Marketing Posts on Crowch

🔍 The Debate: Will AI Destroy or Reinvent Marketing Jobs?

There’s no shortage of bold predictions about AI’s impact on the marketing profession. On one side, leaders like Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind) suggest AI will unlock a surplus of new jobs, driving innovation and human creativity. On the other, Sam Altman (OpenAI) has bluntly warned that up to 95% of marketing roles could vanish, replaced by increasingly capable AI systems. Then there are marketing veterans like Rand Fishkin, who dismiss the fear entirely, arguing that the industry will adapt and thrive. So who’s right? The answer might lie somewhere in the middle — but one thing is clear: ignoring this shift is not an option. As AI continues to evolve, marketing as we know it is already being reshaped, and understanding this transformation is essential for anyone building a career in the field.

💡 The Core Truth: AI Makes Intelligence Cheap

Let’s strip away the hype and look at a few undeniable facts:

1. AI reduces the cost of intelligence to nearly zero.

Tasks that once required years of experience, domain expertise, or a team of analysts can now be handled in seconds by LLMs and automation tools.

2. AI is not just a tool — it’s a replacement system.

While it can assist human workers, businesses are increasingly using AI to fully automate tasks previously done by people — from email copywriting to SEO content planning and even campaign analysis.

3. Businesses follow the money.

When new technology promises immediate and measurable ROI, companies have every incentive to adopt it quickly. AI offers lower costs, faster output, and scalability — a compelling case in any boardroom.

🏢 What’s Likely to Happen Next in Marketing Employment

As AI systems become more advanced and integrated, the core value of human marketers will shift. Here’s what we can expect:

• Commodity-level marketing work will be automated: Think social media captions, A/B test optimization, and basic SEO — these are already being handled by AI with minimal human input.

• Strategy and human creativity will still matter, but only at the top: The demand will shift towards senior-level marketers who can think across disciplines, direct AI workflows, and align automation with brand purpose and customer emotion.

• Marketing teams will shrink: A single person, augmented by AI tools, can now outperform entire teams from five years ago. Companies will optimize headcount accordingly.

• Soft skills and brand intuition will become differentiators: As intelligence is commoditized, things like storytelling, empathy, and trust-building will separate good marketers from great ones.

🛡️ How to Future-Proof Your Career in Marketing

If the value of raw intelligence is approaching zero, then what keeps you valuable in the workforce? Here are a few actionable strategies:

1. Move up the abstraction ladder. Learn to oversee systems and workflows, not just perform tasks. Understand how to connect AI outputs with strategic outcomes.

2. Invest in soft skills. Storytelling, leadership, emotional intelligence — these will become your unfair advantage when technical tasks are handled by machines.

3. Build your AI fluency. You don’t need to become a machine learning engineer, but you do need to understand how AI models work, their limits, and how to prompt them effectively.

4. Develop a personal brand. People buy from people — and while AI can generate content, it can’t build trust. Having a recognizable personal voice, thought leadership, and community influence will insulate you from commoditization.

5. Stay adaptable. The tools will change. The tactics will evolve. Your ability to learn quickly and pivot will matter more than your mastery of any one platform.

🧭 Final Thoughts: Redefining Value in a Post-Intelligence Economy

The rise of AI doesn’t mean the end of marketing — it means the end of marketing as we knew it. The skills that once made marketers indispensable are becoming automated, and the focus is shifting toward creative judgment, ethical direction, and strategic leadership. In a world where machines can do the thinking, the human edge comes from intuition, context, emotion, and originality. Whether you’re a junior marketer just starting out or a CMO navigating this transformation, one thing is certain: those who evolve will not just survive — they’ll lead the next era of intelligent marketing.

📈 Rethinking AI for Business: Less Complexity, More Efficiency

In the ever-evolving world of AI-driven business optimization, companies are constantly looking for smarter ways to make decisions — without adding unnecessary technical complexity. Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) techniques have proven powerful, but they often come with a hidden cost: computational overhead and instability caused by their reliance on critic networks. Group-Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) offers a refreshing shift. Originally successful in large language model alignment, GRPO brings a critic-free, cluster-based approach to reinforcement learning. It replaces heavy critic networks with lightweight group-and-action baselines, making training faster and more efficient — a huge win for businesses deploying AI in real-time systems. This article expands on earlier work exploring clustered RL policies for business applications and investigates how GRPO can be adapted to deliver personalized promotions and smarter decisions in the real world.

