From unsettled to connected: reflections on the Uprising, a retreat for marketing leaders 2024

I was traveling in Tennessee last week. What brought me there was an opportunity to be a guest at Mark Schaeffer’s event, The Uprising – a retreat for marketers, hosted at RT Lodge, Maryville, on the footsteps of the Smoky Mountains. Exploring Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Appalachian Trail, visiting a travel podcast friend in Johnson City, and being immersed in the music and friendly generosity of people in the region were major highlights. Plus, what’s there not to like about a private concert in a country barn with the Chillbillies? And then a day in Nashville, wrapped up with an evening at the Grand Ole Opry? No doubt there will be travel adventures stories shared over on carryonqueen.com in the future!

The Uprising – a reflection and insight

But, I’d like to focus on a few initial insights from the retreat. Not the nitty gritty details of tips and how tos.  Those will come out in future posts as I distill themes and further insights and apply them to stories that I share in my Sunday morning weekly newsletter, as well as here.

The retreat was for a small group of marketing thought leaders from the US, Canada and abroad. Think keynoters, published authors, podcasters, company founders, academics and researchers (anyone else remember Ed Keller and his landmark studies on word of mouth marketing while in school?) and respected business leaders like Sandy Carter, former GM at IBM, former VP Amazon web services, current COO Upstoppable Domains, and of course Mark Schaefer, marketing speaker, multi-book bestselling author and the retreat host/founder.

For 2.5 days 30 of us shared and discussed innovation, trends and insight plus the impacts in the marketing space. It was a unique environment that fostered conversation and relationships in an intimate retreat setting.

Unsettled

We were asked to identify one word that summarized how we were feeling at the end of each day, during our fireside lounge smaller group break out. On the first day my word was “Inspired & Unsettled”. I know what you’re thinking – that’s two words Mary. A rule breaker at the core, I was feeling “unsettled” after all the discussion around AI and its implications for our industry and humanity in general, but I felt compelled to share something positive, so I tacked on “inspired.” What contributed to the unsettled feeling?

• The unfathomable speed and acceleration of AI touching everything in life, far beyond just marketing
• Job loss and unrest as entire industries and society in general reconfigure
• The responsibility we have to youth being educated right now, or just entering the work force, where entry level jobs will be eliminated, to ensure they are prepared (and no, I’m NOT talking about the punitive approach to the use of ChatGPT being exercised by many university institutions right now)
• AI as the great leveler, as we enter an era of “unearned talent” where those that were average, are now good – think writers, designers, musicians, and yes marketing strategists and social media marketing managers.
• Power centers moving to fewer companies
• Centralization of data and the geo political implications to power and politics

Heady stuff. Of course we talked about a lot more than AI during that first day, but the theme was omnipresent, just like the technology will be, as a layer in our lives.

Connected

By the end of the second day, my word had become “connected.” As I articulated to the group that day, “Connected in the sense that the content shared was all connected, with a thread of new insight, but also as a group, we had become connected.” We had explored personal branding, mega trends, AI in leadership, word of mouth marketing, content marketing, social media, communities and resilient leadership.

But it was during Ed Keller’s presentation on word of mouth marketing in a digital world that the light bulb went on for me, as to why there had been a shift from unsettled to connected. It was all about the in person interactions and discussion that had taken place. That is why there had been a shift towards the positive. As the original guru on word of mouth marketing research, Ed shared some statistics. Pay particular attention to the last one:

• 80% of word of mouth is offline
• Offline word of mouth weekly impressions are 13 billion
• Offline word of mouth is mostly positive (offline is mostly framed as advice, which is dominated by human nature wanting to be positive and helpful in a face to face setting)

Ed further noted that online word of mouth is often more polarized, motivated by social signaling, and dominated by a small percent of people who post. Add to that algorithms that have created a feed that feels more mirror than window, and it’s easy to see how important human connection will become as we move into this era dominated by AI.

From unsettled to connected in a world of AI

This shift from unsettled to connected will also likely echo the journey that many of our customers will take as they navigate a world upended by AI. It’s certainly something worth considering, and in particular the importance of maintaining human connection, conversation and community interaction during this period.

Travel observations

As a side note, with all my travels, I’ve spent more time in the US than in Canada since January. So I have an additional observation that applies this 80% offline positive word of mouth concept. With in-person interactions, as opposed to my social media feed, Canadian broadcast media, or even my subscription to the New York Times,  I have experienced nothing but generosity and a sense that America is much more united than divided. Red and blue friends are just friends. There are many commonalities, concerns and desires. All good people. It has caused me to rethink the disproportionate influence and credit given to fringe voices of social media, and the broadcast networks desperate for viewers, that seems to be re-defining America. They’re failing to capture 80% of conversations.

If you’ve yet to read Adam Grant’s book, Think Again, it’s worthy. As a Wharton Business School top rated professor at University of Pennsylvania, he explores how intelligence used to be seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, it might matter more what we can “rethink and unlearn.”

Thanks Ed Keller for your thought provoking content and and contribution to the Uprising. Who would have known that it would all come full circle – sharing conversation over dinner with the guy who published studies cited in my first university marketing course, and whose research in the field of word of mouth marketing, I have followed throughout my career. Plus the realization that word of mouth and conversing with each other will become so important to our future.

On a personal note, thank you Mark Schaefer for creating the space for so much insight, discussion and connection.

A few photos from RT Lodge, Maryville, Tennessee

Sign up for my weekly Five-Minute Marketing Tips newsletter, where I’ll be sharing more marketing insights over the coming weeks, as I distill themes and observations from interactions with all the amazing thought leaders last week in Tennessee!