No Shame in Producing Content At Scale, Long as You Treat it The Same Old Way.

Online this 2026 has become saturated with a folly of content none of us needed to make, opinions assembled from average of other opinions, worth their production cost, nada. The idea that capturing enough eyeballs for long enough would eventually produce commercial outcomes has crumbled, as AI makes synthetic attention cheap and engagement figures that we used to report on mean less now that they arrive click farm to dashboard.

It’s also finally exposed the newswire syndications, the tier-n publication logo portfolio, authorless articles, video content with little substance, and the ever-famous pay-to-play awards for how little any of it was ever worth.

Good news is that’s done something to everything that isn’t banal: the value of true content has appreciated, content with a named voice that’s sometimes wrong and willing to defend a position, answering real issues without forcing-in a keyword brief.

Today’s investments need to generate content that not only doesn’t look artificial, but also doesn’t look like marketing: an editorial voice that the industry follows because it relates to them and says something they don’t already know, supported with the distinctive brand assets Byron Sharp tells everyone to codify and repeat past the point where you yourself are bored sick of them.

There’s no shame in producing at scale with new tools, but how do we produce and still get results? the answer, especially for brands whose offerings are difficult to explain, is to find the human story underneath all the jargon and technicalities and commit to telling it, consistently, over time, without turning every piece into a battlecards. All we need is a named voice and a schedule to do it on repeat, with a face and a format people come back to, running brand marketing like a tv programming operation. Watch the ones managing channels outside their official ones as a tv programme, with consistent formats and a theme driven by real issues discussed idiosyncratically, in opinions that you don’t always agree with. There’s no magic involved, strong brands cultivate a trusted voice until they become their own media network, naturally or by acquisition. That presence pays off two fold: it makes your paid advertising more efficient against that same audience costing less to convert, and puts you among the handful of sources a buyer’s AIIA filters when it does their research.

HubSpot acquired The Hustle, built a media operation next to its software business and reaches millions of marketers. Shopify put up the reality series 'I Quit' that ran in 2020 and followed people who left their jobs to start a business; not one Shopify logo, episodes selling the idea of starting a business which happens to be their product. John Collison, Stripe co-founder, created his own show 'Cheeky Pint' where he speaks with tech founders over a drink; Collison talks to founders, Stripe sells to founders, do you see it?

So, to those who question why so much of the budget sits in brand when performance produces numbers and content can now be produced cheaply and at scale: brands with a following their market wants to keep, a voice worth listening to and a story that isn’t always reaching for a sales bat and a logo slap, will build salience and convert customers more cheaply and hold on to them for longer. And this will show up in the numbers your board are happy with, one or two quarters later than you would like.