Mark: 0:00

We live in a time of magic. I mean just magic. I say oh wow every single day by you know what I see happening in the AI world.

Joeri: 0:15

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Bilas and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be joined by Mark Schaefer. Hello, Mark, how are you Hi?

Mark: 0:30

Joeri, it's so much fun to see you. I'm filled with joy to see you.

Joeri: 0:36

I'm happy too, Mark. You know, last time we got the podcast, I was still in Belgium. In the meantime, a lot of things have happened, guys. If you didn't know, Mark, put me on the path to Web3 and all these new technologies and you see the things that have been happening in the past years. It's really amazing If you read, because if you read the review on Mark new book, you will see what I've written there. Mark, it's a pleasure to have you, but maybe there are people, Mark, that don't know you yet. So, guys, Mark Schaefer is a futurist because he sees what's happening in the future when it comes to marketing trends and so on. He's a best-selling author, written a dozen of books already, I think, Mark, and some of the world's most beloved Marketing books. One book is still one of my favorites, which is known, which actually changed my life. So, Mark, welcome to the show. Today we are going to talk about your new book, which is called Audacious. So, Mark, yeah, your book.

Mark: 2:01

Audacious argues that humans need to out-human AI, and so I'm wondering what was now the exact moment or experience that made you realize that this would be the central thesis of your book? Well, whenever I write a book, it's because I see a problem that people are struggling with. You mentioned Known the book on personal branding. Well, a lot of people were saying, well, Marketing, I want to be a speaker someday, or I want to be an author. I said, well, you have to be Known. And people would say, well, how did he become Known? I said I don't know, so I'll figure it out. And I wrote a book about it.

Mark: 2:26

And, of course, today, with AI, if you've been looking at this at all, if you've been immersed in the world of AI at all, you've got to really be asking yourself some existential questions right now, like where do we belong? Ai? It's just improving, it's exploding in its capability week by week by week, and I just wrote this week, Joeri, a blog post about AI showing empathy, compassion, exceeding humans. In some cases, ai can reason, it can think logically, and so we can't really comfort ourselves anymore, thinking about oh well, we're human, you know our capabilities will always be better than a computer. That's just not the case, and so you know I'm a realist, I'm a practical person, and you know I want to really think this through it.

Mark: 3:31

In this world where AI is has all these amazing capabilities, you know it's, it's competent, it's more than competent, and if you're a human and you're competent, you're vulnerable. What can we do? So this book is specifically focused on the Marketing world. How can we be seen, how can we be heard, above this pandemic of dull that's being created by AI? More than half of all the content on the web today has been created by AI, and so I explored where are the places in Marketing that we will continue to own? What are the things that are uniquely human, where we're going to make a difference, and let's write about that and hopefully inspire people to move in that direction.

Joeri: 4:28

Yeah, I love that and actually you have all this experience. Of course it's writing books, but one of the fears I think you're talking about the fear, the biggest barrier to audacious marketing. And now wondering, writing a book what are the personal fears that you confronted while writing this book and how did you overcome them?

Mark: 4:53

Oh, that boy. I don't think anybody has ever asked me that question before. You know, writing a book well, you've been there, right? I mean, you're an author and writing a book is the biggest risk you can have for your personal brand. It's not like a tweet or a blog post that you can change your mind and take it down. It's part of your legacy.

Mark: 5:20

And so when I write a book, it's a very, very careful decision. It's something you know. It's not, you know, an easy decision. It's a big sacrifice. It's a sacrifice of time, you know it's a sacrifice of resources and can be a sacrifice of your reputation, and when I write a book, I take it very, very seriously. There's only one thing that goes through my head when I write a book, and that is I will never let you down. There's no fluff in my books, right. Every page is an idea, is an inspiration, and it's very thorough. It's very, very thoroughly researched, because my biggest fear is, someday I'm going to get that book review that says, oh, Mark is a nice guy, but the big dummy forgot this. So I want to make sure that I do the best job that I possibly can, and I'm very proud of the new book.

Joeri: 6:25

Absolutely. It looks amazing. And what is also groundbreaking, Mark, is the cover. It's an AI-activated AR, if I can say so, book cover. So why did you decide to take such a bold step? And how does it, I would say, step, and how does it, I would say, dive into the broader message of your book?

