What’s Changing (and What Isn’t) in Marketing Because of AI

Every few years, marketing declares another revolution. The tools change, the language evolves, and new promises fill the air. Digital was going to transform everything. Then social. Then programmatic. Now it’s AI’s turn. Each wave has indeed reshaped how we do marketing — the tools, the speed, the data, the feedback loops — but never what marketing is for. Its job-to-be-done remains the same: to understand demand, shape how the business meets it, and build lasting preference.

AI will change that job’s execution — and many others beyond marketing — more than any technology before it. It’s already doing that by altering workflows, skill sets, and how we learn. But the fundamentals of marketing remain stubbornly constant (a good thing too). Understanding people still beats understanding data. Creating distinct value still drives growth. Building brands still requires consistency and time. Effective marketing still connects strategy, creativity, and execution. These truths form marketing’s North Star — the constants leaders should hold onto while everything else accelerates. AI doesn’t rewrite them; it simply raises the bar for living by them (making it harder at first, but ultimately more rewarding for those who adapt).

Still, the how is shifting fast. Decisions that were once made monthly or quarterly can now happen daily, sometimes in real time. Experimentation has moved from simple A/B tests to continuous learning loops. AI is compressing discovery and making it more accessible, revealing patterns in days that once took months of research or simply remained hidden. The ways of working haven’t caught up (most teams still operate in silos), but the raw capability is there. Creative augmentation is already visible in tools that allow brands to scale content production without losing identity. Customer experience is also changing, with AI adoption beyond marketing — for example, Unilever using AI to align demand forecasts for ice cream with weather data, while Starbucks experiments with voice-enabled ordering to simplify customer experiences. These are small but important signals of marketing becoming more adaptive, more connected, and, if guided well, more strategic.

Yet each technological leap also leaves a shadow. In past revolutions, speed and automation often came at the expense of coherence and long-term thinking. The Advertising: Who Cares? summit in London this October has been a reminder of that legacy — calling out how, in chasing metrics and automation, the advertising industry has sometimes lost sight of what makes people care and is in need of a reset. More broadly, marketing thought leaders continue to warn about the traps and point to the fundamentals — like Byron Sharp on the need to build reach and mental availability, and Les Binet on the central importance of scale and investment versus the far smaller returns of pure efficiency and optimisation. Progress can easily distort priorities. Programmatic opacity still hides waste and fraud. Partnerships have become fragmented, with agencies specialising so narrowly that strategy falls between the cracks. Many marketing teams have retreated into execution and tactics, pulling away from the broader 4Ps — product, pricing, place, and promotion — where real strategic impact lives. And at the organisational level, too many businesses are waiting, watching AI from the sidelines, repeating the “let’s monitor and see” stance that slowed adaptation in the digital era.

The mountain. A reminder that while the tools change, the climb, and the purpose, stay the same

AI won’t automatically fix or break marketing. It will amplify whatever it finds. That includes the good (creativity, insight, speed) but also the bad (short-termism, silos, and shallow metrics). The challenge for leaders isn’t to race ahead with tools, but to decide why they’re using them. AI can make decisions faster, but only humans can make them better. Its greatest potential lies not in replacing thinking but in freeing up time and space for it.

This is the moment to steer deliberately (not to wait and see). To invest in strategic coherence, not just technology. To rebuild marketing’s connective tissue across the 4Ps rather than narrowing further into channels and content. To design AI initiatives around customer value and brand purpose, not convenience. The organisations that move with clarity, that experiment with intent rather than fear, will learn faster, adapt sooner, and build competitive advantage quietly while others are still debating compliance, policy, and whether they should allow the new tech and ways of working to disrupt “business as usual” silos and roadmaps. All of these can become important enablers, but none should be blockers.

To use an analogy close to home, technology will keep changing how we climb the mountain. But the mountain itself — what marketing is really for — remains the same. AI will change marketing profoundly. Whether it changes it for the better depends on how deliberately we lead the change.