AI will soon be able to handle up to 95% of the work currently done by marketing agencies, creative professionals and specialists, according to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Here’s how this shift could lead to the emergence of the “marketing generalist” – a new type of marketer who uses AI tools to quickly execute campaigns across various disciplines, such as content, digital, branding, etc.
Deciphering the marketing impact of AI
In an interview earlier this yearAltman described what he says is the impact of AI on marketing:
“Ninety-five percent of what marketers turn to agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will be easily, almost instantly, and at almost no cost, handled by AI – and the AI will likely be able to test creative against real or synthetic customer orientation. groups to predict results and optimize them. Again, everything is free, instant and almost perfect. Images, videos, campaign ideas? No problem.”
Asked about the timetable for this operation, Altman replied: “Five years, give or take, maybe a little more.”
While I think his five-year timeline is optimistic, Altman is probably right that in the future AI will handle much of what we use agencies, strategists, and professionals for today of creation. This could have a radical impact on the structure of marketing departments and the daily lives of marketers and lead to the emergence of generalist marketing.
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Today’s marketing organizations are ineffective and outdated
The structure of a typical marketing organization hasn’t changed much over the past 30 years: a CMO directs the work of different marketing managers in silos like digital marketing, product marketing, content marketing, customer relations brand/public, martech and events. These departments are supported by shared services such as graphic/web design, data/analytics, and writing/editing. All of this leads to a terribly inefficient campaign flow.
The campaign creation process in most organizations can take at least 6-8 weeks to discuss the right strategy, copy, and creative. The review and redesign stage can take several weeks, as different stakeholders express different and often conflicting opinions. Work moves from silo to silo, with each silo having its priorities, introducing additional delays into the process.
How the rise of generalist marketing will impact organizations and marketing workflows
AI has the potential to radically transform today’s typical marketing organization and erase the typical campaign flow, as every marketer becomes a marketing generalist and takes over most of the work done today in silos. Many existing marketing functions and titles will be eliminated or radically changed in the next 5-10 years.
Today, there are relatively few marketing generalists and those that do exist work primarily in start-up companies, where they are required to be marketing generalists. As businesses grow, they tend to hire specialists: the marketing generalist decides to hire a graphic or web designer, rightly deciding that their time is too valuable to create the graphics for an ad or to build a new web design.
But when that happens, something gets lost. The marketing generalist, who has the broadest perspective on the product, customers and value proposition, something that took him months or even years to learn, must now pass on that knowledge as best he can. can in a creative brief.
But what if the marketing generalist could create graphics and web designs with AI, applying all his knowledge through an AI assistant that learned with him as he grew his business?
What if the marketing generalist sat down with the product manager and they co-created a campaign in an hour or two with the help of AI?
How far could this scale extend? Altman says this could scale quite far, which would be enough for 90-95% of the situations marketers face today through outdated campaign organizations and workflows.
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Rapid iteration and experimentation
Another side effect of condensing campaign creation times from weeks to hours is that marketing generalists can iterate and experiment quickly. While a traditional organization discusses strategy, copy and creative, the marketing generalist of the future might run 30 to 40 different tests, getting real data on what customers prefer and what produces the best results.
Organizations that take a generalist marketing approach with AI assistants will gain a huge competitive advantage over traditional organizations. They will come to market sooner, make decisions based on data not opinions, and be simpler and more agile.
How AI will impact various marketing functions
AI will impact shared services first: When AI-powered tools make it easier to create graphics and web designs, analyze data, and write beautiful copy, marketers will only use plus shared services for 90 to 95% of their needs.
Content marketing and digital marketing will then be eliminated. If AI can write, optimize, and distribute content with guidance from a general marketer, why start a content marketing group?
Why keep this group if AI can optimize digital marketing and run entire campaigns without the need for a digital marketer? Perhaps one in ten people working in content marketing and digital marketing will still be in these professions in 10 years.
Marketers employed in the martech sector are probably safe: someone needs to evaluate, acquire, deploy, and maintain this AI-driven technology. If anything, we may need more martech professionals.
The data (not the analytics) is also likely secure. One of the key challenges for many marketing organizations in the AI era will be cleaning their data and integrating it into large custom language models to create personalized AI assistants, customer service chatbots and radical personalization .
Analytics, however, will be handled by AI, which will either take over decision-making or make recommendations to the marketing generalist without the need for reporting and other analytics activities that generate little value in themselves.
The brand/PR will have fewer, more competent people. The AI will take care of enforcing brand guidelines and the AI agents will handle basic brand promotion and public relations. A small group of highly skilled brand and PR specialists will create brand voices and experiences and address difficult PR challenges. Perhaps one in three people working in branding and PR today will still be working in this niche in 10 years.
Product marketers are the group most likely to become marketing generalists. No longer dependent on graphic/web designers, digital marketers, or copywriters, product marketers will become the assistants behind the AI curtain, guiding the production of much of what we consider today like marketing. The number of marketing generalists will likely increase to perhaps double the number of product marketers today.
With all this evolution in job titles and responsibilities, major changes will also occur in the structure of marketing organizations.
Organizations will adopt hybrid structures
In the AI era, organizations are likely to be organized as a network of centralized and decentralized teams organized around business units and geographies.
Marketing may not exist as a primary department reporting to the CEO. Instead, each business unit and geography will have one or more marketing generalists, with product-oriented generalists centralized and customer experience-oriented generalists decentralized in each geography.
This is what the organization of the future could look like:
Note that in this organization, there is no CMO or marketing organization. Instead, one or more marketing generalists are embedded across business units and geographies where, with the help of AI, they are responsible for digital marketing, product marketing, content marketing, relationships local public events and local events previously organized by specialized departments.
This will also be an opportunity to make marketing more responsive to the needs of business units and geographies. If marketing is integrated into these business units and geographies, they will become better informed and accountable to the needs of their internal stakeholders. This is a good thing and could address a long-standing complaint from many other areas of business that marketing is not meeting their needs.
Final Thoughts
AI is likely to have a radical impact on the typical marketing organization. Marketers will become generalists, with specialization focused more on business units, product knowledge and geographies than on skills. The position of CMO may be eliminated in the organization in the future. Marketers need to prepare for a challenging journey over the next 5 to 10 years.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily of MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.
