Have you ever wondered if we're slowly losing our humanity in the rush to adopt AI? Every day, another marketer proclaims they've automated their entire workflow, created the perfect AI system, or generated flawless content. But what if perfection isn't what your audience really wants?
The truth is, we're facing an unprecedented challenge in marketing. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they're creating a world of perfect content, pristine images, and meticulously crafted messages. But in this pursuit of perfection, we're at risk of losing the very thing that makes marketing effective - our human touch.
That's why I'm thrilled to welcome long-time friend and colleague Mark Schaefer to the show today. Mark is one of the world's most recognized marketing experts, a globally-acclaimed keynote speaker, and the author of 10 best-selling marketing books. His blog {grow} is consistently ranked among the top marketing blogs worldwide, and his latest book "Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World" couldn't be more timely. Mark has worked with organizations like Microsoft, Adidas, and Johnson & Johnson, helping them navigate the intersection of technology and human connection in marketing.
The AI Hat Podcast host Mike Allton asked Mark Schaefer about:
✨ Human Authenticity Wins: Creating authentic, imperfect content that resonates with real people outperforms AI-generated perfection.
✨ Balance is Critical: Success lies in finding the sweet spot between AI efficiency and human creativity.
Learn more about Mark Schaefer
- Connect with Mark Schaefer on LinkedIn
Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode
- Schaefer Marketing Solutions (BusinessesGrow.com)
- Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World
- Mark Schaefer’s other marketing and business books
- The Ezra Klein Show: The Government Knows AGI Is Coming
- Filling the Void: How AI Identifies and Closes Content Gaps with Andy Crestodina
- The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth: Entrepreneurship for Weirdos, Misfits, and World Dominators by Chris Brogan
- Shelly Palmer
- Create your own AI Work Buddy
- AI Primer: A Comprehensive Guide
- AI Training for Businesses
- Explore past episodes of the The AI Hat Podcast podcast
Full Transcript
(lightly edited)
The You-niverse: How to Stay Human in an AI Marketing World with Mark Schaefer
[00:00:00] Mark Schaefer: We are also now at a stage where Ai, even the less expensive models available to all of us, can reason. They're applying human-like logic. They're applying multimodal applications. It can see, it can hear, it can learn. So I don't want anybody out there soothing themselves thinking, oh, AI is average. I'm above average.
I'm gonna be okay. Don't lull yourself into thinking everything's gonna be okay. Major idea in my book is that competency, being competent doesn't cut it. If you are competent. You're gonna get rolled over, you're gonna be ignorable, AI is gonna take your job. So now is the time to be thinking in a different way.
'cause the bots are coming. The bots are here in many industries, but we still own crazy.
[00:00:59] Mike Allton: Mike's got The Hat, the AI kind. Unlocking power in business, you'll find. Cut through the hype, explore the tech. Every week, new ideas to check.
Allton leads us on a digital quest. AI secrets, he'll always invest. Tune in tight, don't miss a beat. Knowledge, groove, keep you on your feet. Listen up! To the AI flow. Business growth, here we go. Cutting edge insights, that's the plan. With The AI Hat you'll understand.
Greetings program. Welcome back to The AI Hat Podcast, where I selfishly use the time to pick the brains of experts at harnessing the power of AI across all areas of business. From streamlining operations and boosting productivity to gaining a competitive edge and driving explosive growth. Oh, and you get to learn, too.
Subscribe to be shown on, prepare yourself and your brand for this AI revolution and come out ahead. Now, have you ever wondered if we're slowly losing our humanity in this rush to adopt AI? Every day another marketer proclaims they've automated their entire workflow, creating the perfect AI system, or generated flawless content, but what if perfection isn't what your audience really wants? The truth is, I we're facing an unprecedented challenge in marketing. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they're creating a world of perfect content, pristine images, and meticulously crafted messages. But in this pursuit of perfection, we're at risk of losing the very thing that makes marketing effective, our human touch.
That's why I'm throw the welcome longtime friend and colleague, Mark Schaefer to the show today. Mark is one of the world's most recognized marketing experts, a globally acclaimed keynote speaker, and the author of 10 bestselling marketing books. His blog Grow is consistently right among the top marketing books worldwide.
In his latest book, Audacious, How Humans Win In The AI Marketing World. Couldn't be more timely. Mark has worked with organizations like Microsoft, Adidas, and Johnson and Johnson, helping them navigate the intersection of technology and human connection in marketing. Hey Mark, welcome to the show.
