Marketers soon to be replaced by AI.

I too felt uneasy reading this title.

Augmented reality. Ultra-speedy processors dealing with gazillions amount of data and insights. High-precision simulating softwares. Alexia and other AI support. Automatic check-outs. Self-driven cars. We are surrounded by technological prowess, and can astonishingly witness performance hitting new grounds at the speed of light.

Are we far from the time when organisations will choose AI-marketers over 100% human-marketers? Can AI add even more value than we, human marketers, currently do? Is there anything that we master way better than AI can ever do?

Hybrid ways of working are here now, it's not the future anymore, even if we're still trying to figure it all out. Collaborating with AI seems to be on the horizon when management is concerned. I can't help but wonder what a hybrid-marketer would be like, when organisations will start demanding we embrace it, involving a strong machine-human collaboration?

Augmented management is closer to reality than we might think, or even like.

Machine vs human

Could some of our competencies as marketers be partly or totally done by an artificially intelligent marketer-bot? Let’s have a look at a selection of Marketing Competencies that could be largely augmented by or fully replaced by AI.

• Time management
• Ability to deal with pressure
• Interpersonal communication
• Quality and speed of decision making
• Forecasting turnover with a high level of precision based on data analytics and KPIs
• Ability to spot the personality traits of team members, helping the Head of Marketing to provide a perfectly tailored adapted response through management and coaching
• Optimising career progression trajectory based on people’s personalities, past decisions, set criteria
• Ability to perform new tasks that were impossible to do thus far.
• And all other simple and repetitive tasks.

?How about creativity? Imagination? What about leadership??Augmented Management is not yet a reality, however it is difficult to ignore its potential. I talk to Marketers everyday and I hear a lot about their high workload, the pressure they're under, and the little time left they have to focus on their development, therefore the true level of value they can add.

Are we giving ourselves enough change to actually grow our leadership capabilities? To unleash the unfair advantage that each of us has and yet is crashed under a stack of limited value / heavily time consuming tasks. I cannot count the times my conversation with Marketers has been about lacking confidence to grow their leadership skills, their assertiveness, expressing their opinions and wants and needs in highly challenging environment that a marketer navigates in (boardroom, meeting with the sales team, dealing with senior stakeholders).

The people I talk to are in fact very competent in their marketing job, they are passionate about the brands they're growing, the challenge seems to rise when it is about interacting with people in circumstances where judgement is feared, rather than tasks. How do we, marketing leads, create a fertile environment for our human marketers to strive, blossom, grow, learn and find the confidence they need to face these challenging circumstances?

The future might be about asking Marketing Managers to transition to a hybrid mode of Marketing, in which case the perfectly human Marketer will require significant support from the organisation. Starting with these 1,2,3.

Time to Think: 1 ? 2 ? 3

????For you, marketer:

1. Take 1 minute to identify 1 thing that is time-consuming and repetitive that you could use an application, software, excel formula for.
2. Take 1 minute to identify a competency that would unlikely be replaced by AI. How might you develop it further, use it more frequently, bring it to the next level, get mentored on it?
3. Take 1 minute to

????For you, Marketing Director:

1. Take 1 minute to think about how you might bring this topic to the next Marketing Team meeting or away day and get your marketers to engage on their added value and spot their strengths.
2. Take 1 minute to reflect on the processes you have in place and their efficiencies. Is the go-to-market funnel working? How fast/slow are decisions made currently, and what would you like this speed to be?
3. Take 1 minute to explore how "leadership" in your team can be augmented with existing methods.

About Mags

Founder of and qualified coach at Starting Blocks Coaching Ltd with 16 years of Marketing background in multinational FMCG organisations.

????I have run Leadership Workshops as part of Learning & Development programs, leadership modules and tailor-made group coaching sessions.

??If you are working on organising an engaging event or meeting to grow your marketing team, why not get in touch with me by booking a free 30 min call.

What I offer could look like:

• A guest speaker (away-day, conference, marketing team meeting...) focusing on a particular topic, competency, thought-provoking angle.
• A tailored solution to raise your marketing team's skills and awareness (workshop, group coaching or leadership training by a marketer to a group of marketers).
• Individual coaching to help your Top Talent(s) accelerate their growth and overcome their challenges.

??Book a call here: https://calendly.com/startingblockscoaching/discovery-chat

??Discover more about what I do here: https://linktr.ee/startingblockscoaching

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