Why Old Marketing Strategies Aren’t Working

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
Something really freaky deaky is happening in marketing right now and it feels like we're posting more, we're checking all the boxes, we're doing the right things, but people aren't listening. It feels like everyone's shouting into the void, but the shouts aren't being heard. And all of my old tips, tricks, strategies, they aren't hitting the same. So if you're feeling the same way, this episode is for you, my friend. I've spent a lot of time researching, analyzing this, and while I don't have all of the answers, I do have a lot of questions and things to think about. So let's get into all of the details in this episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show.

Andréa Jones [00:00:46]:
I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their Magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go.

Andréa Jones [00:01:20]:
Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes and make sure to use my code Drea D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Listen, you're not imagining it. Things feel kind of weird right now. Engagement is down everywhere and the stats are reflecting this. Every year around March or April, I do a report. I do the Rival IQ report. Sometimes I look at the Metro Core reports where these large companies collect lots of data because they have access to the back end insights of lots and lots of social media accounts.

Andréa Jones [00:01:58]:
And every single year for the past three, four years, engagement has gone down on every single platform except for TikTok. TikTok has increased in engagement very marginally, but everywhere else, engagement has gone down. The algorithms also are rewarding, not originality, but they're rewarding the echo chamber ness of it all. So my experience on social media is going to look different than yours. It's going to look different than my friends. It's going to look different than my cousins. It's going to look different than my mom's. Right? Everything looks different and then add the AI in the room to all of this, where there are so many of these, like, videos being turned out that aren't real.

Andréa Jones [00:02:40]:
And because it's unique and in a way, because it's like a trick of the mind, we continue to watch these videos. And because we watch them, then the algorithm thinks we want to watch more of them. So it's like we're on this treadmill, right? As a content creator, as a business owner, we're fighting against this algorithmic echo chamber. We're fighting against the fact that there's more content being produced than there ever has been, and people are getting choosier about what they are choosing to watch. And AI is still in our jobs, you know, and it feels like the back in my day moment where I start to feel like my Internet granny self is settling in a little bit. Where back in my day, I could post on Instagram and I Knew, you know, 10 of my audience would see that post. Now it's like a fraction of 1% of y' all will see my post, and it can be demoralizing a little bit. Uh, so I want to talk about where we are right now in this episode and how we can just accept and acknowledge where we are.

Andréa Jones [00:03:43]:
Last week, I talked about what I'm doing personally in my business. So this episode is a little bit more of a preparation for next week where I talk about predictions. But before I can even get into marketing predictions, I kind of have to take some time because this is so different than what I've experienced before. I've been working professionally in marketing for almost 12 years now. Even before that, I was a content creator creating content online since 2004. So I've been doing this for over two decades, and I've never seen anything like this in between space that we're in right now where old formulas have stopped, but there. There isn't something new that's kind of settled in yet. But if you're still marketing, like it's 2019, okay, 2020, it's time to catch up, because the Internet is already moved on.

Andréa Jones [00:04:31]:
So let's talk a little bit about behavior, like user behavior first, because this, the people behind the Internet, is kind of why a lot of these changes are happening. And it's almost like this rebellion against being. It's almost like people like we, the consumers, are rebelling against being the product. All right? So if you think about the concept of something like Facebook, for instance, you. You are the product. You get to use the platform for free, and Facebook uses Your information that you put on that platform, we have this, like, social construct that that's what's being happened. Even though there's lots of fights against how that data is being used, who's purchasing the data, who Facebook is selling it to. Like, there's lots of legalities around that, but at the end of the day, you're the product because you're using it for free.

Andréa Jones [00:05:21]:
So businesses can pay to kind of put their ads in front of you as you're scrolling through. But what's happening is just like what happened with TiVo, where this, again, is dating myself. Back in my day, we would record the shows that we wanted to watch on live TV youngins, because we did not have Netflix, okay? So we would record the shows that we wanted to watch, but when we're watching back on those recorded shows, we would fast forward through the commercials. All right? And so right now, what's happening on social media is consumers, us, the humans who are interacting with the Internet, we see like, sponsored or we see something as an ad, and our brains just skip over it. So that's why when, you know, these advertising companies say things like cost per click is going up, it's because users, the people behind the scenes, us, we are so used to seeing ads that they're not even catching our attention anymore. We're kind of mentally filtering out, are muting what we don't want to see. Okay? And there's not an assumption now that just because I'm on this app, you can guaranteed get in front of me. In fact, you need my permission, okay, to get my attention.