[00:03:36] Mark Schaefer: I am so happy to see you.
So happy to be here.
[00:03:42] Mike Allton: I'm glad you're here. I know it took a while, but we got it scheduled. I love it. Been looking forward to this conversation. Looking forward to catching up with you. I'd love to know right off the bat, what inspired you to write Audacious and kind of position it in today of all times as the anti AI book.
[00:04:00] Mark Schaefer: Yeah. Well, it's the anti AI book until it's not.
There's a chapter at the end talking about how we need to use AI to be more audacious would be. Silly if we, if we didn't, well, it, to the outside observer, it would look like I have a real strategy to write books. I've, I've written books about every two years. But I don't. I only write a book when I see a problem that, that I, I get just endlessly fascinated and curious about, and I just get obsessed with, with solving it.
And I'm so fortunate in my career. That I get to go all over the world. I get to meet with business leaders at very large companies, even small companies, solopreneurs and nonprofits, and universities. And, and I and I, I can like get these themes of, of what's going on and certainly right now. I think we face truly an existential crisis when it comes to AI and our marketing jobs.
AI is nipping at the heels of our skill sets, perhaps nipping at our careers. We're already seeing some job loss in some cases, and so I really needed to dwell on where do humans fit in a way that's not sugarcoated. In a way that acknowledges that AI is very smart and getting smarter and can do and more, more and more.
So, this book focuses on the uniquely human aspects of marketing and how we need to focus on that and ignite those human fireworks to stay relevant in this era.
[00:06:00] Mike Allton: And I couldn't agree more. This is the kind of conversation that has got to happen now, but it's not, at least not to the level that at once, the, the,
[00:06:08] Mark Schaefer: yeah.
So many people are asleep. Yeah, they're still asleep. Yeah.
[00:06:12] Mike Allton: Yeah, the LLMs are just racing against each other to put out the the biggest, best, fastest models they can with little to no regard over what will happen next, including the law. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. They'll cautiously admit that. Yeah, there'll be some displacement.
There may be some upskilling necessary. Well, the World Economic Forum says that within the next five years. 92 million jobs are going to be displaced. Yeah. By ai. Now they admit that well, 170 million jobs will be created by ai. Mm-hmm. That's a net 78 million gain. Well, that's cool, but what about the 92 million people who need to upskill or reskill or do something?
And the government is woefully unprepared. Ezra Klein just dropped an interview recently. I'll link that in the show notes where he had talked to an official from the Biden administration. Yes, I saw that interview. Fantastic interview. Also mind blowing. Shocking interview about, how, politics is so dramatically impacting how we think about AI at the governmental level.
It wasn't a hot button for voters. In 2023. So it couldn't be on the agenda for the Biden administration until after they got elected, which of course they didn't. So I love that we're having this conversation. I love that you're spearheading it with the book. Now, inside the book, you talked about this concept of robo content being marketing version of processed cheese.
Talk to me about this analogy.
[00:07:40] Mark Schaefer: Yeah, looks good. Doesn't taste very good. So, the, the thesis of the book. It points out an enormous opportunity that we have as marketers, the world, the marketing world, and the advertising world is boring, and I've got data in the book to back it up. I. There's a research firm in the UK that judged the human emotional reaction to more than 60,000 ads, B2B, B2C, ads, marketing materials.
And what they found was that about two thirds of all the advertising and marketing materials got like zero. Human reaction, like it was just blank. And they imagined what is the most boring thing we could think of, and they thought there was a cow chewing grass. So they created a video of a cow chewing grass and put it in the same test and found that it tested AB at about the same level as today's advertising.
[00:08:53] Mike Allton: Hmm.
[00:08:54] Mark Schaefer: And marketing. So we're, we're just in this pandemic of dull, and if there was a CEO of the advertising industry, they'd be fired. The ads of marketing, it's, it's terrible. And there are reasons for that. And I go into this in, in a lot of detail. In the book, but there's an, there's a, there's a scaffolding, there's an infrastructure that keeps boring in place.
We don't want to rock the ship. We don't want to upset a customer in some industries, dull is normalized. This is what we've always done. This is what we'll always do. Huge opportunity there. By the way, people might be afraid of losing their jobs. People might opt in for boring because it's easy to get it approved to the legal department, right?