Mark: 6:53

Well, it actually it demonstrates the book perfectly, because in the book, I present this framework of how do we stand above the noise. You know, we just can't be boring anymore. And so what is a framework for audacious and Joeri? This book was so much fun and so energizing because I got to meet and interview some of the greatest creative geniuses in the world, and they all told me their stories and they told me their secrets that I could put in the book. So the framework goes like this A marketing story really consists of three things it consists of the narrative, the story that you're telling.

Mark: 7:34

It consists of where you tell the story and it consists of who tells the story. So in the book I give examples lots of case studies, lots of ideas. So in the book I give examples lots of case studies, lots of ideas, how to disrupt each of those things. Well, the book cover is a QR code, and it's a long, long story about how we got there, and so I was determined to do something with this book that would be different, and, as it turns out, we created something that is the first in the world. So on the cover of the book, there's a QR code, if you hover over the QR code and click through as you would.

Mark: 8:19

The the book cover changes. It morphs. So what we did is we uploaded the book to AI and AI teased out stories from the book and then created abstract art inspired by the stories in the book. Fun, because you see art on this art show that performs on the cover of the book and you can kind of look at the book if you've read it, and then say, oh yeah, oh, now I know what that one is, and it's never really like a photo of something, but it sort of suggests something from the book, which is part of the fun. So that you know I'm super excited about that. I never thought, you know, in my life I'd be able to create like a first in the world kind of book. I mean, the publishing industry is so boring, so traditional. A book is a book is a book, but this one is different absolutely, totally different.

Joeri: 10:38

Uh, when you look at it, and also some, some of the, I would say, statements that you make, like, for instance, I think you mentioned, competence is ignorable and ai owns competence. And so how can our marketers practically push beyond competence into the realm of audacity without alienating their audiences?

Mark: 11:16

So that's the book. By giving so many examples, I mean there are hundreds of different case studies, big companies, small companies, big budgets, small budgets, nonprofits, universities, and I hope by the end of the book. The message at the end of the book is audacity. It doesn't have to be loud, it doesn't have to be expensive, it isn't a stunt, but it makes a difference. It makes someone pay attention and it's something unexpected that grabs them. It's something so memorable and worthy that makes them want to tell other people about it, which is the best kind of marketing. There is a word of mouth markeing.

Mark: 12:08

So again, the framework is disrupting the story by breaking taboos, breaking norms and you see that in my book cover, right, Because I'm telling a story that's never been told before and then disrupt where you tell the story Well, no one's ever told a story on a book cover before and then disrupt who's telling the story. Well, in this case, on the cover you're seeing all this art. There's not even a human involved. So it sort of demonstrates all three of those ideas all in one place.

Joeri: 12:44

Absolutely. There are a lot of stories, a lot of case studies in there, like you mentioned, for bigger companies, smaller companies, non-profit. There is one whole chapter, I think, dedicated to or about Bianca Guimaraes, if I pronounce her name the right way. She has a fearless approach to creativity and my question is then how can leaders practically build a workplace, a workplace culture, I must say, where big ideas are protected and where fearlessness is the norm?

Mark: 13:17

Well, that's a very, very key question because, as I've written in several of my books, culture is the Mark right. That's what shows up in the world. If you have a culture that's very conservative and buttoned down, that's what's going to show in the world. If you have one that's a little more loose and fun and really customer oriented, that's what's going to show up in the world. And I love that you pointed out Bianca and her story, because it's very inspiring.

Mark: 13:48

She started out as a creative in Brazil, worked in agencies in Brazil, you know, speaking Portuguese, and then she, you know she knew to really make it in the advertising world, she had to go to New York. So she went to New York and and what she learned is the, the, the aspect of corporate culture that really holds you back from creating something bold and new, is fear. It's the fear of making someone upset, it's the fear of losing a customer, it's the fear maybe even of losing your job because you're trying something bold. And so Bianca traces her career about how she took risks all along the way, which finally ended up with her creating her own agency, and that is sort of the signature piece of the culture of her agency is, she said we are not going to live in fear.

