AI isn’t the death of marketers, but it is the death of lazy marketing
AI is not the first seismic shift that marketers have faced. And it won’t be the last.
From the digital revolution of the 1990s, to the rise of social media in the 2000s, followed by a data and automation wave in the 2010s, marketers have faced moments that created a skills gap.
Every major shift in marketing has been about power moving from the marketer to media, to consumers, to data, and now to machines.
The marketers who thrive are the ones who embrace the new power early and learn to use it with humanity and purpose. Those who cling to the old models become obsolete.
AI excels at:
Automating repetitive tasks (reporting, data segmentation, A/B testing)
Generating content drafts, visuals, and campaign variations at scale
Analysing large datasets to reveal insights about customer behaviour
Personalising experiences in real time
These are all things that used to take marketers hours to do. As a result some traditional marketing roles will shrink, change dramatically and even disappear.
But what AI can’t do (yet) is understand:
Human emotion and motivation in context
Brand nuance, tone, and cultural sensitivity
How to build trust and long-term relationships
The moral and strategic choices that define great marketing
AI can automate execution, but not empathy. The marketer’s job shifts from doing to directing - from writing copy or scheduling posts, to setting creative direction, strategy, and values, then using AI as an amplifier.
The new marketer will be AI-literate understanding the tools, prompt them well, and critique their output. They will be strategic - focusing on insight, brand and customer understanding. They will build the human stories, communities and cultures that AI can’t.
The best new marketers will be brand strategists, editors, curators, and psychologists, not campaign operators.
Join us at Private Equity Insights, 26th November, to learn how using our proprietary, analytical methodologies, powered by AI, unlocks powerful, actionable insights and is a catalyst for a new breed of marketer.
