In the AI Era, “Polished” Isn’t the Same as “Credible”
Every few years, marketing gets one of those moments where the industry collectively panics.
It happened when CRMs became non-optional. Then again when marketing automation showed up and suddenly “nurture” became a verb everyone pretended they’d always understood. Then programmatic arrived and half the room acted like it was magic and the other half swore it was a scam. Social shifted everything. Mobile changed everything again. Attribution started arguments that still haven’t ended.
And now it’s AI.
If you’re a mid-senior or executive marketer and you’ve felt that uncomfortable pressure like you’re supposed to have an “AI POV” ready in every meeting, I get it. But I want to be clear: you’re not behind. You’re not late. You’re not “missing it.” You’re experiencing the same cycle you’ve already survived.
What’s different this time isn’t that your experience stopped mattering. It’s that the noise is louder. AI has made it easier to produce, and harder to tell who can actually lead. That’s the tension a lot of people feel and can’t quite name. The deliverables look nicer. The decks are faster. The copy is cleaner. But the questions in the room haven’t changed:
What are we doing and why?
What are we not doing?
What’s the bet here?
What will we measure, and what will we ignore?
What’s the risk to brand, trust, revenue?
Who needs to believe this for it to work?
That’s not tool work. That’s judgment. And judgment is still the job.
Here’s how I’m thinking about AI at work, especially for senior marketers: AI can play a role in the work, but it cannot play the role for you. It can help you move faster, but it doesn’t know what matters. It can generate options, but it doesn’t know which trade-off your business can live with. It can draft messaging, but it doesn’t know what your customers actually believe, what your Sales team will actually sell, or what your CFO will actually fund.
The real risk isn’t “AI is taking over.” The real risk is more subtle: you start outsourcing your thinking without realizing it. You start shipping things that sound good but aren’t true. You start leaning on outputs instead of building conviction. And when you’re leading at a Director/VP level, that’s how credibility erodes…quietly, over time, in meetings where people stop asking you what you think because they can’t feel your point of view anymore.
So if you’re feeling the pressure, here’s a better frame that I want this series to build around:
Use AI to increase your capacity. Protect your career by keeping your instincts, context, and standards in the driver’s seat.
Because if you’ve been in this industry long enough, you already know this: tools come and go, but the leaders who keep winning are the ones who can make sense of chaos, create clarity, and move people. AI can support that. It can’t replace it.
Next week, I’ll go one level deeper into the part nobody talks about: the “polished” trap. How AI can make work look executive-ready while quietly weakening the thinking underneath, and what to do instead.
If you’re a marketing leader in transition or you’re leading in a role that’s starting to feel heavier than it should, I coach mid-senior and executive marketers on clarity, positioning, and confidence in an AI era. The goal isn’t to “keep up with AI.” It’s to show up with a stronger point of view, stronger conviction, and a career plan that actually fits where you are now.