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 recently saw a post touting the importance of a “timeless content marketing strategy. As I read the article, my response was, “Yes… but.” It occurred to me that there are many exceptions to the “rules,” and maybe it’s time to disrupt the traditional notion of content marketing. Let’s see if you agree.

Today I will repeat the elements described in a post as the timeless content marketing strategy and challenge conventional wisdom.

1) Define clear buyer personas.

Buyer personas can be very helpful in large, far-flung company with complex agency relationships. Having a target customer in mind can keep everyone on the same page and focused on content that serves the market.

However …

Creating content meant to serve made-up people can be stifling. Chances are, your closest competitors have drawn up the same personas. So you are all creating the same content for the same made-up people. There might be a small SEO advantage to this, but if you’re trying to break through the noise and create something worthy of attention, being a slave to personas simply creates a pandemic of dull.

Personas can be self-limiting in another way. In our fast-changing world, customers are evolving. Even long-held values and norms are changing. Focusing on one personality type, or even ten of them, can ignore new needs and new customers coming into the fold. In my upcoming book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World (Feb 2025), there’s an interview with Kory Marchisotto, the CMO of e.l.f. cosmetics. She said:

“When I came into e.l.f., every marketing guru, every marketing advisor, everybody on my personal board of directors told me I had to create a customer persona. Every textbook said the same thing: ‘Go create a persona. Put e.l.f. in a box: Alpha is a person who carries this handbag, she does this thing, she shopped at this store.’

“And my gut instinct was to do a manual override. Creating personas just seemed so wrong for this brand. I was reading letters from 60-year-old women, 8-year-old kids, teenagers, and no one person is a ‘persona.’ We’ve taken a stand that e.l.f. is for every eye, lip and face. That is the lighthouse that guides us, and that is also an enormous responsibility.

“We don’t draw borders and boundaries around our customers.”

Think carefully about how personas can limit the creativity and reach of your content marketing. Don’t just follow the guru rules.

2) Develop a content calendar.

Again, this might be a good idea for the largest companies, especially if content requires lengthy legal approvals. But it also imposes two significant limits on content marketing effectiveness.

A few years ago, I was working with a healthcare company that followed a content calendar. But since they had their heads down in a prescribed content calendar, they were focused on National Pencil Day and missed a critical opportunity to comment on relevant legislation passed in their state. Don’t be so wedded to a content calendar that you never look up to see what’s happening in the world.

The second issue is the advantage of timeliness. Plenty of research shows how engagement on content topics degrades over time. For example, I wrote some of the first articles exploring how ChatGPT could be used in marketing. These posts attracted many shares, downloads, and comments. If I had published these ideas just two or three weeks later, they would be old news and far less effective.

Timeliness matters. Fresh ideas matter. To get the most traction for your posts, you need to jump on ideas early, which usually means abandoning whatever was prescribed on the content calendar.

3) Leverage SEO best practices.

In my digital marketing university classes, I explain that there are two high-level content marketing strategies: 1) win SEO or, 2) develop authority and earned subscribers.

What’s the chance I can own one of the top two search results for “digital marketing consultant?” This is a highly saturated field. Competitors have much deeper pockets than me. Just not going to happen.

But could I create content that serves people instead of algorithms and build a mailing list of people who are vitally interested in what I have to say? People who would hire me? I have an excellent chance of doing this.

Add to this issue zero-click Google results, the competition from AI search, and other complications, and it’s easy to conclude that for many companies, a focus on “authority” over “SEO best practices” makes more sense.

SEO gets you visitors. Authority gets you believers.

4) Use a mix of content formats.

This depends on the size of the company.

If you’re a large brand seeking an omnichannel presence and have the budget and agency relationships to do it, then yes.

But if you’re a small company, a startup, or a solopreneur, then absolutely no. To stand out today, you have to be great. And you don’t have the time and resources to be great in 10 places.

My recommendation to small businesses is to fish where the fish are and, at least at first, focus on one, or at the most two, content formats. If you decide on video, then double down on video and then triple down on it to earn your audience.

