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The world seems to be awash with research and data on how AI is impacting the careers of marketers and developers today – and in the future.
Is that because we're in the research industry and have looked at some recent studies, including CMI's 2025 Career Outlook for Content and Marketing, that look at the impact of AI on current and future career opportunities for marketers?
We put this question to Robert Rose, CMI's senior strategy consultant, who has his human finger on the pulse of research and AI. He explains what's happening and what lessons all marketers should take from it. Read on to hear his thoughts, or watch this video:
Reversing the statistics shows the true picture
A mentor once told me something that has stuck with me this week: “If our ability to measure accurately is inaccurate, people will fill the gap with narratives, for better or for worse.”
In other words, you're fitting the data to the story in your head, rather than fitting the story to the data. If you use Google Analytics to tell a marketing story, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
In recent weeks, new research studies, including those from CMI, have talked about the impact of AI on marketing careers. There are many great stories, but the reality is a little more boring.
Are industries really changing to accommodate new ideas? What do statistics like “72% of industry leaders say they need to realign their organizations’ talent and capabilities” really mean? Is this really something new? Disruptive?
I always like to ask, “What’s the deal with reversal?”
And what about the 28% of industry leaders who don't feel they need to realign their organizations' talent and capabilities? What do they think? Do they feel good about the way things are? Or do they say, “Well, we're pretty happy with the team as it is.”
When it comes to AI in marketing and your career as a marketer, is the world ahead of you? Or is it, you know, just a regular Friday?
I'm fascinated by the cognitive bias known as the frequency illusion. Also called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, it occurs when you notice a word or concept more frequently after being alerted to it or focusing on it for a period of time.
The classic example is buying a new car. You've looked at the options, compared prices, decided on one, and now as you drive around, the world is full of that car.
Are the numerous recently published studies on the impact of AI on marketing job openings creating an illusion of frequency? What will really happen? To say it's a decidedly mixed picture would be an understatement.
If you want to stop reading now, the truth is that nobody knows. To quote one of my heroes in literature, William Goldman, from The Princess Bride, talking about movie producers: “Nobody knows anything. Nobody in the entire industry knows for sure what will work or how it will 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 the CMI Outlook, demand-gen marketers did not even put AI on the list of areas where they plan to spend more in the next year. However, 57% of marketers surveyed cited AI as the biggest influencer. In addition, marketers feel pressure, especially from the executive level, to “get good” at generative AI.
Is this a miracle?
Other research headlines revolve around the theme of “changes so fast it makes us dizzy.” According to a recent study by Deloitte, 79% of directors and executives surveyed expect generative AI to lead to significant organizational change in less than three years.
The more recent Kantar study (registration required) shows that almost half of respondents say AI is already impacting their media organization. OK, but remember my reverse preference? This result means that more than half do not.
Experience in AI ranked 10th in the top 10 skills media executives are looking for over the next three years, according to Kantar, with only 27% saying it is a very important skill.
Gartner's analysis of more than 300,000 job postings in November 2023 found that less than 1% mentioned generative AI skills or AI-related content creation responsibilities.
What is the true story?
After all this research, you're probably still confused. All these numbers point to a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about the most useful uses of AI. And people, especially in senior leadership positions, think they're much further behind on integration than they actually are.
The marketing media seems to have some role to play in claiming that AI will fundamentally transform the marketing organization. They say that executives are deeply convinced that over the next three to 50 years, their organization will be disrupted, turned on its head, torn apart, made exponentially more efficient, more innovative than ever, twice as creative, half the size, and ultimately marketing will be so automated.
It's as clear as mud.
Base your AI plans on these ideas
As you round the corner and approach the fourth quarter of 2024 and the 2025 planning season, how do you get beyond the headlines? Consider these three things:
- Companies are approaching enterprise AI cautiously. Most don't really know what to do with it or whether it will work. Many talk big but secretly wait and see how things develop.
- Marketers and content creators are concerned, but a little less concerned than they were a year ago. Most companies integrating AI seem to ignore the advice “AI won't replace you, but someone using AI will.” Instead, they treat generative AI as a core technology, much like computing. They hire 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 a strategist and storyteller.
- AI is changing every day. It's changing almost too fast for its own good. In the early days of the internet, a big challenge was how quickly the technology was changing and the skills people needed to be successful. Many people concluded that it was better to become a generalist and know a little bit about a lot than to try to know a lot about a small piece. You never knew when that little bit would become obsolete.
Many companies bought too much technology and invested too much in complex technology that they didn't know how to get value from. One of the main reasons for the dot-com bubble and the subsequent bust was that fast-growing tech stars realized they were building nothing more than a lot of hot vaporware that had little value.
Whether we're heading for an AI bubble or a crash is uncertain, but the considerations relate to your career, your skills, and the way marketers use this technology.
My advice? Slow down. Learn as much as you can and keep your spider senses sharp. Just don't move so fast that you lose your peripheral vision.
If you look at all these AI tools and all the research, you will see opportunities everywhere. But remember the frequency bias. Not everything is a problem that needs to be solved, and not everything is a problem that can be solved with the latest technology of the last few decades.
Take the time to see what's behind the headlines. When the data shows that AI is at the bottom of the list of most preferred skills and 80% of organizations value communication skills and storytelling, that tells you something. It's important to listen, observe and ask questions to make the story your own.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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