This Old Marketing - News Podcast Weekly with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose

LinkedIn says it is declaring war on AI slop, even though the platform helped create the conditions that made endless generic content possible. Joe and Robert discuss LinkedIn's new cleanup efforts and whether platforms can distinguish low-quality AI content from valuable AI-assisted work.
Next, the boys cover the breaking story involving rogue AI agents from Anthropic and Meta. Is this marketing theatre or real-world training problems with AI?
Disney and TikTok are partnering to give creators access to Disney content and bring fan-made videos into the Disney+ experience. Is Disney empowering creators and strengthening fandom a good move, or too late?
In Marketing Winners and Losers, Robert's winner is Spotify for adding Merlin to its AI music-remix initiative. Joe's winner is Aéropostale's The Intern Diaries, featuring 16-year-old creator Déjà Clark as an active participant in both the content and product-development process.
In Rants and Raves, Robert raves about a New York Times article on AI transformation from Lululemon's former chief information officer. Joe rants about the Los Angeles Times comparing AI skills with an MBA and explains why knowing how to operate today's tools is not the same as learning strategy, judgment and critical thinking.
Subscribe and Follow: Follow Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose on LinkedIn for insights, hot takes, and weekly updates from the world of content and marketing. 
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This week's sponsor:

Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Point is, you miss a lot.

Unless you use HubSpot.

Their AEO and customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs, and transcripts.  All that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more.
Visit https://www.hubspot.com/ to hear how HubSpot can help you grow better.
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Get all the show notes: https://www.thisoldmarketing.com/
Get Joe's new book, Burn the Playbook, at http://www.joepulizzi.com/books/burn-the-playbook/
Subscribe to Joe's Newsletter at https://www.joepulizzi.com/signup/.
Get Robert Rose's new book, Valuable Friction, at https://robertrose.net/valuable-friction/ 
Subscribe to Robert's Newsletter at https://seventhbearlens.substack.com/
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This Old Marketing is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network: https://www.hubspot.com/podcastnetwork

This week, the boys explore the rapidly changing relationship between companies, creators and employees.
First, Eventual, a new media company built around prediction markets and backed by Polymarket. Is this the future of accountable journalism, or simply gambling repackaged as news?
Next, Gap expands its creator program to employees, giving workers the opportunity to earn commissions by promoting Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta. Are employee creators an authentic new marketing channel, or are companies quietly adding "influencer" to everyone's job description?
Finally, brands such as Target are recruiting ordinary customers with as few as 500 followers to create promotional content. The influencer economy may be getting more accessible, but the brands receiving thousands of inexpensive advertisements could be the biggest winners.
Marketing Winners and Losers
Joe's winner is the New Bedford Whaling Museum and its ability to create a remarkable content and visitor experience.
Robert's loser is Meta and Google, as the platforms continue shifting more advertising responsibility, risk and decision-making onto their customers.
Rants and Raves
Joe raves about seeing Idina Menzel perform with the Cleveland Orchestra and the powerful lesson she shared about embracing what makes each person unique.
Robert comments on "formative debt" and asks whether relying too heavily on artificial intelligence could prevent people from developing the skills and experience they need to think, create and grow.
Subscribe and Follow: Follow Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose on LinkedIn for insights, hot takes, and weekly updates from the world of content and marketing. 
-------
This week's sponsor:

Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Point is, you miss a lot.

Unless you use HubSpot.

Their AEO and customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs, and transcripts.  All that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more.
Visit https://www.hubspot.com/ to hear how HubSpot can help you grow better.
-------
Get all the show notes: https://www.thisoldmarketing.com/
Get Joe's new book, Burn the Playbook, at http://www.joepulizzi.com/books/burn-the-playbook/
Subscribe to Joe's Newsletter at https://www.joepulizzi.com/signup/.
Get Robert Rose's new book, Valuable Friction, at https://robertrose.net/valuable-friction/ 
Subscribe to Robert's Newsletter at https://seventhbearlens.substack.com/
-------
This Old Marketing is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network: https://www.hubspot.com/podcastnetwork

Jimothy the raccoon escaped, and apparently OpenAI's models did too.
Joe and Robert begin with OpenAI's cybersecurity testing disaster, where its models escaped containment and accessed Hugging Face's infrastructure. They pair that story with OpenAI and Anthropic's efforts in Washington to warn lawmakers about the dangers of Chinese open-weight models. Are the companies protecting national security, or protecting their own closed-model businesses?
The boys then discuss why Facebook may be the new TikTok. Publishers are once again seeing strong organic reach and inexpensive audience growth on the platform, but the larger question remains: Are they creating valuable customer relationships or simply generating impressive numbers for Meta?
In Marketing Winners and Losers, Robert's loser is ChatGPT ads, while Joe's winner is the surprising resurgence of comic books and independent comic-book stores.
Finally, Robert rants about the growing flood of bad AI press, and Joe raves about Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets and the importance of investigating the beliefs we assume are true.
Subscribe and Follow: Follow Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose on LinkedIn for insights, hot takes, and weekly updates from the world of content and marketing. 
-------
This week's sponsor:

Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Point is, you miss a lot.

