I recently read a prediction piece about what the next aspirational body type will be (I am a millennial woman, after all). The author argues that muscular bodies are coming into fashion because they're now one of the only types you still have to work to achieve. We all know that in the 1900s, being overweight and pale was a sign of wealth because it meant you could afford food and didn't have to work outdoors. Over the past few decades, modern science has made it easy to be toned (lipo, botox), curvaceous (plastic surgery, fillers), and, of course, skinny (GLP-1s). But there’s still no truly “easy” way to build muscle. You have to spend hours in the gym and money to spend on lean protein and vegetables. And so, because it requires free time, disposable income, and actual discipline, it will soon be a status symbol to be visibly strong.

Queue, “And here’s what that taught me about B2B marketing.” (Sorry.)

AI has done to written content what GLP-1s did to weight loss. A junior marketer with a Claude subscription and a dream can pump out dozens of articles a day with the perfect format, structure, and keywords to hit their target audience. Which means, predictably, that content-driven marketing tactics (SEO, the company blog) have started to lose their power. There are still companies that are seeing growth through traditional content channels, but this is becoming the exception simply because it's far too easy to create marketing content. No one (hyperbole) is making meaningful buying decisions based on a five-word Google search. They are looking to recommendations from an AI that has context on their preferences over generic search results, and to peer recommendations over a testimonial on your home page. Emailing a peer for a recommendation may take longer than reading a testimonial, but it results in a recommendation that we feel much more confident in. We understand, on some level, that nothing worth having comes easy.

This is also why we’re seeing more companies standing up media arms, launching podcasts, and doing video. Of course, part of it is that AI cannot (yet) create high-quality video. But there’s also an understanding from the audience (conscious or not) that these forms of media take a lot of work, and we favor companies that will put in that work. Plus, if a company has the resources to do video, they're probably well-capitalized, and a buyer would rather work with a company they know has longevity.

Tanay Kothari, the CEO of Wispr, recently shared that for their India launch, they wrapped 100 rickshaws in Wispr branding and sent them into Bangalore traffic. He points out that American tech companies are burning through millions on digital ads to reach Bangalore's tech community, all bidding on the same keywords and running identical LinkedIn campaigns, while the physical attention of an entire city sits in gridlock, staring at the back of a rickshaw.

For most of the 20th century, if you wanted to reach a mass audience, you bought physical space (billboards, print, transit ads). As demand for OOH advertising increased, it became more expensive (and also difficult to measure in terms of ROI and attribution). When digital advertising came along in the early 2000s and scaled through mobile in the early 2010s, it offered a lower entry point along with better targeting and attribution. Advertisers eagerly flocked to Google Adwords and the Facebook ad network because they were the cheaper alternative.

In the past decade, digital advertising has followed the same trajectory as the billboards it replaced: advertisers flocked, and costs climbed. As the internet has become more complex, targeting and attribution frameworks have also broken down. All of a sudden (20 years later), the cheaper alternative has become the more expensive one. In recent conversations with other marketers, OOH, direct mail, and in-person events come up more often (and with more excitement) than any digital ad channel, lead magnet, or AEO tool.

It feels like the channel that is most effective at any given time is the one that requires the most effort, or the most creativity, or the most resources. Not because effort is inherently virtuous, but because it is self-selecting: most people won't do it, which means the ones who do will have less competition.