I’ve probably studied audience-building strategies more than anyone else earth. There are millions of tips and tricks, but there is only one strategy above them all. There is no close second. And that is, focus on quality. Everything else is just noise in fancy marketing pants.

You might trick somebody into clicking a link. But you can’t trick drive-by visitors into viewing your content or subscribing to it. You must earn that, and that only comes through quality. You can’t growth-hack your way to trust.

If you have any resources devoted to content marketing strategy, do NOT go wide by trying to be everywhere. Go deep and create unmissable, vital content that serves customers well in one way.

Stop trying to be everywhere and start being essential somewhere.

5) Regularly analyze and optimize.

I actually agree with this one, and this is historically a problem for many businesses. We are often so busy creating that we don’t dive into the numbers to learn, evolve, and grow.

History won’t help us predict the future. If you’re in marketing, you’re waking up to a new customer reality every day.

Data can help us learn about what connects to customers to help us serve them better, at least in the short-term.

Timeless content marketing strategy?

The biggest problem with being wedded to the “timeless marketing strategy” is that the more you’re obsessed with a persona, an SEO plan, or a calendar, the less you’re reacting to change.

Speed might be the biggest driver of marketing success today, but we don’t talk about it enough. A lot of the timeless marketing strategy ideas are handcuffs when you need to be responsive.

I’m also concerned that the word “quality” isn’t mentioned in this formula. Too many marketers are obsessed with the game. Stop chasing algorithms and start creating something worth following.

Sound about right?

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

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Some brands are making a U-turn away from safe and reliable marketing practices into something bizarre and even … horrifying. The trade press began to characterize the new wave of unhinged brands as DGAF (for Don’t Give a F*ck).

But nothing could be further from the truth. These brands care deeply about their products and customers but realize that their enemy is indifference. Without awareness and conversations about the product, there are new sales. A disruptive narrative unlocks consumer attention and the DGAF brands are plowing into exciting new territory.

To understand the connection between today’s over-the-top weirdness and consumer attention, we need to start with Liquid Death.

Liquid Death: A pioneer of unhinged brands

When it comes to disrupting a boring brand narrative, Liquid Death is a rocket-fueled joyride to the kingdom of badassery. It’s turned a bland, commoditized category (water) on its head by breaking every marketing taboo in the history of marketing taboos.
This is fearless marketing.

• Let’s start with the name. “Death” is usually not the ideal topic to bring up when selling a consumer product, especially when competitors are normally called something like Rainbow Springs.
• And its packaging. Water is supposed to be a symbol of purity. Liquid Death does the opposite—it’s sold in oversized aluminum cans featuring a macabre illustration of a heavy metal skull. By embracing the imagery and language of darkness and danger, Liquid Death subverts every expectation of what a politically correct brand should be.
• One notorious campaign featured a blind taste test in which participants compared Liquid Death to toilet water. The brand’s founder, Mike Cessario, drank from a toilet on camera to prove that Liquid Death tastes better.

The brand embraces its (many) critics. One review said, “I would rather lick the back of a sweaty fat man than drink Liquid Death.” The company turned this into a viral video when it asked customers to lick the back of a sweaty fat man. It quickly proved that 100% of consumers prefer its drink.

You really need to see this:

Liquid Death aligns with controversial figures and subcultures like heavy metal bands and tattoo artists. By embracing fringe elements of society, Liquid Death appeals to consumers who feel alienated by the mainstream and crave a sense of belonging and rebellious fun.

Unhinged brands emerge

Recently I wrote about the nightmarish TikTok videos published by Nutter Butter brand cookies. If you haven’t checked this article out, go ahead, I’ll wait.

At a time when many marketers are covered in fear-induced night sweats over the potential to make a mistake or offend, there’s a growing crop of brands proving people will reward crudeness and candor when it’s actually entertaining. The strategies and product markets differ, but brands like Nutter Butter, Liquid Death, Duolingo, and Pop Tarts are using edgy, agile laughs to win over audiences. Arguably, the much-maligned Jaguar re-brand is a DGAF nod to the old school marketing world.