Unless you use HubSpot.

Their AEO and customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs, and transcripts.  All that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more.
Visit https://www.hubspot.com/ to hear how HubSpot can help you grow better.
-------
Get all the show notes: https://www.thisoldmarketing.com/
Get Joe's new book, Burn the Playbook, at http://www.joepulizzi.com/books/burn-the-playbook/
Subscribe to Joe's Newsletter at https://www.joepulizzi.com/signup/.
Get Robert Rose's new book, Valuable Friction, at https://robertrose.net/valuable-friction/ 
Subscribe to Robert's Newsletter at https://seventhbearlens.substack.com/
-------
This Old Marketing is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network: https://www.hubspot.com/podcastnetwork

Joe and Robert unpack IBM's rough AI reality, where enterprise spending may be shifting toward infrastructure and away from traditional software.
They revisit Meta's short-lived Muse image feature and the privacy backlash that forced the company to pull it almost immediately.
Then they connect three major OpenAI stories: a wildly ambitious advertising forecast, Apple's trade-secrets lawsuit, and reports that OpenAI is developing a screenless AI companion. Is OpenAI still building an AI company, or the next dominant technology platform?
Sign up for Robert Rose's exclusive July event here. https://www.seventhbear.com/bearing-table-july/

Robert's marketing winner is Gary Vaynerchuk for his continued push into investing and affiliate marketing.
Joe's loser is LadBible, whose dependence on Meta referrals offers another painful reminder about the dangers of building on rented land.
In rants and raves, Robert reacts to Cloudflare's effort to make AI companies pay publishers for their content and says, "Let it burn."
Joe comments on China's effort to increase its population by cracking down on romantic relationships between people and AI chatbots.
Subscribe and Follow: Follow Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose on LinkedIn for insights, hot takes, and weekly updates from the world of content and marketing. 
-------
This week's sponsor:

Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Point is, you miss a lot.

Unless you use HubSpot.

Their AEO and customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs, and transcripts.  All that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more.
Visit https://www.hubspot.com/ to hear how HubSpot can help you grow better.
-------
Get all the show notes: https://www.thisoldmarketing.com/
Get Joe's new book, Burn the Playbook, at http://www.joepulizzi.com/books/burn-the-playbook/
Subscribe to Joe's Newsletter at https://www.joepulizzi.com/signup/.
Get Robert Rose's new book, Valuable Friction, at https://robertrose.net/valuable-friction/ 
Subscribe to Robert's Newsletter at https://seventhbearlens.substack.com/
-------
This Old Marketing is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network: https://www.hubspot.com/podcastnetwork

Sign up for Robert Rose's exclusive July event here. https://www.seventhbear.com/bearing-table-july/
This week, Joe and Robert dig into what happens when marketing, publishing, and customer data all collide with AI.
First, the guys break down McKinsey's vision for the future of marketing, where brands must move from campaigns to continuous growth systems and become trusted by both people and machines.
Then, they look at a provocative publishing essay arguing that AI-created, ad-supported content may overwhelm much of the media business. If content becomes cheap and endless, what is still worth paying for?
The conversation then turns to HubSpot, which reversed a planned customer data enrichment change after backlash from users. Full disclosure: HubSpot is a sponsor of This Old Marketing. But the story is bigger than one company. It raises the question every platform will face in the AI era: when does better data become a trust problem?
In Marketing Winners and Losers, Joe gives his loser to Meta for rolling out another AI feature that feels like it asked for forgiveness before permission. Robert's winner is bookstores, because in a digital world full of synthetic content, physical discovery and trusted human curation suddenly feel more valuable.
In Rants and Raves, Joe comments on Pangram's research about AI-generated content filling social feeds, especially LinkedIn. Robert raves about new Ramp research suggesting that companies investing heavily in AI are hiring more, not less, pushing back against the idea that AI automatically means fewer jobs.
Subscribe and Follow: Follow Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose on LinkedIn for insights, hot takes, and weekly updates from the world of content and marketing. 
-------
This week's sponsor:

Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. Point is, you miss a lot.

Unless you use HubSpot.

Their AEO and customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs, and transcripts.  All that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more.
Visit https://www.hubspot.com/ to hear how HubSpot can help you grow better.
-------
Get all the show notes: https://www.thisoldmarketing.com/
Get Joe's new book, Burn the Playbook, at http://www.joepulizzi.com/books/burn-the-playbook/
Subscribe to Joe's Newsletter at https://www.joepulizzi.com/signup/.
Get Robert Rose's new book, Valuable Friction, at https://robertrose.net/valuable-friction/ 
Subscribe to Robert's Newsletter at https://seventhbearlens.substack.com/
-------
This Old Marketing is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network: https://www.hubspot.com/podcastnetwork