The Pathetic State of Content Marketing: A Plea

I’ve written more than 4,000 blog posts.

None of them has been like this one.

There is no marketing insight here. No clever framework. This is a plea.

If you’re creating content somewhere in the world today, you’re more vulnerable than you think.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about starting over as a creator. I’m learning to paint, and I used that humbling experience to explore what it takes to carve a new place in a saturated world.

But for now, I’m not an artist.

I’m a copier.

I’m not skilled enough to paint something entirely from my imagination. I have no recognizable style. No visual voice. Nobody is going to walk through a gallery, spot one of my paintings from across the room, and whisper, “Ah yes. Early Schaefer. Note the confused shrubbery.”

So I begin with a reference photograph or somebody else’s painting and try to make my version look respectable.

I’m fine with that for now. This is how artists have learned for centuries. They sit in museums and copy the masters. They study the brushstrokes, the composition, the light. They master the materials and learn how to convince paint to bend to their will.

But the work won’t last until the artist departs from the reference, breaks a pattern, and risks making something only they could have made. After they learn the rules, they break them.

And that’s the risk I’m asking you to take today … because you have no choice.

The pathetic state of content

About three years ago, I posted in a social media marketing community with thousands of members and asked, “Is there anybody here creating content so new and interesting that I need to see it and subscribe to it?” While dozens of people commented “Following!,” not a single person stepped forward to volunteer their content.

Perhaps this was the most embarrassing moment in the history of social media marketing. Admittedly, that is a competitive category.

But the silence was revealing. The marketing world is just so freaking boring.

Most podcasts are the same talking heads asking the same questions of the same guests. Every blog is recycled tips and tricks. Every video has a thumbnail of a person in wide-mouthed astonishment over something AI did today.

These are all copies, copies, copies. Ten years ago, you might have slipped by with that. Your competition was a finite number of people, publishing at human speed. You could out-work them. You could outlast them.

That world is gone.

Now every content niche is an AI firehose. You can’t out-work AI. You can’t outlast it.

This should terrify anyone still creating the competent work that might have passed for “good,” a decade ago.

What AI cannot risk

Warm, vulnerable, hand-made-feeling content is already being mass-produced by AI. “Authentic content” — which really just means “believable” — has been industrialized.

If your advantage is merely that your content feels human, you will lose that contest to machines that can seem human on demand, at scale, for free, in any voice you name. It can even include a tasteful typo for atmosphere.

In a study titled “Bot or not: Can people tell the difference between stories written by a human or by an AI system?,” researchers found that nearly 2,000 adult participants could not reliably tell when fictional stories were generated by AI or humans.

Stop denying AI. You can’t keep hiding behind “human” or “authentic.” Art is no longer safe because it looks like art. Vulnerability is not a solution because it sounds vulnerable. AI can fake all of it, and it will.

So, what can’t it fake?

Stakes.

Putting yourself on the line.

AI can generate beautiful prose. It can make astonishing images. It can create Hollywood-quality video without the inconvenience of Hollywood. But it risks nothing.

It has no career, no customer who can leave, no reputation that can crash and burn. It cannot take a position that costs it something, because nothing costs it anything.

What about you?

I’m working on a new edition of my bestselling personal branding book, KNOWN. The book’s foundational ideas remain solid, but the urgency has increased.

Here’s the real opportunity. It doesn’t take that much to stand out today because almost nobody takes risks, especially in large companies where the bean counters have optimized the soul out of everything.

Last year I wrote an essay about feeling depressed over a milestone business achievement. Publishing it scared me because I felt sure it would be criticized. Writing this new book scares me because I’m risking every bit of my reputation. You can’t take a book back.

But I know this new work will move the right people because I have skin in the game. I have conviction, with consequence.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying you need to bare your soul to be successful. This is not the self-indulgent vulnerability competition I often see on Facebook. The creator who ignores the audience is, in marketing terms, a failure. Your personal brand and your content have a job — serving a human need. Pure self-expression isn’t marketing. It’s performance art.

The most human company

The phrase most associated with me might be “The Most Human Company Wins™.” It was the subtitle of my Marketing Rebellion book, and I believe it with all my heart.

The most human company doesn’t necessarily win by looking most human. It wins by being the most accountable — by holding a conviction it would pay to keep, in service of a customer it understands.

Creating content today isn’t about volume, or even beauty. It’s about earning the right to be believed, through truth, through consistency, through positions that could cost you, by being a person your audience can hold responsible.

That’s the line AI cannot cross. Almost no one understands that.

So here is the plea.

Stop copying. Take a risk like your career depended on it.

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.

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Illustration courtesy MidJourney