Mark: 14:53

We are not going to live in fear, we are not going to be afraid of the customer, we are not going to be afraid of upsetting someone. And again, we're not going to be reckless, we're not going to be offensive, we're not going to do something illegal. But if you come to us, you have to know we're going to push the boundaries. But if you come to us, you have to know we're going to push the boundaries and we're going to create something for you that the world has never seen before. And her agency is only a couple of years old now and it move forward. You have to operate in a culture without fear, and that comes from the top. You know the person at the top who holds the budget and the strategy, that's the person who influences the culture, the only person, really, that can change a culture Absolutely really that can change a culture Absolutely.

Joeri: 15:54

Now that you highlight, Mark, is the importance of a narrative platform and storyteller. So which of these do you think Mark most commonly get wrong today and how can they disrupt it?

Mark: 16:10

They're getting it all wrong. They're getting it all wrong. And so there's a story in the book and a bit of research in the book that I think kind of sets the stage for the business case, for what I'm trying to get through. And it's research that was done by a company in England called System One one and they looked at 60,000 ads and they put them through this test to judge the human emotional response to these ads and what they determined was that about two thirds of the ads B2B or B2C registered no human emotional connection at all. They're just wasting their money. It's just dull. The researchers couldn't believe that the industry was so bad, was so boring. So they thought of the most boring thing they could think of a video of a cow eating grass. And they put that through the same system and found that a video of a cow eating grass. And they put that through the same system and found that a video of a cow eating grass performed about as well as most advertising.

Mark: 17:21

And so Dull has just become institutionalized in so many industries. Part of it is fear, part of it is this is the way we've always done it. Part of it is it's easy to get something approved. If it's boring, it's easy to get it approved through the legal department. So you know, it's easy to get it done through the advertising agency. The advertising agency is easy to. It's easy to bill for something that's always been. You know, it's like we've always done. So there's this sort of infrastructure that's keeping boring in place. So, excuse me, so how are we failing? How are we failing? Which one are we failing? It's really in all aspects.

Mark: 18:09

You look at disrupting the storyteller, the idea there is that nobody really believes advertising anymore and there's plenty of research to support that. And what people believe most where most sales occur today is word of mouth. Marketing is creating something so interesting, so memorable, so worthy that our customers can't wait to share it. And that's what people believe. We believe each other. And yet disrupting the storyteller, handing over the mic to your customer it makes so much sense and yet it's completely overlooked. Word of mouth Marketing is just, it's almost trivia in the Marketing department today and everybody kind of in their mind knows it's the most important, most effective marketing you can ever do and it's just consistently overlooked, just completely ignored, not part of any marketing budget today. So I mean we're failing everywhere. We really are. I don't think there's one place that really stands out. It's just. I was talking with a friend of mine today who's an advertising industry veteran and he said if there was a CEO of the advertising industry he'd be fired immediately.

Joeri: 19:32

It's a bold statement. Yeah, now you've included a concept. I think everyday all something you recognize in the right way as a concept for turning customers into advocates. How do you define everyday all in a marketing context, and can you maybe share an example that surprised even you?

Mark: 19:55

Oh well, yeah, I mean, there's lots of examples and I'm glad you brought this up because I think that's one of the most powerful ideas in the book in terms of where the unique position that humans still hold in the marketing world hold in the marketing world. So think about when I was a young man. You had to save your money to buy a record album and once you bought that record album, you invited all your friends over to your house and you'd listen to the record album and on the album they had the lyrics to the song and you could sing the lyrics to the song and you'd play it over and over again and you'd sing and you'd dance and you'd talk, and usually there was pizza involved too. Now think about today. Most people today consume their entire world by themselves. Through their earbuds, they're listening to their favorite music, they're binging their favorite movies, tv shows, podcasts, audio books, and it's in their own world. And today's world is really lacking in shared experiences. And what happens? Think about this difference, Joeri. Think about listening to music with friends and singing or going to a concert together and dancing and laughing, compared to listening to music through your ears and earbuds. It's the same music, but when you bring people together in a meaningful way, it creates this emotional contagion called collective effervescence, which is everyday awe. It's awe. You're creating awe by bringing people together in a different and meaningful way. Now what would it mean to your business if your Mark plan was let's add more awe? How do we get people to experience more awe? Now you asked for an example.

