You and I are living in an era of magic. I use AI nearly every hour of the day to be wiser, bolder, and more creative.

In a way, AI has even become my mentor.

That might sound strange, but hear me out.

I wrote a post recently noting that this question: “Who decides the safe limits of superintelligence?” could be a turning point in human history.

As I wrote the draft of this post, I felt angry and even scared about the prospects of weaponizing AI, and this was apparent in the tone of the article.

I uploaded the draft to Claude before I published and asked, “Is this post balanced? Did I miss anything?”

Claude responded, “Mark, this is not you. Your thesis is emotional and underdeveloped. You are known for your fairness and intellectual honesty. Here are some ideas to make it better.”

And the ideas were pretty harsh … and much appreciated.

I generally work alone. In this case, AI wasn’t just a muse or editor; it intervened as a wise friend, keeping me on brand. AI is helping me to be wiser, bolder, and more helpful in this world.

I have neither turned my life over to AI and nor do I feel threatened by it. My career has become AI-shaped, conforming to the new superpowers and opportunities of a magical technology.

Instead of doomscrolling about layoffs, how can we all create an AI-shaped career?

Creating the AI-shaped career

Let’s start with some advice from my friend Azeem Azhar. Azeem is probably the most connected person I know, and so he’s able to tune into the priorities of a wide range of industries.  and his supremely interesting Exponential View Newsletter.

Here is his advice:

1. Ship end-to-end projects

Choose or create multi-step projects with real stakeholders; practice owning the plan and delivering it to a finish line. If AI takes on more of the execution work, the value for humans lies increasingly in coordination around those tasks, specifically in orchestration. It’s the ability to decide what needs to be done, in what order, and with which tools, and then keep a project moving.

2. Grab managerial experience early

Run standups, lead sprints, and coordinate small teams if you have a chance. Volunteer to own small scopes like roadmap reviews and stakeholder check?ins, to build judgment and trust.

3. Build domain fluency and networks

Learn how people in your field think and speak. It signals maturity and reduces perceived hiring risk. Read primary sources and talk to operators. Join a niche community or meetup and ask specific questions.

4. Choose costly and credible signals, such as an MBA

Managers want evidence of commitment. If a degree isn’t feasible, pick rigorous alternatives – selective fellowships, competitive certifications, or shipping a demanding public project.

5. Use AI well

Build agents, audit outputs, and integrate them into real workflows. You could be the person who sets the AI standard at your next company – we’re still early, and practical expertise is scarce. Track gains (time saved, error rates, throughput) and document playbooks so others can adopt them. Push for small, safe pilots and iterate fast.

The implications for sales and marketing

Let’s get more granular. Most of the people reading this article are in sales and marketing. How do we have an AI-shaped career in that profession?

6. Become impossible to replace in customer relationships

AI may automate tasks, but trust, empathy, and emotional resonance are still the human differentiators.
People want to buy from, partner with, and follow humans they feel connected to.

• Build a personal brand in your niche—be findable, memorable, and known.
• Develop deep customer fluency: their worldviews, their blockers, their aspirations.
• Become the person who delivers difficult news well, handles nuance, and reads a room.

This is the “Most Human Company Wins” applied at the individual level. AI can crank out emails, landing pages, and pitches. But it still can’t feel the customer.

7. Build a Portfolio of Evidence, Not Just a Résumé

AI is making hiring faster and more automated, but that also means résumés look more similar. Portfolios, demonstrations, and proof-of-work become far more powerful signals than job titles or bullet points.

• Publish case studies, screen recordings, agent demos, prototypes, or thought pieces.
• Document your projects in public spaces (LinkedIn, GitHub, Notion, Substack).
• Practice “building in public”—it shows momentum and reduces perceived hiring risk.

8. Become the human face of your brand

The personal brand is our last line of defense against AI. If you are KNOWN in your industry. AI can mass-produce content, but it can’t replicate an authentic, trusted, known human.

No matter what happens in this AI world, we will seek verification, validation, insight and comfort from real humans. The only career equity we can carry with us is our personal brand. Are you known or not?

I teach the best personal branding class in the world to help you determine:

• Your place in a crowded business eco-system
• Establishing the presence, reputation, and authority to break through
• Strategies to get your story out to an audience that matters
• Specific ideas to give your brand an edge

Being “Known” is the strongest career moats in the AI era.

9. Become an experience designer

Your customers are hungry for connection and live experiences. This is a uniquely human acitivy.

We’re already seeing a backlash as young people seek more shared experiences in their online world.

• Learn to design workshops, events, roundtables, and customer communities.
• Study experience design, service design, and community management.
• Become the person who can create moments of belonging and transformation.

10. Lead a brand community

In Belonging to the Brand, I boldly predicted that community will be the last great marketing strategy, and that is backed up with evidence.

Here’s the good news. AI is not going to build and run a human community. Community might be the only type of marketing people actually seek out because we need human connection.

This book goes into detail about how to build and nurture a brand community, but the main ideas are:

• Find an intersection of the purpose of your company and the purpose of your customers
• Create an online and/or offline space of trust and safety
• Reward community members and assure they are seen and heard

The AI-shaped career

Here’s the simple truth: none of us can fully predict where this is going, but we can decide how we’re going to show up for it.

An AI-shaped career isn’t about becoming more machine-like. It’s about becoming the most unmistakably human version of ourselves — more curious, more connected, more courageous.

If you build trust, create experiences that matter, show your work, and become known in a meaningful way, you won’t just survive this transition. You’ll stand out in it.

The future doesn’t belong to the people who race against the machines. It belongs to the people who double down on the humanity the machines can’t touch.

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

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Ten ways to create an AI-shaped career appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Nearly every time I read a marketing newsletter or analysis, I see a reference to something old becoming new again. If you have a brand story to tell, nostalgia marketing seems to be the wave to catch these days.

It’s been a while since I wrote about the power of nostalgia in marketing, so I decided to go down the rabbit hole. I found a new twist. Nostalgia marketing is so resonant right now that even startups with no brand heritage are using 1980s and 90s iconography and aesthetics to promote their products. Does that seem bizarre?

Let’s explore this together today. This article explains:

• Why nostalgia is such an important marketing consideration right now
• The three conditions making nostalgia a sustainable trend
• How modern brands with no heritage are tapping into the positive emotion of nostalgia
• Ten ideas to use nostalgia for your own brand
• What nostalgia might mean to Gen Alpha

Nostalgia marketing is everywhere

If you pay attention to marketing trends as I do, advertising seems to be in a time warp. Throwback products and images are everywhere:

• Fashion: Low-rise jeans, baby tees, butterfly clips, platform shoes.

• Accessories & tech: Digital watches (vintage Casio) are being rediscovered.

• Branding & marketing: Retro logos, reissues, limited “vault” drops from early 2000s design cues. Retro sneakers are the latest trend, as Adidas and Nike drop limited-edition versions of shoes from the 1990s.

• Food: More than 70% of consumers are drawn to childhood-evoking treats. Brands are leaning in with retro packaging and revivals precisely because it translates to sales lift with Gen X and younger shoppers alike.

• Media: Stranger Things. Need I say more?

Let’s keep running up that hill. Today, I’ll look at why and how you might capitalize on this trend (even if you have a new company with no significant brand history).

Side note: The generation born roughly 1997-2006 (Gen Z) is drawn to “eras before their lifetime” to find aesthetic distance or escape the present. While researching this post, I learned a new word. “Anemoia” means nostalgia for a time you didn’t live through. Don’t assume nostalgia needs to be their memory.

Anything old is new again

My friends at The History Factory created an interesting piece of free research on the new momentum of nostalgia in culture and marketing. Highlights:

• Younger adults are the loudest champions; around 70% of adults aged 18–34 show an interest in heritage.
• 74% of Americans would like to see more retro throwbacks from brands.
• Limited-edition, retro products are the most appealing type of content to Americans (among 12 possible content themes).
• Marvel leads the category for brand heritage storytelling across multiple channels, ranking No. 1 on the Brand Heritage Index with the highest overall score of 84.

So, this trend is undeniable and growing, especially with young people. Why now?

There are three main reasons nostalgia marketing is extremely relevant right now, especially with Gen Z:

1. Comfort in a period of crises
2. Historic media trends aimed at children
3. A search for shared experiences.

Let’s break each down in more detail.

