AI is on the rise, prompting the question at the forefront of many conversations: ‘Will AI take our jobs?’ This query is highly pertinent, and business experts are eager to delve into it. There is a possibility that AI could advance to the point of assuming certain roles… could marketing be among them? Our experts explored this possibility. Read on to discover the insights of marketing leaders.
Global Marketing Director, Retail
Although AI can automate certain aspects of marketing, it’s improbable that it will entirely replace human marketing roles. Instead, AI is poised to bolster marketers by managing repetitive tasks like data analysis, segmentation, and campaign optimisation. This allows marketers to concentrate on strategy, creativity, and cultivating customer relationships. Furthermore, AI still grapples with replicating human intuition, empathy, and comprehension of intricate social dynamics, underscoring the ongoing necessity for human marketers to interpret data, craft engaging narratives, and adjust strategies in response to evolving market dynamics.
High Digital
I am the founder of High Digital – a software development business specialising in data products. Some of our major clients operate in the Marketing/Martech sector, for whom we are developing AI-powered tools. From our standpoint, I would assert that AI will not specifically lead to the demise of marketing jobs. Presently, the advancements we are pursuing stem from astute marketers aiming to enhance processes and revolutionise insight-driven strategies. Nonetheless, there exists a distinct possibility that AI will substantially alter all occupations in the future, in which case, the answer could indeed be yes…
Application Centre Ltd
Principal Recruiter & Director, Archers Recruitment Group
My firm, Archers Recruitment Group recruit AI and Machine Learning hires for a number of disciplines. Marketing is one of those.
Rather than AI replacing marketing jobs, aside from routine or mundane tasks, AI can be regarded as a side-kick to marketing professionals. This is especially true where marketing specialists are working with large data sets, market segments and demographics, as well as measuring campaign effectiveness and ROI.
Where AI will struggle is with creativity and creative tasks. Can AI be creative in the same way as a human: for example, writing an advertising slogan, a strapline, or a jingle that gets stuck in your head? Can AI replicate human whimsy and imagination?
AI can adapt marketing campaigns and ads by way of Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to suit customer/segment data. But in terms of baseline creativity, if it ever can, we’re some way away from that point.
Marketing Directors and creatives can sleep easy. For now.
Cristiano Winckler
Director of Digital Operations
Something people often overlook is that AI isn’t necessarily new; it has been around in various forms for perhaps a decade. However, what has changed is its popularity and accessibility, particularly in the digital workplace.
While I don’t believe AI is poised to replace your job just yet, it is reshaping our operational landscape. It enables us to drive greater efficiencies across different departments. Within our organisation, we utilise AI for ideation, adaptation (tailoring messaging for different audiences), and acceleration (expediting content production). However, it’s essential to note that we still rely on our in-house experts to oversee the output of these tools and apply their expertise, allowing them to focus on strategy and implementation.
Therefore, while AI may not be poised to replace your job at present, it undoubtedly accelerates our processes. Specialists remain indispensable, particularly given the extensive knowledge base of AI tools. Experts can fact-check, rectify, and implement changes to align with client criteria or target audiences.
That being said, AI is driving an evolution in our work methods. We encourage everyone to embrace it and enhance their skills in the latest AI developments. In the event that certain job roles become obsolete in the future, individuals equipped with AI knowledge can pivot and adapt. The emergence of roles such as prompt engineer exemplifies this shift, indicating that further changes lie ahead.
Director – Surveyors UK
As a marketing expert the who loves AI and uses it daily such as ChatGPT, Perplexity AI etc I believe that AI is transforming marketing in exciting ways, but it won’t completely replace marketing jobs. Instead, AI is becoming an invaluable tool that enhances our capabilities and allows us to work far more efficiently and add more value.
AI is already automating mundane tasks in marketing, such as data analysis and ad targeting, freeing up marketers to focus on strategic thinking, creativity, and building customer relationships. However, marketing fundamentally requires empathy, creativity, and emotional intelligence – qualities that AI does not possess.
I think that AI is making a significant impact in areas like personalisation, predictive analytics, chatbots, content creation, social media and ad targeting. I think we need to embrace these technologies and learn how to use them effectively, while also recognising their limitations such as hallucinatins and using them ethically.
I think that AI is transforming marketing, but it won’t replace marketing jobs entirely. By combining the power of AI with human creativity and strategic thinking, we can create more targeted, personalised, and effective marketing campaigns, while building stronger relationships with our clients. Its extremely powerful but does not replace original human thought and creativity.
Connector in Chief, Linked Business
AI has been around in basic forms for many years. Even standard email marketing systems are a form of AI. The recent explosion of tools and interest has focused on content creation for text and image/video.
What does this mean for marketing and marketing jobs? On the one hand, it puts content creation at more people’s fingertips. So more businesses, particularly smaller businesses, may be encouraged to create content. They probably weren’t using marketing professionals before so there is no threat to jobs there.
However, just because AI can create content, it doesn’t mean it is good content. It may not even be accurate or original.
This is where marketing professionals come in. A good marketing professional will ensure the content produced will be authentic, original, interesting, useful, and relevant to the target market. They will use AI to generate ideas, broaden the inputs, and speed up the process.
So in short, AI won’t take away your marketing job, but another marketer that can use AI more effectively than you will.
Principal Recruiter – AI & Machine Learning
Is AI taking over marketing? Yes it is, but very badly. You can see the huge volumes of poorly crafted, marketing on social media. They’re easily identifiable, just look at the language used, usually cheesy US style or, on videos, the robotic voices.
Why? Put simply, despite the hype, AI isn’t quite there yet. In fact, I’d say we’re fairly far away. There are some incredibly fascinating use cases of AI, but if you break it down, they are still following rules and logic, albeit at superspeed.
AI is able to mimic human logical thinking, but the creative side is a different story. The approach of trying to logicise creativity so AI can replicate it, hasn’t been succesful so far. There are new approaches to combine cognitive computing and neuroscience, but I can’t imagine we’ll have anywhere human level marketers in AI until we have achieved AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
So for now, AI is a tool that can augment human marketers, but I wouldn’t rely on ChatGPT to write my marketing for me.