While there has always been an element of weird in the ad world, I think we’re on a cusp of really audacious content because the world is ready for it.

Indifference is the enemy

I don’t pretend to completely understand the imagery and narrative presented by Nutter Butter or Liquid Death. But I do understand that they have people talking.

And I love this refreshing take. It’s objectionable but not offensive. I mean, what is the legal department going to say about people licking sweat of a guy’s back?

It doesn’t cross a line because it creates new lines in a unique brand universe. Liquid Death and Nutter Butter have looked at the “rules” of water and cookies and determined that they need to be re-written. Awesome.

Weird marketing isn’t new but perhaps it is newly relevant in a world where people are just tired of the same repetitive ads and marketing.

If you’re going to take a big brand risk, maybe the safest play of all is inventing a new world where there are no rules and nobody to offend. Even small brands are entering the DGAF universe.

You only win with brand

In an interview, Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario contended that dull is usually embedded in a brand from the beginning. “Entrepreneurs create something new. They have a product name, and maybe they hire a graphic designer, but it’s not that interesting or smartly branded. Later in the game, when they have money, they hire marketing agencies to build campaigns around this uninteresting thing to make people care about it, or somehow make it relevant when it’s not. But when you can have the people involved at the beginning who understand culture and psychology and have them create the brand, it’s a far more powerful position.

“You’re only going to win with branding. You won’t win with some functional ingredients you can’t own. In that case, when you’re big enough, Coke or Pepsi or someone else will just produce the same thing—same ingredients, cheaper, more widely distributed, and then you lose. With water, there’s minimal, if any, functional difference between the brands. The difference is purely marketing. People want to walk around with this thing instead of that thing. None of the water brands were interesting. I did my homework. There was a huge opportunity to tell a different story.

“The big mistake entrepreneurs make is thinking ‘what has worked in the past is what’s working now—let’s make something like that.’ Most new things are just copies of existing things. If you aspire to be truly unique or innovative, you have to trick your brain and force yourself to consider bad or dumb ideas. That makes you consider things that don’t exist, because why would anyone create a product that’s a bad idea?”

DGAF brands? No. The wisdom is far beyond that.

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 DGAF: Why unhinged brands could be the safest marketing path appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The other day I checked in on Twitter (Still can’t bring myself to say X) and saw this tweet:

About a year ago, Twitter started injecting tweets into my “notifications” stream from people I don’t follow. So, I don’t know Faith Back Rub. Never heard of the account before. And yet, Twitter’s algorithm somehow thought this was one of the most important things for me to see that day.

The message I received was “a famous American football player slammed a presidential candidate.” And then I went on to something more interesting in my busy day.

But then I thought about it a little more: this celebrity American football player is usually non-political. He makes millions in product endorsements and podcast sponsorships. This statement seems uncharacteristic. So I went back to the tweet and clicked on the actual Kelce message:

Now my reaction was — well, this is a verified account. Looks like Travis Kelce really did take a clever swipe at Trump. Surprising. But what is this “Parody by Rub” thing in the corner? Is this real or not? Now, I had to dig to figure out what was going on. And here’s the truth:

This did not come from Travis Kelce, but how would I obviously know that? Remember how this showed up in my news feed: There was no indication that this was fake news when it was displayed to me. I read the headline and moved on.

As it turns out, most people who clicked through were fooled by this tweet, even though it was identified as a “parody.” I know this because there were nearly 1,000 comments on this tweet, most of them Trump supporters blasting Travis Kelce — who had nothing to do with this opinion.

And this is the true problem with social media. The threat to our society doesn’t necessarily come from what people say, it comes from algorithms amplifying disinformation.

The implication of amplification

Everybody has a right to say what they want to say, even if it’s incorrect or controversial. When the American Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, even the most powerful and compelling voice back then could only hope that somebody would read their pamphlet or hear a speech. Information spread slowly, and mostly, locally. Even a juicy conspiracy theory couldn’t get nationwide attention very easily.

