Brand is basically all that matters now.

We’re back with weekly insights on all things brand strategy, audience marketing, and experiences.

I recently took a bit of a social media break. Candidly, I had to. Work was getting busy and I made it a priority to focus on my physical health and mental wellbeing.

I got some wild texts and DMs about my absence:

“You’ve been quiet. Just wanted to say hello and check in.”
“All good my friend? I haven't seen you online for a while.”
“Where are you?  We’re late for dinner.”

Ok, maybe that last one was from my wife.

I really did appreciate folks reaching out.  I honestly hadn’t considered that posting on social media had almost become a sign of life – that I am here, I am OK, just… doing other things.

Isn’t that the case for our businesses as well?

LinkedIn (and other networks) have become the new tradeshow floor for our industry.  The feed is the new battlefield for the attention of our buyer audiences.

If your brand or executives are NOT posting content regularly – will your audience know you’re there?  That you’re OK?

This revelation – and others that I’ll share in time – have led me to believe that we’re really entering into a brave new world as a marketing practice.

Brand and the Intelligence Age

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently wrote an incredible essay called The Intelligence Age. The article paints a beautiful and optimistic picture of what the future of life and work will look like as AI gets more deeply integrated into our society.

Here’s Sam in his own words:

“Many of the jobs we do today would have looked like trifling wastes of time to people a few hundred years ago, but nobody is looking back at the past, wishing they were a lamplighter. If a lamplighter could see the world today, he would think the prosperity all around him was unimaginable.”

Humor me and let’s take Sam at his word. What marketing jobs will look like a waste of time next year? In the next five years? Ten?

No one knows for sure. But if you look into the potential for AI agents to take and synthesize unstructured proprietary data, draw inferences based on company goals, and execute workflows at the level of a PhD (or beyond) that take actions and drive a business outcome – you can tell yourself a story that the marketing organization will be disrupted meaningfully.

So if that were to be true – what remains?

Well you need someone to own the collection of proprietary data and orchestration of multitudes of agents. A career in MarkOps may not be a bad one in the Intelligence Age!

But in my opinion, the only other jobs that matter fall under “brand.”

Brand is what makes our companies human.  It’s what appeals to the emotions of our audience – winning the hearts and minds of the 95% of our audience, while reinforcing the buying intuition of the 5% of our audience in-market.

So when I say “brand,” what do I mean specifically? I think there are three core pillars:

• Brand Strategy: Articulating an emotional corporate narrative that is authentic to your brand and audience, deeply rooted in your purpose, and mobilized by your community. Your brand narrative becomes the foundational platform for your entire marketing strategy.

• Audience Marketing: The future of content is independent media. Innovative companies are activating their brand narratives at scale by becoming a media network for their audience – leveraging audio, video, live experiences, and modern distribution strategies – in order to position their internal spokespeople (and external voices within their industry) as thought leaders in their movement.

• Experiences: Nothing can replace the power of getting people together in-person. Events and experiences create a sense of belonging within your community and position your brand as the convener of your audience.

It’s not that AI can’t help support the operations of each of these core pillars – quite the contrary! I just happen to not believe that they’ll altogether replace human contribution. Even the smartest engineering leaders working in AI agree that there are just some things that machines won’t be able to do, or certainly not as well as humanity.

I’m choosing to believe that our best days as a marketing practice are ahead of us.

Imagine the potential of combining human / creative / inspiring brand effort with the scale of the agentic economy to come. The potential is endless.

New Look Goldenhour Newsletter

You may have noticed that things look different around these parts.  

We’ve merged our former AudiencePlus newsletter with Goldenhour to deliver a weekly insight into your inbox on all things brand in the Intelligence Age. Stay tuned for more updates as we look to share best practices and tell the stories of marketers who are finding success leading with brand.

We hope you’ll stick around and be part of this exciting new chapter with us.

You can always reach me directly by emailing [email protected] or simply by replying to this email.

I’d love to hear your questions, thoughts, or any ideas you might have. Thanks again for subscribing! I’m thrilled to see where this journey will take us.