1. Comfort food in chaotic times

Jola Burnett, SVP of consumer research company Ipsos, attended my Uprising retreat a few times. At a recent session, she presented on the most important global trends and said:

“This generation is not living through a crisis. It is living through multiple crises. It is a time of extraordinary economic, environmental, and social strain.”

In this context, a search for “comfort food” makes sense. During periods of unusual stress, people seek emotional regulation and a sense of belonging. The American Psychological Association notes nostalgia boosts well-being, eases loneliness, and restores meaning.

In the words of Dr. Krystine Batcho, it’s “the soothing ointment that helps people manage the anxieties from conflict.”

Nostalgia is an important part of “brand therapy” to get through the blues. And, we have a LOT of blues.

2. Media trends fuel the nostalgia marketing trend

I wrote about the influence of nostalgia in 2020 and noted that the evolution of media helps explain why old is gold.

Up until the 1980s — and the advent of cable programming — there was almost no direct marketing to children. Most of the early children’s television programming, like Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers, was on PBS — no ads. And at prime time, children watched whatever network programming mom and dad had on the tube.

Cable TV introduced fully dedicated channels for youth-oriented cartoons, movies, nature programs, and educational programming. This increased exponentially with the advent of the internet and surged again with the rise of smart devices, when children could watch anything, any time, and anywhere. An entire media ecosystem was created for kids.

Starting about 30 years ago, the golden age of children’s programming and youth-oriented product marketing began. The Millennials who grew up in this era have an incredible abundance of media-driven emotional connections compared to any other generation.

If nostalgia means longing for a happy childhood place or experience, you could say that kids growing up after 1980 have been thoroughly prepped for it.

3. The search for shared experiences

There is a third reason why nostalgia connects now — a search for shared experiences.

Our fragmented media environment means we have fewer common references than we did in the past. Everybody curates their own media experiences alone, through their earbuds.

You can’t have nostalgia without a shared past to return to — and you can’t have commonly understood jokes without a shared understanding, or even, in the truest sense, a shared language. The appeal of nostalgia is that it allows storytellers to set their adventures in the last period where we really did have that shared understanding — before the smartphone shattered our world in more ways than one.

What if you don’t have a nostalgic story?

There are many newer brands and startups that look like they dropped from a time machine. Look beyond your own timeline. Some nostalgia opportunities don’t come from your brand history—they’re cultural overlays you can tap:

• 80s arcade-style visual design
• Early internet aesthetics (pixel fonts, loading bars, Windows 98 UI)
• 90s mall culture
• Y2K chrome gradients and flip-phone culture
• Analog textures and filters (film grain, VHS distortion, cassette labeling)
• A brand pop-up shop that replicates a 1990s bedroom
• A “throwback menu” or “throwback website” for one day

Olipop is an example of a startup connecting to classic flavors and retro design elements:

My grandmother always kept a stash of Cream Soda for me, so I’m all in on Olipop!

Take a look at Vacation Sunscreen. The fast-rising brand created a 1980s world to establish the emotional connection to its product:

Vacation sun lotion even comes with its own “radio station” that plays oldie hits and commercials from the 1980s:

Cereal start-up Magic Spoon has a design that echoes 1980s/90s cereal boxes: mascots, bright gradients, Saturday-morning energy, but with keto macros and adult-friendly nutritional claims.

Many tech companies are adopting a lo-fi, pixelated look reminiscent of early video games. This is from the Nothing Electronics website:

I have suits older than the Graduate Hotel chain, yet when you step inside, it feels like you’re in the 1960s.

Their hyper-stylized retro design borrows from cultural memory, not their own brand history.

• Kitschy vintage colors straight out of a 1960s yearbook

• Plaid patterns, rotary phones, wood paneling, chandeliers, and campy memorabilia

• Guest rooms styled like nostalgic dorm rooms (complete with old-school desk lamps, varsity motifs, and needlepoint art)

• Public spaces that look like mid-century student unions or 1970s rec rooms

• Restaurant and bar concepts that feel like throwback diners, supper clubs, or old campus hangouts

I never look back fondly at my great memories at the good ol’ Walmart. It doesn’t seem ripe for nostalgia marketing. But this video is one of my all-time favorite examples of nostalgic emotions in an unlikely place. A genius commercial that became a viral guessing game:

So, you don’t need to be an old-timey brand to create a nostalgic feeling. Sometimes nostalgia is most powerful as an experience, not a product.

10 Ideas to create your own heritage moat

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying the number of crises in the world won’t diminish any time soon (Hey, AI, I’m looking at you!).

Does your brand have a heritage moat, a story that connects people to a comforting memory? Here are some ideas to put this to use for your brand:

1. Audit your “dormant assets.” Most heritage sits under-leveraged inside a company: old packaging, jingles, slogans, characters, mascots, stores, uniforms, product variants, and past brand partnerships.
2. Explore what your customers are already nostalgic for. Gen Z and Millennials constantly create nostalgia timelines on TikTok and Instagram. Search for people already celebrating a past version of your brand through remixed commercials, vintage packaging collections, and fan communities sharing memories.
3. Celebrate anniversary milestones. An obvious opportunity is taking customers on a trip down memory lane in association with a brand’s birthday. Let’s be honest … nobody cares about the anniversary except your company. But it’s an opportunity to bring back milestone memories that elicit positive emotions with your customers.
4. Don’t be gimmicky. Nostalgia trends are emotional triggers. They work because they connect — so whatever you borrow, ensure the narrative is meaningful and not just surface-deep. Nostalgia marketing can backfire if it feels fake, irrelevant, or neglects how times have changed.
5. Connect it to now. Gen Z cares about authenticity and values, not just the aesthetic. So when leveraging nostalgia, tie it to something relevant (inclusion, sustainability, community).
6. Bring back “lost rituals.” Many industries have rituals that quietly disappeared. Brands can resurrect these rituals digitally or physically. Examples: Burning CDs, Family game night, popping popcorn, the mall photo strip booth.
7. Engage the senses. Nostalgia is multisensory. It can be evoked by sounds, sights, smells, touch, and tastes.
8. Recycle past products. The Coca-Cola Company restocked shelves with a blast from the past—Hi-C Ecto Cooler. Ecto Cooler was first introduced in partnership with the original Ghostbusters movie in 1987, and a movie reboot gave Coca-Cola the opportunity to revive its popular discontinued product.
9. Resurrect old icons. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) hired a series of actors to portray its founder Colonel Harland Sanders since 2015. While actors like Jim Gaffigan and Rob Lowe don the founder’s iconic white coat from time to time, nobody says it quite like the Colonel himself. KFC’s more recent television spots splice together old film of Colonel Sanders or portray him in a modern context.
10. Explore emotional moments. Every brand has a moment where customers fell in love for the first time: “The cereal box toy I kept forever.”
    “The first time I tried a video game.”
    “The shoe I wore during a milestone moment in my teens.”
    “The logo that was on my high school backpack.”

• Identify and map those “first-love” moments. Those are the memories you want to activate.

The nostalgia of the future

I had this thought … what will be nostalgic 20 years from now for Gen Alpha (born 2010-2024)? Is it possible to create nostalgia-worthy brand characters, rituals, and cultural touchpoints today as part of a long-term brand strategy? Are there cultural patterns that seem destined to be beloved and memorable, or is it more random?

Maybe the nostalgia of the future will revolve around TikTok jokes and memes?

Have not really heard of anybody mindfully building nostalgia into a product for the next generation. If anybody is working on a nostalgia-forward strategy, drop me a line. It would be fun to hear about that.

In any event, the power of nostalgia soothes a whacked-out world, and it’s probably an idea to consider, even if you don’t have a historical brand story to tell.

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

The post The heritage moat: Why nostalgia marketing dominates today appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

These days, it seems like every marketing conversation swirls around the latest AI tool, the newest social channel, or some fresh “growth hack” promising overnight results. Don’t get me wrong: staying current is vital. But as my recent Marketing Companion episode with Andy Crestadina reminded me, we might be so dazzled by the new that we forget the timeless fundamentals of marketing that built the very house we’re renovating.