🤹 The Business Challenge: Many Goals, One Policy

Unlike traditional AI research problems, real-world businesses don’t have the luxury of optimizing for a single metric. A company might aim to:

• Boost revenue

• Personalize user experience

• Maintain fairness and transparency

• Stay consistent with brand voice

These goals often conflict, yet must be handled simultaneously by a single decision-making system. This is where most RL frameworks struggle. Standard models like Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) tend to optimize for one dominant objective and rely on critic networks to evaluate every action — a setup that introduces delay, instability, and significant resource consumption. GRPO sidesteps these issues elegantly by leaning on group-relative comparisons within customer clusters. Instead of comparing every individual to an absolute critic estimate, the system learns by observing how similar individuals respond to actions, which dramatically simplifies the reward structure.

🧠 Why Critic-Free Learning Matters

In classic RL setups, a critic network estimates the expected value of actions, guiding the agent’s learning. But in business contexts, especially those using offline customer logs, critic learning becomes noisy, expensive, and sometimes outright misleading. GRPO removes the critic entirely. Instead, it groups users based on shared attributes (demographics, behavior, engagement level) and tracks the relative performance of actions within each group. This “in-group comparison” serves as the signal for learning — no critic needed.

Benefits include:

• Lower variance in policy gradients

• Faster convergence

• Reduced compute requirements

• Better alignment with human-level goals, like fairness across segments

These features make GRPO a strong candidate for practical, production-grade decision engines that need to run on constrained infrastructure without sacrificing performance.

🛒 Case Study: Personalized Promotions at Scale

Let’s take an e-commerce scenario: a company wants to serve personalized offers to users, balancing conversion rates with customer lifetime value and brand equity.

Traditional RL might recommend deep personalization for every individual, but that often leads to overfitting or inconsistent messaging. With GRPO, users are first clustered — say, by purchase history and browsing behavior. The algorithm then compares offer performance within each group, learning which promotions outperform the others without relying on an external critic model.

This creates a system that:

• Learns faster using real-world data

• Generalizes better across user segments

• Maintains a coherent brand experience

Importantly, this strategy works even offline, using historical logs — making it ideal for companies without access to real-time interactions.

⚠️ Autonomous Agents Aren’t Magic — They’re Code

The tech world loves a good story — and few have been juicier in recent years than the rise of autonomous AI agents. These aren’t just chatbots answering support tickets. They’re supposed to replace entire departments, make decisions in real time, and operate independently inside your business.

According to the narrative, your business will soon run on autopilot. Just plug in a few agents, connect them to your data, and let them do everything from marketing to supply chain optimization. Sounds incredible, right?

Well — here’s the twist: it’s not that simple.

Behind the glossy demos and slick marketing, AI agents don’t run on promises — they run on pipelines. And building those pipelines? That takes real engineering.

🛠️ The Truth: Real AI Needs Real Developers

Every serious team working in AI — whether at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or small-scale startups — already knows the score:

• LLMs are commoditized.

• “Talking to an AI” is table stakes.

• The real value lies in agentic architectures, where AIs are embedded in structured systems that perform meaningful tasks on their own.

But here’s the catch: even the best AI agents aren’t plug-and-play. They need to be orchestrated. They need monitoring, logic layers, fallback procedures, and access controls. And all of that lives far outside the neat world of prompt engineering.

To make AI do real work, you need pipelines: think sequences of functions, data transformations, API triggers, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints. You’re not building a chatbot — you’re engineering a nervous system.

💸 Big Tech’s Two-Front War: Engineers vs. Illusion

To understand why this illusion exists, look at what Big Tech is doing on two fronts:

1. The Hiring Arms Race

Top AI researchers are being offered $300M+ comp packages, even while companies lay off thousands of regular engineers. The industry is betting on a handful of visionaries to invent the future — but who’s left to actually build it?

2. The Marketing Overdrive

With flashy claims like “AI will run your business”, corporations are selling a dream. Your 100-person company? Replaced by 10 agents. Meetings? Gone. Processes? Collapsed into graphs of autonomous logic nodes. Decisions? Reduced to triggers and tokens.

Sounds beautiful. Efficient. Clean. But… not real — yet.

🤖 What’s Actually Working in the Wild?

Some companies are seeing results — but not the kind the keynote slides suggest. What’s working is this:

• Hybrid architectures, where agents handle structured tasks but humans oversee.

• Workflow automation, tightly scoped and highly customized.

• Agent frameworks, like AutoGen or LangGraph, used by engineers — not marketers.

• Trigger-based systems, not AI “decision-makers.”

🧠 Wait… Are We Blogging Again?

Believe it or not, blogs are making a big comeback — and this time, it’s not because the algorithm demands it. It’s because people do.