Andréa Jones [00:06:31]:
And if it's not interesting, I know that there are other things that are more interesting coming along the way. I made a TikTok video recently because Lizzo was talking about the death of the music video. And I think her story relates a lot to this kind of, like, attention rebellion moment where again, back in our day, you had mtv, musicians would spend a lot of money producing music videos. The musicians and their agents and their. The companies that they work for, the records, they would spend a lot of money producing music videos. And it would be a huge deal because everyone's attention was on a very singular focus. And even when we were watching YouTube videos as music videos as YouTube videos, it still was very singularly focused. We knew there was going to be a huge launch campaign.

Andréa Jones [00:07:24]:
The video would be released on YouTube, and then again, the musicians, the record companies, the agents would watch the views on that YouTube video. Now, basically, music videos could be a TikTok. Music videos could be an Instagram reel. And so we've taken these massive campaigns, and because our attention is choosy, we'd rather watch a little micro moment than commit to watching an entire music video. That being said, if you like something, you'll definitely binge watch it. And this is where Netflix is kind of capitalizing on this strategy, where they count on people watching one episode and then continuing through the entire series and multiple series, but they have to catch your attention with the one episode. So that's what's happening right now in digital marketing, is that you can't really plan large, huge campaigns without knowing that you've captured them in the micro moment first. And it's not because of the algorithm.

Andréa Jones [00:08:29]:
I hate when people say it's the algorithm, it's the people behind the algorithm. The algorithm's goal number one goal is to get people to stay on the app. That's it. The algorithm just wants attention. And we as humans don't necessarily want to sit and watch an ad. We want to see the cute cat video. We want to see someone tripping and falling and almost getting hurt, but then picking themselves back up again. You know, we want to see, unfortunately, the AI video where it looks like a cute duck and then it morphs into a shark for some reason.

Andréa Jones [00:09:02]:
Like, our brains are very primitive in that way and that. Like, we just want to see what we want to see, and we want the emotional payout of consuming content that interests us in some way. It could be funny, it could be fascinating, it could be. It could be heartwarming. Whatever it is. Like, we want to watch what we want to watch. And so currency, the new currency is attention. And this means that as businesses, as brands, we kind of have to think as content creators first when it comes to our marketing plans, because we're creating kind of an experience with our marketing, right? So attention rebellion is the first piece of what's changing right now marketing.

Andréa Jones [00:09:46]:
The second piece is that there's too much. There's too much information. There's way too much information online to the point now where if you want to find a tutorial on something, let's say you wanted to figure out how to change the text color in Canva. Literally, if you go Type that into YouTube right now, I bet you you'll get hundreds of of videos. Okay, so it's not that there's a lack of information. The information's there. And I find myself even these days leaning on my good friend chatgpt. Chatty for stuff.

Andréa Jones [00:10:19]:
The other day, I wanted to make a Chili recipe. But I only had two different types of beans and I usually do like four or five and make like a huge pot. But I just wanted like a smaller version. So instead of like looking for recipes, I just said, hey, ChatGPT, I have these two beans, I have ground beef, I have this, like, can I make chili out of this? And can you make it toddler friendly? And then away I went, okay, shredded them carrots in that chili. Nobody knew any different. And that would have taken me a lot longer to kind of sort through that information manually in Google. And instead I could just have ChatGPT put it together for me. And I've made it a million times before, so I know kind of what to substitute out anyway.

Andréa Jones [00:11:01]:
So it's not that there isn't information. We're all drowning in information. What's needed right now is perspective and interpretation on that information. So what we need now is the person who can make meaning of that information. So your job as a business owner isn't to just shout out more information, it's to filter it. It's to contextualize that information into something that's digestible for your people. And that's where brands are becoming super valuable now. Not as information or educators, but as interpreters of that information.