As we shared a few laughs (and introduced “sex” into our podcast conversation for the first time), Andy and I unpacked a few marketing truths that are more relevant than ever.

To listen to the conversation, just click here!

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 327

An AI-generated summary of the conversation:

1. Persuasion is (Still) the Science at the Heart of Marketing

Andy kicked things off by quoting the copywriting legends: “It used to be all about persuasion.” And he’s right. Classic marketing was rooted in psychology—understanding why people take action (or not) and how to tip them toward us.

Everybody’s obsessed with optimizing for algorithms, but if your copy can’t persuade, all the traffic in the world won’t help. Marketers often overlook handling objections, using cognitive biases, and “nudging” consumers (thanks, Richard Thaler). It’s not all that different from decades past. Andy and I both agreed: re-read Cialdini’s Persuasion, crack open “Scientific Advertising,” and revisit Nancy Harhut’s work on behavioral science in marketing. These classic texts are treasure chests of techniques that’ll never go out of style.

2. Your Brand Is Still Your Moat

The switch was flipped 20 years ago and has never been turned off: we optimize for everything — Google, Facebook, conversion rates, clicks, Likes, and SEO. But the “soul” of marketing is still your brand. Distinctiveness, emotional resonance, and memorability — these are the long-term drivers of growth.

Look at the world’s best brands: they don’t win just by being good at Facebook ads, but by creating an emotional expectation and meaning around their name. Is your brand working as hard as your SEO?

3. The Power of Human Connection: Live Events & Community

Here’s a bit Andy and I always come back to: business is personal. Community, relationships, and the magic of in-person interaction will *always* be a goldmine for marketers. Andy’s network — and mine — comes from years of shaking hands, swapping stories, and sharing meals at conferences and industry events. COVID might have shaken up the landscape, but live events are back, and the impact is real.

Brands can (and should) host their own events. The potential for networking, relationship-building, and, indeed, sales is immense.

4. The Unexpected Luxury of Paper

In our endlessly buzzing, swiping, and scrolling digital age, few things cut through the noise like a handwritten note or a printed newsletter. Andy and I swapped stories of thank-you cards and beautifully crafted newsletters that made it past the digital trash heap and straight into someone’s heart (or office).

Paper feels like a luxury now. It’s rare, a little surprise and delight that says, “I put in extra effort for you.” For the right audience, a physical touchpoint can generate deeper loyalty than a thousand “likes.”

5. Stop, Iterate, and Focus on What Works

With every new tool or channel, marketers pile on more and more — TikTok, threads, Snapchat, Reels. But Andy’s right: the best marketers aren’t everywhere. They stop, iterate, and have the discipline to quit what’s not delivering. If you can’t go deep, you can’t be great.

Audit your time. Are you spreading your attention too thin across too many channels? Cut loose the underperformers and double down on what *moves the needle.* It’s about high-impact focus, not omnipresent mediocrity.

What are you doing that’s become a drain? Put something “to bed,” and reinvest those hours into upgrading your best work.

6. Sex, Beauty, and the Importance of Design

No, this isn’t clickbait. As much as culture changes, the human brain still processes beauty, sexual attractiveness, and design as signals of quality and trust. Whether you’re selling a service, a SaaS platform, or a new book, your visual presentation matters.

From an evolutionary standpoint, humans are wired to notice beauty because it historically signaled health, fertility, and good genes. Symmetry, clear skin, and proportionate features were reliable indicators of well-being and reproductive fitness.

When an ad feels aesthetically pleasing, the brain interprets that fluency as truth and credibility. It’s a shortcut: if it’s beautiful, it must be good.

When society repeatedly portrays certain faces, bodies, or aesthetics as “ideal,” people internalize them as signals of success, happiness, or desirability.

Advertising plays on this loop: we want to be like the beautiful people we see, so we buy what they use. It’s not rational; it’s associative learning—our brains connecting the brand with the desirable identity it projects.

This extends beyond “sex sells.” It’s about quality design, brand aesthetics, and the perception of credibility—online and off. Even as influencer brands experiment with minimalist sites and direct channel links, most of us still need a killer, beautiful website that instantly builds trust.

At the core, marketing hasn’t changed as much as we think. Persuasion, branding, human connection, standing out with tangible experiences, disciplined focus, and a sharp eye for presentation: these aren’t relics. They’re the secret sauce, even in an age of AI and infinite screen time.

Take a beat. Step back. And ask: which OG marketing moves are missing from your playbook?

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

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customers to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

A recent Semrush study found that AI search traffic is projected to surpass traditional search by 2028. That makes now the time to prepare your brand for the future of search.

With Semrush AI Search tools, you will lead this transition.

• Track your AI visibility score: See a single, clear benchmark of your share of voice across AI search platforms.
• Identify AI mention opportunities: Uncover sources where your competitors are cited—but you’re not—including social media, forums, and more.
• Benchmark against competitors: Find the exact prompts, mentions, and sources where your competitors appear in AI responses and you don’t.
• Discover trending prompts: Spot the real questions your audience is asking AI platforms—and build content around them.
• Shape your brand narrative: Monitor the sentiment and context tied to your AI mentions, and make sure your brand is being represented the way you want.

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 Rediscovering the OG Fundamentals of Marketing appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

There has been a flurry of new evidence emerging about mysterious Rage Farms and their relentless attacks on politicians, businesses, brands, and individuals.

The Cracker Barrel example was just the most recent meltdown. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, McDonald’s, TD Bank, and American Eagle have suffered withering attacks from legions of coordinated, fake social media accounts.

“Disinformation-as-a-Service” has become a profitable, global criminal enterprise: low-cost, high-impact bot networks hired to attack and destroy businesses and individuals … like you. And the social media platforms that could stop them won’t, because chaos is profitable.

Propelled by AI, these strikes are targeting brands big and small. And the financial consequences are real — sliding stock prices, damaged brand equity, ruined careers.

There has been a lot of online chatter about the anonymous AI agents wreaking this havoc, but I wanted to know more. WHO is doing this? WHY are they doing it?

I’m alarmed that any of us can be attacked by these anonymous criminals. So I went down the rabbit hole to find out who’s behind this … and what we can do about it.

Today I will cover:

• How these bots attack controversial issues at blinding speed
• The evidence that these are coordinated attacks 
• How AI bots “prepare” for their next fight
• How momentum from fake bots enters the culture and becomes amplified by real people
• The probable goals of Rage Farms, including financial gains from stock market manipulation
• Why Rage Farm controversies are disconnected from true consumer sentiment
• Expert views on preparing for a Rage Farm attack

A clue: The speed of attack

The first clue that we’re observing sophisticated, coordinated efforts at Cracker Barrel and other brands is the speed of the online attacks. Once a small amount of negative sentiment circulates about a brand, the disinformation ramps up immediately and relentlessly.

According to The Wall Street Journal, AI-powered bots rapidly spin up “grassroots-looking” campaigns around incendiary or divisive issues (like culture-war topics), and keep them trending.

Fake bots authored 44.5% of X (Twitter) posts mentioning Cracker Barrel in the 24 hours after the new logo gained attention on Aug. 20, 2025. That number rose to 49% among posts calling for a boycott.

Within a few hours, X saw around 400 negative Cracker Barrel posts per minute. Seventy percent of the accounts promoting boycotts at that point used duplicate messages, a key marker of coordinated bots, said Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics.

Rage Farms: The business of creating chaos

A Cyabra investigation revealed more specifics about the coordinated Cracker Barrel attack. By analyzing thousands of profiles engaged in the conversation, Cyabra mapped inauthentic behavior patterns and exposed a coordinated strategy.

The data show a substantial portion of the negative discourse was manufactured by fake accounts working to amplify hostility, promote boycott narratives, and undermine public trust.

• Multiple reports found that about 35% of online activity criticizing Cracker Barrel was driven by fake accounts, with at least two organized bot groups fueling much of the outrage.
• Fake profiles created hundreds of posts and comments specifically crafted to damage Cracker Barrel’s reputation, and the manufactured campaign had nearly 5 million potential views.
• These fake profiles also triggered 3,268 direct engagements from genuine profiles. This is important because when real people engage with fake information, it gives fake posts a powerful boost on the X algorithm.

