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

Three stories about platforms, advertising, and control. Are tech companies doing anything surprising, or are marketers simply expecting these platforms to act against their own interests?
1. ChatGPT Expands Advertising
Angle: Are we making too big a deal about AI advertising?
Google already mixes AI recommendations with advertising. Consumers seem comfortable with it. Why should ChatGPT be different?



Do people see ChatGPT as a trusted adviser or simply another search engine?



The YouTube strategy: Could advertising intentionally make the free experience less attractive so more people upgrade?



Question: Is ChatGPT advertising a threat to trust, or just the next version of Google Search?
2. Google Changes Its Content Guidance
Angle: Visibility is the new traffic.
Marketers are realizing that appearing in Google doesn't necessarily mean getting a click.



Content discovery is becoming a brand play, not just a traffic play.



The challenge is measurement. How do we demonstrate value when people see our brand but never visit our website?



Question: If nobody clicks, how do we know our content marketing is working? And does it matter?
3. Meta Bans TikTok Advertising
Angle: Why should Meta promote its competition?
Meta is a private company. Why should it help TikTok grow?



Isn't it perfectly reasonable to protect your own platform?



The wrinkle: What about third-party brands trying to promote their own TikTok content?



Question: Is this starting the banning war of 2027?
Marketing Winners and Losers
Robert's Winner/Loser: Publicis
The Day the CEO Stopped Being Scared. Publicis is bypassing traditional agency pitches and selling AI transformation directly to anxious CEOs. Robert says this is a long-term loss and no way to sell trust.
Joe's Loser: Norwegian Cruise Line
Norwegian has talented onboard performers but isn't doing enough to build them into creators and influencers. A missed opportunity to grow audiences, build loyalty, and attract talent.
Rants and Raves
Robert's Rant: AI Cute-Washing
Cute is the worst way to sell long-term trust.
Joe's Rave: Sylvester Stallone's Memoir
Stallone's life, career, persistence, and creative journey.
Article Links
ChatGPT Expands Advertising | Mashable
Google Changes Its Content Guidance | MarTech
Meta Bans TikTok Ads in Seven Countries | TechRepublic
Publicis Is Selling Directly to AI-Anxious CEOs | Digiday
Big Tech Is Cutewashing Its AI Agents | Fast Company
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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.thetilt.com/join-tilt-newsletter
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

In this special Ask Me Anything episode of This Old Marketing, Robert and Joe put each other in the hot seat with questions about marketing, business, and how they ended up here.
They cover what's changed in marketing over the years, the biggest business decisions of their lives, why Robert does consulting at all, and how Joe started Content Marketing Institute. Along the way, they get a little personal and share some stories you might not have heard before.
Stick around until the end. A few of the best questions, and most unexpected answers, have nothing to do with 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.
-------
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.thetilt.com/join-tilt-newsletter
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