So it's just, it's just lazy. And there are some places where conservative and boring are required. If there are legal regulations, you don't wanna go to jail, but if you're just afraid or dull has been normalized in your industry, this is a time to shake things up and, and in a way that AI can't touch.
Now, AI is making it even worse because today more than 50% of the content on the web is being created by Ai. And how does AI learn from what they see on the web? So it's learning from itself. So it's just this big bucket of meh that's, that's getting worse and worse, and it is an opportunity for humans to disrupt the game.
[00:10:42] Mike Allton: I couldn't agree more. It, it's a reflection of what Andy Crestodina and I talked about back in, gosh, episode five or six of this podcast where he supposed that, AI really should stand for average intelligence because the typical AI response the typical user gets from AI is, is mediocre. It's the average of all the answers and, and output that it could possibly give you.
Obviously, if you. Know what you're doing and, and you work well, you can get really highly customized and I do wanna Yeah. Content. I do. Yeah.
[00:11:12] Mark Schaefer: I do wanna jump in on that because Yeah. While that is generally true, we are also now at a stage where Ai, even the less expensive models available to all of us can reason Yeah.
They, they're applying human-like logic. They're applying multimodal. Applications it can see, it can hear, it can learn. So I don't want anybody out there soothing themselves thinking, oh, AI is average. I'm above average. I'm gonna be okay. Yeah, don't lull yourself into, uh uh, into thinking everything's gonna be okay.
Major idea in my book is that competency being competent. I. It doesn't cut it. If you are competent, you're gonna get rolled over. You're gonna be ignorable, AI is gonna take your job. So now is the time to be, we've got to be thinking in a different way. 'cause the bots are coming. The bots are here in many industries, but we still own crazy.
That is the secret. That's our secret formula. Right. And so this book is. It gives you lots of examples and a framework for kind of like teasing out the crazy and staying ahead of the bots.
[00:12:37] Mike Allton: I think it's time to dig out Chris Brogan's book. The Freaks Will Inherit the Earth. Yeah. I need to be a little more freaky.
Right. But that's a very fair point. You're right. Yeah. So, so this glut of AI generated content, is that why you're putting a hundred percent human content that badge on your blog post? Or is there something else that kind of prompted that decision?
[00:12:59] Mark Schaefer: Well, so there's, I think, a connection between our relevance in the AI world and our personal brand.
When chat GPT first came out, Mike instantly I could see what an important and profound impact this would have on business and of course on marketing. And I called up my friend Shelly Palmer. He's a very well known tech analyst in New York. I said, Shelly, what do you think about this? He said it's terrifying.
He said, I've blogged almost every day for the last 15 years. I asked chat GPT to write a specific blog post for me in my voice, and it did a perfect job. In three seconds, he said, I'm 80% replaced. Now on the surface, that does seem terrifying. But the more important question to ask is what's the 20%? And the 20% is his personal brand.
Shelly is known. He is trusted, he is loved. He has nothing to worry about. People will always read his blog, they'll always read his books. They'll always come to his speeches. They will always come to his adv, come to him for advice. Because no matter what happens in this AI world, we're going to need to turn to humans for navigation and for truth.
And I think this is the same way for me, Mike. I've been putting out content for about the same time as Shelly been blogging. My podcast is in its 14th. Year. This is my now 11th book. I've been very generous in the way I show up on the web, and I've got people, a, a group of people, a platform, an audience of people who love me, who trust me.
And that's why on my blog I have this badge that says 100% human content because I want to reinforce that this is me. I am here. It's always gonna be me. I'm not gonna go away. And you can trust that.
[00:15:20] Mike Allton: Love it. So another concept that you talked about in the book was these random moments of joy that were in marketing, that were in, they were evolving.
As AI becomes more prevalent or how do you see them evolving as AI becomes more prevalent?
[00:15:37] Mark Schaefer: This is a very important part of the book. So let's back up for a moment and talk about record albums.
[00:15:50] Mike Allton: Okay, great.
[00:15:51] Mark Schaefer: When I, when I was a, when I was a kid, you had to save your money for a record album. It was a big deal.
Then once you got that record album, all of the friends in your neighborhood would come over and you'd listen to their music. And you'd look at the, the lyrics on the, on the album cover and the, on the, on the notes. And you'd sing along or maybe you'd discuss the lyrics. And usually there was pizza and snacks involved.
