Welcome to the Age of Intelligence
Marketing in the Post-Information Age
This newsletter is about what changes—and what doesn’t change—for marketing leaders and growth-focused founders in the Post-Information Age. Interested? Join in!
What’s the Post-Information Age?
2 years ago, I described the problem:
“For most of history, information has been a scarce, precious resource. But as new “information technologies” have emerged, we progressed from information scarcity to information abundance. Now, as we continue our way through the 21st century, we’ve gone beyond abundance—we’ve now reached the point of information over-abundance. We now have information saturation.
In a world with too much information, the key skill will become the ability to filter it. To distill, to discern, to curate. To find signal within the never-ending waves of noise. Widespread access to Artificial Intelligence tools was the tipping point that finalized this shift and these tools can also be used to navigate it—but I believe this transition will push us toward values that the Information Age originally took away: communicating with a degree of context and connection that requires us to accept some constraints.”
(from ‘Welcome to the Post-Information Age’)
Since then, it’s only become more obvious how true this is.
These changes affect everyone, but for marketing leaders and growth-focused founders, this changes the foundation of what we do.
The Double Disruption
One reason that all of this feels so transformative is that the introduction of AI actually creates changes on two fronts: Disrupting the value our companies offer and disrupting the communication channels we use to introduce them to people.
Invalidated Value Props: AI is an existential threat to any software product. Software ate the world, but now AI is eating software. Every product that offered improved efficiency vs. a more manual approach is now the less efficient alternative. And traditional services businesses that traded on expertise and light-weight specialization have to face the fact that LLMs like ChatGPT can offer comparable services, often for free. The fundamental offer that we’re presenting to potential customers needs to be completely rethought.
Channel Collapse: 20 years ago, social media fragmented mainstream distribution—information that used to be broadcast via a handful of big network channels on TV and radio is now split across social media accounts give every person their own platform. Since then, advertisers have relied on major digital platforms for aggregated distribution, but now, every pillar of the digital marketing ecosystem is crumbling. SEO & SEM depend on people finding information via search engines. Traditional content marketing is collapsing under the weight of AI-generated slop. The cost of paid ads is exploding as the social networks enter the third phase of the platform evolution cycle and start charging for access to ‘your’ audience. Plus, all ad targeting and attribution are becoming less possible, in the face of increased privacy restrictions like GDPR and Apple’s walled-garden ecosystem.
The fundamentals that every marketing and growth leader has built their career on are shifting under our feet.
What’s changing? New ways to grow
What will be the key channels in this new era, and how should you approach them? This is what I’m seeing and will be digging into:
Human intelligence & Trust
In the midst of information saturation, trust is a premium currency. How can you build personalized connection with your intended audience? Through personality-driven distribution. This looks like:
Founder-led content - It starts at the top. What’s the unique perspective and motivation that’s driving the company?
Employee-generated content - The more the merrier. Each member of your team can add perspective and context.
Creator partnerships - As you’re building your audience and trust, borrow the audience and trust of others. Work with individuals who already have the attention of your ideal customers.
Human-level connection points will maintain attention and credibility, even as the massive distribution channels crumble.
The options for communicating through these channels are almost endless, but I see three key types of stories that companies should be telling, through them:
Grand Narrative (The Big Story) - If you’ve heard, ‘Your company should be a movement,’ this is it. This should be anchored in a massive change in society that your company is leading. Often built around owning a problem that you want to solve. Note: This can’t be faked. If the founder of the company has this kind of vision, clarify it and then lean into it. If not, there are other ways.
Build In Public (The Company Story) - Instead of waiting to reveal the story after you’ve reached success, share the messy process along the way. Bonus points for sharing when things go wrong.
Experience & Expertise (The Personal Story) - Everyone is navigating these changes, everyone is trying to figure it out. What are the practical things you’re learning along the way?
Each one of these can be mixed and matched across the channels, depending on your advantages and priorities. For instance: Founder content will likely focus on Grand Narrative & BIP; Employees will focus on BIP & Expertise; Creator partners will focus on Grand Narrative & Expertise.
Artificial intelligence & Leverage
Alongside the need for increased human connection, new AI tools create undeniable individual leverage. What changes, when one person can do the work of an entire team?
“Satellite Apps” & Building Distribution - AI-powered software development (“vibecoding”) means that marketers can build micro-products (which I call “Satellite Apps”) that can capture attention and demonstrate value for potential customers, much earlier in the marketing funnel. How should these be built? Where do they fit in the existing landscape?
Teams of Agents - How does the managerial skillset translate to overseeing AI workers alongside human workers?
The Next Big Thing (TBD) - As Brian Balfour has pointed out, the emergence of new platforms always creates massive opportunities—but the new distribution framework on top of ChatGPT and other LLMs still hasn’t been decided. How can you monitor this situation and dive in at the right time?
If you understand how to create trust through human intelligence and create leverage through artificial intelligence, you’ll be ahead of the curve.
Hey, just FYI: The goal of this newsletter is to help you explore these topics on your own. But this is also the focus of my work as a consultant & advisor: I have limited availability to help CMOs and founding teams develop their strategy (and sometimes early execution) for these key new channels. If you’re interested, let’s chat! Set up an intro call.
What doesn’t change - A precedent for “unprecedented times”
Beware anyone who claims that “we’ve never experienced anything like this.” They are likely not a student of history.
Yes, the size and scope of the AI ‘double disruption’ is massive. But humanity has developed an impressive toolkit for navigating change. So, as much as this newsletter will address what is changing, I’ll also be digging into what doesn’t change:
Startup mentality and rapid-learning: “A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty,” Eric Reiss said in his famous book, The Lean Startup. How can your organization (whether it’s early-stage or not) apply proven tactics of iterative development to solve the ‘double disruption’ riddle?
Behavior Design and psychology: Our technology is evolving much faster than our brains. Despite the long-held belief that humans are fundamentally rational, behavioral economics points out a degree of ‘predictable irrationality’ that actually drives what we do. How can your company use this model to make it easier for your customers to complete the actions that you both want?
Things are moving quickly, so we need to figure out: What can be borrowed and applied from previous generations? And what needs to be built from scratch?
Are you ready? It’s time to choose.
The word “intelligence” comes from Latin: inter + legere, which means: To choose between.
I’m writing this for senior leaders and decision-makers, because you have some choosing to do.
Are you going to lean in, to figure out how to continue to grow your organization in this new era?
And if you are, are you willing to sift through all the noise to figure out what applies for you, and what doesn’t?
Because I’ll tell you what you already know: I don’t have all the answers for you. No one does. The context of every company is unique, and you need to craft your own path.
But I am here to help. I’ll share the patterns I’m seeing across a wide-variety of companies: what’s changing and what’s not changing. I will help you ask the right questions.
So if you’re ready to navigate this change, you’re in the right place.
Subscribe to get updates and leave a comment or email me hi [at] jwby [dot] co to let me know what you think.
Welcome to the Age of Intelligence. Let’s explore it, together.