The future of marketing happens here

Twice a year, I host a marketing retreat called The Uprising. It's not unusual for people to call this "magical" or "transformational" as it blends actionable marketing ideas, meaningful new relationships, and a connection with food, fun, and nature. I created this event out of my own frustration that marketing conferences were overwhelming, impersonal, and focused on iterative, small thinking. This retreat is limited to 30 people and focused on the future and our relevance as marketers.

I've captured a few highlights from this intimate gathering. The major themes were:

• Artificial intelligence
• Personal branding
• Future of the brand
• Word-of-mouth marketing
• Megatrends

These priorities were pre-determined by the participants. Here are some highlights:

Artificial Intelligence

Of course, this theme was woven throughout the retreat. I kicked off the discussion with high-level observations about the near future, including:

• Navigating the rapid pace of change
• AI Agents and their impact on work
• Implications of relying on AI as an "external brain"
• How generative AI will lead to even more addictive behaviors

In a world where AI increasingly curates our content, there is a marketing opportunity to introduce serendipity and surprise into customer lives.

Dr. Lisa Palmer gave a stunning presentation about the "AI legal storm." What happens when AI can produce mass complaints, employee claims, and destructive comments against an organization? The current legal system will be overwhelmed, and it's happening now.

Robbie Fitzwater , a university lecturer and entrepreneur, provided practical tips for integrating AI into our lives and businesses. He is achieving massive productivity gains by building AI into repeatable processes like quality checks on his emails and social media posts.

Daniel Nestle and Tyler Stambaugh led open discussions on AI business integration.

Personal Branding

Before each Uprising retreat, I survey the participants to observe their educational priorities. For the first time, "personal branding" came out as number one.

Lauren Colbert of Filament led the group through a hands-on workshop on determining where each person fits in their business eco-system. One exercise encouraged participants to create a personal brand "haiku" by naming:

• Whom do I serve? (in five words)
• What do I do for them? (in seven words)
• Why does it matter (in five words)

The group also had a unique opportunity to hear the inspirational personal branding story of Amanda Russell, MBA , who discussed the evolution of her career from elite athlete to pioneering YouTube star, entrepreneur, consultant, academic, thought leader, and author. For me, there were a few lessons:

• Amanda's intense tenacity in the face of life obstacles.
• How she was able to assess her strengths and deploy resources at each stage of her life to get to the next step (as a broke college grad, she mailed companies old running shoes as a sign of her work ethic!).
• How she was able to view her "shit jobs" as a path to a achieve a greater vision.
• How she demonstrated courage to say "no" to financial opportunities when they were not aligned with her values.

A key theme of the personal brand discussions was considering the feeling or emotion your brand elicits in others. Think beyond functional relevance.

By building meaningful connections and providing valuable, empowering experiences for audiences, creators can sustainably monetize content and thrive in a changing world.

Future of the brand

We were honored to have Claudia Sciarretta , Global Insights Director of Pepsico, return to The Uprising with views on connecting customer insights with brand strategy. Claudia gave a fascinating talk that included insights on:

• Using customer data to discern changes in “slow trends” (like values and basic needs) versus “fast trends” that might represent short-term opportunities. One of her biggest challenges is figuring out which trends will last, and communicating that to Pepsico’s many brands.
• When we heard from Claudia two years ago, she talked about the end of the brand “bonfire” as companies focus on being relevant in cultural moments. This year, she talked about brands actually changing culture – a bold and interesting idea.
• She described how she is integrating AI into generating and unlocking insights, especially when it comes to micro trends in different countries.

Sara Wilson debuted a new talk on the community-powered brand. Her premise is that consumers are increasingly barricaded in “digital campfires” outside traditional social listening platforms. Somehow brands must earn their way into these communities.

Strategies included:

1) IRL (in real life) events 2) Media and Brand Partnerships 3) Creator Collaborations 4) Social content

To achieve success, brands must be clear on what they stand for, identify organic communities relevant to their customers, and activate within the communities.

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)

There was synergy between all of the presentations at The Uprising, but the connection to WOMM was particularly strong throughout the retreat. There is a recognition that as customers become unreachable by traditional media,? we need to connect in new ways. While trust in companies and the media might be in decline, we still trust each other – a strong business case for WOMM.

