I'm Worried About Traditional Marketing Managers Keeping Their Jobs in the Next Three Years

I’m worried about marketing managers.

Not all of them.

Some are brilliant.

But there’s a particular kind of marketing manager I’m increasingly worried about.

You’ll know them.

They’ve worked in marketing for 15 years.

They manage a seven-figure budget.

They approve every campaign.

And then, when presented with an idea, they say:

“Oh, I’m not creative.”

Sorry.

What?

You’re the Marketing Manager.

Creativity is quite a large part of the marketing.

It’s a little like hiring a Head Chef who says:

“Oh, I’m not really into flavours.”

We may have a problem.

“I’m Not Creative”

I hear this constantly.

Usually right before that same person gives creative feedback.

“I’m not creative, but…”

Here we fucking go.

“I’m not creative, but could we make the logo bigger?”

“I’m not creative, but I don’t really get the joke.”

“I’m not creative, but could we see another option?”

“I’m not creative, but I think management will prefer the blue.”

Interesting.

Because you might not call yourself creative.

But you’re making creative decisions all day.

Which idea lives.

Which dies.

Which creator gets approved.

Which joke gets removed.

Which campaign gets funded.

Which campaign gets slowly beaten to death across nine rounds of feedback until everyone is finally comfortable with it.

You are shaping the creative.

You just don’t think that’s your job.

And I think that’s about to become a very big problem.

The Most Valuable Bit Is Becoming the Bit You Gave Away

AI is going to eat a lot of marketing tasks.

Reports.

Summaries.

Research.

Competitor analysis.

Media variations.

First drafts.

Content calendars.

Presentations.

Meeting notes.

Briefs.

Emails saying, “Just circling back on the below.”

Thank Christ for that last one.

The mechanical parts of marketing are getting extraordinarily cheap.

Things that used to take a team three days can increasingly happen before someone has finished explaining why the meeting needed to be a meeting.

So what becomes more valuable?

Judgement.

Ideas.

Taste.

Knowing when something is good.

Knowing when something is shit.

Knowing when the data matters and when it doesn’t.

Knowing when to push.

Knowing when to stop fucking with something.

Knowing the difference between an idea that makes you uncomfortable because it’s wrong and an idea that makes you uncomfortable because it’s interesting.

Taste.

And that’s awkward.

Because we’ve spent years building marketing departments where the people with the most authority over creative are sometimes the quickest to tell you:

“I’m not creative.”

Marketing Managers Have Been Designed for Approval

This isn’t really their fault.

Look at the job.

Marketing managers have been trained to manage.

Budgets.

Stakeholders.

Agencies.

Timelines.

Procurement.

Legal.

Brand guidelines.

Reporting.

The CEO.

The CFO.

The CEO’s daughter who apparently didn’t understand the campaign.

Their job has slowly become less about making marketing and more about getting marketing through the building alive.

Actually, not alive.

Approved.

Very different thing.

And if you do that job long enough, you learn what gets rewarded.

No surprises.

No complaints.

No angry emails.

No awkward conversation with management.

No campaign that requires you to stand in front of the board and say:

“Yes. I know this looks weird. Trust me.”

You learn how to anticipate objections before they happen.

You become excellent at sanding edges off.

You know exactly which words Legal won’t like.

Exactly which joke the CEO won’t understand.

Exactly which creator might be “a bit much.”

Exactly how far you can push something before somebody above you gets nervous.

That is a skill.

Unfortunately, it might be the exact opposite of the skill marketing increasingly needs.

Creativity Is the Thing That Works

Strip marketing back far enough and there’s an inconvenient truth sitting underneath it.

Interesting things get attention.

Good ideas travel.

Funny things get shared.

Useful things get saved.

Emotional things get remembered.

Surprising things stop thumbs.

Great creative can make media work harder.

Boring creative can make enormous media budgets disappear.

We’ve written about this before: you can put $50,000 behind something nobody cares about, but you haven't created $50,000 worth of interest. You’ve paid to be ignored at scale. That exact contradiction runs through the scripts too: the client wants more reach, more innovation, more relevance, more virality—but keeps removing the things that might create it.

And yet creativity is often treated like the fluffy bit.

The subjective bit.

The bit the agency does.