Andréa Jones [00:11:39]:
So, for example, I talked last week about how I joined a new agency. So for those you don't know, I posted it on LinkedIn. I am now the creative director at Uncommon Marketing Agency. It's been a lot of fun for me to go through this process. I sold my agency last year and I really miss honestly working with people. I didn't realize this until I didn't have it, but I work best with other people. So I started looking for opportunities and like, if you know what fractional CMO means, like fractional Chief Marketing Officer. That's technically my title.

Andréa Jones [00:12:12]:
My arms are kind of in sales and marketing and consulting, kind of overseeing a lot of things. It's what I'm made for, let's just say that. So when the opportunity presented itself, I hopped on to it. It's part time. So I'm still doing this work over here, creating marketing shortcuts, building my new products, doing this podcast that's also going. I just now have more space now that both kids are in daycare and I'm ready to restart again. So anyways, I say all that to say at the agency. One of the things that we're working on is this concept called vibe coding, which is using AI tools to code websites.

Andréa Jones [00:12:51]:
So this is a project that we're working on. And to me, it conceptualizes coding in a way that I previously could not understand it. So now that I'm working with, with a team of developers, I get to bring in the non technical jargon into something like a AI tool and have it do what I want it to do in a technical way. But. And this is a huge but, pun intended. This is a huge but. But I need the web developers who know coding to fix when it breaks, okay? Because y' all know AI hallucinates like no one else's business. And it'll make up some stuff.

Andréa Jones [00:13:29]:
It'll look at your website and be like, yeah, that's there. And you're like, no, it's not. Okay, so you still need the expertise, the information behind the scenes to make that system run. But now me as a layman can contextualize the process using these tools. And so this is where I think that brands will really kind of develop. A superpower is not creating more content, but creating more context. Right? So no more content, but creating context, being able to interpret the world around you. And I get real excited about that, as y' all can tell.

Andréa Jones [00:14:02]:
All right, so we talked about the attention rebellion, we talked about this idea of context, but I also want to talk about tool fatigue and really technology fatigue, because technology is moving so quickly. The challenge that everyday people are having is we have to learn technology quickly. Okay? There is this cultural burnout that's happening where we go, oh, my gosh, it changed again. This is how I feel. And I'm looking at this stuff every day. So I know when someone logs into Instagram and the menu bars change, they're like, what is happening? And they probably back out and go, I don't even need this in my life right now. And it feels like every single week there's a new platform, there's a new plug, a new tool, added AI, saying, this is going to be easy and it ain't okay. And so it feels like there's a lot of effort put in to supposedly make things effortless, but it's still very fragmented.

Andréa Jones [00:15:00]:
It's still very. It doesn't have a very great user experience a lot of times. So I'll give an example. Y' all know I love airtable. I went into Airtable and started messing with their AI. And usually I build my Airtable basis from scratch. Well, airtable now has AI built in. And for those of you who don't know, airtable is like a fancy spreadsheet.

Andréa Jones [00:15:20]:
It helps process a lot of data there's forms, there's automations. I have it kind of process a lot of data in my business. So I said, you know, I'm going to make a new airtable base. Instead of building it from scratch like I usually do, I'm going to use airtable AI. And y', all, when I tell you what it came up with was so far from what I wanted that I spent far too long trying to figure it out because me being the problem solver person that I am, was like, let me figure this out because then I'm going to have to teach it to someone else. I still don't have the thing figured out. I actually ended up taking a screenshot, putting it in chat GPT and going, help. And then I figured it out and then I was like, you know what, I'm gonna start from scratch.

Andréa Jones [00:16:00]:
Okay. Sometimes, sometimes whatever we're marketed to is easy and effortless and, and all these tools that promise us a huge thing. It ends up actually being more work for us. Now we have multiple dashboards, we have multiple systems, we have multiple places to log in. And I don't think think that the future of marketing is more features, especially these platforms that have all in one features. I don't necessarily know if we're looking for more features. I think we're looking for less friction. We want to get to the end goal faster.

Andréa Jones [00:16:34]:
Okay. And I think a lot of these tools actually cause more friction along the way. I see this a lot when I'm working with my mentees. So these are freelancers and agency owners who are looking for guidance as they're growing their business into multiple six figures a year and into bringing on team and expanding their operations. Right. So I have a handful of people who I mentor and guide through this process. But sometimes when you're making say $50,000 a year, you go and you look at a tool and you say, this tool is going to help ease my onboarding process. But I can tell you right now, hold up, stop.

