I made a significant announcement on my new podcast episode, show number 328 of The Marketing Companion.

In this 13th year of the program, I’m stepping down and handing the reins to a new owner. You can listen to the episode for the details. I’m not going away quite yet, but beginning in January 2026, there will be a new owner and show host.

Having a podcast that has lasted more than a decade — and I’ve never missed an episode — certainly beats the odds. More than 2 million downloads later, I’m moving on to new projects.

I’m not one to dwell on the past, and this show is no exception as I plow forward on a discussion of key tech considerations for marketing with my friend Sandy Carter.

You can enjoy this show and hear my announcement by clicking here:

Listen to Episode 328 of The Marketing Companion

Here is an AI-generated summary of the show highlights:

The Nvidia Deepfake: A Cautionary Tale for Brands

Something jaw-dropping happened during Nvidia’s big corporate event. I hopped on LinkedIn and saw the video of Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, who always delivers inspiring talks. But, to my shock, the replayed video had more views than the actual livestream — and it turned out to be a fake.

This wasn’t just a prank. Thousands (including some Nvidia employees and even CNBC) tuned in, believing it was Huang, only to discover it was an AI-crafted forgery pushing a crypto scam. Even veteran marketers like Sandy and me were fooled, clicking legitimate-looking links that led to the fake event.

What’s really unsettling is the precision and organization behind this attack. This wasn’t a lone hacker; it was an orchestrated crime with marketing-level sophistication. They timed the fake stream perfectly, hijacked search and social placements, and created something so convincing that even close colleagues were swindled.

Here’s the big lesson: authenticity in branding now demands proof. We’ve crossed into an era where merely sounding or looking authentic isn’t enough — brands must invest in new forms of verification.

And here’s the kicker: platforms have the technology to detect and verify truth, but won’t use it. Polarization, outrage, and viral fakes drive more views and, unfortunately, more ad revenue.

Are You Ready for Humanoid Robots?

That’s only half the future. The other revolution speeding toward us is the age of humanoid robots — not just as factory workers or distant sci-fi dreams, but as customer-facing agents.

We’re already seeing this in places like Korea and Japan, where robots are stepping in to care for the elderly or providing personalized services. In Silicon Valley, there’s already a humanoid robot in beta that will deliver pizza, serve you at dinner, pour drinks, and even clean up afterward. That sounds like an upgrade to my hosting skills! However, it has profound implications for marketing.

The robot selects the brand of soda. The robot chooses which cleaning product to use. Suddenly, Coke, Pepsi, P&G — their customer might not be the humans in the household, but the robot company or its AI!

And what about architectural design? If your home can’t accommodate the robot’s width, maybe it’s time for a renovation. Marketers must start thinking about scenarios that were pure fantasy just a few years ago.

More than that, physical AI opens the door for a whole new specialty: “robotic trainers.” Soon enough, marketing educators and consultants might be training robots (not humans!) on how to greet guests in a restaurant or care for patients.

Speed Becomes the Ultimate Advantage

One theme kept coming up again and again in the discussion: speed. AI is compressing the time between idea and impact. We used to run A/B tests for months; today, that luxury is gone. Real-time analysis, constant adaptation — this is survival now.

Some businesses, like those in Dubai, aren’t just keeping up; they’re redesigning their cities for the age of AI and global branding. Dubai has a CEO for the city, not a traditional mayor, and they’re combining storytelling, authenticity, and technology to build global icons like Dubai Chocolate. Makes me realize how far traditional campaigns and approval cycles must evolve.

Management consultants and big agencies like McKinsey are facing tough choices as their data-driven cultures collide with the urgent need for rapid experimentation. Smaller brands and startups get it faster — but larger organizations must shift, too.

I’ve never been this excited — or nervous — about what’s next. If you want to keep up, embrace the uncertainty, stay endlessly curious, and get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Please support our sponsors, who make this fantastic episode possible.

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post The Marketing Companion Podcast: Beginning of a New Era appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Too short for a blog post, too interesting to ignore, here are a few observations from the world of marketing, and beyond.