In an era oversaturated with AI-generated content and short-form social fluff, audiences — especially those in B2B and startup ecosystems — are hungry for something more real. Something grounded. Something… human. And startups are responding in kind. We’re seeing a return to authentic, long-form content where founders, builders, and creators speak directly to their audiences. Not through polished PR campaigns or algorithm-optimized carousels — but through blog posts, newsletters, and opinionated essays.

🔄 Back to the Blog: A Throwback with a Purpose

If this feels familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. Think back to the golden era of startup blogging in the 2010s. Medium was on fire. Every founder had a hot take. Everyone was publishing lessons from their Series A or their customer discovery journey.

At the time, blogging felt like a natural extension of startup culture — share your journey, build your brand, and create credibility by documenting the process. Eventually, things shifted. SEO hacks, ghostwritten posts, and growth-first content crowded the landscape.

But now, we’re cycling back — and this time, authenticity is the engine. Why now? Because audiences can smell fake from a mile away, and AI has flooded the content market with surface-level repetition. That’s why genuine, imperfect, human-written content suddenly feels fresh and trustworthy again.

🧩 Authenticity Isn’t Just a Vibe — It’s a Strategy

Let’s be clear: this shift isn’t just nostalgic. It’s strategic. In 2025, building trust with customers, investors, and even future team members depends more than ever on transparency. People want to know who’s behind the product, why it was built, and what values shape its roadmap.

That’s where founder-led storytelling comes in. When startup leaders take the time to write their own blog posts — or even deeply collaborate with writers — they communicate something that no ad campaign can replicate: realness.

That doesn’t mean every post has to be personal or emotional. It just has to feel true. Whether it’s a technical breakdown, a reflection on early failures, or a roadmap update — the key is speaking in your own voice, not a corporate script.

✍️ Why Human Content Wins in a Sea of AI

AI is great — but it’s also made digital content feel increasingly robotic. Every other startup’s website starts to look the same. LinkedIn posts repeat each other. SEO-optimized articles regurgitate the same 10 bullet points. And so, authenticity becomes a differentiator.

Audiences reward originality. Investors notice founders who can clearly articulate their vision. Journalists prefer quoting voices that don’t sound like brand training manuals. In this landscape, writing a blog post isn’t old school — it’s a competitive edge. Just look at the explosion of Substack newsletters from startup founders, designers, and engineers. Many of them aren’t going viral — and that’s okay. What they’re doing is building trust, attracting the right audience, and reinforcing their brand with every honest word.

🧠 Lessons from the Blog-Fueled Frontlines

If you’re a startup founder wondering whether to jump in — do it. But do it right. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Speak in your actual voice. Drop the jargon. Don’t try to impress — try to connect.

• Tell stories, not strategies. Numbers are great, but what people remember are turning points, lessons learned, and honest reflections.

• Be consistent, not constant. You don’t need to blog every week. You just need to show up regularly enough to stay credible.

• Start small, then repurpose. A good blog post can become a LinkedIn thread, a podcast script, or a company-wide memo.

And most importantly: don’t outsource your voice. Even if you get help shaping your words, the ideas have to come from you. Authenticity isn’t just a format — it’s a commitment.

🔥 Authenticity Is the New Virality

In a world where content is being churned out by the terabyte, the rarest thing you can offer is your unfiltered perspective. People follow people — not brands. And the founders and creators who are willing to put themselves out there, with all their rough edges, are the ones who’ll build the strongest communities.

So yes, blogs are back. But more than that — voice is back. Humanity is back. Authenticity is back. And in startup marketing, that might be the most powerful tool you have.

🔍 The Trap of “Should” Thinking in Strategy

Too often, business leaders approach strategy with the same mindset they’d apply to a checklist — looking for a definitive answer to how things should be done. Questions like “Should we have a single strategy cascade or several?”, “Should startups do strategy or just execute?”, or “How often should we review our strategy?” pop up frequently.

But here’s the truth: there’s no universal “should” when it comes to strategy. No perfect frequency. No golden rule about number of cascades. And certainly no one-size-fits-all template that neatly applies to every business at every stage.

What really matters is starting from the reality of your situation — not an idealized abstraction of how strategy ought to be.

🧭 Strategy Already Exists — Whether You Name It or Not

Many executives fall into the trap of believing strategy only exists if they consciously create it. But in reality, every organization already has a strategy, even if it’s informal, fragmented, or unspoken.

Your company makes choices every day: where to focus, how to compete, what capabilities to build. These decisions define your de facto strategy. Whether you document it or not, your business has a Where-to-Play (WTP) and a How-to-Win (HTW). Even startups — often considered too fast-paced for strategic exercises — are constantly making consequential choices that shape their strategy from day one.

The real challenge isn’t creating strategy from scratch — it’s recognizing the one that already exists, making sense of it, and improving it where necessary.

