The Marketing Companion

Mark Schaefer and Mathew Sweezey talk about some of the landmark marketing events of 2022 and project what might be important in the coming year.  Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN" and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.  Mathew Sweezey is the Co-Founder of Salesforces Web3 Studio where he helps Salesforce and their top customers transition into Web3. Mathew is also a best selling author, and avid adventurer. 

In five days, one million people signed up for ChatGPT, a sophisticated artificual intelligence program now broadly available in a user-friendly interface. At a minimum this upends our approach to content, social media, research, and strategy. For many, it will be the end of their careers as they've known it.  To help us figure out what's next, I turned to a revered tech analyst, Shelly Palmer. In this special episode, Shelly explains why he things ChatGPT "changes everything," the opportunities and limitations, and his career strategy. Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN" and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.  Shelly Palmer is an author, speaker, educator, and tech analyst. 

Mark Schaefer and Jay Acunzo re-think content marketing from the ground up, contending that that the personal brand and their trusted audiences may drive strategy more than "helpful content."  Instead of a content department, Mark and Jay think through what a "content culture" would look like that nurtures in-house creators, establishes a space for outside industry thought leaders, and assigns full-time creative duties at an executive level.  This is a model that is already happening at media companies. Why not transfer these best practices to the corporate and agency world? Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN" and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.  Jay Acunzo is an author, speaker, and host of the podcast Unthinkable -- the show about marketers who trusted their intuition, not the best practices, and all the unconventional, refreshing things they did to build their brands and leave their legacies. Learn more and find a Starter Pack of episodes at https://jayacunzo.com/unthinkable-podcast 

Amanda Russell relates an amazing story of how she cuts through the clutter to surround herself with powerful business relationships. This is a graduate level class about networking strategy and gaining attention of thought leaders in a busy world.   Some themes: Deep research on potential connections Creating value that cuts through the noise Continual effort to build on momentum Establishing a mutually-beneficial relationship Focus on the individual, not the ask Prioritizing follow up and follow through Establishing reciprocity The role of community Mark and Amanda also discuss the phenomenon of imposter syndrome. It seems to be everywhere but neither one of them has this condition. How do they approach scary new situations and ambiguity with confidence?   Amanda Russell is a college educator at the University of Texas, author of The Influencer Code, and consultant on influencer marketing.    Mark Schaefer is a strategy consultant, college educator, keynote speaker and the author of 10 books including "KNOWN" and "Marketing Rebellion." His annual marketing retreat is The Uprising.

Mark Schaefer and Keith Jennings explore a vastly overlooked aspect of marketing -- status. While this may seem like a taboo topic, seeking status drives almost every aspect of our lives from where we live to our art, music, and brand devotion. Mark and Keith connect the dots between status and key cultural trends, especially the shifts we are seeing from Gen Z.

NFTs have been in the news so much lately, and there's so much to learn! In this show, Mark Schaefer and Mathew Sweezey talk about NFTs as a tool to build community, loyalty, and brand identity through some exciting new use cases.

Social listening platforms are meaningless when it comes to young people today. Gen Z is hiding out in their digital campfires on Fortnite, Roblox and other hard-to-reach places. Mark Schaefer and Sara Wilson discuss how this new generation of tastemakers are re-defining community, marketing, and how we reach our customers. Sara Wilson is a journalist-turned-social-marketer (former Facebook & Instagram) who works with brands, publications, and platforms like YouTube, Nike, Bumble, the New York Times and many others find, engage and grow obsessive communities across digital channels through her consultancy SW Projects. Sara also writes frequently on the subject of digital marketing trends; she coined the term "digital campfires" in the Harvard Business Review to describe the types of spaces where young audiences are gathering online today, and often speaks and leads workshops on this and other topics related to social innovation, web3, and Gen Z consumption trends to companies around the world such as Microsoft and McKinsey.  

Mark Schaefer and Dennis Yu get out their crystal balls to look at the biggest impacts on marketers in the next two years. Will it be the metaverse? NFTs? Influencer marketing? The hosts don't always agree on this but you'll gain a fascinating perspective on what's coming next! 

Put down your smartphone, shut down the metaverse, and close TikTok for a moment to re-visit one of the most important marketing theories of all-time, the Four Ps of marketing. Mark Schaefer and Robbie Fitzwater provide a fresh, surprising, and perhaps controversial take on what the theory means to marketers today.

Mark Schaefer and Amanda Russell both have globally-recognized brands but took drastically different routes regarding their self-promotion strategies. In this show, the co-hosts discuss their pitfalls and challenges, the need to evolve strategies over time, the limits of self-disclosure, being "on-brand," over-sharing, and more.