AI is getting more powerful, publishers want their communities back, and marketers are apparently becoming engineers.
In this episode of This Old Marketing, Joe and Robert start with OpenAI and the growing concerns around increasingly capable AI systems.  Is it marketing...or theater...or real concerns? The boys lean toward marketing.
Then, OpenWeb launches Reddit-style forums that publishers can build directly into their own sites. For years, publishers watched conversations move from their comment sections to platforms like Reddit and Facebook. With search traffic under pressure, could community once again become one of the most important assets publishers own?
Marketing Winners and Rants & Raves
Joe's Marketing Winner: Meta and Muse
Joe gives Meta the win for understanding that AI adoption isn't only a technology problem. It's an emotional one. By associating its AI with a cute, friendly character, Meta is making the technology feel less intimidating and more approachable.
Is it brilliant positioning, or the AI equivalent of putting a cartoon character on a cereal box?
Robert's Marketing Winner: Visit Sweden
Robert gives the win to Visit Sweden and its "Introvert Travel Agency," a campaign built specifically around travelers who would rather avoid crowds, forced social interaction and the traditional tourist experience.
Joe's Commentary: Anthropic, Religion and the Marketing of AI Acceptance
Joe looks at The New York Times report on Anthropic's private meetings with theologians, philosophers and religious thinkers about Claude, morality and the possibility of AI consciousness.
Robert's Rant: The Marketing Engineer
The Wall Street Journal looks at the rise of the "marketing engineer," a title for marketers combining AI, automation and traditional marketing judgment.
Links
OpenAI / Astra safety
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/technology/openai-astra-safety.html
OpenWeb launches forums for publishers
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/30/openweb-forums-publishers-reddit
Joe's Marketing Winner: Meta Muse
https://www.theverge.com/column/999999/optimizer-meta-muse-ai-cute
Joe's Commentary: Anthropic, Claude and Religion
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html
Robert's Marketing Winner: Visit Sweden's Introvert Travel Agency
https://adage.com/creativity/work/aa-visit-sweden-introvert-travel-agency/
Robert's Rant: Marketers Are Rebranding as Engineers to Survive the AI Era
https://www.wsj.com/cmo-today/marketers-are-rebranding-as-engineers-to-survive-the-ai-era-2938574b
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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.
-------
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.thetilt.com/join-tilt-newsletter
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

Content marketing is changing, and Joe and Robert believe the traditional model may finally be reaching the end of the road.
In this special episode of This Old Marketing, the guys look ahead to the state of content marketing in 2027 and present two different, but complementary, models for what comes next.
Joe goes deep on the Trust Portfolio, a strategy for organizations to build a diversified collection of trusted human voices instead of relying almost entirely on the corporate brand. He walks through how companies can identify the audiences where trust matters most, find the right people to serve them and build human-led content franchises designed to create ongoing audience relationships.
Robert introduces The Plural Brand, his framework for a world where AI makes every company capable of producing polished, professional and increasingly similar content. Instead of trying to manufacture one perfectly consistent brand voice, Robert argues that organizations need distinctiveness, multiple credible human voices and the ability to earn trust one audience at a time.
Two frameworks. Two perspectives. One big question: What does content marketing become when creating more content is no longer the answer?
Resources from the episode
Joe Pulizzi: How to Build a Trust Portfolio
Includes the full article, the free Trust Portfolio Field Guide and the companion Trust Portfolio Worksheet.
https://www.thetilt.com/marketing/how-to-build-a-trust-portfolio
Robert Rose: The Plural Brand
Includes Robert's free Plural Brand eBook.
https://www.seventhbear.com/the-plural-brand/
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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.
-------
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.thetilt.com/join-tilt-newsletter
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 kick off the show with a question that's getting harder to ignore: when the CEOs building the world's most powerful AI systems start saying development may need to slow down, how concerned should everyone else be? New warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman bring the AI safety debate back to the forefront.
Then the guys dig into some troubling new content marketing research from Andy Crestodina and Orbit Media. Of 1,042 marketers surveyed, just 14% say their blogs deliver strong results. AI may be making content faster and easier to produce, but the strategies most closely associated with strong performance, including original research, expert collaboration and human editing, are actually being used less often.
Meanwhile, Perplexity is going big on creators, working with hundreds of influencers and running campaigns involving more than 100 creators and multi-million-dollar budgets. Is this further proof that as AI makes content creation cheaper, trusted human voices become even more valuable?
Joe's marketing winner is Meta and its work showing how Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses can help blind and low-vision users gain more independence. Robert's marketing loser is Nike, which is being removed from the S&P 100 after 18 years as the company struggles with a dramatic decline in market value.
Robert raves about HBO's new DC series Lanterns, while Joe recommends Harlan Coben's new book, Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft, part memoir and part practical look at the realities of the writing process.
Episode Links:
AI CEOs revive debate over risks to humanity Andy Crestodina's content marketing research Perplexity is betting big on creators Meta AI glasses for blind veterans Nike's S&P 100 removal and Dow concerns Lanterns on HBO Harlan Coben's Plot Twist
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.
-------
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