Mark: 22:07

I have a Marketing retreat called the Uprising, and the reason it's small it's only 30 people. We go off to a lodge in the woods. The reason I created this is because I'm frustrated that when you go to a Marketing event, it's all about how do we do better SEO, how do we make better content and better headlines. It's iterative, and yet the entire Marketing profession is changing before our eyes In 12 months. We won't even recognize what Marketing is and nobody's addressing it, nobody's talking about it. So that was the purpose of this retreat.

Mark: 22:50

Now, when people fill out the survey at the end of their treat, they say, yes, I did all those things, but they were saying something else. They said this changed my life. I was like what I didn't expect. That reflect on what's happening. This is a special environment where everything we do is very intentional to bring people together in this communion where they talk, they collaborate, they build new ideas together, we eat together, we hike in the woods together together, we sing songs together at a concert. So in the context of awe, all of a sudden it made sense. So on paper it looks like I'm doing something interesting and good, but once you're there and experience it, it's all about connecting with people, it's all about the awe. So, truly sincerely, my Marketing plan for the uprising is add more awe. Have people experience something that they can they create. You know, they experience this collective effervescence that just it creates this awe in their life that they're missing in most of the rest of the world.

Joeri: 24:16

Wow, but now, of course, I'm curious. Like we are smart, it takes probably also time to create this awe marketing. Being creative takes time. Now, ai is there today, with AI dominating speed and scale, yeah, you are emphasizing the power of human creativity, and so how do you see actually the balance between using AI tools for efficiency and keeping the human essence alive in Mark?

Mark: 24:48

At the end of the book. So they kind of start the book saying it's kind of the anti-AI book because everybody's writing about AI. But what about us? Somebody needed to write about us. But at the end of the book I have a chapter about AI. Because we live in a time of magic, I mean just magic.

Mark: 25:15

I say oh wow, every single day by what I see happening in the AI world. And so what I encourage people to do certainly we need to embrace it, absolutely we need to embrace it. It's part of our world. It's improving every day. It's not going to go away. You know AI is going to surround us like the air that we breathe. It already does. You know, every piece of software we have. Someone was telling me the other day she was using a couple software programs at the same time and like one of them was saying, well, I'll take the notes, the other one was saying I'll take the notes, like the AI was trying to elbow each other into significance, right? So I mean the AI is already there. It's being integrated into all of the tools that we use, whether we like it or not. So we need embrace it, we need to think about how we can use it and focus on what makes us different. What's our strategy, what's our focus.

Mark: 26:24

The image that I use, Joeri, is a surfer. So what makes you special is your surfboard. It's the thing that you carry with you, and a surfer, to be relevant, doesn't need a new surfboard. She needs a new wave. She's looking for the best, the next wave, the best wave that will help her be successful. It's the same with AI successful. It's the same with AI.

Mark: 27:01

It's not going to really change necessarily who you are or what you do or what makes you great, but it can make you better at your best. If your business is known for service, it can make your service greater. If it's known for speed, it can make it faster. If you're known for creativity and innovation, it can make you more innovative. And I'll leave you with one final thought, unless you have more questions about it, on AI, and it's this. I saw some research a couple days ago about. They did this study about researchers who were using AI and the researchers that used AI. Of course, they made more discoveries, more breakthroughs, had more patents, had more product launches, but this was the important thing it made the best researchers better. So all the researchers were using AI. A brand distances you between you and your competitors right, creates some emotional bond, some meaningful emotional expectation. Ai can help you be better.

Joeri: 28:06

Absolutely, and I think how you should use AI, like make you better and not replace you. Something else you mentioned is that a big budget can hinder creativity, and then my question is then how can startups with limited resources embrace audacity to stand out against, I would say, well-funded competitors?

Mark: 28:31

Yeah Well, there's a really fun story in the book about how I sort of learned my lesson in this, where I had one of the greatest creative breakthroughs in my life with three other people in a hotel bathroom, and you're just going to have to read the book to get that story and then you know I've been in situations in my life where I had huge budgets and it just added to waste. I think for people that read my book, you'll sort of realize that I think businesses that are small to medium size have an advantage. Right now I work with businesses of every size and the big brands. They've got more to lose. They're less willing to innovate, they're less willing to be audacious, they're surrounded by lawyers and if you look at most industries, they're just ready to be disrupted because they're so boring. My guess is, in general, if two-thirds of the Mark and advertising is dull and worthless, two-thirds of the Mark and advertising in whatever industry you're in, for all your friends who are listening to this show, it's probably the same for you.

