Focus on What Won't Change: A Marketer's Guide to the AI Revolution

Almost every second article about AI reminds me of the 1998 movie where an old man is asked what he sees, and the man screams, "Gojira, Gojira, Gojira..." While this scene might not accurately depict what marketers in India are feeling, it is pretty close to what most of us are experiencing at the moment.

I would safely categorize marketers into three buckets:

The Believers: Those who see the potential of AI and understand now is the time to dive head-in to understand what value this technology could unlock. They're running toward the monster with open arms.

The Fence-Sitters: People who have somehow tried but are still on the fence. They've experimented with AI-generated copy for minor projects but hesitate to integrate it into their core workflows.

The Non-Believers: Those who still think it is science fiction and their job is safe. They're turning their backs, convincing themselves that the shadow on the horizon is just a trick of the light.

The question is very straightforward: If you are thinking about AI, how do you go about it? Let's apply first-principles thinking and see what AI might potentially disrupt.

The Three Stages of AI Disruption

At the first stage, I believe it will replace grunt work, anything and everything humans dislike doing: meta descriptions, product descriptions, headlines, and more. The truth is that humans never liked doing this work, and anthropologist David Graeber labeled these jobs as "Bullshit Jobs." Nobody wanted to do this job in the first place, but we somehow managed to create it.

Then at the second level, you have somewhat strategic jobs where some amount of brain power is required. But with the right inputs, this should get automated. This is the first time some would actually scream "Gojira!"

But the third act is scariest. This is when the scary movie turns into a conjuring. These are tasks you never thought AI would be able to do. Think of these as emergent behaviors that you thought would never exist—perhaps AI creating campaign concepts that tap into cultural nuances or generating visual ideas that actually move people emotionally.

Most of us are at the first stage and still figuring out what AI would look like in its third act. While some folks are saying that prompt engineering is the future, and where this quote often gets used: "AI will not replace you, but someone with AI will."

If this model or LLM—whatever you want to call it—is so smart, then it should be able to figure out what you are saying even if your prompt sucks. At least I have seen some of my bad or what you may call stupid prompts giving me excellent outputs. The machine's intelligence should transcend our clumsy instructions.

The Magic Is Not In The Computer

So here is what I want to get to essentially. It is okay to worry about the future, and I get you. But instead, think about what might not change.

Morgan Housel has this great new book called "Same as Ever," and the entire book is about a single idea: What do you think will not change in the future?

For marketing, I believe these constants include:

1. The Waterfall Workflow: Marketing has always followed a waterfall workflow, unlike engineering, which has always been agile. You can automate parts of the waterfall, but stitching it all together will be a challenge. The sequential nature of brand development isn't inefficient; it's essential to brand coherence.

2. The Human Element: There are parts of any process that are people-dependent, which can never be completely automated. Consider messaging and positioning for a brand—several folks sign off on something like that, and I can never see AI doing this end-to-end. Great marketing requires understanding people not as data points but as complex beings with contradictory desires. AI can simulate empathy; it cannot feel it.

3. The Need for Strategic Intuition: The intuitive leap that connects seemingly unrelated concepts to create something new remains beyond AI's reach. While AI excels at optimization within defined parameters, it struggles with the revolutionary thinking that transforms markets.

4. The Collaborative Nature of Decision-Making: Marketing decisions rarely come from a single authority. They emerge from collaborative processes involving multiple stakeholders with different perspectives. This social aspect of marketing won't be automated away.

So, the more significant point I was trying to make was to quit worrying about what would change and start thinking about what would not. It is easier to maintain perspective when you know that a new LLM model is released every week.

No One Has This Figured Out

More importantly, nobody has figured it out yet. Everybody is figuring it out like you and me. If someone claims to be an expert, I would also say they are naive. We're standing on a bridge between what was and what will be. The fog is thick. The wind is strong. And yes, there appears to be a giant monster in the distance.

A lot of thinking and tinkering is happening, which is all good. So join folks in figuring out what to do when you reach that bridge.

Remember this: Technology changes, people don't. Keep your eyes on people, and you'll never lose your way. The rest is just noise.