Sarah Neely is a word-of-mouth marketing expert with extensive experience with brands like Red Bull, Major League Baseball, and Chipotle. She led a workshop to help each participant explore WOMM opportunities for their own businesses.

While WOMM success can be a complex cocktail of research, data-informed strategies, and identification of customer groups, Sarah helped participants focus on the authentic, relevant, and helpful story elements most likely to create word of mouth success.

I debuted a new speech that will accompany the ideas of my upcoming (Feb 2025) book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World. While not strictly a word-of-mouth marketing book, Audacious describes a path to disruptive marketing that will help businesses stand out in a world swamped by AI content. All of this ultimately fuels WOMM, the purest and most trusted form of marketing.

I opened the presentation with data showing why marketing is so boring today. I then provided lively case studies that illustrated three paths to disruptive marketing:

Disrupt the story narrative

• Start with wrong
• Leverage anxiety
• Break taboos

Disrupt where the story is told

• Add awe
• Mix the media
• Lean into customer signals

Disrupt who tells the story

• Critical importance of UGC
• The math behind WOMM
• Social objects

Mega trends

It's always an honor to host Jola Burnett , SVP of Ipsos , and learn her views of the critical mega-trends impacting our world. Jola focused on several key areas:

Consumer confidence in the economy, which is high and growing in the U.S. and other places in the world.

The AI threat to news and how this will negatively impact consumers. The lines between news and entertainment have blurred, leading to a decline in journalistic integrity. Most people cannot discern disinformation. Trust issues spill over. Most of the issues facing news and journalism apply to your brand messaging, too.

Cookies can quantify how many times a digital ad appears onscreen (“viewable impressions”). But more powerful brand tracking frameworks can evaluate campaign performance over time in recognition, emotion and retention, which Ipsos calls “memory currency.”

By focusing on memory currency, marketers can go beyond whether an ad was simply viewable. They can craft more influential attention-getting ads while centering their real target: human impact.

Most employees want to be more creative at work. There is workplace tension about having a creative outlet versus working in a “sea of sameness.” Generative AI could be a release valve for this tension.

Ipsos sees marketing becoming much more visually-oriented, driven by easily-accessible AI capabilities.

Jola showed data illustrating that most people are not worried about AI. My view is that they’re not worried because they don’t know!

Over the next few years, marketers will be challenged to navigate authenticity alongside the explosion of AI-generated and hyper-personalized content.

Jola concluded with a fascinating talk about the future of parenting, including the impact of AI, shifts in values, mental health, climate anxiety, and rising financial costs. A major opportunity is for brands to help buffer this stress of parenting:

• Help me be fully present at the key daily and life moments of my kids
• Help me seamlessly shift between work mode, parent mode and elder caregiver mode
• Prevent me from missing out on anything important (work promotions, kids’ milestones, unexpected curveballs, etc.)

The Uprising Conclusions

As you can see, The Uprising was quite an intellectual goldmine. But this is only a fraction of the professional value of the event.

Most of my “a-ha” moments came from the group discussions connected to each of these presentations. For example, I realized that AI algorithms and exposure to social media might be depressing creativity, risk-taking, and fun. Jola’s talk opened my eyes to the vast and complex new needs of parents. A talk I had with Uprising friends led me to realize the unexplored new roles for employees in word-of-mouth marketing.

That is the true beauty of The Uprising. We don't think out of the box. We combine boxes for breakthrough ideas.

And lest you believe that all we did was hurt our brains with all these new ideas, we also had plenty of time for relaxation and fun, including hikes, meals, reflection time, and a private concert.

The Uprising is an extraordinary experience that I hope you’ll experience for yourself one day soon. Registration is now open for the next retreat. Hope to see you there!

I appreciate you and the time you took out of your day to read this! You can find more articles like this from me on the top-rated {grow} blog and while you’re there, take a look at my Marketing Companion podcast and my keynote speaking page . For news and insights find me on Twitter at @markwschaefer , to see what I do when I’m not working, follow me on Instagram , and discover my RISE community here.