Fake profiles pushed hashtags like #BoycottCrackerBarrel and #CrackerBarrelHasFallen, creating the impression of a massive consumer revolt … that was not happening in real life.

The attack momentum

These accounts made exaggerated claims about an imminent financial collapse, often stating that the company’s stock price would “crash” and that restaurants would soon close nationwide.

They promoted deleting the Cracker Barrel app and announced they would never set foot in any of the chain’s stores or purchase any of its products. By falsely portraying the boycott as successful, these profiles created a self-fulfilling prophecy of declining consumer confidence.

Noting the online wave of attention (and unaware that most of it was fake), prominent political accounts like Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Donald Trump Jr. piled on with their own takes on the controversy and began targeting the company’s CEO, Julie Messino.

After his son’s post, President Trump weighed in on Truth Social against the new logo. And when that level of celebrity contributes to the conversation, the illusion of failure becomes reality.

On Aug. 26, Cracker Barrel reversed course and cancelled a $700 million rebrand.

This effort, primarily backed by two organized Rage Farms, succeeded in:

• Creating an illusion of consumer rejection: Flooding platforms with negative content manufactured the appearance of widespread customer abandonment.
• Framing a routine change as catastrophic: What might have been viewed as a standard brand refresh was positioned as a devastating mistake through coordinated messaging.
• Generating mainstream media coverage: The manufactured outrage attracted attention from most major news outlets, further amplifying its reach.
• Establishing persistent negative narratives: Strategic hashtag deployment ensured negative framing dominated search results and social conversations about the brand.

The obvious question is, who did this?

Who is behind a Rage Farm?

Cyabra CMO Rafi Mendelsohn told me that his research firm checks 600 to 800 parameters, including location, posting frequency, and the use of AI-generated avatars, to declare whether accounts are human or not.

Some of these fake accounts “prepare” for attacks by posting real content for months to build credibility and attract an audience. The accounts within a Rage Farm also interact with each other, further enhancing their status within the X algorithms.

But who is creating this coordinated mayhem?

“The answer to that is — who is behind all crime?” said Mendlesohn. “It could be a range of different actors, including state-backed crime or organized crime, syndicate crime, political crime, or small networks of lone individuals. It could even be competitors or financial players looking to impact the share price.

“The anonymity that malicious actors are allowed through fake social media accounts enables them to operate without much risk. We can detect fake accounts, but we can’t tell exactly who is behind them. We can look at the behavior of those accounts and their content, and if it’s manipulated, but we can’t tell you the IP address because we don’t have access to that information. We can’t say, ‘this is an office block in Moscow, or it’s a group of angry people in Texas.’ It’s impossible to do that, and that’s by design, right? That’s why it’s so effective. The anonymity is powerful.”

According to Rafi, the main motivations behind coordinated brand attacks include:

1. Money, power, and influence
2. State-backed actors looking to cause chaos and disrupt social harmony
3. Financial manipulation (e.g., targeting ticker symbols)
4. Ideological reasons and culture wars (e.g., “go woke, go broke” narratives)
5. Amplifying emotional or controversial topics to sow chaos
6. Commercial adversaries creating false narratives about a brand’s stance on social issues to harm the brand’s reputation

In addition to the obvious “anti-woke” ideological amplification in the Cracker Barrel example, there could have been stock market manipulation since this is a publicly traded stock (CBR). If a Rage Farm can manufacture a rapid change in brand sentiment, it increases the odds of gap-downs and forced follow-on selling — the environment where short sellers make the most money in the least amount of time.

Criminals behind the attack could have manufactured the online sentiment slide, and made millions by shorting the stock.

The disconnect from consumer reality

I think it’s critical to add that there is probably no correlation between online rage — whether real or manufactured — and true customer sentiment.

In a comprehensive analysis, researchers Brad Fay and Rick Larkin compared the online sentiment of 500 brands versus the sentiment of everyday consumers. They concluded that there was “no meaningful correlation between online and offline discussions for brands.”

Of course, this also means that brands can’t rely on “social media listening” as a proxy for broader consumer sentiment or to evaluate the complete impact of any decision or campaign … but that’s a story for another day.

In summary, AI-propelled, fake social media accounts created and amplified a national controversy, and even if some of the online discontent was genuine, it almost certainly didn’t reflect the sentiment of the company’s real customers.

“In any other crime, you can see it being committed,” Rafi Mendelsohn said, “You can see the act. But in this case, you are consuming content in your feed. You can’t grasp the big picture. You have no idea the crime is being committed, and you might be part of it.

“We’re just this passive victim, not even knowing what it is that we’re seeing, but we know it made us feel angry, or it tapped into a certain emotion, and we might even want to move on from the brand … and that’s what it’s designed to do.”

While companies like Cyabra can’t pin down IP addresses and eliminate bad actors, X can. But they won’t. Controversy of any kind drives engagement. Engagement drives advertising. In summary, hate is good for business.

“Brands can find themselves in hot water, not just because of something they’ve done, but purely by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Rafi said. “Fake accounts can escalate a situation to the point that it gains media attention and impacts the brand’s reputation.”

What can we do about Rage Farms?

So the only organizations that can protect us (like X and Facebook) won’t do so because it would hurt their businesses. What are our options?

In addition to Rafi from Cyabra, I solicited advice from corporate communications experts Kami Huyse and Daniel Nestle. Here is the advice:

Keep your head down.

If a controversial topic is brewing, Rage Farms are looking for anything they can grab onto in order to amplify chaos. Brands are easy targets. (Rafi)

Prepare.

If you’re launching a rebrand, product change, campaign, or major announcement — map out how it could be framed negatively. What narratives could be constructed? What emotional triggers (tradition, identity, politics) exist? (Rafi)

Monitor as if you’re NORAD.

Invest in the right listening platforms that flag anomalies and suspicious activity in real time. Spot the patterns before they explode. (Dan)

Be proactive.

It has reached a point where brands must have a bot-attack crisis plan. Even if they aren’t in a traditionally controversial company or industry. We now have a decision tree in all of our clients’ communication playbooks, from large to small. We have pre-written some messages that allow our team to quickly without waiting for multiple approvals. This allows us to identify patterns early, remove harmful content, and escalate issues when needed. (Kami)

Run crisis simulations using AI.

Create and maintain personas for all of our audiences (especially media and investors), and if we have synthetic data, even better. We can use these to role-play scenarios, test messages, and get feedback. Learn from the simulations, load pre-approved messaging, and accelerate response speed and accuracy. (Dan)

Relentlessly build trust and credibility with audiences.

This should be what we already do, but most of the time it’s just lip service. We should create experiences, invest in brand marketing,  deploy frequent and authentic executive communications, treat our employees as our most important audience. All the important stuff. We won’t stop the bots, but we can short-circuit them with a durable, believable, well-loved, and very human brand. (Dan)

Show active listening.

If a crisis hits, acknowledging legitimate concerns, showing willingness to listen and adjusting (rather than doubling down blindly) helps reduce amplification of negativity. (Kami)

Don’t engage.

AI bots comment on each other’s posts to trick algorithms into thinking there’s an authentic conversation, which then makes the malicious conversation start to appear to people who might have the same or opposite point of view, or both. Engaging with bots rarely helps and often amplifies the problem. (Kami)

Activate fans.

When bots rush in, your best defence isn’t more bots — it’s real people. Loyal customers, brand advocates, influencers who genuinely care and share. Build and mobilize this community ahead of time so that when something hits you, the “real counter-voice” is already in place. (Rafi)

Don’t treat this as a “PR problem.”

This is company-wide reputational security. (Rafi)

In this environment, every brand must assume it could be next. Preparedness is no longer optional. The networks, the bots, the narratives are waiting. The brands that win will be those who anticipate and build resilience now, not just after the storm hits.

Rage Farms: Final thoughts

Everything above is good advice.

It’s also exactly what the attackers want.

They want brands to be bland. Executives to be scared. Marketing to play it safe. Democracy to be fragile. Trust to erode.