Mark: 29:55

One example here in America and I don't think this brand is available in Europe yet is a water brand called Liquid Death. So this was a startup. If you look at the water industry. It's boring, you know. It's clear and it's wholesome and it's in plastic bottles or glass and the name of the brand is rainbow strings or something like that. Well, this fella said boy, this is so boring, everything is the same. And he created this brand called liquid death, and I remember the very first lesson I learned in Mark class was never associate your brand with death. So basically, what he's done is started with wrong Like let's disrupt this Mark and have some fun by doing everything wrong. So he called his brand Liquid Death. His logo is a flaming skull. The mascot of the company is somebody wielding these axes called Murder man. He's selling it in cans, in bars, where usually bars give water away. Their advertising is just crazy.

Mark: 31:14

I encourage all of you to go to youtube and and and watch some of the liquid debt ads. I mean they, they're they. I mean they're they really make you anxious. Some of them are a little scary, but but again, this is a, it's a startup. They they had no funding, they had very, very limited resources, but what they did have is a vision to disrupt and there's a very powerful statement in this case study about liquid death, where the founder of liquid death said the brand is everything.

Mark: 31:51

He said what if we came out with a water that has special flavor or has special ingredient or had a special this? He said what if we came out with a water that has special flavor or has special ingredient or had a special this? He said who are our competitors? Coca-cola, pepsi, the biggest beverage companies in the world? There is nothing we could do that they can't copy, except our Mark message. That's it, the brand, it's everything, it's all we have. And so for a startup, for an entrepreneur, I mean that should be pretty inspiring, that should be very encouraging. You know, it's not the money, it's the message that can make you different. It might be the only thing that makes you different.

Joeri: 32:39

We are coming towards the end of the podcast episode, but still a question also I would not forget to ask you. It's about, yeah, for our marketers now listening today and who might feel stuck in safe transactional campaigns, what would be the first small, audacious action they should take tomorrow to spark transformational change?

Mark: 33:08

Read the book. You know, I think the biggest thing is courage. I mean, I think if you have courage, you can do just about everything, Because the reason that the world is boring is because of a lack of courage. And so if you have courage, if you have curiosity, then you're going to be better off than most people in your space. And look, I've been in Mark more than 40 years and I've worked with every type of business and I'll tell you that most entrepreneurs today they view Mark as an afterthought. Today they view Mark as an afterthought. They say I've got a product, I've got an idea, Boy, it's just so great, it's just going to sell itself. Well, it's not.

Mark: 34:05

If you don't have customers, you don't have a business and you've got to bake in Mark, in everything you do. So if you're going to do it, don't be boring. If what you do is boring, you're going to do it, don't be boring. You know, if you, if what you do is boring, you're going to have to spend more money to make it work. So, you know, be audacious, upfront. You know, be be audacious, twist it, turn it, move it, change it. You know, make people take notice and say, wow, what was that? I need to learn more.

Joeri: 34:39

Absolutely. That's a really powerful message. Mark at the end of the podcast episode. Now people probably are eager to buy the book. Where would you like me to send them to find your book, to buy the book?

Mark: 34:53

Well, it's available in Amazon on paperback, hardback, ebook and audio which I've narrated, and if you want to learn about me, it's easy to remember. You don't have to remember my name, you just have to remember Businesses Grow that's the name of my website, businessesgrowcom. You can find my blog, my podcast, my books and all my social media connections. I'd love to hear from you. Follow me on LinkedIn. I follow everybody back and, Joeri, thank you so much for having me on your show. You're the best. These were great questions.

Joeri: 35:34

Thank you, Mark. Guys, indeed, what an amazing episode. As you know, there are always show notes, there is always a blog article. Every link that Mark mentioned will be found in there. Yeah, so, Mark, thank you so much again. It was a pleasure to have you back on my show.

Mark: 35:53

Thank you. Thank you so much, Joeri. A pleasure to have you back on my show. Thank you.

Joeri: 35:55

Thank you so much, Joeri. Guys, this episode was so amazing. You probably you must have people around you that will be interested in this episode, so share the episode with them. Talk to them about the book, about everything that Mark is doing. If you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, if you give me these five stars, this would help me reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.