Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.
If a product changes faster than its customers can keep up with, is content the only constant that can save it?
Having a newborn has led me to consuming more TV than I thought humanly possible. I’ve largely leaned into the baby brain and stuck to completely mindless reality television. (Love is Blind has surely done more intellectual damage to the human race than all of the AI labs combined).
However, I have consumed some highly intellectual content, such as…the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the latest MCU show, VisionQuest (and its precursor, WandaVision), there’s a running theme involving the Ship of Theseus.
To get Philosophy 101 on you for a second, the Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that asks: if you replace every plank on a ship, one at a time, is it still the same ship? What gives something a persistent identity?
This, like all things, made me think about AI and its relationship with marketing. Every company is a speedrun of the Ship of Theseus right now.
The biggest marketing challenge I had at Dock before going on leave was the rate of change of our product. Our developers are building exponentially faster with AI. Every day, one plank on the Dock ship is replaced with a new one. If you hadn’t checked out the product for a year, you’d think it was a brand new ship. And there are ten competing ships that also change daily.
That rate of product change is going to be a challenge for all B2B companies and their customers. Snapchat’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, and many others, have stated that software isn’t a moat anymore. Anyone can build a ship now. Distribution and attention are at a premium.
It’s our job in marketing to give our customers one consistent experience of our ship, plus a solid enough understanding of where that ship is heading so people want to get on board.
I’m not convinced product marketing alone can do that job. Even if I could keep up with announcing every new feature, our customers would never be able to absorb that much ongoing change.
I see content marketing as a big part of the solution here. If product launches tell our customers about the planks, our content tells them about the ship: where it’s going, why it’s built the way it is, and who’s steering it.
Parasocial relationship-building content like our podcast does a lot more to help our customers understand our vision of the future of their work and how we fit into it. We recently closed one of our biggest customers ever and our main champion on the deal explicitly called out a few things our founder had said on the podcast.
That philosophical alignment was potentially more important than any specific feature—it’s pretty easy to add any missing features to the roadmap now. Planks are replaceable, but the story, the point of view, and the crew aren’t.
I certainly don’t have it all figured out yet, but I’m betting that in a world of constantly swapped planks, the companies that tell their story well are the ones people will still recognize and trust.
- Eric
📆 Upcoming Superpath Community Events
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Slack AMA (Today!): A live Slack AMA with Ariel Rubin, VP Content at Air, on Air's creativity-first content strategy, balancing viral stunts with business results, and scaling a content team.
Superpath Social (Nov 4): A fun virtual networking event with other content marketers. We'll divide everyone into two 20-minute breakout groups, so you'll have a chance to meet a bunch of people within the hour.
Change My Mind (Nov 11): We'll debate two to three hot takes we're hearing in the world of content marketing. Be prepared to change your mind!
Superpath Social (Dec 2): A fun virtual networking event with other content marketers. We'll divide everyone into two 20-minute breakout groups, so you'll have a chance to meet a bunch of people within the hour.
AI Show & Tell (Dec 9): Two to three community members will jump on to showcase how they’re toying around with AI.
💬 Great Slack Threads This Week
Here were some great discussions in the Superpath Slack community this week:
I’m looking into using Claude to help sales/BD folks create content without me. Specifically trying to remove AI tells from copy and ensure alignment with voice and tone guidelines. Any recs for preexisting skills or am I better off writing my own?
I finally saw the collab feature appear on my LinkedIn. For anyone who has been using this, have you noticed a difference in reach and engagement? Or basically same as tagging someone and them reposting?
We're backfilling a senior copywriter role and leadership is pushing back on using AI instead of filling the role. My team deeply understands why this needs to be a human, in house role, but on top of explaining how important that is, I need to come with real data. Can anyone point me to resources about how AI content performs worse when there aren’t human guardrails?
📙 The Reading List
Here are some links that got the Superpath Slack community talking this week:
Here is what women want from AI. | Elena Verna (a response to that New York Times article)
💼 Who's Hiring?
Check out the Superpath Job Board — a mix of jobs we've curated from the open web, plus exclusive featured job listings from companies looking to hire the best content marketers.
This week’s featured roles:
⭐️ Virayo is hiring a Content Marketing Specialist (Remote — US, $70K–90K)
⭐️ Grasp is hiring a Marketing Lead (Onsite — London, £50K–85K)
⭐️ Hearst Media Production Group is hiring a Video Audience Development Manager (Freelance — LA, Charlotte, $95K–105K)
⭐️ MediaJel is hiring a Managing Editor, SEO (Remote — Global, $68K–75K)
Jobs are posted on the job board 48 hours late. Superpath Pro members get them within hours of posting.
Want to post a role? Feature your job here.
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