The Cracker Barrel case is not an outlier — it’s a harbinger. This is our new, true reality, and I am concerned on three levels:

1. Great marketing is not about conformity. It is about non-conformity. Will surviving in this Rage Farm world mean that everything is vanilla now? What level of creativity is worth an attack like this?
2. Marketing has changed the world for the better by taking risks, by helping people speak up and stand out, by calling attention to societal problems and new solutions. Will that aspect of our profession wither?
3. I am deeply sad and concerned that the Rage Farm attacks focused on individual executives. These are hard-working people with families and careers, trying to do their best for a company. We all make mistakes. But nobody deserves to live in fear of physical attacks on their families because of a logo redesign.

When anonymous criminals can destroy careers over a brand re-launch, they’re not just attacking our businesses. They’re attacking our ability to speak truth and stand for something.

There is hope

Let me end this article with a ray of hope.

I’ve been around long enough to say with authority that every technological development is eventually weaponized. But we figure it out and neutralize it over time.

Regulating technology to protect our personal and business interests is a slow process. But it does happen, every time. Remember … Rage Farm attacks on our brands are a secondary concern. They are also attacking our democratic processes.

Watch the news. Countries will begin to fight back.

• A few years ago, Singapore introduced a statute that explicitly targets what it calls “false statements of fact” disseminated online, signalling a governmental willingness to treat bot campaigns and manipulated networks as more than mere marketing or PR mishaps.
• The EU requires the biggest social platforms to report and act on manipulation campaigns and bot-driven disinformation, providing a blueprint for how law can begin to counter Rage Farm attacks.
• In the U.S., law enforcement isn’t just watching. The DOJ recently announced the seizure of nearly 1,000 social media accounts tied to an AI-powered Russian bot farm that spread disinformation.

A solution is not easy or imminent, but I don’t think Rage Farms will be free to sow their chaos forever.

And remember, the best defense against synthetic rage is authentic trust, earned one customer at a time.

The Most Human Company Wins. Stay strong.

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 Rage Farms: The Hidden Industry Weaponizing Outrage Against Brands appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I have a new baby grandson. He is an angel and an extraordinary pooper. So, his talents demand a steady supply of diapers.

The boy is the end customer for any company selling diapers. But of course we can’t market directly to him. Mom and Dad are the decision makers. So, if you’re in the diaper business, you need to create an expert marketing appeal that targets the person between you and the final customer.

A similar dynamic is now occurring with AI and it will impact every business in the world.

Chapter 6 in my new book How AI Changes Your Customers digs into the rapidly increasing trust people place on AI platforms to make decisions for them.

I provided an example in the book where ChatGPT planned a detailed vacation trip to Paris for me, including hotels, restaurants, attractions, and transportation. I used the plan exactly … without seeing an ad, an influencer, or a piece of branded content.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth. When AI becomes your customer’s brain, AI becomes your customer. More precisely, Big Tech becomes your customer.

The moment your content is summarized, rated, or recommended by a machine, you’re speaking to the algorithm instead of a person.

In essence, we’re marketing to an intermediary decision-maker. We’re all in the diaper business now.

The dirt on “diaper marketing”

If you’re in marketing, you already know that AI is chipping away at the search engine business.

For now, Google still reigns supreme. In fact, search on the site is still growing.

But even Google uses an AI-assist that answers at least 20% of user queries.

Another mind-blowing fact is that if your business shows up as a recommendation on ChatGPT, it converts to a sale at a rate 23 X compared to traditional search on Google.**

As more people lean on AI for answers, context, and judgment, their buying decisions will become passive reactions to algorithmic cues. And this is not just for low-risk decisions. People are increasingly using AI to influence major purchases and life decisions.

** I’m sorry I don’t know the exact source of this fact. It was verbally reported at a conference and I could not record the source fast enough!

AI versus SEO

Perhaps the greatest question of our time is: How do we influence this powerful AI recommendation engine?

The answer is evolving day by day but here is one perspective informed by new research and expert advice from Rand Fishkin and Andy Crestodina.

The main themes are emerging day by day, but I think at a high level this is a pretty good summary (please drop me a note if you disagree!).

Top Factors Influencing SEO Success

(In no particular order)

• Backlinks and authority signals – Credible, high-authority websites linking to your content.
• Keyword relevance and intent matching – Aligning with what people are truly searching for.
• On-page optimization – Title tags, meta descriptions, headings, alt text, internal links.
• Relevant, original content – Depth, clarity, and usefulness for the searcher.
• Technical SEO – Site speed, crawlability, mobile-friendliness, proper indexing.

Top Factors Affecting AI Referrals

• Clarity of brand positioning — Easy-to-understand description of what the business does. Extreme detail about what you do.
• Content presence in high-quality sources — Indexed articles, interviews, studies, or reviews that the model can reference.
• Topical authority  — Demonstrated expertise in a niche (books, blogs, media presence). Harmonized messaging across website, social, press, and reviews.
• Reputation and trust signals – Recognized as credible, respected, and reliable. News articles, podcasts, thought leadership citations.

The Intersection!

Both SEO and AI search depend on authoritative brand content, positive social signals (validation), and content freshness (publish regularly!). The latest research shows that AI puts more weight on “newness” of the content.

Every business should be working on this, and by the way, if your internet security system is blocking AI platforms from crawling your site, stop that. I explain why here.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Many businesses will dutifully work on their content and AI signals but overlook the overrides. What is an override? The marketing power that transcends an AI recommendation:

Let’s break these down. Why are these elements of marketing important in the AI Era?

Brand preference — Brand is more important than ever. I might ask ChatGPT to plan a trip to Japan for me, but I might require flights on Delta, or a hotel stay at Hyatt because those are brand preferences. Brand love overrides whatever AI has to say.

Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) — WOMM is the most trusted, purest form of brand advocacy there is. I might consider what AI says, but I will absolutely act on a recommendation from a trusted friend. Now, increasingly that trusted friend might be AI, but that’s a story for another day.

Advertising — Great storytelling through ads can reach through the noise and connect with targeted customers.

Brand communities — About 80% of new business startups rely on a brand community as their most important form of marketing. The reason is simple. There is no stronger form of brand loyalty.

We’re all in the diaper business now

Well, there’s never a dull moment on the marketing scene, is there?

I hope today’s advice was interesting and useful. Please act on it. Think about how SEO played out. The early adopters of SEO strategy likely had an advantage and a premier place in search results.

The window will be closing on AI recommendation preferences in the same way.

Google search is still the most important marketing factor for some businesses but start considering the “diaper sales” mentality that is needed to win in the AI Era.

If you benefited from this post, you will love my new book How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.

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 Why every business is selling diapers now. AI versus SEO appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

It’s been two years since I published Belonging to the Brand. This book had an audacious subtitle: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.”

I firmly believe I was correct in this bold prediction. If you examine the biggest marketing trends, they all point back to the importance of human connection and community … especially now.

I’ve been giving speeches and workshops on the topic of brand communities and gained some new insights and observations about what’s happening right now. I haven’t written about this topic in a while, so I thought I would share my latest thinking on brand communities with five observations:

1. Smaller businesses are winning at community
2. An AI backlash drives community
3. Affinity groups represent a bold new strategy
4. Community as an “override” for AI
5. “Breeding” communities
6. Measurement priorities
7. Integrations with influencer brands

1. Smaller businesses are winning at community

First Capital recently reported that

• 80% of startups are investing in community as a primary marketing strategy.
• 28% consider it to be “the factor most critical to their success.”

This makes perfect sense. If you’re bootstrapping a new business, a community can propel new ideas, advocacy, and even funding. These are your first customers and fans.

But the biggest brands are struggling to find their footing for these reasons:

SCALE

The biggest brands are used to investing in campaigns that earn millions of impressions. That probably won’t happen, even in the largest communities right now. How does the big brand advertising culture adjust to the smaller scale of today’s communities?

There are exceptions, of course. Sephora has a community of 6 million fans. But even the largest Reddit groups might have hundreds of thousands of people, not millions.

REAL HUMAN INVOLVEMENT

The idea of real human engagement is foreign to many companies. You go to work, you create a brand strategy, and then you hand it over to an ad agency. A brand manager is generally not hands-on.

I’m often asked how brands can become involved in creator communities. My answer is, “They can’t. It can’t be a ‘brand.’ It has to be a person.” How does that work in a global company?

LEGAL

The biggest brands have been built over decades with millions of dollars of advertising. That is a massively valuable asset that must be protected with layers of legal fortresses.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But when smaller brands can take more risks in terms of content, speed, and authenticity, the legal constraints make community life more difficult.

