🤖 AI in Marketing: Hype, Risik or Revolution?
AI makes us faster, smarter, more efficient - but can it also replace us? My honest look at how AI is changing marketing - and why it needs more than just good prompts + an infobox on the EU AI Act
Hi 👋 I’m Florian Schleicher. This is the FutureStrategies newsletter of FUTURES. Thank you so much for reading along 💚
We need to talk about AI.
I know, everyone wants to talk about it.
All. The. Time.
But we need to discuss the impact of AI on marketing, its potential, and its risks. And how we can use it effectively for organizations.
In my last newsletter, I mentioned that I see 5 particularly exciting trends around marketing and strategy for 2025.
Today, we’re diving deep into number 4:
🤖 GenAI Explosion – The AI Cultural Shift in Marketing
Let’s get this straight from the start—I wrote this piece myself.
But AI helped me research a little beyond my usual scope.
Some key questions that have been on my mind (and maybe on yours too?) are:
Will young marketing managers have a harder time finding jobs now that agencies and brands have artificial assistants?
Will AI not only change our work but also our perception of creativity itself?
Will companies and employees who don’t engage with AI still be competitive in five years?
Will AI models soon replace creatives and strategists—or will they free us from repetitive tasks so we can focus on real ideas again?
Will AI make brands smarter, more relevant, and more unique—or will it lead to uniformity, making all content interchangeable?
As these questions show:
We’re moving in a field of tension.
On one hand, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, claims that AI will take over 95% of all marketing, creative, and advertising work currently handled by agencies.
"It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI — and the AI will likely be able to test the creative against real or synthetic customer focus groups for predicting results and optimizing. Again, all free, instant, and nearly perfect. Images, videos, campaign ideas? No problem."
Yes, Generative AI produces text, images, videos, and even entire campaigns in seconds.
But is that enough to create real brand relationships?
Marketing is more than just generating content quickly.
It thrives on intuition, human creativity, and cultural sensitivity. It’s about understanding emotions, telling stories that stick, and giving brands a unique identity.
AI can test, optimize, and personalize—but it can’t feel. It can analyze data, but it can’t create genuine brand culture. And if everyone uses the same algorithms, won’t everything start looking the same?
Data Points
88% of organisations are exploring how to use Generative AI (only 61% are working on prediction models, and just 30% on robotics).
25% already say, that they are integrating Generative AI capabilities across large parts of their organizational structure als integrierte Fähigkeit in großen Teilen ihrer Organisationsstruktur (not just in marketing).
76% of marketing strategists have a positive attitude toward AI - and nearly 90% expect to work with AI even more.
Only 25% of companies invest in AI training for their employees, and only 39% of employees have received AI training from their companies.
80% of employees in organizations with AI bans admit to using AI anyway - 74% do so through their personal accounts.
Employees don’t want to wait for official AI guidelines. They use it because it saves time (90%), helps them be more creative (84%), and makes their job more fulfilling (83%).
Between Unlimited Potential & Lack of Direction
Why do marketing professionals use AI in their work?