But today, damaging content can spread instantly and globally. And that puts a new spin on the issue of free speech.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said there is a limit on free speech: “You can’t yell ‘fire’ (with no fire) in a crowded theater.” But today, anybody can yell fire, and it can impact the opinions of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people. Amplification matters. Amplication is the threat. Why isn’t anybody taking responsibility for this?

Social media companies must be accountable

Let’s think through the case study I presented today.

• Twitter’s algorithm—no human being—decided to amplify news clearly marked as fake into user news streams without indicating that it was a parody (the first screenshot above).
• Based on the comments, two-thirds of the recipients of this tweet thought it was real, or 342,000 people.
• But that’s just the beginning. This fake news was retweeted 7,700 times!

This example was relatively harmless. The parody tweet probably caused Travis Kelce some irritation, but maybe that goes with the life of a celebrity.

However, what if this amplified fake tweet was devastatingly serious?

• What if a “verified account” called off evacuations in the middle of a hurricane?
• What if a fake account said every computer was hacked and would blow up today?
• What if the tweet accused Travis Kelce of beating up his girlfriend Taylor Swift?

My point is that Twitter and any other platform that employs algorithms to knowingly spread false claims should be held accountable.

In a recent interview, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari made this comparison: People can leave any comment they want on an article in The New York Times, even if it’s false. But amplification from social media companies is like the newspaper taking a bizarre, false comment and putting it on the front page of their newspaper.

That’s irresponsible and dangerous to society. Nobody would stand for that. And yet, we do.

Aim at amplification

As we enter the AI Era, the danger of fake news and its implications grows profoundly.

Let’s cut to the chase — Twitter knowingly lied to me to increase my time on their site and benefit its bottom line.

While it would be nearly impossible for any platform to monitor the comments of millions (or billions) of users, it’s much easier to hold companies accountable for spreading known false information to innocent people. This is a simple first step to protect people from dangerous falsehoods.

Why is nobody talking about this? Addressing bot-driven “sensational amplification” is a much easier fix than trying to regulate or suppress free speech. This must be a regulatory priority.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post The biggest threat to free speech and democracy isn’t speech, it’s amplification 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}.

A LinkedIn comment made me wonder about the practical economic value of human authenticity and the “soul” in our work. Does that seem heretical? Let’s dive in and see …

To set the stage, Andrew Safnauer read my post about how AI is taking the soul out of music, marketing, and most creative endeavors. Most people responded with a virtual high-five to the idea that we will always seek out true human connection. This has been my position, too. Then I read Andrew’s comment (edited for style):

“I worked in radio for my first career. Post deregulation in late 1990s, the industry eliminated overnight DJs through automation. (Saved money). Worked so ‘well’ that they moved it to other time slots. Slowly but surely local talent was replaced by someone from out of town or, more often, no one — they just let the music play.

“The technology removed the unique advantage of radio — the local touch, a connection to the community. And frankly, they removed the soul of what a local radio station brought to a town.

“You can buy a decent frozen pizza made by a machine but it is never going to be as good as one made at Sal’s Pizza by a guy who’s worked the oven for 30 years. His work has soul.”

Let’s dissect this observation. There is an unexpected truth here.

The economics of human authenticity

Andrew’s comment has two nuanced, important points:

1. The radio industry, built on the popularity of human DJs, eliminated them—literally cutting the soul out of the product. And it didn’t matter. Radio stations moved on with a new economic model nearly devoid of human authenticity.
2. However, the beloved local pizza baker can only survive in a world of big chain competition due to the local, human connection.

This got me thinking. Despite our human marketing pride, the authentic human element doesn’t always win. Businesses will use AI to cut the heart out of our work to save money, and in some cases, customers won’t care. This might seem unfair, but as much as we decry the soul-less AI bots, they’re coming, and they’re winning.

The other point is that soul does matter … sometimes. Why is human authenticity critical for a local pizza guy and not the popular DJ?

When I was a kid, the local DJs were GODS. They were your only connection to music discovery in those pre-Spotify days. I would argue their role and presence in a community was at least as important as the pizza maker. What’s the difference and what went wrong?

Authenticity isn’t dead. It’s just … complicated.

But I think I know how to unravel this.