CULTURE

Traditionally, marketing is often viewed in terms of annual campaigns. You fund a project, execute, and when the money is gone, you start over.

But a community is a social contract. A community can’t disappear if you undergo a reorganization or if the brand manager is fired. A community must be an organizational commitment.

There are many big brands that have overcome these obstacles and led tremendous communities. Nike, LEGO, and L’Oreal, to name a few. However, I believe that for the foreseeable future, smaller companies have the best chance of succeeding with brand communities.

2. An AI backlash drives community

Every year, I attend the annual gathering of global thought leaders known as SXSW. I’ve been a speaker or panelist there many times, and I applied to be a speaker at the next event.

Last week, I received an update with a report on the most popular topics submitted to this prestigious event. What was number one? AI? Global Warming? Cybersecurity?

Nope. It was community and human connection.

The organizers said that, “In an AI-saturated world, proposals show a renewed emphasis on the power of connection and what it means to be human.” Proposals on the “why” and “how” of community-building dominate the entries.

I find this remarkable. The more we move to AI, the more we emphasize community. I like that trend.

3. Affinity groups represent a bold new strategy

I love the brand strategy behind e.l.f. Cosmetics and featured their rule-bending marketing strategies in an entire chapter of Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

And if I had to write my brand community book all over again, I’d probably write a chapter about them in that book, too!

When you think of community, you probably think of a place. A Slack Channel. A Facebook Group. Maybe your favorite Discord server.

But e.l.f. is organizing communities based on cultural moments, not places, and it works like this …

Short version: e.l.f.’s “community” isn’t a closed forum … at first. It’s a networked, TikTok-first ecosystem that rallies people around repeatable cultural objects on the platform — original sounds, challenges, creator storylines, live shopping, and collaborations.

They organize these affinity groups by branded hashtags and then watch for the most active participants. Essentially, e.l.f. forms communities in real-time based on cultural interests.

It then identifies the most active engagement and deepens relationships by driving these customers into smaller, semi-closed spaces, such as Discord, a private Facebook group, Twitch, and Roblox.

The brilliant part of this is that e.l.f. isn’t passively watching for trends. They’re creating the trends, creating the TikTok culture through their own music videos, challenges, and a reality series called “Eyes. Lips. Famous.”

e.l.f. also adopted TikTok Shop early and was the first brand featured in a TikTok Shop “Super Brand Day,” debuting a product with an original soundtrack and platform-native promotions that directly encouraged consumers to make a purchase.

As I wrote in my book Audacious, e.l.f. isn’t just re-writing the rules of content and commerce, it’s reimagining marketing for a modern world.

4. Community as an “override” for AI

Increasingly, AI is making decisions for our customers. That means AI is “the customer.”

There is an entirely new field emerging to figure out the “SEO of AI” to influence that referral path, but there is an essential strategic principle that connects to community.

When AI suggests an idea, we consider it. When a trusted friend suggests something, we act on it.

And a community is a gathering of trusted friends.

It’s extremely challenging to secure a positive brand mention in The New York Times or on the nightly news. But it’s relatively easy to drive word-of-mouth marketing through community members who are excited about what you do.

Community advocacy is an “override” for algorithmic referral engines. AdWeek recently declared that User Generated Content (UGC) is 10X more influential in the purchase decision than influencer or branded marketing.

5. Proactively building new brand communities

Perhaps the best possible brand advocacy comes from passionate influencers promoting your brand to a large, engaged audience.

An extreme example: I would rather have Taylor Swift drink my beverage in a music video than have a Super Bowl commercial!

Several brands are actively training and nurturing the next generation of community leaders / brand advocates.

Sephora offers a training program called Accelerate to support emerging community leaders in their growth and development.

Similarly, e.l.f.’s reality program was designed to find the hot new TikTok creators who eventually became paid community advocates.

6. Measurement priorities

There are many aspects of successful community management that seem counterintuitive, and measurement is one of them.

According to new research from HubSpot, here are the preferred methods of measurement:

1. Retention — 62% of brand communities name this as their priority. If members stay connected to a community, it is a leading indicator of advocacy and sales.
2. Engagement — Sephora’s CMO names engagement as their top goal, signaling relevance.
3. UGC — Are people sharing brand content and stories outside the community?
4. Sales — Ultimately, we must drive sales, but nobody will visit a community if all you try to do is open their wallet. Over-selling is the primary cause of community decline.

7. Integration with influencer brands

The world of influencers has undergone significant changes over the past decade.

In the early days, we had content creators who built an audience. It made sense for brands to cooperate with them to borrow their influence over a relevant audience.

Over time, creators moved this content audience — one-way communication — into communities. Communities are two-way communication exchanges that propel extraordinary brand loyalty. At this level, brands are collaborating with creator-community leaders, perhaps as paid advocates.

As these communities grew, powerful creator/influencers realized they could create their own products. Thousands of creators have created million-dollar and even billion-dollar businesses. In this stage, brands are either acquiring the trusted brands or helping the creators manufacture and market their own branded products.

Perhaps the most famous of these moves occurred this year when e.l.f. Cosmetics acquired the Rhode brand from model/influencer Hailey Bieber. Rhode entered a crowded market of celebrity cosmetics in 2022 and rose above the tide. By March of this year, the brand had hit $212 million in annual net sales. In May, e.l.f. Cosmetics announced it was acquiring the brand for $1 billion, adding Bieber to a growing class of beauty supermoguls.

The creator-led brand is one of the hottest marketing stories right now, and we are just at the beginning of this integration trend.

So there you have it.

If you’d like to learn more about how brand communities can serve your business, Belonging to the Brand is a thorough, well-researched strategy guide. LinkedIn called it the “seminal book on brand communities.”

I’m also available to help you sort out your options, either through a personal consultation or a workshop.

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 Mid Journey

The post Seven new ways brand communities are changing the marketing world appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the personal angst I had about people creating custom GPTs that replicate my intellect. Is this flattering and fun, or a creepy theft of intellectual prowess?

I went through a period of introspection and came to a new realization as I was writing my new book How AI Changes Your Customers (… and all of humanity by the way).

There is no way to escape the influence of AI. No way to dismiss it. No way to deny the permanent impact it will have on our lives, our careers, and our families.

So we have a choice. We can live in fear and denial. Or we can reimagine how AI can make us bigger, bolder, stronger, more creative, and more impactful.

I choose impact. So, I did a thing. I created  The MarkBot — an Expert Trained Model informed by my public work, like books, blog posts, speeches, classes, strategic frameworks, and more.

I am a teacher, a mentor, a guide. If I had an AI that could truly channel my philosophy, education, and experiences, then I could be a teacher to the world … anywhere, any time I am needed. I would be using AI to reimagine myself as a global marketing teacher and business consultant.

I’ve been working on this for a few months, tested it with more than 100 people and now I’m giving it away for free.

Which might not make any sense. So read on.

The Business Strategy

Why would I give away my knowledge base for free?

This isn’t the first time we’ve had this debate. In the early days of content marketing, your boss probably said: “What??? You want me to give away my content and best ideas for free on a blog?”

Yes.

Because if you didn’t, your competitors would. Their content would be discovered, highlighted, and shared — and you’d lose out.

The same is true with AI.

For better or for worse, information flows freely on the web. Once you publish anything, anywhere, it will find its way to open waters. Everything I’ve ever written is already part of the immortal glue holding AI together. Why not channel it in a way that helps people … in my way?

I wasn’t sure how giving away content in the early days of the web would result in business for me, but it did. No matter how much I gave away, people still wanted to connect to me personally for a speech, a workshop, or a business consultation.

Giving away content fueled my success. I’ve never paid for an ad in my life.

Is the MarkBot just another vessel for my content and ideas? Will this work the same way and bring me business? I don’t know. But I do know is that this is a way to help people with honest advice at scale, and that is a dream come true for any teacher.

And it works!

I’ve been working on MarkBot for several months, and I’ve learned that building a great GPT requires much more than just feeding it content. This thing had to be an extension of me. It had to be something I was proud of.

MarkBot is not just an expression of my intellect. It also reflects my values and personal consulting style.

Dozens of people have tested it, and the results have been startling.

