The Marketing Companion First or Fast Follower? 3 AI-Era Rules for Marketers
Feb 23, 2026
Mark Schaefer, a marketing consultant and digital pioneer, shares stories from early internet wins to modern AI shifts. He covers ethics and legal risks in AI, the debate around being first versus fast follower, and why 85% AI solutions can fail. He also outlines three AI-era rules for marketers and the need to keep listening to customers.
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Building One Of The First Corporate Intranets
- Mark Schaefer built an early reverse-auction intranet at Alcoa to buy and sell scrap, installing terminals at customer sites because they lacked computers.
- That homemade e-business system saved millions and led Mark to run a new company-wide e-business department.
AI Follows Earlier Tech Cycle Patterns
- Digital waves repeat: panic, fragmentation with many tools, then consolidation and a bubble — the same pattern held for internet, social, and now AI.
- Mark sees the AI bubble as healthy and inevitable, mirroring past tech cycles that produced both innovation and bad actors.
Ethics Problems Repeat With Each Tech Shift
- Unethical shortcuts recur in new tech eras: Mark recalls early black-hat SEO and now sees large AI firms knowingly scraping content and risking lawsuits.
- He cites his own pending class-action award against Anthropic as an example of these harms.