Andréa Jones [00:17:09]:
We don't need that tool because you don't even have enough clients yet to need an automated system. Okay. If you're only getting two or three clients a year, do we need to automate that? Do we need to pay, you know, even if it's something like $30 a month, do we need to pay $30 a month to automate something that only takes a few hours? How about instead we focus on getting more clients first? Then we can figure out what needs to be automated, not buy a tool and then try to figure out how to make that tool fit into our business. We don't need more tools, we need less friction. Okay. And there's actually way easier ways to do this now. Easier, way easier than ever, actually. All right, so tool fatigue.

Andréa Jones [00:17:50]:
That's one. Now I gotta talk about in tangent with this, this kind of dichotomy of AI, because AI has this idea that there's a huge opportunity behind AI and AI can save the world. But then there's also this like, AI anxiety of like, oh no, if everyone's using AI, is there going to be any creativity left? And so it's like opportunity versus anxiety. And so I want to kind of address the AI elephant in the room because AI, yes, has made it easier for people to create. I'm a huge fan of AI. All know this. I love using it as a tool to support my creativity. There's a lot of use cases and ways that I use AI for this.

Andréa Jones [00:18:37]:
However, I have noticed recently AI is also cluttering up our feed. I can tell at a glance now when a graphic was created in ChatGPT, for instance, I saw one recently for a restaurant I followed and I'm. And I know that restaurant has an agency running their social. And I immediately thought, oh no, that's not good. It was like, I don't want to give too many descriptions because I don't want y' all to know which restaurant it was. But they had like this tower of food. And I could tell that they use AI to not only enhance the image so it looked way too smoothed out. And AI is like a very distinct style that if you don't give it more parameters, it's always going to do that style.

Andréa Jones [00:19:21]:
And then they use AI to put text on the image. Same thing with the text. If you don't give AI parameters, the text, the font looks like an AI font. And I can just tell. And so for me, I went, oh, no. Like I would immediately want to hire another agency. Especially when you're talking about food. I want to see a picture of the food.

Andréa Jones [00:19:39]:
Don't give me an enhanced AI looking edited photo. Ew. Especially for a restaurant that supposedly is, you know, selling things that are very high end and it's part of this huge chain and it's like, okay, well I can understand if you're like a local mom and pop shop, use the AI. And in fact I'm like, yes, good for you for using a tool. But I think that the tools have a certain limit and my expectation goes up when it's a higher end restaurant to Me, it's like having higher quality ingredients, right. And so I think that I can really be a great shortcut for a lot of people. But what's going to happen is there is going to be this flood of our feed of all things AI and everyone's going to start recognizing it. The younger generation actually can recognize it sooner.

Andréa Jones [00:20:28]:
Like my nephew who is 13, can recognize AI videos before I can, which is just wild to me. So when we think about AI and kind of like where things are going, where marketing is going, there's going to be this flood of AI content. But what that means is there is going to be an opportunity for originality to stand out. And this is the one thing that you cannot rely on AI for. You cannot rely on AI to be original. It's not. It literally can't be original for you. But what you can do is take an original idea and have AI help you create that idea.

Andréa Jones [00:21:08]:
So if I were this restaurant, I would input maybe the concept of this food thing that they're trying to promote and say, this is the concept. What's an interesting piece of content that we could create or a marketing campaign that we could create to get more people to come in and buy this type of food. Great. That's a great use case for AI and then have real people eating the food or real people taking a photograph of the food. That's just my two cents. But I think that this is where discernment is going to be key here. And it's almost like, like taste level. Right.

Andréa Jones [00:21:45]:
I think that there's going to be an interesting case study to be made in a couple of years for what. What signifies a great piece of content. And I can promise you it wasn't created by AI. And finally, one of the things I want to talk about with this idea of like marketing feeling unsettling right now is it's almost like an uncanny valley. Ness of it all is this idea of human centered marketing. And I've been talking about this for a long time. This isn't a new concept, but AI kind of really fast tracked this whole process. So think back to Instagram, say 2016.