The jobs to be done

On this blog and in my podcast, I’ve covered an idea called “jobs to be done,” attributed to Clayton Christensen.

The simple idea is that people don’t necessarily buy a product. They buy a job to be done. People don’t need a drill. They need a hole.

One way to figure out the economics of human authenticity in an AI world is to evaluate this through the lens of jobs to be done.

When I have a problem with an appliance, I call a customer service rep to get it repaired as fast as possible. The job I need is to fix this thing fast. I don’t care if the rep on the other end is a human who writes poetry and cares for her elderly goldfish. I just want to get off the phone, and if an AI bot can do it better, that would be great!

In this case, the economic value of human authenticity based on the “job to be done” is zero.

When I was a kid, the job I hired a radio DJ for was to:

1. Play my favorite songs
2. Answer the telephone request line to play my favorite songs
3. Help me find more favorite songs.

They were the gatekeepers of cool, but really … it was about the songs. They became dispensable because the job to be done is easily automated. I liked these personalities and enjoyed their jokes, so the economic value of human authenticity would not be zero, but it was low enough that I don’t lay awake at night grieving the loss of DJs. I happily accept the convenience of Spotify.

Sometimes, the robot wins.

AI and your economic value

By comparison, let’s examine the jobs we might hire the local pizza chef to do:

• Remind us of the good times we have at this restaurant
• Create a special dinner just the way we like it
• Watch a sporting event in a place that is nostalgic and filled with fellow fans
• To see the friendly face of the owner
• Enjoy something made with unique craftsmanship, maybe an old family recipe with that special sauce!

None of this can be automated. The human connection is everything. Maybe their pizza costs a little more. Maybe the restaurant floor is a little grimy. Maybe we drive an extra mile to get there. But we don’t care because only this human being can deliver these “jobs to be done.”

In this context, we can evaluate the economics of human authenticity for our own careers. What job are people hiring you to do?

Copywriting? Basic illustrations? Editing? Yikes. You’re in DJ territory.

What is uniquely yours? What is your special sauce or unique “family recipe” that you bring to the marketplace?

This is why I’ve been yelling from the rooftops for years  — a strong personal brand is our only defense against the encroachment of AI. You need to deliver something that is uniquely you. What’s the problem you solve in a way that cannot be ignored?

Start now.

I am not a salesy person. This is not a salesy blog. But I do have a solution if you’re feeling vulnerable in this Ai turmoil.

For more than five years, I’ve been teaching a personal branding class that is the best of its kind. It’s taught live. It’s based on experience, research, and best practices. And it has absolutely changed lives.

It’s not too late to start working on your personal brand and focus on your unique value. Please consider my class, which can be found here.

In the end, it’s not about being human everywhere. It’s about being human where it matters most.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post The economic value of human authenticity appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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

The post The Real Reason Marketing Content is Getting Worse appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Personal brand on TikTok?

Too short for a blog post, too interesting to ignore, here are some quick thoughts from the Schaefer-verse:

Is it really a personal brand on TikTok?

I’ve been teaching about personal branding for nearly a decade and probably have studied this subject as much as anyone on earth. But a new development has me flummoxed.

Increasingly, “personal brand” is becoming synonymous with performers on TikTok. I’ve seen this connection creeping in, but it slapped me in the face when I saw sessions on “personal brand strategy” at SXSW run literally by teen TikTok stars.

I’m not against teen TikTok stars—go for it. But is this building a personal brand … or achieving personal fame? There’s a difference.

The term “personal brand” was popularized by a 1997 Fast Company article called “The Brand is You” by Tom Peters. He stressed the importance of curating your own professional brand (just like a corporate brand) to succeed in business.

In my popular Personal Branding Master Class, I make the distinction between fame (like Kim Kardashian) and a personal brand, which means you have the

• presence
• reputation
• authority

… to make your professional dreams a reality. You probably won’t be famous (and don’t need to be), but you will be known in your industry, and that’s a HUGE advantage.

By the way, I think you can create a professional personal brand, instead of personal fame, on TikTok just like any other channel. I’ve seen some great marketing and business content there.