It was a social event. Same way with movies. If you wanted to see a movie, you'd find somebody with a car that was step one. Now, today. Most of the population and especially young people today consume their entire world through their earbuds. They can sit in a, in a room by themselves, listen to their favorite music, watch their favorite movies and TV shows, listen to podcasts listen to audio books, whatever entertains them, and they can binge their favorite artists that nobody even knows about.
And what's missing from today's world are shared experiences like we had in the past. And if you, if you watch the news, we're starting to see a backlash and pundits in the industry who are observing how AI is changing society. They're saying there is going to be a backlash. There's gonna be a group of people that reject the isolation and loneliness.
Of AI and look for these shared experiences. Now, this is something only humans can do. To bring people together in special ways. Now, let me tell you why this is so important. If you listen to music by yourself, it might be pleasant, but when you have an experience where you bring people together, something occurs called collective effervescence.
It's an emotional contagion that is this joy that you asked about. In fact, it's a feeling of awe. Now, as I said, the this book is really about how, where humans need to dwell in this AI dominant world, and this is a place where we rule. Bringing people together. I just got back from South by Southwest and it's all about meeting in real life and making new connections and a bunch of friends we got together and we went to this party and there was a concert and I just cannot tell you how much joy there was. And this, this event, by the way, was sponsored by a brand so forever. I'm gonna have positive feelings about that brand because we had this collective effervescence.
We have awe now associated with this brand. So one of the challenges I have in the book. Is what if your marketing plan was create more awe, add more awe? How do we have our customers experience joy in a way that transfers to us massive opportunity for marketing?
[00:19:30] Mike Allton: Got it. Love it. I was actually relating very heavily 'cause just this morning I was taking my daughter to school and I decided we were listening to some musicals and there was some, I didn't really know, so I'm like, we're just gonna listen to Jesus Christ Superstar.
Mm-hmm. I plugged that in and immediately I was transported back to when I was a kid listening to it. Yes. As a record. Yeah. And of course my 13-year-old daughter has no concept of records. Yeah. I don't know if she's ever even touched one in her life. She certainly doesn't own any. Yeah. Very different kind of experience folks.
We're talking with Mark Schafer about the real impact that AI is having on marketing and our humanity. I've got several more questions you aren't going to want to miss, but first, a quick word from our sponsor.
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So Mark, in, in the book you had this interesting, like then versus now comparison in marketing. Which of those shifts that you talked about there did you find to be like the most significant?
[00:21:18] Mark Schaefer: Yeah, the purpose of that little I. Graphic was to provoke people into thinking bigger about what AI can can supply.
For me. AI is just, it is just a world of, of magic, and this is one of the things I talk about in the book, in that specific chapter actually, and we, we can't put our head in the sand. This is coming. We need to embrace it. I'm frankly shocked at how few. Marketers and professionals are embracing this.
I give talks all over the world and well, when I'm talking about ai, how people raise their hand. How many people are using ai, a couple times a week, it's like 10%. And so we must immerse ourselves and not just use AI as a glorified search engine. But as really a tool to build businesses, to build, to create new worlds.
Just push it, try to break it. It, it's absolutely amazing at, at, at, at what it can do. Now, specifically the question that you're asking me about, like the, the before and after it compares from a creator standpoint what the world was like before AI and, and, and. What it can be now. And I think for me personally I love the idea that, all of us are publishers, but with AI, we can be co-creators.
Let me give you an example of how AI was a co-creator for me on my book. Now I want to assure everybody that I wrote this book we're talking about Audacious. How Humans Win In An AI Marketing World. So this is not an AI driven book or an AI even assisted book. However, when I finished the manuscript, I.
I uploaded it to both chat GPT and to Claude, and I said, read the book and tell me what's missing, and I'll be darned. Both of them came back with the same answer.
[00:23:42] Mike Allton: Oh wow.
[00:23:42] Mark Schaefer: They said, you're missing a chapter on measurement if you're expecting people to be bold and take risks to outpace ai. How do they know if they're making progress?
Now, here's the irony. In my original outline for the book, I had a chapter in measurement and I took it out 'cause I was just tired and lazy I suppose. And AI encouraged me to put it back in. They didn't know I took it out, but they knew it was missing. And so truly, AI intelligence has put a stamp on my book by making it a better book, by making it a more profound and richer experience by adding the chapter that was missing. I probably wouldn't have done it without that input.
