Don’t Let AI Headlines Steer Your Marketing Career the Wrong Way

The world seems chockablock with research and data about how AI is now — and in the future — having an impact on the careers of marketers and creators.

Is that because we’re in the research business and have seen a few recent studies, including CMI’s  2025 Career Outlook for Content and Marketing, that speak to AI’s impact on career opportunities, both current and future, for marketers?

We took the question to Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategy advisor, who has his human finger on the pulse of the studies and AI. He explains what’s happening and the takeaways all marketers should have. Read on for his take, or watch this video:

Stat’s inverse indicates the real picture

A mentor once told me something that’s top of mind this week, “When our ability to cleanly measure is imprecise, humans will fill the gap for better or worse with narrative.”

In other words, you fit the data into the story in your head rather than fit the story into the data. If you use Google Analytics to tell a marketing story, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Over the last few weeks, new research studies, including CMI’s, speak to the impact of AI on marketing careers. A lot of amazing stories are out there, but the reality is a bit more boring.

Are industries really changing to meet ideas? What do stats like “72% of industry leaders say they need to reshape talents and skills of their organizations” really mean? Is that really anything new? Disruptive?

I always like to ask, “What’s the story with the inverse?”

What about the 28% of industry leaders who don’t feel like they need to reshape the talents and skills of their organizations? What are they thinking? Do they feel great about things the way they are? Or are they saying, “Meh, we’re pretty happy with the team the way it is.”

When it comes to AI in marketing and your careers as marketers, is the sky falling? Or is it, you know, just another Friday? 

The cognitive bias known as the frequency illusion fascinates me. Also known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, it occurs when you notice a word or concept more frequently after you’ve been made aware of or focused on it for some time.

The classic example is after you buy a new car. You’ve explored the options, priced them, chosen one, and now, as you drive around, the world is filled with that car.

Are the multiple recently released studies on AI’s impact on marketing job opportunities creating a frequency illusion? What’s really going to happen? To say it’s a decidedly mixed bag would be an understatement.

If you want to stop reading now, the truth is nobody knows. To paraphrase one of my writing heroes, William Goldman, of The Princess Bride film, talking about movie executives: Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire industry knows for sure what’s going to work or how it’s going to all turn out. Every time, it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.

Is generative AI really important in marketing careers?

In CMI’s outlook, demand-gen marketers didn’t even put AI on the list of where they planned to expand spending in the next year. However, 57% of marketers in the research named AI as the No. 1 biggest impact. Additionally, marketers feel pressure to “get good” at generative AI, primarily from the C-suite.

Is it any wonder?

Other research headlines are filled with the changing-so-fast-it’s-making-our-heads-spin theme. A recent study by Deloitte finds that 79% of director and C-suite respondents expect generative AI to drive substantial organizational transformation in less than three years.

The more recent Kantar research (registration required) finds that almost half of respondents say AI already affects their media organization. OK, but remember my inverse preference? That finding means that more than half don’t.

Experience in AI was 10th in Kantar’s list of the top 10 most important skills sought by leaders in the media industry in the next three years. Only 27% say it is a very important skill.

Gartner’s November 2023 analysis of more than 300,000 job postings found that fewer than 1% mentioned generative AI skills or responsibilities for AI-related content creation.

What’s the real story?

After consuming all this research, you would be right to still be confused. All these numbers seem to indicate a lot of FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — about the most appropriate uses of AI, and people, mostly those in senior leadership positions, think they’re a lot farther behind in its integration than they actually are.

Marketing media seem to play a bit in the talk that AI will fundamentally disrupt the marketing organization. They say leaders are deeply convinced their organization will be disrupted, upended, torn apart, made exponentially more efficient, innovate like never before, double in creativity, halve in size, and ultimately evolve marketing to be automated in the next three to 50 years.

It’s as clear as mud.

Ground your AI plans in these ideas

How do you move past the headlines as you round the bend and head toward the fourth quarter of 2024 and the planning season for 2025? Consider these three things:

1. Businesses are taking a considered approach to this enterprise AI thing. Most don’t really know what to do with it or whether it’s going to work. Many talk a big game, but privately wait to see how it starts to shake out.
2. Marketing practitioners and content creators are worried but a little less worried than even a year ago. Most businesses integrating AI seem to avoid the bumper sticker advice, “AI won’t replace you, but someone using AI will.” Instead, they treat generative AI as a core technology, not unlike computing. They employ smart strategists, storytellers, and innovative and creative people and teach them AI rather than hiring AI specialists and trying to teach them how to be strategists and storytellers.
3. AI changes every day. It’s almost changing too fast for its own good. In the early days of the internet, a big challenge was how quickly the technology and skillsets needed for workers to thrive were changing. Many people concluded that becoming a generalist and knowing a little bit about a lot was better than trying to know a lot about a little piece. You never knew when that little bit would be outdated.

   Many businesses over-purchased technology and over-indexed on complex technology they didn’t know how to derive value from. One of the biggest reasons for the dot-com bubble and subsequent pop was that fast-expanding technology stars realized they were building nothing other than a lot of hot vaporware that amounted to little value.

   Now, whether an AI bubble or crash is coming is uncertain, but the thinking relates to your career, skills, and how marketers use this technology.

My advice? Pump the brakes. Learn as you can and keep your Spidey senses up. Just don’t move so fast you lose your peripheral vision.

As you look at all these AI tools — and all the research — you start to see everywhere, you’ll see opportunities everywhere. But remember the frequency bias. Not everything is a problem to solve and not everything is a problem to solve with the hottest technology in the last few decades.

Take the time to see what’s going on behind the headline stories. When the data shows AI is dead last in the list of the top preferred skills and 80% of organizations appreciate communication skills and storytelling, that tells you something. It’s important to listen, watch, and ask questions to make the story your own.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute