posts that are three, four, and even five years old. This is unexpected and weird. So I asked LinkedIn expert Richard Bliss what the heck is going on. He pointed to three possible factors:

1. I had been asked to participate in collaborative articles through LinkedIn. I’m not sure what I’ve done that put me into that category. But Richard said this is putting me in front of a new audience that is checking out old content.
2. An algorithm change is trying to put relevant content before a new audience. It is possible your content is being indexed and then served to small groups interested in that topic.
3. The recent partnership between LinkedIn and Google means your articles are now being indexed by Google and showing up in search results.

Apple is different

In a recent post, I forecast that the speed of marketing is one of the most pressing and interesting trends.

A member of my RISE community asked, “Is Apple the exception to the importance of speed in marketing? They don’t participate in memes or other in-the-moment-marketing.”

Great question. Apple is different because it is a luxury good. They’ll never be part of the social media track meet (like Gucci or Lamborghini). They are never first to market, but they’re never too late either.

Luxury good marketing has a completely different flow and pace. I discussed this in a podcast episode with Amanda Russell — one of the most fascinating discussions!

AI and humanity

I had a Twitter discussion with a friend who claimed, “We can’t trust humanity.”

I responded, “I agree that humanity can’t be trusted. But there are people who we trust. Those are the ones who can transcend the AI misinformation onslaught. There are individuals you’ll always turn to.”

The business case for the personal brand!

The big question

The most important question for marketers in the future will be: “Can an AI bot do this?”

This will push us to be more creative, more weird, and more human, or we will be replaced. Truly, the most human company wins.

No, it’s not

I’ve been preparing for a big new speech about brand communities and have found lots of articles touting community successes. Many people confuse a loyalty program with a community.

Loyalty programs are great, but that’s not a community. Having a loyalty card shows you love the brand, but it’s not a group of people working toward a common purpose. A community needs to know each other.

Let’s bust an AI myth

Here is advice I see over and over, and it drives me crazy: “AI isn’t going to take your job, but someone who knows AI will.”

This implies that if you know AI you will somehow be safe. This is false. AI will overtake many knowledge worker jobs whether you know AI or not. And there may not necessarily be a person behind that AI. The technology will become ubiquitous and companies will use it to reduce headcount ruthlessly. This is already happening in the tech industry.

This advice is like telling a person who made horse buggies in the 1920s: “The automobile won’t take your job, but somebody who knows automobiles will.” No, automobiles eliminated their job, not some person. And even if you “know” automobiles, your buggy business is dead, no matter how much re-training you have.

I’m a positive person, but I also want to be realistic about what is happening.

Distrust is the default

I couldn’t sleep after a long overseas flight, and while flipping through Instagram, I saw a post featuring other-worldly, mesmerizing butterflies. Then I wondered, “Is this real? Is nature really this beautiful, or did somebody make this up?” There was no way to tell.

It saddens me that I can’t even look at butterflies these days without being skeptical. Distrust is the default now.

And now, some good news

Over the next few months, we will hear A LOT of bad news about AI. Deep fakes. Political misinformation. Bullying and chaos.

The bad stuff makes great headlines, but don’t miss out on the extreme new levels of discovery, innovation, and beauty that have been unleashed by AI.

A non-profit called The Earth Species Project aims to use AI to interpret animal communication systems. That makes my heart skip a beat.

So embrace the chaos and look at how AI is bringing new beauty into the world.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy MidJourney

The post The business benefit of social isolation and other observations appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Many universities use my books as assigned texts, and I do my best to pop in for a Zoom Q&A with students when time allows. Recently, one instructor asked me if there was anything they could do in return to help me. I said that I’d like to know, “other than environmental issues, what are students worried about?”

The class gifted me with a set of essays, and the depth of the responses surprised me. Their answers were serious, well-thought-out, and beautifully written. They covered many of the topics you’d expect like getting a job, paying off bills, and the stress of a toxic world.

But one response stopped me in my tracks, and I’d like to share it with you today. It shared a unique perspective … but at the same time, his concern seems so obvious. I’ve edited the comment slightly for clarity. This will get you thinking …

“Compared to any other generation, Gen-Z creators have a much greater ability to publish their work, artists are freer to share and skip hassle-laden middlemen, and small businesses can start online with much ease. In essence, there is just much more of everything, which is always good. However, as a consequence, there are much fewer shared cultural experiences among my generation.