[00:24:41] Mike Allton: Love that example. And I really just love this chart 'cause you talk about how, then you used to create, now you co-create what you mentioned just a moment ago then was local language.
Now it's any language which I talk about a lot 'cause I do that with our customer stories at Agora Pulse. Then you learn the app. Now the app learns you this, this really. Flows well into what I'm teaching businesses all the time. Not just marketers, but business leaders and every employee to use AI as a, as an assistant, and as a consultant.
A 24 7 consultant. Yeah. I've got a link I'll share in the show notes where you can download instructions to create your own AI work. Buddy. So I have an AI chief of staff, but maybe chief of staff is, might feel a little presumptuous for you if you're just a, if you're a social media manager, you're a cog and a corporate, you feel like you just want that work buddy.
Somebody that you can turn to, to co-create and so on. I love that use of ai. I use Gemini most of the time and my AI chief of staff is someone that I've turned to regularly to help me strategize where I'm going with this business. Not just build a blog post or tell you to your point, search like you would a search engine. Could you share an example of a brand maybe that's effectively doing what you're talking about here, maintaining its humanity while still leveraging ai?
[00:25:57] Mark Schaefer: Well, you okay, so that, that's not where I thought you were going with the question. So let me split that question in two.
So first I wanna talk about an example of a brand of brands. That are not necessarily using ai. There's probably AI somewhere in the, in the, in the process. But remember, this book is really about disruption. It's about creating disruption in this pandemic of doll. That's a place where humans can dwell.
And one of my favorite examples from this book is Liquid Death. Now. In my very first marketing class, I can remember one of the first things they ever told us is, never associate your product with death. Now, here's the water brand calling itself Liquid Death. It's mascot is, is someone they call Murder Man.
They're selling this thing in cans with skulls across it. They've got all these crazy brand partnerships. They're, they're, I, I encourage everyone to go on YouTube. And look at some of their advertising, it's absolutely cringe-worthy. Now, I think the beauty of this case study is, we have to remember, this is a startup.
This is a company that's about four to five years old. It's now the fastest growing beverage in the world, and the, the founder of the brand said, look, there's nothing we could do to this water. Coke or Pepsi couldn't copy. There's no special flavor. There's no special ingredient. The only thing is the brand.
The only thing is the brand. The brand is everything. The story that you're telling. So. How do you tell that story in a way that cuts through, that gets attention And that's, I, if I could reach through the, the, the smartphone, everyone's listening to this, I'd grab you and I'd say, dig deep, stop being competent.
We've got to disrupt because the bots are gonna take our jobs otherwise. And I think this is a great case study. It's a very human driven brand. It's a very creative brand and they're doing it. They built the whole brand because they're disrupting. Think how boring our world is. Think how boring the, car advertising is.
I don't know what a hemi edge it is. I don't care. Think about pizza. Pizza should be fun. What's the best we got in pizza? Nobody out. Pizzas the hut. What the hell does that mean? Pizza is, is is youthful and it's fun and it should be crazy and there's nothing crazy going on in pizza. And what this guy did was find a way to be crazy in water.
Now that's the first part of of my answer. Now the second part is you said talk about brands who are using AI in this sort of creative. Way to stand out. There aren't many examples. Yeah. There's sort of things going on behind the scenes, but the opportunity that I had when writing this book is I got to interview some of the greatest creative geniuses in the world, and they all work for big, big brands.
They work for, HBO. They work for, insurance companies. They work for car companies. They work for movie companies and, and they, there's, there's this tension going on. First of all, their customers are saying, don't use ai. Don't use AI because there are too many legal gray areas.
And, and these brands have too much to lose. So there might be some innovation going on with smaller brands. But in terms of like big companies, we might have heard of there's not a lot going on. Everybody is, is being very, very cautious. And on the creative side, and you mentioned this in your introduction on the creative side, there's a backlash to ai perfection.
Yeah, there was a story in the news about a month ago how there's a backlash in the gaming industry that, these gaming companies are spending millions and millions of dollars to create perfect environments and movie-like experiences in their games. And the gamers are saying, no, we don't want that.
We want, we want Mario Kart, we want the old stuff. We, that's what we really want. Stop spending so much money. On this other stuff, Michael Kika I call him in the book, the King of Viral video. Literally, he's had more gigantic viral videos on YouTube than any person alive, and this is what he said.
People try to copy me. And they can't, and here's why. This is my secret. 'cause people try to copy me and then they edit and they make it perfect and they take out all the mistakes and they make sure all the sound is great. He said, I leave the mistakes in. I never use ai. Maybe it's a little out of focus.
Maybe the sound was a little, wasn't a little quite right. But that shows it's real. That shows we were there. And so I, I, I, it's a really interesting tension, isn't it, Mike? Yeah. That we have this creative opportunity and, and, and, and yet bringing AI into creating content, it's like a little bit. Like bought, like buying, bringing store-bought cookies to a bake sale.
It's like, okay, it works. Mm-hmm. But you want the chunks, you want the cookies that aren't exactly the same. 'cause somebody really made it.
[00:32:08] Mike Allton: Yeah. So I, I, I love this because it's a great segue. You you're talking about leaving the mistakes in to have that proof of humanity. Yeah.
Attached to, in, in this case, we're gonna, attach it to our marketing, not necessarily our baking. You don't want my baked cookies, they're no good, but. We're, I don't know that we would want to rely on our audiences to catch those mistakes in order to know that it's not ai. Are there practical ways that marketers can actually demonstrate proof of human in their marketing?
[00:32:43] Mark Schaefer: Well, I, I, I think there's one big way, and look, this is something I've been preaching since the beginning.
[00:32:50] Mike Allton: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Mark Schaefer: And it's this to stand out. You have to be original and to be original, you only have one choice. You have to add your story, you have to add your perspective, and this is a lesson I learned over a long time.
This did not come easy for me. I grew up, I'm a very private person. I'm actually an introverted person, which people might find surprising 'cause I, talk at big events and everything. But this is, I like talking to one person like you. This is my comfort zone. And I grew up in a stoic family where you don't show your emotions and it's nobody else's business.
Right. And I had to learn. To, to share bits and pieces of my life. 'cause that's what makes me real. That's what builds this emotional connection. What is brand marketing? Brand mark? Brand marketing is creating this emotional expectation between you and your, your customers and potential customers. So when you think of Mike Allton, if you think of Mark Schaefer, what you know, what words come to mind and that only.
Comes through this long term consistent exposure to what you say, what you do, what you stand for, that's gotta come through in your content. If your content is competent, if your comp, if your, if your content is met. Then your brand is competent and meh and nobody wants that. So we've got it. It's a matter of courage.
And, and, and I address that directly at the end of the book. I, the, the end of the book. There's a chapter called the Most Important chapter in the book. 'cause the whole book, I'm encouraging people to be bold and to take risks. And in that chapter I talk about courage and I talk about the culture to encourage people I.
To, to show up and to take risks. It's, in many ways, Mike AI is not a technology problem. It's a leadership problem. AI is gonna force us to reimagine our organizations
[00:35:12] Mike Allton: mm-hmm.
[00:35:12] Mark Schaefer: To reimagine utility to, to, to reimagine skillsets. To reimagine the economic value of intelligence with AI and as it resides in our, in our human workforce and culture is so important to encourage people to take that risk, and that's really the only way you're gonna build your brand.
[00:35:40] Mike Allton: As the chief storyteller at Agorapulse, I love everything that you're talking about because it's ringing true as I've assumed this role there. I, I've, I had to craft our brand story. We really didn't have a brand story. We had a history on our about page, which is not a brand story at all, right? And now I'm slowly working with all the departments in the company.
Not just marketing, content sales, customer service, and. Helping them to understand and then weave that story into everything that we do. So it starts to become repetition. Not only what do we do, but why do we do it and why do we do it the way that we do it. Very much ticking a page from Tamson Webster in that regard.
And that's why I love, writers like yourself, like Shelly Palmer, who, everything that you're doing, you're weaving in those personal stories. And that personal story with a capital S and everything.
[00:36:28] Mark Schaefer: Yeah. And I also wanna, emphasize, the work you're doing with research to build that narrative, right?
That has to come before the content. If you don't know what you're, what you stand for, what your story is, then you're setting up your marketing people up to fail. Because they don't, they're, they're not gonna know what to say. And that's another big lesson I think from my book, being audacious, it's not a stunt, it doesn't mean it's loud, it doesn't mean it takes a lot of money.