One person said it was like talking to me.

Another person received some advice on her business, which she called “profound.”

A third person tested it against other LLMs and found it to be superior for marketing strategy and brainstorming.

Some of the advice it provides seems beyond anything I could do myself. Which is hard to explain, but I’ll take it!

It’s not perfect, and it will always be a work in progress, but I think you might enjoy trying it out. It’s free and private, so your questions and answers are not stored anywhere.

Try MarkBot here.

Beyond marketing consulting

I recently got into a deep discussion on custom GPTs with Dana Malstaff during an episode of The Marketing Companion podcast. She is also developing her own AI to drive her business but in a radically different way.

Her approach is to design AI—chatbots, custom GPTs, and other agents—that set boundaries and parameters. For Dana, it’s critical that these tools reflect her authentic voice and beliefs, and that they’re honest enough to challenge users and not just validate their ideas. This is foundational to building trust and long-term value.

Key highlights from her approach include:

• A “future self” guidance AI bot
• A conversion scanner that assesses websites for conversion opportunities
• An internal bot that streamlines company operations and helps with conflict resolution.
• Certification programs

Integrating AI into key company processes allows her to spend even more time on the human side of the business that drives revenue and loyalty.

Custom AI isn’t about cutting costs or flooding the web with more generic content. It’s about deeper service, smarter boundaries, and building something that truly sets you apart.

I hope you’ll dive into the MarkBot and learn more about Dana’s revolutionary use of AI in the new episode of The Marketing Companion.

You can listen to this special show here:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 325

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

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customers to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

Unlock your brand’s full digital potential with SEMrush, the all-in-one marketing toolkit trusted by professionals worldwide. From uncovering competitor strategies to tracking keywords, optimizing SEO, and managing social media, SEMrush gives you the insights to outrank and outshine. Imagine having the power to spot opportunities before your rivals, sharpen your content, and drive measurable growth—all in one intuitive platform. Whether you’re scaling a startup or leading a global enterprise, SEMrush equips you with data-driven tools to win online. Don’t just compete — dominate your market with SEMrush. Start your smarter marketing

The post Now you can access my marketing consulting mind for free appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve been immersed in the world of social media marketing since the beginning. It was so exciting to be part of those early pioneering days!

It took us years to determine how authentic creativity and real human engagement blended (or didn’t blend) with the stodgy culture of traditional corporate marketing.

It took a lot of patience and experimentation to prove that we fit a marketing department. The biggest question we always faced: “How do you measure the value of this stuff?”

I lost one of my first customers because I couldn’t measure the ROI of a tweet!

We’ve come a long way, and social media marketing has evolved into an independent skill set and budget item. However, according to new research from Sprout Social, we’ve made little progress in terms of measurement and legitimizing our work.

This chart from the report made my head spin:

So 68% of social media marketers define Return on Investment … by engagement???

No wonder some regard the field as fluffy.

ROI is a financial measurement. Period. Always has been. Always will be.

If you came to my office justifying the ROI of your effort by engagement, I’d throw you out.

Social media marketers have been at this for more than a decade. Shouldn’t we be aligned with the real language of business by now?

To make matters worse, there is little to no correlation between engagement and the business’s revenue, conversions, or brand loyalty. Social media marketers are literally picking the worst possible measurement — engagement — to justify their existence.

The purpose of marketing is to create customers. If you’re driving engagement without conversions, you’re “engaging” your company into the poor house. Let’s look at a better way.

What “Measurable ROI” Looks Like

When we say “social media,” do we mean ads or Instagram Reels? Sprout probably needs to do a little better with the question because a good marketer will use both, and “ROI” lands in different ways.

When we consider social media advertising, we can generally measure ROI with precision — Conversions, CPA, ROAS.

When you run paid campaigns with clear calls to action, you can measure cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and lead generation. This is where social media behaves like any other performance channel.

So for the “bottom of funnel” or “middle to bottom funnel” activity, social media is highly measurable. You can put in dollars, get out hard numbers, rinse and repeat.

This success requires collaboration with a trusted, experienced ad partner, but on the performance marketing side of the business, the real ROI of social media is easily measured. So why not say so?

Brand Marketing is Critical, Too

Now to the less measurable, but equally crucial side: awareness, trust, brand equity. This represents brand marketing, and these benefits matter deeply, but they don’t always show up on the next quarter’s P&L in obvious ways.

Direct ROI attribution for organic TikTok videos, thought leadership posts, and podcasts is notoriously difficult.

My friend Martin O’Leary put it well in his excellent newsletter:

• 77.5% of sharing is invisible (Dark Social data)
• 93% of attribution died with iOS 14.5 (Dashboard data)
• Most metrics don’t drive revenue anyway (Vanity metrics data)

If you’re obsessed with attribution and engagement, you’re not seeing the full picture. And that might be the best thing that’s happened to you.

Because once obsession over attribution dies, you have to look elsewhere.

• Do people remember you?
• Are they talking about you?
• Do they come back without needing a discount code?

That’s marketing.
Not math.

This is where we usually fumble the ROI discussion. It’s hard to find the money, so we revert to “engagement” because it’s easy to measure.

But not all measurements are important. And, in this case, all things important cannot be easily measured.

Brand marketing — and I would include almost all organic posting in this category — is essential because it builds a company’s emotional connection with its audience, fosters long-term trust, and ultimately drives sustainable growth. In a world flooded with noise, choice, and copycats, a brand is the one thing nobody else can replicate. It’s your reputation, your signal, and your promise all wrapped into one.

The Brand Equity Imperative

Your reputation and brand equity is hard to quantify on a month-to-month basis, especially for smaller companies, but it is no less important than the advertising side. Done right, social media can propel awareness, foster brand conversations, and cultivate a community that can significantly increase revenue.

Brand equity is a proxy for trust. People don’t buy from faceless companies. They buy from those they feel understand them. And trust is earned through consistent, human-centered communication. When your marketing focuses on reinforcing your values and emotional resonance, it accelerates the building of trust.

Second, brand marketing creates differentiation. In fact, it is probably your only differentiation. Competing on features or price is a race to the bottom. The best brands compete on emotion, identity, and belonging. Apple, Patagonia, and Nike aren’t just companies. They’re symbols of aspiration and identity.

Third, a well-developed brand becomes a growth engine. Studies show that brand-loyal customers spend more, refer more, and forgive more. They become your marketing department (see my book Marketing Rebellion to do a deep dive on that idea).

Brand marketing builds resilience. When economic conditions shift or new competitors enter the market, it’s not just your product that keeps you afloat — it’s your brand equity. A well-loved brand gives you margin, customer loyalty, and relevance when everything else is uncertain.

Finally, brand marketing has a compounding effect. The more people encounter your message in a clear, emotional, and consistent way, the more brand momentum you build. Like investing, the returns grow over time.

Measuring Social Media Brand Marketing

Just because social media brand marketing is harder to measure doesn’t mean it’s unmeasurable. But folks, we need to move beyond engagement.

The truth is, there are reliable indicators that show how your brand-building efforts contribute to ROI over time. These may not appear to be instant sales, but they are leading indicators of future financial health.

Here are a few:

Share of Search

This is one of the best proxies for brand awareness. If more people are typing your brand name into Google compared to competitors, you’re winning mindshare. Les Binet’s famous research shows that share of search is a strong predictor of future market share.

Branded Traffic

Website visits that come directly from brand-related keywords and links are another sign of brand equity. Growth in branded search volume indicates that customers know you, remember you, and are actively seeking you out.

A side comment — When customers care enough about you to include your name in a search, you are “overriding” the automated decision-making of AI. In the AI world, brand is more important than ever.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

A strong brand doesn’t just attract customers; it keeps them. CLV grows when your brand fosters loyalty and repeat purchase behavior.

Referral Rates and NPS (Net Promoter Score)

People are more likely to recommend brands they trust. Tracking referrals, reviews, and NPS is a way to connect emotional equity to bottom-line growth.

First-Party Data > Everything

If you don’t own the relationship, you don’t own the result. Attribution models that rely on third-party data are dead. What works now:

• Email capture with progressive profiling
• Customer accounts with behavioral tracking
• Direct website visits through branded searches
• SMS opt-ins for immediate communication

Pricing Power

Strong brands can command a premium price. If you can maintain margins or raise prices without losing customers, that’s a measurable ROI of brand strength.

