More content, less differentiation. What we discussed at the MORE webinar.

Tuesday, May 12, as part of the activities of the international MORE network, of which MiRò is a member, we attended a webinar that put a question on the table that anyone working in communication and marketing can no longer postpone: what happens to the value of an agency when artificial intelligence can do well, and in just a few seconds, what until yesterday was the exclusive expertise of professionals?

Answering that question was Joeri Billast, author of The Future CMO, a book about marketing in the AI era featuring a foreword by Philip Kotler.

The moat that no longer exists

There’s one word Billast uses often: moat. The moat that once protected agencies from competition.

The old moat was made of measurable things: faster outputs, lower cost per asset, more channels covered, better-crafted campaigns. These were real advantages, built on skills and processes that were difficult to replicate.

Today, that moat has dried up. Same tools. Same prompts. Same outputs. Technical differentiation has collapsed because AI has made it accessible to everyone.

According to Billast, the new moat is made of something else entirely: a defensible point of view, verifiable trust signals, a community that grows over time, and strategic judgment — not output volume.

Expertise has become invisible

Let’s start with an uncomfortable fact: AI has democratized technical quality. A junior copywriter with a good prompt can produce accurate and coherent text in the same amount of time it takes a senior professional to open the document. The gap between average execution and excellent execution has narrowed to the point of almost disappearing.

This does not mean professionals are no longer needed. It means technical expertise has stopped being a differentiator.

As Joeri Billast explained clearly: “AI does not solve a lack of leadership. It amplifies it.”

If your strategy is weak, AI will deliver weak results faster. If your positioning is generic, AI will help you look even more like your competitors with less effort. The problem is not the tool. The problem is whether you have something to say that nobody else can say in your place.

The three shifts reshaping the role

Billast structures his reasoning around three transitions that marketing professionals must embrace.

From attention to trust.
Clicks, views, reach: easy to obtain, increasingly meaningless. Trust is the only asset AI cannot generate, scale, or automate. It is built interaction after interaction, promise after promise kept. And it is measurable: in the price premium a client is willing to pay, in how quickly they return after a problem, and in how often they recommend the brand spontaneously.

From volume to point of view.
Publishing more is not a strategy. It’s noise. The test is simple and brutal: if a competitor could place their logo on your content and it would still look like theirs, you do not have a point of view. You have competent but interchangeable content.

From tools to strategic leadership.
The role of the CMO is being fundamentally redefined. It is no longer about overseeing campaigns and production. It is about building trust, designing communities, and translating complexity into value.

From audience to community: how it is really measured

One of the most practical parts of the webinar focused on the distinction between an audience and a community.

An audience listens and consumes. A community contributes, discusses, and generates content.

To measure the health of a community, Billast proposes a framework called the Community Health Calculator, which completely overturns traditional metrics:

• Participation Rate: active members over total members. Not followers, but people who actually do something. It is the difference between genuine engagement and passive following.
• Content Quality Index: user-generated content versus brand-generated content. The more the community produces, the less the brand has to control the narrative. It is the sign that the story has truly become shared.
• Member Retention: retention curves at 90 and 365 days. It is not enough for people to arrive; they have to stay. This is the indicator of sustained value over time.
• Value Creation Ratio: the ratio between community-led content and brand-led content. When this flips, the shift from broadcast to co-creation has happened. It is the signal of a mature community.

The premise behind all of this is simple: most agencies measure reach.

Future-ready CMOs measure community health.

The AI Visibility Check: four questions to assess your brand now

Billast also introduced a practical tool to apply immediately, called the AI Visibility Check: four questions to ask your brand — or a client’s brand — this week.

01 — Is your brand citeable by AI?
When ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity answer questions in your sector, does your name appear? If you don’t know the answer, that is already an answer.

02 — Do you have a defensible point of view?
Could a competitor place their logo on your content and make it look like theirs?

03 — Is your credibility verifiable in 30 seconds?
Testimonials, named clients, endorsements: are they immediately visible, or buried deep within the website? A stranger should be able to trust you in less than half a minute.

04 — Are you optimizing for trust or for attention?
What is celebrated internally? A viral post, or a concrete result achieved for a client?

The answers reveal where attention and investment are truly being directed.

MORE Community

Being part of MORE means having access to conversations like this: exchanges between professionals operating in different contexts but facing the same questions. Marketing is going through a phase that Billast describes as one of reconstruction, not simple evolution.

AI has changed the rules. But the game remains human.

Success comes from trust, from a clear point of view, and from the ability to build relationships that withstand time and competitive pressure.

“When content becomes infinite, trust becomes the filter.” That may be the most valuable takeaway from the entire meeting.