It's about strategy and doing something different that makes a difference. The most precious thing in marketing today is awareness. It's every single person listening to this show, here's what they want. They want to be heard, they want to be seen. They want to be discovered. And I can say with some authority, that has never been harder to do in the history of marketing than today.
And so that's what this book is about, is how do we become the signal against the noise in this overwhelming AI world.
[00:37:47] Mike Allton: I love it. Now, in, in a moment, I'm gonna ask you to share your final advice. Before you give that, I'm gonna share some final advice of my own, which is to, folks just go buy all of Mark's books and read them all.
You can't see on the, I have, I've got like decor behind me, but on the other side of the camera, I've got several shelves loaded with hundreds of marketing books that I've conducted over the years. All of Mark's books are spread out. I should probably just put 'em all on one shelf and collect them all. A little shrine to Mark Schaffer.
But they're fantastic folks. Like, like Mark's at the outset. Each book isn't just an effort to turn on another book because, well, it's two years, it's time to turn on another book. They're, they're tackling some of the most important concepts and marketing and business and humanity. So do yourself that favor.
I'll put the links in the show notes, but Mark, what final advice would you give to marketers who are, they're feeling overwhelmed. They don't know what to do with ai. Maybe they feel like they should automate everything. Maybe they feel like they shouldn't automate anything. What would you say to them?
[00:38:45] Mark Schaefer: Well, first of all, the, the, the, the way I advise people when they're feeling overwhelmed is to have an image of a surfer. So a to, for a surfer to be successful and to be relevant, that person does not need a new surfboard. They need a new wave. So the first place to really start is to think about your brand, what your are known for.
Are you known as the friendliest company? The company with the best service or the fastest service, or the most innovation? What are you known for? That's your strength, that's your surfboard to be relevant in this new AI world. You don't need to change that. You don't need to rethink that. AI in the future is simply applying innovation in the future, is applying a layer of AI to everything we, we, we do.
So stay focused. If you are all about customer service, then you don't need to worry about creating images or creating video or all these other magical things that AI can do. Just focus on what can make you create better service or faster innovation, or whatever your strength your surfboard is. So just stay focused on your competency and look for the next wave and state.
Focused there. And the last thing I'll say, which I, I end a a lot of my speeches this way is the, the subtitle of a book I wrote a few years ago. Marketing Rebellion is the most Human Company wins, and I believe that with every fiber of my body, today, it can be really intoxicating to want to automate everything.
But just remember that the foundations of marketing, it's about this human connection, about this emotional connection and, and keep that in mind. Look for every customer touchpoint and see how can we be more human? How can we add our smile, our stories, our compassion, our passion? Sometimes we can use AI to help us do that, but the most human company wins.
[00:41:08] Mike Allton: It is funny because I was at Social Media Marketing World when you headlined that Count Talk, which was probably six or seven years ago, 2019. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, it was impactful then. And I have honestly found myself thinking about that line even more often over the past 12 months because it, it could not be more relevant and I, it could be more appreciative to you, Mark, for coming on the show and having the impact, not just on me and my career, but on the folks that are listening and, and learning from you today.
So for folks who have more questions, they wanna reach out, they wanna follow you, where should they go?
[00:41:42] Mark Schaefer: Very easy. You don't have to remember my name or even let alone how to spell it. All you have to remember is Businesses Grow. That is my website. You can find my blog, my podcast there, and the, the books we've been talking about today and all my social connections, I'd love to hear from you and connect with you.
Mike, I just wanted to say thank you. It's just a joy being with you. Thank you for being so well prepared and asking such interesting questions today.
[00:42:13] Mike Allton: Awesome. Thank you, Mark. Thank all of you for listening. That's all the time we've got for today, friends. But as always, we will have all those links in the show notes below.
And if this is somehow your first foray into the world of AI and business, I've got a resource for you in the show notes that AI Primer designed to quickly get you out to speed on the terms, the tactics, and the underlying technology that's powering this AI revolution. Check it out and I'll see you in our next episode.
Welcome to the grid.
That's a wrap on another episode of The AI Hat Podcast. I hope you've gained some valuable insights and actionable strategies to boost your business with ai. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your network. And don't forget to visit the ai hat.com for more resources and to connect with me.
Until next time, keep innovating and remember, the future of business is human and it's powered by ai.
