Episode 384 - Why Authenticity Is Your Best Marketing Move in the Age of AI | Christian Pinkston

**Christian Pinkston** (0:00)
11 years ago, I was in Dubai on a business trip, and staying in a hotel in the Persian Gulf, and I went outside late at night, went in the waters, kind of swimming, it was dark, no one was out there. I missed the sign that said Riptide, and I realized after a few minutes, I was in trouble. It's, this thing starts carrying me out, and I'm fighting, and I'm swimming, I'm doing everything that I can to get out of it. I'm like swallowing seawater, and run out of steam, and just realize, I'm dying. This is it. This is how I'm going out. You know, there's a thing that you hear, you see the life flash before your eyes. My life flashed before my eyes, and it was a horror story. And I realized, like, I had been pretending for decades to be someone I wasn't, to impress people in my life, so they'd think that I was worth something, so then I would think I was worth something, and I just crashed down in that moment, and I realized my life is a lie.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:08)
Bold visionaries, faithful disruptors, some call them crazy, but they are called to create, under his power, for his glory. The Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast.
In this episode, we have the CEO of Pinkston, Christian Pinkston, shares his dramatic story of a tragic accident that exposed decades of shame-driven identity. He also talks about how through brokenness, confession and grace, he was rebuilt, and now pours into young men.

**Justin Forman** (1:38)
Christian, we live in a day of massive disruption, so I have to start with the most basic fundamental question. Before we get to AI, before we get to this, what does marketing even mean today? Like, what does marketing mean in the world that we live in?

**Christian Pinkston** (1:54)
It's an impossible question to ask because it means something different to everyone. It's completely undefined. And so, rather than waiting in to...
rather than waiting in to business speak, I mean, it's just good to sit down and have a conversation.
Who are you? Tell me your story. Tell me what you're trying to achieve. What's the goal? What's the objective? And what is standing in your way? Of reaching it. And I mean, marketing at the end of the day is one of the tools that can be used to remove the barriers that are standing between you and your objective. Now, of course, you have to have a product and a price, and you have to have, you know, a viable business. But if you can't...

**Justin Forman** (3:09)
Can't tell a story.

**Christian Pinkston** (3:10)
Yeah, well, if you can't, yeah, if you can't explain it in a compelling way, and the right people that need to be influenced don't see it or hear it, then it's all for not.

**Justin Forman** (3:22)
You know, I love the simplicity of it when you break it down to story.

**Christian Pinkston** (3:25)
Oh, totally. It's all about story.

**Justin Forman** (3:27)
It is. And like everybody, I think, I think story sometimes, it has bright lights, it casts a long shadow. But when I think of like marketing, and I think about story, I think so many things. There's brand, but it's really, it's just this idea like it's the voice of strategy. When I think of content and storytelling, like, what is it? It's sharing the strategy, the goal, the thing you're trying to accomplish, just in various different forms, but in the form that I think traces back to so much of our both childhood, but also decades ago.
It all starts with campfires and telling stories.

**Christian Pinkston** (4:05)
Yeah. And story is proof. It's proof of concept. It's proof it works. Like, don't tell me what you're going to do for me, or what your product is going to do for me. Show me the real world impact.
Demonstrate it to me so that I can believe it, and then I'll try it.

**Justin Forman** (4:32)
So when you think about that idea in the AI world that we live in, just take us into, as an entrepreneur, as a practitioner, in some ways, it's helping others with marketing. But how is marketing being disrupted by AI right now?

**Christian Pinkston** (4:48)
It's really a massive opportunity and it's a massive challenge.
It's a massive opportunity in that you can do more with less, quicker, cheaper. You can create content, whether it's written or visual or video or audio, it's insane what you can do.
You can run a marketing effort with a fraction of the time, money, manpower that would have been necessary five years ago or even maybe a year ago. The pace at which it is moving is mind boggling, but it's a massive challenge for two reasons. One, we have obliterated the sense of authenticity, and so it's impossible to believe what you see anymore. Like, what is real? And you can almost say or demonstrate anything that you want to, and so now it's really hard to believe. Like, the trust factor is just seriously diminished as technology is able to create, out of thin air, anything that you want it to. And so I think we will hit a point where the pendulum will swing back, and people will crave and pay for and prefer the organic, the authentic, the real, the handcrafted. And I think that's where we're going, and I think we're already starting to see, I think we're starting to see some of that even swing back now.