“There is unlimited segmentation in every market, and infinitely more consumer options.

“For example, we don’t watch the same late-night show on Saturdays. I could talk about the newest Netflix series I’m watching, and no one in the room will have heard of it. We don’t listen to the same DJs on the radio — we all have hyper-tailored Spotify playlists. There are chart-topping popstars whose names mean nothing to most people.

“So we are rarely united by the shared experiences that brought our parents and grandparents together with friends. This is why I think we’ve been clinging onto mundane things and memes such as Barbenheimer and why the Among Us video game craze got us through Covid-19. We’re hungry for memories with friends and anything that would create a special bond among members of my generation, even if it only lasts a couple of months at a time.

“There is a lot to fear in out world — the environment, war abroad, a pandemic resurgence, and the like. But  I fear that as a generation we won’t have a lot of “back then…we all did x” sorts of stories to tell my children one day.”

Quite an amazing statement, and he’s right.

It made me think of my pre-internet college days. The Student Union building had a music listening room. It was a large room with couches and big pillows all along the four walls. Students would choose on side of a record album to listen to and dozens of students would sit quietly, perhaps studying or reading, enjoying new music through a great sound system.

Similarly, if you wanted to hear rock music, there was one radio station, so that was a shared experience. Everybody stayed up late to watch “Saturday Night Live” and talk about it the next day. If you wanted to see a movie, you gathered a bunch of friends — and you probably had a beer together afterward.

In hindsight, this young man’s observation is so clear, but it’s the first time I’ve seen the dots have been connected in this way.

No wonder Gen Z feels so isolated and disconnected. Much of their world experience is siloed, coming to them through earbuds as they sit alone on a couch.

Toward shared experiences

Unsurprisingly, I just saw an article in The New York Times about groups of Gen Zers forming film clubs. They gather in pubs and other locations to watch and discuss movies together. Could this be the first wave of a new shared experiences trend?

Another recent article documented teens leaving a smartphone liberation movement.

I’m thinking through some of the implications for marketers.

• Can we have too much personalization? Are we putting people in lonely siloes?
• In my book Marketing Rebellion, I predicted that creating shared experiences would become a meaningful part of our marketing future. Is that time now?
• If you think through the future of algorithms and social media, this segmentation problem is just going to get worse. We will be spending more and more time-consuming siloed content. Could there be an innovative opportunity to create content experiences that are more fun when shared (other than games, of course)?
• I’ve written a lot about the importance of community. This seems to validate that idea. Brand communities are a massively overlooked opportunity.
• Is there a way to activate young people through cause-based experiences?
• I think there are also some things to think about as parents here. Knowing this content culture is pulling kids apart, are activities like sports, band, and service clubs more important now?

Anyway, I hope this observation provokes a few thoughts and begins a conversation. Our customers long to belong.

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 Unsplash 

The post From Memes to Memories: Gen-Z’s Quest for Shared Experiences appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” — Pablo Picasso

I was just scolded in a Facebook Group.

I love nature and participate in several communities that share photos and experiences with wildlife. One group is dedicated to sharing photos of birds. I don’t have a great camera like most of the people in the group, but I recently posted a watercolor painting I did of a popular local bird called a black-capped chickadee.

I received many warm responses from people who loved the art, and they encouraged me to share more. In fact, this post received more likes (275!) than any post in the group for the entire year. Here is the art:

But then the group administrator stepped into the comment section and asked me if the painting was based on my own photo. I said no, and he threatened to kick me out of the group. I’ll get back to this controversy and how it relates to you, your content, and AI, but first, I need to set up my case with a little story about Leonardo Davinci.

Bet you didn’t see that coming.

Art is iteration

Leonardo DaVinci was arguably the most creative human being who ever lived, a magical genius who was endlessly curious.

What struck me about his life was how most of his ideas and breakthroughs were collaborative. Even his most famous illustration, “Vitruvian Man,” was inspired by Vitruvius, a Roman author, architect, and civil engineer who lived centuries before Leonardo’s time.

Leonardo was a beloved man, always surrounded by friends. One day, his friend Francesco showed him a sketch of a man in a circle, based on the detailed descriptions from a Vitruvian book. Part of the Renaissance movement was rediscovering ancient ideas and reframing them in modern terms, and Francesco was excited by his revelation. It spurred Leonardo to consider the dimensions of a human being in mathematical terms.

