At the start of Content Marketing World 2024 today, I'm sharing my opening remarks on the current status and future direction of our popular practice.
Marketers live in extraordinary times. Every day we have the opportunity to reshape the way people think, work and connect with the world.
But too few of us do it.
Not only is marketing more complex than ever. It's that too many of us miss out on essential, nourishing experiences, the “valuable friction” that comes with difficult work.
Over the last quarter century, we have experienced wave after wave of technological change. Consider these milestones:
- Broadband internet and search engines redefined how to find information (25 years ago).
- Professional social media platforms changed the way we interact with customers and build communities (21 years ago).
- The iPhone Put the Internet in everyone's pocket and change the frequency and context in which customers are reached (17 years ago).
- Generative AI turned the world of creativity upside down and changed the speed and methods of expressing ideas.
These transformative innovations have given rise to many functional tools that shape our marketing activities.
We have all witnessed the rapid adoption of internet-based software such as digital content management, e-commerce, CRM, marketing automation, analytics and so on.
We created these tools. Then they shaped what our profession became.
How the medium became a message
Does this sound familiar? It should. I repeat the famous quote (incorrectly) attributed to Marshall McLuhan: “We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.”
But this phrase helps explain McLuhan's more famous and often misunderstood saying: “The medium is the message.”
“We design our tools” describes the beginning of a new medium (innovation). And “then our tools shape us” describes the “message” (effect) of this medium.
The impact of innovation (be it electricity, internet, social media or generative AI) ultimately shapes us.
And there is no doubt: innovations have shaped us.
- Instead of remembering specific new knowledge, people now remember how to retrieve it through online searches.
- People and brands today share and connect in ways that do not require face-to-face interaction due to social media.
- Thanks to mobile and e-commerce technology, shoppers can now access the information layer from anywhere to get more product details and make price comparisons.
What does this have to do with content and marketing in 2024?
Peak tools trap marketers in their “meh” era
CMI was recently released B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: 2025 Outlook Research Finds Too Many Content Marketers Are Delivering Disappointing Results:
- 58% of marketers rate their content strategy as just moderately effective.
- 53% describe their content as average, mediocre or poor.
- Almost half struggle with it unclear goals.
- Only one in three has one scalable content creation model.
We have become what Monty Python would call the Knights of Meh. Too many of us get stuck in a loop of incremental improvements, constantly tinkering with tools to make things more efficient – but losing our creative spark in the process.
Marketing teams are caught in a never-ending cycle of corrections. The CMS was never fully implemented. Marketing automation still doesn't work. No one can access the right data, but we are all looking for it. The analytics are broken. The new CMO is reorganizing and reviewing everything. And we all play with AI like it's a shiny new toy, but no one knows where it belongs.
No wonder progress feels like running a marathon in quicksand. Companies are stuck in the hamster wheel of optimization instead of looking for innovative ideas.
Why do so many marketing teams play defense instead of winning?
We shaped our tools. And then they shaped us.
Companies have incorporated every technological innovation into marketing in the hopes of making it more efficient or effective.
But they have failed to convey the actual purpose or objectives. And they rarely think about how to feed people so they can improve their skills or build institutional knowledge that they can apply to marketing strategy.
Marketing teams are stuck because technology has shaped brand management, lead management and customer experience.
We have reached the top values of the tools. We collect data that we do not have access to and make every effort to gradually generate more clicks, views or purchases. Then we claim we have improved our marketing.
But have we?
Instead of giving us the freedom to take bold, creative leaps, technology has led us to optimize the mundane. The result? We have forgotten how to take risks that can lead to spectacular success or spectacular failure.
We have reduced the risk in marketing and also the joy.
Consider these findings from CMI's 2025 Career Outlook for Content and Marketing Research:
- 76% of marketers say they are satisfied with their role.
- But 35% are actively looking for new jobs.
- And only half agree that they would still choose a career in marketing if they could start over.
Marketing is experiencing an identity crisis. We feel isolated and constrained, without a clear path to growth. We have become specialists in optimizing the tools that shape us and are losing sight of the big ideas we could pursue.
Then, as if on cue, generative AI came onto the scene.
Amplifier or outsourcer?
If there was ever a terrible time to introduce a new tool to address the creative challenges of marketing, it was the early 2020s.
But AI is here and will change the way we work. The question is not whether it will change us. It will. But how it changes us is still an open question.
And here lies the opportunity.
AI does not replace creativity; it reinforces what you bring to the table. If your content ideas are mediocre, AI will only produce more mediocre. But if you approach it with creativity, strategy and courage, you will find a way to amplify these qualities with AI.
AI is not a villain. People are afraid of a future controlled by robots. They imagine a crazy AI that, with the goal of making paper clips, starts making people into those paper clips and destroys us all.
This is a distraction.
The real threat of generative AI is that it drives us deeper into complacency. We may be trusting AI to do more and more creative things without adding our human spark – diluting what makes marketing an art as much as a science.
We can trust AI to generate more and more of our strategy – while ignoring our need to understand whether the strategy is sound or not.
By skipping the hard work of creative revision, intensive reading, and storytelling, we miss out on the experiences, knowledge, and empathy that foster wisdom.
When we as marketers and content creators outsource not only the busy work but also the ability to think strategically, creatively, we risk becoming passive participants in strategies and stories.
As they say, the AI available today is the dumbest you will ever use. But that only increases the risk that AI will negatively impact us.
The real danger of generative AI is not how intelligent it becomes, but how complacent it makes us.
This is where valuable friction comes into play.
The power of valuable friction
Valuable friction is the conscious resistance that slows you down enough to think critically, evaluate and challenge. It is the tension that forces you to pause and add creativity to your work. It is the intellectual nourishment you get from reading the book, understanding the details, and working through the process.
Without this friction, people become automated, robotic, and disconnected from the process.
If you want to move your marketing beyond maintenance mode, redefine your goals and actions, and make marketing more human, where are you in the process?
Do you use technology to increase your creativity or do you outsource your learning, knowledge, empathy, creativity and wisdom?
The friction, the effort and the commitment – that’s where the value lies. The more you embrace the challenges of the evolving landscape, the more you will realize your full potential as a marketer and content creator.
Where do we go from here?
If you're on the cusp of the latest marketing shift, you're not alone. Every content and marketing team is on this journey too.
You won't find the answers if you look for technologies that automate everything. You'll only get there if you refine processes, apply strategic best practices, and introduce new technologies in a way that advances the team's collective wisdom. (This is also my new focus, and I stand ready to help.)
This approach allows you to build institutional strength and create space for your teams to do meaningful, frictionless work that builds brands, increases revenue, and creates lasting loyalty.
Go ahead and stir up some serious tension. This is the only way wisdom can be ignited.
It's your story. Say it well.
Want more insights from these and other Content Marketing World speakers? Sign up for an on-demand pass to access session recordings through January 31, 2025. Use code BLOG100 to save $100.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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