My take on marketing, leadership, and AI

I've worked with some exceptional content creators over the years. I've also watched companies hire them expecting something different, and seen both sides left frustrated as a result. Not because anyone did anything wrong — but because the roles ask for genuinely different things, and treating them as interchangeable tends to shortchange both. It's worth being clear about the distinction.

I want to give an honest account of what using AI in marketing actually feels like day to day, because the conversation tends to stay at a level of abstraction that doesn't match my experience.AI has changed how I work. Genuinely. Some things that used to take a day take an hour. I use it constantly. But the idea that it's simplified marketing — that it's reduced the expertise required or made the work more straightforward — doesn't match what I see.

We've spent the better part of the last two years debating what AI can do. The jobs it’ll replace. The industries it’ll transform or completely upend. When are we going to start really talking about what it costs us to let it run? The license fee, as it stands today, is the easy part. The real exposure: AI (and data) consumption that scales unchecked across teams, tools, and product lines.

One of the most common mistakes I see in marketing isn’t execution. It’s playing the wrong game. What do I mean by that? We often talk about marketing like it’s a single discipline with universal best practices. In reality, especially in the world of B2B, there are two very different approaches at play—and confusing them leads to wasted spend, frustrated teams, and disappointing results.

A recent Wall Street Journal piece highlights a widening gap between how CEOs and employees experience AI at work. Executives overwhelmingly believe AI is making work dramatically more efficient. Employees, on the other hand, tell a very different story.