Another friend, Giacomo Andrea, scribbled some interpretations of the Vitruvian idea and showed Leonardo how the human figure could be circumscribed in a circle.

Leonardo was mesmerized by the idea and inspired to find his own manuscript of Vitruvius’ ancient work. He developed his famous drawing from those ideas, and in both scientific precision and artistic beauty, his illustration is in an entirely different realm than the work of his predecessors.

Leonardo’s most famous drawing was built upon an ancient idea that inspired a scribbled drawing by a friend that led to a discussion and more drawings by friends. Yes, Leonardo delivered something exquisite and unique, but it could only have happened from a combination of ideas from four different people.

Placing this in the context of today

Let’s connect the dots and get back to my painting. Where did the inspiration for the bird come from?

I’m not a good enough painter to create something out of my head, so I needed a model. Here’s my process: I go to MidJourney — an app that creates generative art — and type in what I want to paint, like, “watercolor painting of a black-capped chickadee on a branch,” and the program delivered this:

This computer image is much better than the hand-made painting I ultimately produced, but it gave me a general direction. I reduced the busy background and used a technique that I favor to create abstract patterns behind the bird. I changed many little details, largely due to my limitations as an artist!

My work was not completely original. It is an iteration of an AI work — which is an iteration of many other artworks. I participated in a virtual collaboration. Leonardo would have loved it!

The AI work that served as my model is an amalgam of other artists. Am I hurting these artists by not providing attribution? No. The AI art is simply a guide, but I’m producing something of my own.

If you go into any major art museum in the world, you’re likely to see art students sitting at the foot of a painting, drawing it. Iteration and practice are how we all learn to be great bloggers, podcasters, speakers, and video producers. The excellent work of a creator comes from thousands of intentional and unintentional sparks from those who came before us.

The very day I was scolded, somebody from my RISE community asked me, “I loved your blog post today. Can I steal that idea for my own?” I was flattered and, of course, agreed. What a wonderful moment! Somebody is making progress in the world based on inspiration from my own work. My writing provided a spark of momentum for another person.

That’s how the creative world works, at its best.

The future of creators and copyright

Let’s bring this down to a practical application and the problems we face today.

All creativity and invention depend on iteration. Today, the existing copyright laws aren’t built to handle AI amalgamations. Similarly, AI companies aren’t built to reward or even acknowledge individual contributions. Creators are suing AI companies. AI companies are suing creators. Something has to give.

I want to be clear that I am not dismissing true copyright infringement, where wholesale content is literally lifted and pasted without attribution. This has happened to me many times, and it hurts. More than once, a famous author stole something right out of one of my books without attribution  … and later apologized, but that doesn’t change anything, does it? They stole it on purpose.

Similarly, the recent lawsuit that The New York Times filed against OpenAI showed many examples in which OpenAI software recreated New York Times stories nearly verbatim.

In an IEEE Spectrum article, authors Gary Marcus and Reid Southen pinpoint the problem.

“LLMs are “black boxes”—systems in which we do not fully understand the relation between input (training data) and outputs. What’s more, outputs can vary unpredictably from one moment to the next. The prevalence of plagiaristic responses likely depends heavily on factors such as the size of the model and the exact nature of the training set. Since LLMs are fundamentally black boxes (even to their own makers, whether open-sourced or not), questions about plagiaristic prevalence can probably only be answered experimentally, and perhaps even then only tentatively.

“…The mere existence of plagiaristic outputs raises technical questions (can anything be done to suppress such outputs?), sociological questions (what could happen to journalism as a consequence?), legal questions (would these outputs count as copyright infringement?), and practical questions (when an end-user generates something with a LLM, can the user feel comfortable that they are not infringing on copyright? Is there any way for a user who wishes not to infringe to be assured that they are not?

This is the ultimate answer. We need a process where truly generative content is free from copyright constraints. If we don’t, the future of creators — and breakthrough creativity — is in jeopardy. Perhaps we need an official designation for generative content that assures a work is so far from an original that it is free from licensing issues. Maybe we call it a genuine fake? : )

In any event, we need to recognize a truth of the human experience — the most imaginative movies, art, and books we love were built on the shoulders of others.

Or, perhaps, the servers of others.

Something new: My bird painting and a few of my other watercolors are now available to buy as prints at this online shop. 

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. 

Images courtesy of MidJourney

The post Artificial Intelligence, Iteration and the Future of Creators appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.