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}.

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}.

On vacation in Italy, I visited a lovely wine shop in Florence. So of course, I wanted to talk to the owner about marketing (can’t help myself). The proprietor had a lovely place filled with antiques and art — such an interesting, visual environment! And yet, she wasn’t on Instagram. In fact, she didn’t use social media at all, a personal decision that certainly goes against the grain.

“Everyone tells me I should be posting,” she said. “But I don’t feel comfortable with it and would rather spend my time talking with customers.”

She spread her arms to indicate this sacred space where she sits in her shop, sipping wine with customers. “This is what I love about my business.”

Obviously, this anti-social media strategy has worked well. Her business has been growing for 18 years, built on her reputation of quality products and personal attention.

Sometimes, you can’t just listen to the gurus. Marketing is often a personal decision.

And I’d like you to consider this alternative thinking as a possible competitive advantage …

Marketing lemmings

The biggest problem with marketing, and especially social media marketing, is that “best practices” are so well known and so easily absorbed. Once a new competitive trick is discovered on a social platform, it spreads like wildfire and becomes part of everyone’s normal practice.

For example, the “shocked look” video thumbnail pioneered by Mr Beast:

Leads to this:

I’m not judging whether this is good or bad. It probably works on some level. But it all looks the SAME.

My point is that by going your own way, following your muse, and ignoring conventional wisdom, you can evolve into your own competitive advantage simply because when it’s YOU, it’s different.

Go your own way

I was an early adopter of social media marketing. In 2006, as part of my corporate marketing duties, I led an early social media team and started my own blog a few years later.

And I was a big rule-follower. I desperately tried to fit in and follow all the best practices of the day. I dutifully created my strategic, SEO-optimized content for my “ideal customer personas.” And two things happened.

First, nothing happened. Nobody was reading or commenting on my content.

Second, I became bored. What was I doing? Creating keyword-infused content for a made-up persona? Blah.

So I stopped.  And I started telling my own story, following my curiosity, expressing opinions (even when they went against the grain), and breaking the shackles of Google-driven content.

And something amazing happened.

When I went my own way, instead of finding my ideal audience, my ideal audience found me. And they were all over the world. When I decided to be a real person, real people responded back, and it changed my career.

There is no way this would have happened if I had stayed in the social media trough of best practices.

It was a powerful lesson, and since then, I’ve broken rules all along the way as I’ve written my books, created The Uprising, and established a speaking career. That personal decision to have your own little rebel yell doesn’t mean you’re reckless or offensive. But it requires courage to show up differently when boring is the path of least resistance.

The personal decision and marketing

Are you in a marketing trough? Are you so focused on what other people are doing that you’re overlooking your unique value and inherent creativity?

More importantly, are you happy and excited about your work, or are you becoming bored with all these rules, as I was?

Stop trying to game the system and start being unapologetically you. Because in the end, people don’t connect with keywords or personas. They connect with stories, passion, and real human beings who have something genuine to say.

There is a place for best practices, but don’t overlook the power of going your own way, especially when most marketing is so dull. There is tremendous pressure to do what everybody else is doing. It might seem scary not to follow the crowd. But that might be your most powerful and meaningful differentiator.

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 Austrian National Library and Unsplash.com

The post Sometimes, marketing comes down to a personal decision 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

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Early in my career, I learned a powerful lesson on how to battle boredom that changed my professional life forever. I hope this story will inspire you too.

How to battle boring

I began my career in corporate communications and had the amazing opportunity to have my own little company magazine. I did everything – writing, editing, design, and photography.

This dates me (painfully), but at this time in my career, a photographer still had to worry about f-stops and film speed. Digital wasn’t a thing—not even close. So, I needed to learn the craft.

I signed up for a weekend class with a master photographer who specialized in the type of corporate photography that was part of my job. He assembled a class of ten students in adjoining suites in a Dallas hotel, and this is where I learned how to battle boring forever.

The first day of class covered the basics of composition and lighting. The second day pushed us to put these lessons into action. The class was divided into two and we were challenged to create photographs that would make the other team laugh, ask questions, or feel curious.

Using Polaroid cameras to create our art on the spot, we were instructed to only use what we could find in the hotel rooms for props. With no budget or outside resources, we depended on the team’s collective imagination to create something out of nothing.

The teacher pushed us. “Never be average or predictable,” he said. “Use the team to create something I’ve never seen before.” We moved, changed, twisted, challenged, and pushed our meager resources until we had singularly unique and bold photographs.

The team trials became progressively more difficult, and near the end of the last day, the teacher issued a final assignment – create a photo that would shock the other team. Until then, creating a funny or puzzling photo had been fun and relatively easy. But shocking? Now we really had to reach … and remember we were stuck in that boring hotel room.

The Shock Doctrine

We did our best and worked to create a photo that we thought was shocking. But then he looked at both teams, shook his head, and said, “You’re not getting it. I mean, you need to create something really shocking. Go back to your rooms and create a photo that will knock our socks off. You have 20 minutes.”

By this point we were working well as a team and we were determined to produce something audacious. We emptied our pockets and backpacks. The women on our team emptied their purses on the floor. Was there anything we could work with?

One of the women had black mascara and started rubbing it on the back of her hand like shoe polish. Then the other woman took it and started rubbing it on her face until it was black as night.

Somebody else had a tiny flashlight. Another person had a mirror that we held up to her nose. We pulled up her blonde hair. At the end of 15 minutes, this was our photo:

Yes. We blew their socks off.

Decades later, I still see this photo as a great inspiration. If we could create this ghoulish, one-eyed monster in a dark Hilton hotel bathroom, it made me believe that I could make anything more remarkable. I could battle boring and win. I would never create dull content again.

I didn’t need money to push the limits, and I didn’t need a team of experts. I just had to be desperately dissatisfied with mediocrity.

Money is the bane of creativity

Later in my career, I worked at a plant location that was swimming in money. It was the most profitable plant in the system, and everyone just threw money at every problem. There was so much waste. And so much dull!

I realized that the most creative teams I worked with had the fewest resources. Money was the bane of creativity. It’s possible to battle boring, even with a small budget.

I’ve never met a fellow marketer who told me, “We have too much money in our budget.” No matter where you are in your career, you’ll face resource constraints. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be audacious. In fact, as long as you have access to a tube of mascara, you’ll probably 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

The post How to battle boring … even without a budget 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}.

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.

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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}.

When it comes to my content projects, am I a coward or a genius?

This is an internal debate I have when considering my content strategy. It goes like this …

I have three main content projects:

1. A blog I’ve populated with content at least once a week for 15 years.
2. A podcast now in its 12th year (never missed an episode)
3. Marketing-related books (counting all editions, 16 since 2010)

I have been a model of consistency.

But when I look around the industry, my colleagues are stopping and starting content projects all the time. Limited edition podcast series. A small video series. Or completely abandoning major content assets and starting over.

And I wonder if I am missing something. Am I boring, or am I consistent? Am I stuck, or am I focused? Am I in a groove or stuck in a trough?

When do you know it’s time to stop and start over, or when it is time to start at all?

This is the debate I have with my friend Jay Acunzo, who has stopped and started many newsletters, podcasts and video series over his career. In the new episode of The Marketing Companion, we explore the psychology and business benefits of starting and stopping your content projects. Click here to listen!

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion episode 287

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 The art of starting and stopping content projects appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.