🛠 The Only “Should” That Matters: Start with Reality

Let’s go back to the reader’s question about cascading strategy across one corporation and four business units. Should he do five cascades? One? Three?

The answer lies in the actual strategic alignment between the units. The reader needs to reverse-engineer the current strategies using the strategy choice cascade as a tool. If the strategic intents, capabilities, and competitive positioning of all units are aligned, one cascade might be enough.

Take a (fictional) example of a food company with three divisions: pasta, pasta sauce, and parmesan cheese. If all three divisions share the same aspiration — say, becoming the premium natural choice in their category — and follow similar paths to market, a single cascade might suffice.

But what if the parmesan cheese business operates in a different supply chain, faces distinct competitors, and targets a different customer base? In that case, forcing it to fit into the corporate cascade would hinder its success. That unit would need its own cascade — because reality demands it.

🧠 Fast-Moving Doesn’t Mean Strategy-Free

Some leaders claim their environment is too fast-changing to pause for strategy. But speed doesn’t erase the presence of strategy — it just makes it harder to spot. Even in rapid environments, choices are still made. Those choices still amount to a strategy. Ignoring or avoiding the strategic implications doesn’t make them disappear — it only weakens your ability to steer the business.

Instead, reverse-engineer what’s really happening, then evaluate: Are your current outcomes aligned with your goals? If yes, continue. If not, don’t wait for the next quarterly offsite — make new choices now.

📅 How Often Should Strategy Be Reviewed?

Here’s another recurring question: “How often should we revisit our strategy?”

Once again, the answer depends on outcomes. Strategy is not a calendar event — it’s the pattern of your choices. If those choices are driving results you’re happy with, there’s no rush to change them. But if they’re not delivering what you want, it’s time to reassess — no matter when your last review was.

There’s no magic number of months or years. There’s only a need for clarity, alignment, and performance. That’s your signal.

🧩 Strategy Is What You Do — Not What You Say

At the end of the day, strategy isn’t about crafting perfect mission statements or polished PowerPoint decks. It’s about making deliberate, consistent choices in pursuit of a meaningful aspiration.

Don’t let misplaced shoulds steer you toward abstractions. Instead, start with what your business is actually doing. Understand it. Question it. Then improve it — or keep it, if it’s working. The only rule that matters? Be grounded in reality.

And the strongest kind of influence is example. People don’t follow those who simply speak louder. They’re drawn to those who act, especially when it’s difficult. Who stay true to themselves. Who remain calm in tension. Who don’t break under criticism, but learn from it. Who don’t put themselves at the center — but become a source of support for others.

A true leader isn’t always the one in the spotlight. More often, it's the person you barely notice — yet without them, nothing works. They don’t seek recognition, they seek results. They don’t build a cult of personality — they create an environment where others can grow. They understand that the stronger the team, the stronger the system. And they’re not afraid if someone around them shines brighter. Because their strength isn’t in dominance, but in trust.

A leader is someone who serves, not someone who controls from above. It may sound paradoxical, but service is the deepest form of leadership. Not submission, but a conscious choice to place the purpose, the team, the mission above one’s own ego. That doesn’t mean abandoning yourself — it means seeing something more than just yourself. A leader asks questions with no easy answers. They can go against the flow — not out of defiance, but out of integrity.

Often, the leader isn’t the one who knows the path — but the one who dares to search first. They take the unclear road, make mistakes, fall, get up, and share what they’ve learned. They’re not afraid to seem imperfect. Their strength lies in vulnerability. In being honest with themselves. They can say: “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out,” “I made a mistake, and I’m growing from it,” or “This is hard, but I’m still going.” That is the kind of maturity the world needs — beyond slogans, beyond surface-level solutions.

A leader isn’t afraid to trust. Trust is always a risk — a chance you’ll be let down, misunderstood, or disappointed. But without trust, nothing moves. Control may create structure, but not inspiration. And it’s inspiration that brings people in. A true leader knows: engagement doesn’t come from fear — it comes from meaning. And they look for meaning — in work, in people, in each step they take.

Leadership is an internal stance. It can’t be forced. It can’t be assigned. You can only take it on when you understand that you’re ready to be responsible — not just for your actions, but for what comes after. Not for reward. Not for praise. But simply because you know, quietly, deeply: “I need to be here.”

Real leadership isn’t loud. It’s often quiet — but steady. It doesn’t demand attention, but creates the space for others to grow. And that’s why it matters. Because in a world where everyone is chasing outer success, the leader is the one who stays faithful to an inner compass. Who doesn’t build around themselves, but around meaning. Who doesn’t call others to follow — but simply walks. And by walking, lights the way for others.