Since 2022, I’ve been warning about the demise of content marketing. Especially the creation of content for content’s sake, as an afterthought rather than a well-thought-out strategy with a specific point of view. Even before the launch of AI, the practice of gaming content for SEO purposes or superficial lead generation has resulted in the release of massive amounts of mediocre material and untrustworthy search results. Wading through the oversaturation in search of something worth reading is a murky experience. With such a dearth of substance and in our current climate of hustle culture, everyone’s brains have surpassed the overload zone. 

We’ve seen glimpses of AI content dumps and you likely recognize AI-specific templates everywhere. However, it’s still early and we have yet to see its full impact. Before it completely changes how we interact with content, we will likely see an influx of less detectable AI content released in the coming year. This will make the current glut seem like an insignificant puddle in comparison. 

The Cult of a “Thought Leader”

Someone in a marketing group I belong to posted a critique of a new hiring trend prioritizing “thought leaders,” who would amplify the company’s message on LinkedIn and other social media networks. Their point was that most of the “thought leaders” on LinkedIn (or “bot leaders,” as one person hilariously called them) post hot takes or superficial advice that any amateur in digital media could tell you. She also mentioned the reality that most of us face as marketers. We do this work all day long for other people, so the last thing we want to spend our free time on is thought leadership for ourselves. 

It’s uniquely hard to market yourself unless you are a natural self-promoter, which most of us aren’t. Even while understanding that this is the most important investment you will likely make, it’s challenging to prioritize the time in an already overloaded schedule. The only way that a full-time employee can afford to invest time in creating quality thought leadership is if the company helps them prioritize it as a core part of their job. Many people hire others to do this for them. That’s because it takes time and investment to put out quality thought leadership, Even with the help of a “bot leader” – that is if you care to post more than just the usual self-serving drivel that makes its way to the feeds on LinkedIn. 

I highlighted this trend in my 2024 musings and I can’t deny that it is here to stay – at least for the foreseeable future. If it’s not hiring a full-time employee to play this role, it’s hiring thought leaders or influencers to promote the company’s service or products. As much as the algorithms have tried to replace celebrity tastemakers and gatekeepers, this trend will keep circling back around. The community a brand is trying to reach needs to be nurtured, so if they aren’t doing this nurturing themselves, they have to hire someone who can authentically access that community. If a company wants to be effective here, it cannot be a transactional arrangement. Even if the role serving this is not full-time, the responsibility to nurture these relationships never ends. It’s in line with what I wrote about in my Marketing Manifesto. I think more and more people will demand this kind of accountability, especially as companies add fewer and fewer full-time employees. 

Bot Leaders

While I laughed at this term’s use in the context of describing “thought leaders” on LinkedIn, this could also become a trend of a different sort. There is a possibility that some clever company or person will launch a celebrity bot or guru bot that will become a massive hit. If it’s possible to train a bot to don a personality, then training it to output thought leadership shouldn’t be that big of a stretch. It will need to be a unique configuration that can’t be easily repeatable. It needs to align with the company’s brand. Moreover, even if the end effect might be similar to what we experience with the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter Bros today, a Bot celebrity will surely be held to a higher standard. One would hope. 

Some companies have experimented with adding personality to their customer service chatbots, but a bot leader would require much more in-depth work to excel at thought leadership for a company. Currently, AI excels at synthesizing elements of the past and it can more easily collect and regurgitate the trends of the present, but cannot tell you about the future. It could provide a POV about the future and possibly better than any futurist out there. But it’s one perspective and a brand stands out most of all by having a unique perspective. The potential upside of a Bot Leader is that even if managed by an employee, the Bot would maintain consistency even if the employee or influencer moved on. On the other hand, companies do need periodic refreshes and that includes different brand ambassadors that reflect those refreshes. 

Return to Brand

I’ve been having conversations with various people wondering where the market is headed and how they should adapt their marketing approach. Some business models are predicated on inbound marketing so it can be challenging for organizations to face such a drastic shift. But shift, they must. It won’t happen overnight, but AI will fundamentally change how the average person uses search engines. The search engine as it exists today will fundamentally change. What that looks like remains to be seen, but content made solely for SEO purposes is on its way out. 

It’s been interesting to explore this topic with business leaders, but even though they recognize the shift coming they seem more interested in talking about channels and formats rather than the fundamental change necessary to their marketing approach. I tend to think that organizations that have not distinguished their brand with a personality or point of view, who’ve focused heavily on the pragmatic solutions they provide and less on what makes them unique, will have the hardest time with this shift. 

As I mentioned in my post about defining your Unique Value Proposition, when the services that you offer have been commoditized, it’s imperative to define how you uniquely deliver that service. This is your brand and your brand becomes very important in a commodity environment.

Since the launch of my digital marketing career nearly 20 years ago, I’ve continually seen brand marketing take a backseat to performance marketing. Most people I’ve worked with in a startup environment share a skeptical view of brand marketing. From their perspective, it is at its best an inefficient use of money and at its worst a complete waste. It’s been seen as a luxury that most startups can’t afford. Most people seem to hold this view largely because it’s hard to measure the direct impact of such marketing – even as its impact on some of the largest commodity brands out there is undeniable. That kind of branding has always been perceived as a type of marketing that carries a hefty price tag. Investment in a creative branding campaign indeed costs more than a straightforward direct marketing campaign. A successful brand campaign also needs reach, consistency of messaging, and repetition, which requires a certain level of investment.

Even so, what people don’t seem to get is that our minds are efficient machines, and if a brand has not left an emotional impression or a mnemonic picture behind, it’s likely the person who engaged with the brand will have no recollection of it the next time they are thinking about needing the solution that brand offers. Especially when multiple brands offer similar solutions. When you look at it from that perspective, any other kind of marketing that doesn’t lead to a direct exchange of money in that singular interaction is a wasted opportunity. Sure, you can utilize remarketing as repetition, but if there is no hook to remember you those remarketing efforts are equally forgettable. 

Brand Personality and POV is Key

I chuckled when someone snidely mentioned that they didn’t care about their jeans’ story and that not every company needed to create a story around products. Maybe. But making sure your company has defined its core values, unique value proposition, voice, and point of view is important regardless of whether you have a storytelling campaign in mind. People are not cognizant of what leaves an impression on them versus what doesn’t.  We are often not conscious of the kinds of cognitive impacts outlined in this study. Based on brand recall these stories help elicit, I’m pretty sure that this jeans company will have more longevity than the jeans company that spends no time on building their brand. But only if that story grabs you and leaves an emotional impression. 

The point is that companies have to find ways to resonate with their customers. It’s becoming more and more important to customers that the companies they do business with align with their core values. That is if they have a choice. Certain stark realities override this, of course. But those stark realities become a function of need and in that case, it can create a dysfunctional relationship between buyer and seller. There is no loyalty here at all, but a destructive habit can be formed until that brand is destroyed by the very thing that made it a monopoly in the first place. There are plenty of brands that survive the ebbs and flows of this, but they usually need to reinvent themselves in the minds of their customers. We are seeing how this revival can work with brands like Microsoft. Others aren’t so lucky. 

The advance of intelligent tools makes it even more important for a brand to have its story down. AI can certainly empower the creative process and make it easier for a brand to execute the more tedious aspects of segmenting and automating campaigns. But even if AI “is the future,” it can’t tell the future. It’s best used to analyze past performance or support and cement the brand’s existing story. With a strong brand foundation, AI can then also serve as a useful guide for more strategic and creative work that centers on inspiring authentic and impactful connections. It can only take us so far, the future is up to us to create.