Midway through a fireside chat with Ann Handley at The Uprising 2025, Mark Schaefer leaned in, hands open, and said:
“When I started writing, I was very buttoned down. I came from a corporate environment and was creating what I thought was ideal content for my ideal personas. But I was just making made-up content for made-up people. When I started to relax and add my personality, that’s when my ideal audience found me.”
The room laughed. I did too, but then it landed hard.
As a former journalist, I’ve spent years hiding behind clean structure, well-cited stats, and expert quotes. As a marketer creating content for B2B clients, I've followed the same formula: Safe, Professional, Impersonal.
I can dissect benchmarks in my sleep, write for persona customer needs, and tell other people’s stories until the cows come home. But ask me to tell my story, and suddenly, the screen looks more like a confession booth.
Personas aren’t bad. They’re just not enough.
Don’t get me wrong. Personas definitely have a place. At their best, they’re a hypothesis, based on deep research and real insight. I wrote about how AI can help add real depth to the desk research part, and how I would always want to add real customer voices to them here.
But there has been a rise in “one-click AI content engines” that simply ask for top-level detail about the industry and target persona, and provide a top-level strategy and content calendar.
It's incredibly efficient. But the outputs are incredibly hollow.
The Johari Window, and the mask I forgot I was wearing
During my MBA I learned about a tool called the Johari Window. It's a framework that maps what you share versus what you hide. My “public self” has always been curated: clean grammar, third-person voice, low risk. That’s the journalist in me.
But listening to Mark and Ann swap stumbles and breakthroughs, it hit me, I’ve been starving my audience of the one thing AI can’t replicate: lived experience.
Ann nailed it:
“It takes an enormous amount of emotional investment to create something of value.”
Translation: the more you hide, the less it matters.
AI isn’t the enemy. But it’s not the author.
I use AI every day. It’s a great scout, a fantastic assistant, a solid second brain. But it’s just that, a tool. The magic only happens when I show up, too:
- Desk research? Let the AI find the obscure stat or quote I missed (it helped me find the one from Mark above, I had misremembered who had coined the phrase "made-up content for made-up people"!).
- Reality check? Actually talk to customers. Confirm or kill assumptions.
Human layer? Add the stuff only I can: the stories of the failed product launch, the tough feedback, the small win that changed everything.
Skip step three and I’m back to square one: made-up content for made-up people.
Your personal brand isn’t cosplay
I saw a debate recently between Adam Grant and Mark Schaefer: Are personal brands just influencer fluff? Mark’s take stuck with me:
Personal brand is earned trust at scale.
That’s it. No gym selfies or meal snaps required. Just enough of you that people trust there’s a real brain, and heart, behind the words.
I don’t need to share my macros. But I do need to let people see how I think. And yeah, sometimes, where I mess up.
My 2025 challenge (maybe yours, too):
- Write one thing a month that scares me. If I’m not a little nervous about hitting publish, I’m probably not being real enough.
- Show the messy middle. The half-baked draft. The “what am I even doing?” moment. That’s where the gold usually lives.
- Let AI carry bricks, not draw blueprints. Research, summarize, assist, but I own the design. And the weird flourishes.
Final thought
I’m done writing for the cardboard cutout in the content brief. I’m writing for the real humans. The ones wrestling with AI. The ones who want to build something that matters. The ones who quietly worry they’re not “expert” enough.
If that’s you, pull up a chair.
I’ll try to bring the unpolished stories. You bring the real questions. Let’s kill the phrase made-up content for made-up people - for good.