Andréa Jones [00:22:29]:
Instagram 2016. We didn't have reels. We're using Valencia filters. And it's really the era of the influencer. The Kardashians were very popular. Okay. When we think about that, we think about it's a human. Yes.

Andréa Jones [00:22:44]:
And sorry, no offense to Kardashians, specifically for legal reasons. I am not talking about them specifically. This is just an example. I make myself laugh Anyways, I just think that there's going to be. The pendulum is going to swing back towards ultra human moments. Okay? These are the kinds of things that AI cannot replicate. And I'll give an example for this. I oftentimes will put in copy that I've written into AI and ask it to improve it, and it'll call out things that it thinks I need to improve.

Andréa Jones [00:23:19]:
And I go, I'm not going to do that, because it's just part of who I am. And so I think the human element, the humanness of it, there's going to be a huge, like, desire and craving for this. And so the pendulum is swinging back to brands that feel like a human, not like an entity. And I know this isn't new. I've been talking about this a lot, but I think that it's going to go even more that way. We see this with brands trying to share their values, and we see this with brands aligning with celebrities, like big brands, right? They align with celebrity celebrities to have it. The brand feel like someone, not something. But I think that smaller companies, like those of you listening to this podcast medium, smaller companies, we have a huge opportunity to be human because I think that there's going to be so much AI gobbledygook on the Internet that people are going to be delightfully surprised by the humanness of it all.

Andréa Jones [00:24:18]:
And I see this happen all the time. So one of the things that I used to do that I really want to get back to in my marketing is I used to send Christmas cards and birthday cards to all of my clients, physically mailed cards. Okay. And they were so delighted by this process because everyone else just sends an email, right? An email, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, whatever the case may be, even on your birthday, you may get a text, but to get a physical card, feel special. And it's one of those human things where, you know, I can do it, but I really try to make it a human experience. So I may mention something that I know you like, or I may, you know, handwrite a little, like, little drawing in there, or I may just add a little funny something maybe. I saw on social media recently that you did. Like, I want to be like, hello.

Andréa Jones [00:25:10]:
Hi. I thought about this for two seconds. You know what I mean? And I didn't just put it into ChatGPT. And I think that there's something there. I think that there's something very powerful about the people who feel human. And the scary part to this, this is where I go back to, like, AI anxiety versus Opportunity is the smarter that AI is, the harder it is going to become to tell what's actually human or not. But I think there's, there's going to be signs and then it feels like Uncanny Valley, which is like you look at like an alien looking creature, humanoid creature and you go this feels like it should be human but it's not that. That's how we're feeling right now.

Andréa Jones [00:25:52]:
All right, so this whole episode was all about this like identity crisis that marketing is going through right now. But I don't want it to be like jump scare. Everything is awful because next week I'm going to talk about my 2026 predictions. This is my favorite episode to record every single year. I put so much research into it and I very intentionally skip over other people's predictions. I can, I actually already saw them coming out and I was like, this feels early but I realized this year I'm late. I usually record these episodes in October. This year I'm doing in November.

Andréa Jones [00:26:23]:
So I'm really purposely not looking at other people's predictions. These are from Andrea. I listened back through all past, I think it's six years now of predictions. And then I use what I've learned this year in marketing. Looking at myself, looking at my consulting clients, my, my done for you clients and now I have all of the clients in the agency. Like I've been looking at their marketing strategies and then I predict what's going to happen in 2026 and I'm pretty good. Like it's my Ms. Cleo moment for sure.

Andréa Jones [00:26:52]:
But, but I think that the next two years specifically are going to redefine marketing. It's going to be a very pivotal, pivotal moment in marketing. I'm low key, scared about it and also excited. So anyways, next week I'll get into those predictions. Make sure you're subscribed to. Stay tuned for that because I'm really excited about it. And then the week after that I'm going to talk about what's new. What's new for me.

Andréa Jones [00:27:14]:
I've already talked a little bit about Uncommon Marketing Agency, but I'm also building a brand new product that I'm so excited about that's really going to feed into all of this. So stay tuned for that. That's all for today. I'll be back next week. Bye for now.