In my last role as VP of Marketing for a top music and comedy live entertainment company, I proposed a branding campaign titled: “BE THERE WHEN.”

Be fully alive.

In the room (stadium, arena, club).

When anything can happen.

That’s the power of live entertainment: what happens on that stage, field, or court will only happen once.

Here’s my thesis: AI won’t kill creativity. But I do think it will change the kind of creativity we trust, crave, and pay for …. and that’s where live events, sports, and documentaries rise to the top.

We live in an odd era of creativity — and capital.

More creators are launching brave, resonant, and genre-shattering work. I believe this quote to be true:

“[Today there is an] earthshaking drama where angels peer expectantly over the human shoulders to see what is coming out of the palette or typewriter.” (Calvin Seerveld)

Similarly, more funders are looking for brave, resonate, and model-proving work. To quote one funder:

“The problem isn’t funding; the problem is finding creators that have a model that can be tested and scaled. There’s plenty of money available to things that work.”

And yet … projects stall, relationships break down, and dreams fade out before they catch fire.

The deeper problem facing publicity isn’t timing. It’s that no amount of pitching can overcome the collapse of the traditional media landscape:

When once-powerful media companies are auctioned off for a dollar...

When conglomerate names read like your spacebar is broken...

When social posts have more reach than newspapers or television ...

When there are fewer outlets with less influence...

It’s a crisis for anyone trying to get attention in a world drowning in content.

We’ve all been there — learning lessons the hard way, in real time, after the deal is done. You walk away from the meeting, review the terms, and suddenly you’re quarterbacking the conversation from your couch, muttering, “I wish I’d asked…”

We know the feeling. We’ve lived it, advised through it, and heard it from dozens of filmmakers who’ve said the same thing: “I didn’t ask the right questions — and it cost me.”

Nashville officially became known as “Music City” in the 1950s, but the legend behind the name traces back to the historic Fisk University Jubilee Singers. In 1873, this all-African American choir toured the U.S. and Europe to raise funds for their struggling school. According to reports, Queen Victoria, upon hearing their performance, remarked that these singers must hail from a “city of music.”

We create with others. Always. Creativity thrives in community, not in isolation. We take risks that scare us — and stretch us. Safety is the enemy of significance. We don’t chase red carpets or algorithms. We chase what matters.

I don’t want musicians crafting songs that are “safe for the whole family,” filmmakers recycling the same Hollywood formula, or authors deleting the sentence that might make an editor sweat. I definitely don’t want marketers creating content that pleases but never provokes.

We don’t need safe. We need smart. And today, smart means unconventional.

If we want to see this industry flourish, get audiences back in theaters setting down their devices to pay attention and really watch and consume and enjoy our movies and shows. If you want stories to reach the widest possible audience then we need to bring the audience back to the table. Make it a first thought, not an afterthought. And we need to have better alignment. Everyone working toward the benefit of all stakeholders, and that especially includes creators and audiences.

That’s the uphill battle. We’ve trained ourselves to check our devices every six minutes. Theaters ask us to pause that impulse — and that’s both their biggest challenge and — maybe — their greatest opportunity.

If you’ve been awake (and alive) for the past 25 years, you know content creation has exploded in all forms and formats. There’s a reason Seth Godin, even 15 years ago, called it “the most cluttered marketplace in history.” The “clutter” of 2010 looks minimal compared to today’s flood of Substacks, podcasts, memes, books, videos, films, songs, series, essays, poems, illustrations, photographs, and articles pushed to our devices every day.