Marketing does the serious stuff.

Budgets.

Strategy.

Measurement.

Governance.

Approval.

Then AI arrives and becomes extremely good at lots of the serious stuff.

Awkward.

AI Has Made Taste More Important, Not Less

Here’s the weird thing.

AI can make you 100 headlines.

Today.

Right now.

It can give you 100 campaign territories.

100 scripts.

100 images.

100 strategic directions.

100 variations of your fucking LinkedIn post.

That sounds amazing.

Except now you have a new problem.

Which one is good?

When making becomes cheap, choosing becomes expensive.

Anyone can generate more.

The value moves towards knowing what deserves to exist.

That’s taste.

And taste isn’t:

“I personally prefer Concept Three.”

Taste is developed.

You consume things.

You study culture.

You watch what people actually watch.

You understand comedy.

Film.

Music.

Design.

Creators.

Advertising.

Internet culture.

Human behaviour.

You make things.

You get things wrong.

You develop instincts.

You learn why something works before the dashboard arrives six weeks later to inform you it worked.

And perhaps most importantly:

you give a shit about creative.

You Cannot Outsource Taste

You can outsource production.

You can outsource design.

You can outsource copywriting.

You can outsource media.

You can outsource your social team.

You can outsource research.

But if you are ultimately the person saying yes or no, you cannot outsource your taste.

Because eventually the work lands on your desk.

Here are three ideas.

Choose.

And no amount of:

“Can we get some data around which one will resonate?”

completely removes that responsibility.

Sometimes you have to choose.

Sometimes you have to have an opinion.

Sometimes you have to say:

“That one.”

And put your name next to it.

Terrifying.

The Approval Manager Is in Trouble

Imagine two marketing managers three years from now.

One is incredible at administration.

Brilliant decks.

Beautiful timelines.

Excellent stakeholder management.

Can turn a 45-minute meeting into a 14-point action plan before everyone has left the room.

But they don’t really understand creative.

They don't consume much culture.

They don't use the platforms they advertise on.

They don't make anything.

They don't have strong opinions about the work.

They’re “not creative.”

The other knows the numbers.

But they also have taste.

They understand their audience.

They know creators.

They know what’s happening in culture.

They can spot a good idea.

They can make one better.

They know when an agency is bullshitting them.

They know when management is about to kill something brilliant.

And they have enough conviction to say:

“No. We’re keeping it.”

Which one becomes more valuable when AI can do half the admin?

That’s what I’m worried about.

“But Creativity Is Subjective”

Yes.

So is hiring people.

So is strategy.

So is leadership.

So is deciding what fucking restaurant to eat at.

We still develop judgement.

The goal isn’t to become objectively correct about creativity.

You won’t be.

We aren’t.

Nobody is.

The goal is to develop enough taste that your opinion is worth something.

Because “I’m not creative” cannot continue being a get-out-of-jail-free card for people whose job includes approving creative.

If you control the marketing budget, creative is your business.

If you approve the work, creative is your business.

If you decide what your audience sees, creative is very much your fucking business.

Maybe We Need Marketing People Who Actually Like Marketing

Radical idea.

Hire marketing people who love ads.

Who send each other campaigns.

Who know creators without requesting an influencer landscape.

Who actually use TikTok instead of downloading it onto the work phone.

Who notice design.

Who care about writing.

Who can explain why something is funny.

Who have favourite directors.

Favourite brands.

Favourite stupid internet things.

People with opinions.

People with curiosity.

People with taste.

Then teach them the processes.

Not the other way around.

Because I don’t think marketing managers disappear.

I think marketing managers who exist primarily to manage the process have a problem.

AI will make processes faster.

Automation will make administration cheaper.

Dashboards will become easier.

Reports will write themselves.

The 86-slide quarterly review may finally be taken behind the barn and humanely destroyed.

What remains is the bit we probably should have cared about all along.

Is the marketing any fucking good?

And someone still has to know.

So if you work in marketing and regularly say:

“I’m not creative.”

Maybe stop saying it.

More importantly:

Maybe stop believing it.

Your job is not to get marketing approved.

Your job is to make marketing work.

And increasingly, the difference between those two things might be the difference between keeping your job and having AI write a very thoughtful farewell email on your behalf.