Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder @ Black Glass.
Forrester recently estimated that AI will replace 7.5% of agency jobs by 2030.
I think the impact is going to be much more substantial. A few weeks ago, I shared with you the beginning of my research into AI and the impact on the marketing department.
Quick reminder: I developed 73 job descriptions for 233 marketing roles and rated them based on their defensibility against automation. Jobs with scores of 2.5-plus were highly defensible, while those below 1.5 had lower defensibility. The average score was 1.67, with 16 roles (7%) being highly defensible, 99 (43%) medium and 118 (50%) low.
There’s more to this story, though. I found some worrying indicators beyond the raw, unsettling proportions of replaceable marketing work. Folks: It’s real dark!
A Closer Look At The Data
Let’s start with gender. The 136 women in the organization tended to hold jobs with less defensibility (average: 1.63) than the 73 men (average: 1.73). This “defensibility gap” is smaller than the salary gap in this organization, where the men’s average salary was $161,000 and the women’s was $131,000.
This is an objectively terrible situation. Not only are women underpaid, they’re also holding jobs with fewer defenses against replacement. Yikes. Another recent study also found that AI is more likely to replace jobs held by women—even beyond marketing.
The story isn’t much better when you look at tenure and education. Of the 217 people in jobs with a medium-to-low defense against AI replacement, 107 had over 10 years of experience, and 65 had MBAs. The average cost of an MBA is $61,800, totaling $4 million spent on additional education for all of those potentially replaceable jobs.
When you roll it all up, the annual salary cost of the 99 jobs with medium defensibility is $15.4 million, and the 118 jobs with low defensibility is $12.8 million. Eliminating half the jobs from each category would yield annual savings of $14.4 million, representing a 10 basis point improvement in the company’s net income.
Further highlighting the potential impact on marketing, McKinsey reports that out of 16 business functions they analyzed, four functions—including marketing and sales—“could account for approximately 75 percent of the total annual value from generative AI use cases.”
What This Means For Companies And Employees
From a strategic point of view, this is an incredibly exciting moment. Companies that lean into artificial intelligence are likely to have a hiring advantage for high-potential talent, a competitive edge against their peers in terms of product differentiation and better unit costs, and will be able to unlock new, previously unreasonable ways of doing business. That much is obvious to anyone who has even dabbled with these tools and is supported by research.
From a human(e) point of view, it’s more complicated. Each slice of that graph is a livelihood, and the chart couldn’t be a better depiction of inequality if it tried: Our research tells us that most of those jobs have a limited defense against replacement by a well-trained computer.
Shifting Our Focus To Make Work More Meaningful
So … now what?
I didn’t do all of this research to just prove out a bleak future but rather to gain real clarity around the pitfalls and potential wins lying in plain sight.
But this also somewhat misses the point: We should automate the work that gives us little joy and where humans have a limited advantage over a computer. We should replace what we automate with better, fulfilling, growth-oriented work. Consider how AI could free up your time to focus on things like:
• Innovations that serve underserved and underrepresented communities.
• Breaking the systemic problems and systems in place in advertising and marketing.
• Developing and launching new (and more sustainable) products.
• Creating deeper relationships with customers and partners.
• Supporting psychological safety with and for peers.
• Coaching teammates, building new skills and capabilities.
• Impacting cultures and society toward forward change.
• Deep learning and research.
• Going home on time and/or focusing on health and wellness.
Unfortunately, most of us only have a playbook suited for a pre-AI world, and our job descriptions reflect that playbook.
Thankfully, things like playbooks and job descriptions are well within our control. Better, more future-ready versions are within our grasp. We just need the will to make the leap.
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