TL;DR: AI can handle a lot of marketing execution, but outsourcing your entire marketing function to bots is a losing bet. Consumers are already skeptical of AI-generated content, creative workers burn out when reduced to AI managers, and your marketing is one of the best ways to show the real humans behind your business. Use AI as a tool, not a replacement.
Recently, my LinkedIn feed has been filled with “thought leaders” claiming to have built fully autonomous marketing agents that can replace a company’s entire marketing department. And while yes, the technology exists, I’m going to make a case against doing this. Not because I want to keep eating for the next few years, but because I genuinely believe humans need to be part of the creative process in order for your marketing to work. Let me explain.
AI Content Has a Branding Problem
I don’t believe we’re going to fix AI’s branding problem anytime soon. Think about your own personal biases. When I see graphics or social media posts that are very clearly AI-generated, it instantly devalues the content in my mind. I just assume you put no effort into it at all, which could actually be far from the truth.
I’m not alone in this. A Gartner survey released this month found that 50% of consumers prefer to give their business to brands that don’t use generative AI in consumer-facing content. That’s half your potential audience starting with a negative impression before they even read what you wrote.
When I produce content for startups or small businesses, I want the audience to feel like the brand put in meaningful time and effort to create something useful or entertaining. You might argue, “Well Matt, you idiot, one day AI-generated content will be completely indiscernible from human-generated and my audience won’t care or be able to tell the difference.” Maybe. But I think we’ll potentially see a world where this content is more regulated on social media and potentially even deprioritized in algorithms and feeds, because I believe most humans using these platforms generally prefer content from humans.
These are just my opinions and bets that I’m making. I’d love to hear yours in the comments, if you are in fact a human.
Imagine going to a movie and really connecting with it, but instead of hundreds of names in the end credits, it just says “Made with ChatGPT.” I’d personally feel terrible about myself. If two companies offer the exact same service but one is human-led and the other employs no humans, I personally would choose to work with the humans. Your small business marketing is a great opportunity to show the humans that make your company and your offering special. What does your marketing currently say about your company and the people behind it?
Making Creative People Into Middle Managers
Now let’s say you decide not to replace your whole department with AI, but you decide to keep one creative person with a Claude Max subscription and have them do the work of a three-person team. More and more companies are developing policies and expectations around AI use like this to maximize the output of each human worker. This is unfortunately also not a winning plan.
A lot of people I know in the marketing world, myself included, got into this line of work because of a desire to be creative, to make stuff, to use the right side of our brain. When you tell or imply to creative people that they should be outsourcing creative work to our lord and savior, Claude, you’re essentially making them middle managers to your stack of AI agents. No offense to all the middle managers out there, but this is deeply unfulfilling work for someone who loves doing design or making videos.
I haven’t seen a lot of articles on this yet, but data is starting to back it up. UC Berkeley researchers recently found that while AI tools increase productivity and task variety, the nonstop work they enable is leading to burnout and cognitive fatigue. And the creative roles are getting hit hardest: recent job market data shows that graphic artists (-33%), photographers (-28%), and writers (-28%) are among the fastest-declining roles. I would not be surprised if we’re seeing unprecedented amounts of burnout because of shifts like this.
So What Should You Actually Do?
I could go on and on, but ultimately, if you’re still on a mission to have all your marketing done by bots, I implore you to reflect on why. Is it just so you can produce more content? I’m grateful to report that more is not automatically a good thing. Now, more than ever, I’d rather my clients be in the low quantity, high quality quadrant, focusing on making content that really stands out from the slop city standard.
If you’re outsourcing to bots, perhaps you’re searching for more affordable marketing support or a specific area of expertise you don’t currently have on your team. If I’ve convinced you to consider hiring a human to do your marketing (crazy concept), you can book some time to meet with me here.
For the record, I do use AI and it’s not my intention to imply it has no place in our work. There are really great use cases for it in web development, video production, admin work, and more. I’m primarily using it to assist in the daily operation of my agency so that I can show up and be fully engaged with each one of my clients. I just think it’s incorrect to believe we don’t need humans to do marketing work now.
Thanks for reading. If you made it this far, you’re either a bot or my new bestie and you should connect with me on LinkedIn.
