Remember when AI was the stuff of nightmares, poised to steal our jobs?
Well, plot twist.
Over half of marketing professionals (58%) are ready to welcome AI into their roles.
And 43% expect AI tools to positively impact their jobs, compared to only 17% who see a downside.
Quite the turnaround from 2023's apocalypse-now mindset.
Let's take a closer look at how AI is changing marketing. It's a big shift, not just a tool. But what about people? We examine how tech and talent together are shaping what comes next.
AI’s role in modern marketing
AI tool users hit 250 million globally in 2023 — more than double the 2020 figure. By the end of the decade, that number’s expected to top 700 million. ChatGPT alone has over 200 million weekly users.
If you're not using AI chatbots to draft emails to your solicitor or ponder what your cat really thinks of you, what are you up to?
But let's talk work. Are you using AI on the job? Odds are, yes. 68% of marketers are weaving AI into their daily tasks.
As more marketers use AI, they're pushing its limits. Finding strengths, spotting weaknesses. Sharing some discoveries, keeping others under wraps.
Here's what's clear: marketers and leaders are seeing real benefits:
- 59% of business leaders using AI say it’s improved their job satisfaction.
- 26% of B2B marketers using chatbots saw a 10-20% boost in leads
- 25% of marketers say AI automation and chatbots make their strategies more effective
- 93% of marketers said AI helps them generate content faster, 81% uncover insights more quickly and 90% make decisions faster.
AI helps marketers whip up content, brainstorm ideas, automate tasks, research and crunch data — faster than ever before. It's making them happier at work. Some are even seeing better results from their marketing efforts.
AI isn't the enemy, according to the way we’re using it. If you are embracing it, are you getting the most out of it?
How your favourite tools are evolving
Many of the tools you use every day have AI built in, quietly improving how things get done. Advanced features often require a subscription. These tools include:
Grammarly
Powered by AI to offer sharper, context-sensitive writing suggestions. It helps fine-tune tone and clarity.
Gmail
Uses Gemini (formerly known as Bard) to refine email drafting, enhance autocomplete suggestions and sort messages. It can prioritise important emails, summarises long threads and suggest responses.
Otter.ai
Taps into AI to pull key insights from your recordings, offering summaries, tagging and highlighting key points.
Asana
Predicts deadlines and prioritises tasks based on importance, streamlining workflow based on historical data.
HubSpot
Has integrated AI into everything from lead scoring to content recommendations. AI helps identify high-potential leads, optimise email marketing sequences and suggest personalised content for prospects.
Maybe you're using chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini more intentionally. Why stop there? If you're comfortable with AI, there are other tools out there — ones you might not have heard of — that could unlock new ways to connect and communicate with your customers.
Character.ai
Character.ai is a chatbot platform primarily used for roleplaying. With some tech know-how, you can build your own bot and give it a personality. Like your favourite TV or book character. It's popular among teenagers using it for therapy and to combat loneliness. Terrifying.
For marketers: create audience personas. Then have conversations with specific customers. Ask about their needs and desires, get their opinions on a key message or marketing campaign. Compare and contrast with real feedback. Replace at your own risk.
QuillBot
Has a few different uses, but what sets it apart is its paraphrasing capabilities. I put this sentence into the system and it produced “has several applications, but its paraphrase ability is what makes it unique.”
With a paid subscription, you can use it to change the amount of synonyms used, make formal text sound more natural, adjust paraphrasing output depending on the type of content you’re producing, and so on. Useful to take existing content and give it a fresh spin while maintaining its original message to increase its lifespan.
Should you tell your customers you’re using AI?
What happens if they find out and you didn't tell them?
They might not mind, as long as they're getting results. But there's more to consider than outcomes — it's also about perception.
60% of marketing experts who've used generative AI worry it could harm a company's brand due to biases, plagiarism and misaligned values.
These concerns highlight why transparency matters. Especially in industries where personalisation, craftsmanship or creativity are key. Disclosing AI use can be sensitive. Clients might (and should) expect a personal touch they fear AI lacks.
On the other hand, being upfront about how AI enhances your services can strengthen your position as a forward-thinking company.
If you’re going to spill, do what you do best. Communicate how it benefits your clients. For example:
- AI helps you deliver high-quality work quicker, so clients get results sooner without compromising quality.
- AI supports the creative process by freeing up time for human creativity and strategy.
- AI lets your team concentrate on strategic activities by automating time-consuming tasks, which can lower costs or offer better value.
Tell your clients that tools like Otter.ai help you handle note-taking and summarising meetings. So you can focus on their strategies instead of administrative tasks. Share that using Grammarly improves content accuracy, ensuring even better standards in every deliverable. You get the picture.
The indispensable human element
AI can’t replace human insight and creativity. Because there’s nothing original about algorithmically generated ideas. They’re built on existing data, not genuine inspiration.
But the urge to use AI to save money and speed up production is strong.
What happens when we replace human specialists with AI? Let’s look at content creators.
Using AI for content creation?
It’s becoming easier to recognise content produced by AI due to its ubiquity. AI content is overly optimistic or positive. Generic. Repetitive. Too perfect (there is such a thing). Titles with colons in them, every word capitalised. Formulaic sentence structures. Excessive use of AI typical words (crucial, delve, tapestry, in today’s world of, not only but).
It's a dead giveaway.
Going back to the point about perception. It feels like it’s been generated by a machine — and that’s a turn-off. Authenticity matters more than ever in marketing. 81% of consumers need to trust the brand to buy from them.
When AI-generated content becomes too polished, it loses the imperfections and quirks that make it relatable.
And that’s why you need people behind the words. While AI can get you started or help organise thoughts, it's humans who spin the stories, weave in emotion and tweak the tone to match the audience's mood.
Human writers know how to bend the rules for impact, when to talk casually and when to surprise you.
If your content looks and sounds like it came straight from ChatGPT, people will notice. And when they notice, they might start questioning whether your brand is truly engaged or just relying on shortcuts.
This is why balancing AI with genuine human creativity is so important. AI can support your efforts, but it’s the human touch that makes your content stand out.
This thinking applies to most tasks marketers use AI for.
AI's great at the boring stuff: repeating tasks, crunching numbers, spitting out quick insights.
But it's the human element that turns these tasks into something meaningful, interesting and impactful.
Without people steering the ship, AI's work might look fine but misses the heart and soul that really pulls people in.
How Incredibble uses AI
We use AI to enhance our abilities, not replace them. Here’s how we blend AI with human intelligence:
Summarising and briefing
AI builds out the first draft of a brief from transcriptions from video calls. But we add the particulars it’s missed, and the finesse and flair only humans can offer.
Research
For challenging searches, AI helps us find examples, like obscure case studies, providing us with a broader data pool. We also use AI for keyword research, then validate those findings with official SEO tools to ensure accuracy and relevance.
Quality checks
AI tools like Grammarly scan our content for obvious no-nos. But the real quality assurance is on us. Our copy editors and proofreaders make sure everything's up to our standard, not just AI's baseline.
Skill up or team up
AI has proven its value. It speeds up tasks and opens new possibilities. But it doesn't replace human creativity, empathy or intuition.
To use AI effectively, you need the right skills. If you don't have them, collaborate with those who do.
At Incredibble, we're AI-competent but not complacent. With us, you get the speed and smarts of AI plus the heart and soul of real storytelling.
We help you cut through with human content that's not just seen and heard but felt — driving results and deepening your connection with your audience.