The risk of AI in marketing

It can draft your emails, write your landing pages, generate subject lines, analyse your data, and come up with 50 ideas in an instant.

AI means the barrier to producing “good enough” marketing has never been lower.

Many marketers worry that this means their jobs are in danger.

I don’t think that’s true. Not any time soon, at least.

But only if you react.

Yes, AI is doing more work for us. More ads. More words. More visuals. More ideas. More code.

But when everyone has access to tools that generate competent, polished content, the internet fills up with competent, polished content. You’ve already seen it a thousand times: cookie cutter phrasing, familiar structures, and emails that feel like they could have been written by any LinkedIn influencer.

”Good enough” has already become abundant. So where does that leave us marketers?

If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, the danger is it won’t be enough.

You can have a team of patient robots. How do you lead them?

I believe we’re entering a new age where the original skills of marketing matter more than ever. There’s no hiding behind tools or budgets any more.

It’s no longer about your ability to navigate Google Ads Manager, query a CSV file, or add captions to an Instagram Reel.

The T-shaped marketer

But then, I’d argue, marketing was never really about those things anyway. Those were things many of us had to do to be able to call ourselves marketers in the digital age. I’m not saying it hurts to have those skills — I believe the “T shaped” marketer is still a great way to think about most roles. But so many of the skills (the breadth) can now be assisted by AI tooling, that many of us can go broader and deeper than ever before.

It’s becoming harder to do good marketing without… being a genuinely good marketer.

Good marketing is — and always has been — about the fundamentals:

• Can you tell a compelling story?
• Do you have a clear proposition?
• Can you create emotion?
• Can you motivate someone to care?
• And eventually, to buy?

If you have those skills, you’re now empowered to do more than ever before.

If you don’t, you now have unprecedented access to education that will help you develop those skills.

AI can give you structure. It can help you edit faster. It can suggest angles. It can even help you execute. What it can’t easily replicate is lived experience, conviction, taste, or the slightly uncomfortable honesty that makes someone feel understood.

Those still come from us — the human. The ones with a soul.

The tools are changing fast. But trust, care, emotion, and genuine relationships are becoming more valuable than ever.

And that’s something to feel optimistic about.

Footnotes

I appreciate that AI is a hugely controversial topic. I haven’t even touched on the ethical, societal, and environmental aspects this week because I felt I couldn’t do them justice without adding thousands more words to today’s email. If you’d like me to explore more on this topic, please reply and let me know. If you’d like me to never mention AI ever again, also: please reply. I’d love to hear your feedback to calibrate where we take future issues of EcoSend Weekly.

I have long been of the opinion that this writing setup would suit me far better than any AI tooling, computers, or software. One day maybe.