Subscriptions

Especially for small businesses, building an email list is everything. These are the people who love you and will buy from you.  Subscribers are a leading indicator to revenue.

It’s hard to attribute brand marketing to a precise dollar amount on every social media post, but you can measure whether your social media efforts are moving the levers that ultimately lead to revenue and customer acquisition.

So yes, social media is both advertising (measurable today) and brand marketing (measurable over time). Budget for both brand AND performance marketing. When you account for both sides of the equation, you’re not just justifying social media — you’re proving its role as a powerful business driver.

Just don’t ruin it by telling your boss that an increase in engagement is the ROI of your marketing! Are you with me on this?

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.

The post This is Why Social Media Marketers Struggle appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Some mornings, you just want somebody to serve you breakfast.

And on those days, I would drive to Cracker Barrel. Despite the fluffy eggs and smoky sausage, I never felt like I quite belonged in this place of silver-haired “old timers” and boxed sets of The Beverly Hillbillies. But it was close to my house, and I was hungry.

Then a new place opened — First Watch. This restaurant was clean and bright. It offered healthy alternatives as well as creative new options such as lavender pancakes, breakfast cocktails, and the GenZ signature dish, avocado toast. There were no Patsy Cline CD collections. And they leave the coffee pot on the table!

I have not stepped foot inside a Cracker Barrel since.

Apparently, millions of other people made the same choice. Traffic to Cracker Barrel declined by 16% in the last five years.

Something had to change for this brand, and fast. It was time for a refresh … and you probably know what happened next. Chaos.

What can we learn from this fiasco?

I won’t re-hash the debate, but as this unfolded, I couldn’t help but wonder … could a social media brand backlash like this happen to me? Could it happen to you and your company?

What do we need to do so that our own marketing efforts aren’t Cracker Barreled?

Was the backlash even real?

The most visible and public display of the change was a re-branded logo that eliminated the “old timer.”

The new logo was part of an effort to reach younger customers with a sleeker, more contemporary look. But this conflicted with the company’s old-fashioned, down-home image.

I thought the design was soulless, but I also approach these things humbly. I assumed this logo was probably the result of millions of dollars of testing and development. I was not in the meetings. There had to be a customer-driven logic here.

The backlash over the new design was swift and intense. Social and mainstream media lit up with criticism, including commentary that the brand had gone “woke” (more on that later).

My first instinct was to feel defensive and support the marketing team. It seems like everything in America is politicized these days. But would real Cracker Barrel customers even notice a logo change?

Research shows that there is almost no correlation between true public opinion and social media sentiment — a small number of angry people with large audiences can hijack the conversation and make it seem bigger than it is. Are the online critics even Cracker Barrel customers?

According to Cyabra, a social analytics firm that specializes in detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, 21% of the outrage was generated by fake accounts and artificial amplification.

These weren’t throwaway spam bots. They were sophisticated actors creating 916 coordinated content units that reached “more than 4.4 million potential views.”

Despite being artificial, Cyabra found a measurable real-world impact. The manufactured posts generated more than 3,000 genuine engagements, peaking August 22 — coinciding with a 10.5% drop in Cracker Barrel’s stock, much of it triggered by signals that never represented genuine community sentiment in the first place.

When the backlash came, I hoped Cracker Barrel would remain steadfast and see the thing through.

I recalled a similar outcry — the famous Nike brand partnership with Colin Kaepernick. Some people were so angry that they burned Nike gear in the streets! However, the company stood by its position, and the stock price soared within a week.

Cracker Barrel should stay the course, right?

How to avoid being Cracker Barreled

As the backlash intensified (including a tweet from Donald Trump), Cracker Barrel reversed its logo rebrand and returned to its original emblem.

Had a political agenda defeated a rational marketing strategy?

Does this mean we abandon solid business priorities when Twitter runs hot?

Could any well-meaning, professional marketer be Cracker Barreled?

We need to examine the entire story. Information began to seep out that there was inadequate research behind the rebranding. The company cut corners by moving to creative before a thorough market analysis.

They committed the great marketing sin: Creative before strategy.

Polling showed that three-quarters of Americans preferred the old design, with only 23% viewing the rebrand positively. That should have been evident in the research before the rebrand. But there was no research.

What was different about the Nike example? Nike had extensive research on the values and priorities of its customers. Aligning with the controversial quarterback made sense. The company knew there would be a backlash — and they accounted for it. But the people who complained were not their core customers. Nike held the course and accomplished a great marketing success.

The Cracker Barrel debacle serves as a poignant reminder of a fundamental lesson in Marketing 101: Strategy begins with research.

Commit to research

There are no guarantees in marketing. But if there’s one thing we can control, it’s whether our big bets are informed by reality or driven by guesswork and emotions.

Research isn’t just a line item in a budget. It’s marketing insurance. Cracker Barrel cut corners and went straight to creative. Nike didn’t.

And for a big bet like this, research has to be something more than polling or running a focus group. Great research is multi-layered:

• Quantitative data — surveys, polling, and yes, even new synthetic AI-generated panels that can test ideas in hours.
• Qualitative insight — focus groups, interviews, or just observing how real people interact with your product in the wild.
• Cultural listening — paying attention to the broader conversations, memes, and movements that shape how people interpret your brand.

Starbucks doesn’t guess on something as small as cup designs. They study cultural shifts related to sustainability, digital convenience, and identity before taking action.

Doritos ran a campaign stripping its logo from packaging/ads, betting people would recognize them anyway. They validated the idea through brand recognition studies and social listening before going public.

Chipotle monitored viral TikTok “menu hacks” (like the quesadilla + vinaigrette combo) and tested them in small pilots. Basically, this was free R&D that shaped product decisions.

Treat every decision — a new logo, a pricing change, a product feature — as a hypothesis. Test it before you scale it.

Why didn’t Cracker Barrel pilot the idea first? Brand arrogance.

Wokification

If Cracker Barrel had robust research that supported the rebranding decision, would it have made a difference? I’m not sure.

The lack of research was only part of the story.

Much of the social media backlash centered on the opinion that the Cracker Barrel CEO was a “woke woman.” When the attack takes that ugly, polarizing direction, reason and data don’t make a difference.

Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist, posted on X: “It’s not about this particular restaurant chain — who cares — but about creating massive pressure against companies that are considering any move that might appear to be ‘wokification.’”

The logo commentary was unhinged. Sean Davis, the chief executive of The Federalist, a right-wing website, wrote, “Cracker Barrel’s CEO and leadership clearly hate the company’s customers and see their mission as re-educating them with the principles of gay race communism.”

In what universe is a boring logo and new menu items a manifesto for gay race communism?

And if you followed this story, you’ll know that the president eventually weighed in.

Even if your research is sound, will a board of directors support your rebrand when the president of the United States piles on with negative tweets?

The new layer of fear

It’s impossible to know, but I don’t think any amount of research could have prevented the political backlash. It was a slow news cycle. The activists smelled blood and needed to stay in the culture wars spotlight.

Cracker Barrel messed up, but it didn’t deserve that level of hate. An interesting thought experiment: Could the highly successful Nike campaign be successful in this political climate?

For me, this incident highlights a new layer of fear in the marketing world. In my recent book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, I named “fear” as the biggest reason why most marketing is boring.

We play it safe and create boring work because of fear.

Fear of upsetting a customer.

Fear of a reaction from the legal department.

Fear of being ridiculed.

Fear of losing your job.

Fear of being the next Cracker Barrel.

We’re no longer in a comfortable world where a brand is what you say it is. The brand is defined by what others say it is. Including the social media rabble rousers. Including influencers trying to catch the wave of public opinion. Including the president.

The enigma is, “safe” is lousy marketing. “Safe” is ignorable.

The surest way to avoid being Cracker Barreled is to realize that your customers are the strategy. Start with research and, like Nike, make sure your leadership team is on board with the risks.

Research and organizational alignment don’t eliminate political risk, but they ensure you’re betting with data, reason, and a defensible strategy on your side.

Before you redesign, research. Before you publish, pilot. Before you fold, fight.

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

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post How to keep from being Cracker Barreled appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.