Mark Schaefer

Why organisations work with Mark Schaefer

• A connected, multi-book argument about where marketing economics are actually going, from Marketing Rebellion to Belonging to the Brand to Audacious, rather than a single talk track repackaged.
• A working position at the front of the AI-and-marketing conversation, built on original research gathered from 300 global futurists for How AI Changes Your Customers and taught through his Rutgers „Mini-MBA: Digital Marketing in the Age of AI“.
• A serious thesis on community as a marketing asset, with case work on brands like Sephora, that gives CMOs a defensible alternative to paid-media-only growth plans.
• Keynote and consulting experience with global enterprises including Pfizer, Cisco, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, P&G, McKinsey, and the U.S. Air Force, which means examples land for both regulated and consumer-facing audiences.
• A teaching habit, three years studying under Peter Drucker and an active Rutgers executive education role, that shows up in how he structures sessions: argument, evidence, frameworks leaders can take into a Monday meeting.

Biography highlights

• Executive Director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, with consulting and keynote work for Pfizer, Cisco, P&G, McKinsey, Dell, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Air Force, and the UK Government.
• RBS Executive Education Lecturer at Rutgers Business School; teaches the Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing in the Age of AI and graduate marketing classes.
• Author of twelve books, including Marketing Rebellion, Belonging to the Brand, KNOWN, The Content Code, Cumulative Advantage, Return on Influence, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, and How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Chapter, built on original research gathered from 300 global futurists.
• Audacious launched with the first AI-driven Augmented Reality book cover and reached #1 in Amazon’s marketing category.
• Founder and co-host of The Marketing Companion podcast and publisher of the {grow} marketing blog; featured commentator across The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, BBC, NPR, Wired, and Harvard Business Review.
• Keynote speaker at South by Southwest, the Institute for International and European Affairs, Marketing Summit Tokyo, and Social Media Week London; delivered „How to be Relentlessly Relevant“ at TEDxPlano; has lectured at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton.

Biography

The cost of reaching a customer keeps rising while the trust those impressions buy keeps falling. Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins set out the argument that built much of Mark Schaefer’s reputation, that businesses are no longer built on advertising impressions but on human impressions that help customers believe, belong, and find meaning. It is used as assigned reading at more than 70 universities and has been translated into 20 languages.

That argument continued through Belonging to the Brand, which makes the case for community as the next durable marketing strategy, and Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World, which examines e.l.f. Beauty, HBO, and Giant Spoon to show how creative nerve captures attention in saturated markets. Audacious reached number one in Amazon’s marketing category.

His authority is grounded in operating credentials. Schaefer runs Schaefer Marketing Solutions and has consulted for Pfizer, Cisco, Adidas, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Air Force. At Rutgers Business School he is the Executive Education lecturer behind the Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing in the Age of AI, and he has lectured at Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and Princeton. He studied under Peter Drucker for three years, and he has tested his thinking weekly in public for over a decade through The Marketing Companion podcast and the {grow} blog.

His twelfth book moves the question from how marketing reaches people to what is happening to the people themselves. How AI Changes Your Customers draws on research gathered from 300 global futurists and describes a customer who is less patient, more trusting of machines, less attached to brands, and looking for meaning in unfamiliar places. Schaefer has taken that argument to P&G’s global brand innovation summit, a Johnson & Johnson marketing summit, and McKinsey’s marketing leadership in New York.

Key speaking topics

• Human-centred marketing strategy
• Brand community as a growth strategy
• AI and the psychology of the customer
• Personal branding for executives and professionals
• Customer trust, loyalty, and the post-advertising buyer
• Content strategy and influence
• Cumulative advantage and competitive momentum

Ideal for

• CMOs, brand directors, and heads of marketing rebuilding strategy around community and human connection.
• CEOs and commercial leaders questioning the ROI of paid-media-led growth plans.
• Heads of customer experience and digital who need to integrate AI without losing brand distinctiveness.
• Communications, PR, and corporate marketing leaders in regulated industries facing trust and credibility challenges.

Audience outcomes

• A reframed view of where marketing value now sits: human impressions, community, and creative nerve over paid reach.
• Concrete case examples, including Sephora, e.l.f. Beauty, HBO, and Giant Spoon, that audiences can map against their own categories.
• A working position on how to use AI in marketing without becoming indistinguishable from competitors using the same tools.
• A clearer set of questions to bring back to brand, content, and customer experience teams about what they should stop funding.
• A vocabulary for talking to boards about brand and community as commercial assets, not soft costs.