The many-hatted marketer

I think this might be what mathematicians call an inflexion point: ‘A crucial point where something changes direction or nature.’

In business, these are rarely ‘kaboom!’ moments – more a subtle shifting of attitudes and practices. Tactics that have always worked become less effective, or something you thought was a fluke success just keeps on happening.

Right now, we’re seeing two trends happening in parallel. In one, the onward march of AI continues to gather pace, leading many to question whether we are heading towards another bubble, given the hype and spend. On the other side, we’re seeing some significant job cuts, particularly in media and marketing, as agencies consolidate and organisations rationalise.

The big question everyone has is, is the former directly responsible for the latter?

Speaking as someone who can’t go a day without someone outside my sector (and that’s a crucial point) asking if I think AI is going to take my job, the answer is a) I don’t think so, but b) it’s too soon to tell.

The ‘outside the sector’ bit is crucial because if you take headlines at face value, it’s easy to think AI is about to decimate the workforce. But if you actually work with the tools and examine the options, it rapidly becomes clear that AI is no human substitute.

That doesn’t mean its capabilities aren’t increasing all the time, or that it can’t already take over some of the drudge work and, yes, even help with creative tasks. But it still pales in comparison to human skill sets.

So why the ‘jobpocalypse’, a phrase coined by, among others, our senior contributor, MaryLou Costa, in this issue’s Debate. Again, many factors are assailing our industry besides AI. Everything from consumer confidence to taxation, global unrest, supply chain challenges, consolidation and more is at play.

But these are all signals that change is afoot. And as marketers – and humans – we need to meet that change.

We used to talk about the job for life. Now, we’re as likely to speak of our Monday-to-Wednesday job. Why? Because we have a different one on Thursday and Friday. And perhaps a side hustle we manage across the week. Portfolio careers, interim CMOs and fractional marketers – these are all common parlance now.

Just as product diversification protects manufacturing from market shocks, it can also safeguard marketers’ careers. Gaining new skill sets and parlaying existing skills into other roles – consultancy, troubleshooting, and so on – is a way to find the flexibility needed to buffer times like these.

This may be cold comfort if you feel you have been marching against a tide of redundancies and phantom vacancies. Still, it is a sign that there is a greater appetite for flexibility, both from marketers and organisations, than ever before. This is a creative industry that needs an innovative approach to shape it for the next era. And that is something no machine will ever replace.

As ever, we tackle the topics that matter most to marketers, so this issue includes articles on AI, marketing in a crisis, the creator economy (a whole economy born of a side hustle, you might argue), legislation and much more.