Talk to me

It seems like everywhere I turn marketers are touting the benefits of personalized marketing, and especially how AI is leading the way. My question is, where is it???

I find marketing as impersonal and intrusive as ever.

Today, a guy left me a message on LinkedIn: “I’m trying to connect on a more human way on LinkedIn and created this personal video for you.” I clicked out of curiosity. It was a cookie-cutter video. He had simply created more spam — only in video form.

Here’s what most companies think personalized marketing is:
“Dear [FIRST_NAME], we noticed you might be interested in [RECENTLY_VIEWED_PRODUCT]…”

Here’s what it actually is: Spam with a smile

The irony is that “personalized marketing”—if it means just slapping a name at the beginning of an email—is still impersonal. It’s artificial intimacy that’s a signal for me to “ignore.”

The technology exists for businesses to be truly helpful and personal, so are we just lazy? The era of true marketing personalization is still ahead of us, it seems.

If you’ve seen examples of true and useful personalization, drop me a note.

Reality check

Loved this quote from Ted Gioia:

In VR, we go into a fake world to interact with real people.

In AI, we remain in the real world but interact with fake people.

That’s not much of an improvement. By my measure, it’s actually a step backward.

Reality is not something to trifle with. It always gets the last laugh.

The core problem with social media

Conflict is the currency of social media. Hate is good for business. Controversy drives engagement and eyeballs. While people exit Twitter-X for Threads or Bluesky or whatever, these patterns of hate will repeat unless the revenue model is based on subscriptions instead of ads and attention.

The job is NOT to create content

Marketing is sick in so many ways right now. However, one of the biggest issues I encounter is that many marketers think their job is to create content. Perhaps it is even to turn their brand into a “media channel.”

No. Your job isn’t to create content. Your job is to create customers. Stop for a minute and look hard at what you’re doing. If you’re not creating customers, stop it, and start over.

This is something I write about in my book “Social Media Explained 3.0.” Too many marketers, especially those working in social media, are sleepwalking. They’re creating and engaging and Instagramming on autopilot and unaware of what they are even doing.

Are you creating content because you’re afraid not to? Because everyone else is doing it? It’s time to be more strategic and thoughtful with your work. Wake up. Create customers.

Bot companies

Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang and others have stated that soon we will have companies entirely run by agentic AI bots.

Analyst Scott Belsky had this forecast:

In such a world, every company will ultimately become a compute + data-centric company. Until now, humans have been the reasoning layer of every organization.

Sure, every company uses technology, but mostly for the purpose of driving productivity and analysis to help humans make decisions and take action. In contrast, the next-generation company will be run by a combination of inference engines (real-time computational reasoning running every function and driving actions across the business), leveraging a variety of pre-trained AI models and a large amount of deep and proprietary data at the center of the company.

This core of data, models, and computational reasoning will all be surrounded by “nodes” – the modern version of every “function” of a company from HR to product to sales – which, together, compose the logic layer that performs every process and operation of an organization.

I think we will see this happen in 2025. Somebody will want to prove this concept — a company entirely (or almost) run by bots. Nvidia is already testing the idea in different departments. Hopefully the first one will be personalized marketing!

In the next year, AI will not be a technology challenge, it will be a leadership challenge.

Are you all-in?

I was lamenting about the difficulty of staying up to date with the rapid pace of AI change in the marketing field, and a friend asked, “Is there a hybrid solution? Can you keep up with just a small part of it?”

A thought-provoking question. My answer was, “No.”

I think focus must be a key strategy for every business, but for somebody like me who is an author, consultant, and college educator, I need to maintain a broad and current view of the AI world. To be relevant, I have to be “all-in,” which is a challenge. To be effective, I can’t be caught flat-footed about a significant new AI revelation … which seems to happen every day.

How do you feel about that? Do you need to be “all-in” to be relevant as a marketer? How do you handle the stress?

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

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy MidJourney

The post Dear [FIRST_NAME]: Why Personalized Marketing Still Feels Like Spam appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.