But today, TikTok’s meme-merchants with brand deals seem to be lumped together in the “personal brand” category by the popular media. I think that’s confusing. Am I splitting hairs?

I broke my own rule

In many of my books and speeches, I implore marketers to stop doing what people hate — interrupting, intercepting, and spamming, for example.

Here’s one thing that I know people hate: pop-up ads. The research is overwhelming. In 2014, Ethan Zuckerman, the inventor of the pop-up ad, wrote a lengthy apology for his creation in The Atlantic. He called it “The Internet’s Original Sin” and pleaded with businesses to “ditch them.”

And yet, I now have a pop-up on my site. One attentive reader called this irony to my attention, so I thought I would explain it.

Subscriptions to my blog had been stagnant. Long story short, I am fighting the math of large numbers (the bigger the email list, the more I need to grow to keep up with natural attrition).

I needed to upgrade my email strategy, and one recommendation was to add a pop-up to gently remind people to subscribe. I resisted the idea for years but finally succumbed.

I hope I have done this in a kind way. It only pops up after you have been on the site for a while, so it’s not on your face, and it only happens once. Bottom line, it worked.

So I have a “gentle pop-up!”

No sugar-coating

In my last roundup-style post, I had a number of sobering observations about AI and our future. One reader chastised me for not being more positive.

I do think positivity is important, but the truth is even more so. If I don’t tell you the truth, I am cheating you, deceiving you in the long term to make you feel good in the short term.

If you believe projections from Accenture, Deloitte, and McKinsey, between 40% and 70% of marketing tasks can be easily automated. My friend Paul Roetzer, who studies this more than anyone, ranted in his podcast this week that job displacement is coming fast, and he’s worried that nobody is prepared for it.

I do not think mass job displacement is inevitable, at least in the short-term. There are many financial, legal, ethical, and political hurdles for AI to overcome. And, as I wrote recently, I believe is always a place for human creativity.

But change is coming. That’s what’s real right now. We can’t see the truth through a sugar-coated lens. Let’s grow together based on truth and lift each other up along the way!

Word-of-mouth marketing is where it’s at

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) is probably the most important marketing genre. But it has been relegated to a marketing sideshow because it’s difficult to execute and even more difficult to measure. And frankly, it’s just not as sexy as a celebrity-filled TV ad.

But I’m convinced in this deep fake age of mistrust, WOMM will emerge as an incredibly important strategy. It’s not that hard. Give people something cool to talk about!

It can be this simple. I dined at the wonderful Oasis restaurant on the Caribean island of Saint Martin a few weeks ago. At each place setting, there was a little card to give you a fake smile. Donning the fake smile was irresistible of course. Don’t you think kids would love this?

The simple word-of-mouth marketing idea becomes complete with unique stories on the back of the card. About 10% of the population are “super-sharers” who will take a cool story and share it with family and friends. That ignites WOMM. So, feed them the stories and it will spread.

Don’t overlook visual prompts like the smile card to remind people to talk about you.

What are the stories you’re sharing about your business? How are you getting them out into the world so your business becomes conversational?

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 Are you really building a personal brand on TikTok? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

The topic for this blog post came to me in a dream. I woke up from my dream thinking, “Yes, it’s true. There really is one big mistake content creators make. I should tell others about it!”

I’m sorry this dream wasn’t more exciting or titillating. Maybe my other dreams will be a story for another day. Or not.

Before I reveal my dream-truth, I need to review a basic content marketing philosophy:

Content must be unleashed.

It doesn’t matter if you’re creating epic content or the best work of your lifetime if nobody sees it. The power in your content doesn’t from the content. It comes from the transmission of the content. We want our work to move, which leads to awareness, fans, subscribers and people who will buy things from us.

The biggest mistake content creators make

OK, let’s think this through.

You create great content. You post it everywhere. Somebody bites. They click on the link and what do they see when they arrive at your website?

A blog post? A video? A podcast episode?

Of course … but what else? If you’re like most people, the answer is … nothing. And this is the problem.

