AI is here love her or hate her...

“AI didn’t make me fall back in love with marketing. It reminded me why the fundamentals matter.”

Sometimes you fall back in love with the thing you’ve been doing for years.

Lately I’ve been feeling that about marketing. I’ve spent more than 20 years in this craft. Agency life, global brands, big campaigns, scrappy teams, long nights, brilliant mentors, plenty of mistakes and a lot of learning. 

And recently I’ve been watching a new wave of people enter the space convinced that because AI sits at their fingertips they now know more than the people who’ve spent decades learning the discipline.

AI is powerful. I use it every single day. It makes me faster. It helps pressure test thinking. It asks better questions. It’s an incredible partner. But it isn’t a substitute for understanding marketing. What it can’t replicate is the years spent learning the fundamentals. The training. The frameworks. The instinct that develops when you’ve seen campaigns succeed and fail. The ability to read a room, understand people, interpret behaviour, and turn that into strategy.

Marketing isn’t just copy or content.

It’s part data.

Part analysis.

Part creativity.

Part emotion.

And a huge part of it is understanding humans.

That’s why I appreciated the recent conversation sparked by Mark Ritson. His point was simple and blunt.

Training in marketing makes you better at marketing.

It sounds obvious, but somewhere along the way the discipline got watered down. Marketing became something everyone thinks they can do after a few podcasts and a handful of social posts.

The reality is the best marketers I know are constantly learning. Formally trained. Still training. Still reading. Still testing. Still sharpening the craft.

I’m formally trained.

I’ve learnt a lot on the job.

And I’m still learning every day.

Tools will change. Platforms will change. AI will keep evolving.

But the fundamentals of understanding people, building brands and creating demand will always matter. And honestly, watching the conversation unfold lately has reminded me why I love this industry so much.