Marketing leaders should not be content to follow the wisdom of AI enabled crowds, but seek to think clearly, act deliberately, and lead through complexity.
Disruptive technology, including generative AI, real-time personalisation engines, autonomous agents, and decentralised consumer ecosystems have reshaped how brands interact with their markets. Martech stacks are now broader, faster, and in many cases more opaque. But while the tools change, the job of marketing remains what it has always been: to understand customers and create value that matters.
Too many teams are chasing fame. We don't seek to reject technology but we need a reminder that the tallest buildings require foundations. Amidst the hype cycles and quarterly targets, what distinguishes great marketing is not its fluency in tools, but its commitment to the mission.
This is not a nostalgic return to “basics.” It is a strategic return to principles, many of which have now been immortalised through their absorption into AI models.
The fundamentals haven’t changed, but perhaps they have been forgotten.
The Premise: Technology Changes, Fundamentals Endure
Marketing has always evolved alongside technology. From the Gutenberg press to Google Ads, from Nielsen ratings to real-time behavioural targeting, each new capability reshaped what marketers could do. The past few years have been shaped by accelerating and disruptive technologies including the much hyped generative AI that can simulate creativity, and perform predictive analytics that infer intent before it's expressed. The customer journey is also changing with LLM-powered chatbots acting as frontline brand interfaces and platforms promising personalisation in real-time and at scale.
These innovations are not minor upgrades. They fundamentally change how marketing is done. But they do not change the why…
The job of marketing is to translate needs and wants into value.
That job has not changed, and will not change, but the more powerful our tools become, the more tempting it is to confuse activity with progress. Velocity becomes mistaken for growth. Sophistication in analysis gets mistaken for relevance. The presence of analytical tools is taken as proof of insight. It isn’t. True advantage still comes from asking better questions, not running faster automations.
The Expanding Threat of Tactical Obsession
Marketers are paralysed by too many real-time dashboards. Teams are fragmenting into micro-specialties without any brand level oversight. The focus is on growth and vanity metrics - views, likes, subscribers, 5-star reviews and algorithm amplification - not long term, forward looking indicators like NPS or customer lifetime value.
GPT-based agents can now ideate, script, test, and optimise creative within minutes, but the results are still not much better than a recent Marketing graduate. Martech vendors sell plug-and-play customer journeys that are less differentiated than before, often relying on USA based learnings that are irrelevant in other markets. When pressed, the AI can tell you that they got it wrong, but they can’t say why.
We are not saying that there shouldn’t be short-term goals and targets. We are not saying that you should abandon your day-to-day promotional tactics. We are saying that these activities should not be the focus for marketing leaders.
Strategic Warning: Every dollar spent based on a decision made by an AI black-box that’s unmoored from a core marketing principle is not just wasted, it’s compounded misalignment.
Anchor All Marketing Decisions to Fundamentals
It doesn’t matter whether you are making a marketing hire, choosing a new tool for the marketing stack or building out your product roadmap, every marketing decision should be based on the foundational questions that led you to start your business in the first place.
- What customer behaviour are we responding to?
- What unmet need (or want) are we trying to solve?
- What is the commercial rationale or business case?
This is not a call to ignore innovation. It’s a call to earn the right to deploy it.