When I visit most blog posts or other web content, I can’t even tell who wrote it. I don’t know what this site is about. I don’t see a place to subscribe. I don’t see a place to share the content on social media if I like it. It’s a marketing dead end!

When people click on a link to your content, they don’t arrive at your home page. They arrive at your content. And if all you have on this page is your content, you’re missing a massive opportunity. In fact, this is by far the biggest mistake content creators make today.

In essence, your content page needs to be a mini-landing page for your business. You spend all this time bringing people to your business, but it’s not your business—it’s just a piece of content. They read it and leave. TRAGIC!

Here is your goal: Keep them on your website. You should put as much thought and design into your standard content page as your home page. The longer you keep them on the page, the bigger the chance they will subscribe to your content, share it, or even buy something from you. So don’t miss this opportunity.

Let’s learn how to do this …

The mini home page

If I were sitting with you over coffee, I would pull out my laptop and give you a demonstration. I would probably even buy you the coffee. But since we might be thousands of miles apart, I’ll walk you through it and owe you the coffee when we finally meet. Deal?

As I give you this lesson, it would be helpful to look at how I display my own work, the result of many years of testing. If you like, open up this blog post as you read the rest of my tutorial so you can visualize the lesson.

We’ll start at the top and learn how to make your content into a mini home page.

On my post, what’s the first thing you see under the headline? Social sharing buttons. I can’t believe how often I go to a site and have to work to figure out how to share the content.

Research shows your content will be shared 400% more if you simply add social sharing buttons. The total social shares displayed on my buttons isn’t accurate. It’s sort of a long story why they’re not, and it’s frustrating that nobody has worked that out, but put the buttons up there anyway. No excuses.

Next: An eye-catching graphic. If somebody sees your content shared on LinkedIn or Twitter, the first thing that grabs their attention is the graphic. Maybe you can stop them long enough to read the headline and get a click. The image that goes with your content is also an SEO boost because you can add meta tags to the photo to help Google figure out your content.

Let’s start looking at the right-hand column. You first see a call to action to spend time with me. Cool.

However, the next field, an invitation to subscribe, is the most essential item on the entire page. Why? Because a subscriber is opting in to you and what you do. They are volunteering to hear more. They are becoming members of your email list and possibly future customers.

You might be asking yourself, if the subscribe button is the most critical part of the page, why isn’t it at the top of the column? Heat map studies show that the top right corner of the web page is invisible to many people. I don’t know why, but the conclusion is consistent. So, the top of the column is sort of a throw-away item to get people to the next block which encourages them to subscribe.

As you go down the rest of the column, you’ll see:

• An opportunity to buy my book
• An invitation to attend my marketing retreat
• News about a class I am teaching
• An ability to search the site
• A little welcome message so people know who I am
• Boxes to search my posts by topic, date, or recent articles.

These are all things you might expect to see on a homepage. But most visitors who click on a link never see your home page. We need to fill that gap and give them lots of things to do. Remember, we want to keep them on the website.

Now let’s skip to the very bottom of the blog post. What have we here? A photo of me and further invitations to engage and connect. 

You might note that this page has lots of reasons to buy something from me, but I never sell within the content of the post. Some content gurus insist that you should sell something on every blog post, but I say phooey. I think that’s annoying and disrespectful. I wouldn’t want to subscribe to a constant sales pitch, would you?

But we’re not finished. Under my bio is another opportunity to share the post on social media because we want to get this content to move!

Next, there are a couple of prompts to send you to similar posts on my site. These are free WordPress apps that increase your time on my site by 18%. Huzzah!

And we wrap things up with another opportunity to connect with me on something like buying a book.

Just copy me

I just gave you some ideas for overcoming the biggest mistake content creators make today. My guess is that you have almost none of this on your page today. These ideas are easy to implement and can elevate your content immediately.

Everything I’ve covered here is free if you have a WordPress site. Nothing custom. Ask your web person to review my blog posts and copy my format. I’m happy to help you in that way.

It’s upsetting that so many people put their heart and soul into great content, only to have it languish on a boring, useless page.

I hope these ideas will give your content and business the boost they deserve.

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

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