Everyone Has the Tools Now. I Chose to Build the Paths Data Flows Through.
They say AI has made our work easier. But has it, really?
Copy drafts come out in seconds, and reports summarize themselves. Yet if your work was mostly repetitive tasks, you've probably felt it: things got faster, but somehow you ended up with more on your plate.
Expectations for a single person went up, in both workload and skill level. Meanwhile, the job market froze.
Then a MarTech job posting from a big tech company caught my eye.
The New Marketer, According to a Job Posting
Here's what the role listed as key responsibilities:
- Systematizing repetitive marketing tasks and building automated workflows
- Optimizing marketing tools like Braze and leading internal system integrations
- Defining and planning services to improve growth marketing efficiency
- Leading technical communication between marketing, PM, and engineering
And in the requirements, this line: "Experience defining problems in manual work and solving them systematically."
It scared me a little. It felt like this role would gradually clean up all the repetitive, manual, people-powered work. That vague idea of "AI replacing marketers" suddenly felt very real.
It reminded me of the film No Other Choice. A story about work you've done your whole life suddenly becoming unnecessary. Nobody's fault. Just a change you have no choice but to accept.
What ChatGPT Didn't Change
Looking back, when ChatGPT first came out, a marketer's day-to-day didn't change much. Copy got faster, but data was still scattered everywhere.
Connecting anything meant filing a request with engineering and waiting. You could see the insight, but execution had to wait in line behind the dev backlog.
Now, Marketers Do It Themselves
Not anymore. I call APIs myself, without asking engineering. When an error code pops up, I read it and troubleshoot it myself. I analyze large volumes of marketing data myself, too.
What AI took away wasn't the marketer's job. It was the waiting.
And in that empty space, the marketer's role is getting blurry. Where does marketing end and engineering begin? The line is fading.
Tools Change. The Axes Don't.
The blurrier the lines got, the more I looked for what doesn't change.
In MarTech, tools change every year. But the axes data travels along stay the same.
Performance → Analytics → CRM → Revenue
Bring users in, see how they move through the product, build relationships based on that, and turn it into revenue. Ad platforms change, CRM tools change, but data flowing between these four axes doesn't.
I Decided to Be Man-su From the Final Scene
The current of the times is a sad one. But I'm choosing to ride it, not resist it.
Like Man-su in the film's final scene, alone, watching over an empty factory filled with nothing but the cold hum of machines. I dream of being the person who manages the system, in the place where repetitive human work has been handed over to machines, one task at a time.
Marketers Will Still Be Here
What disappears isn't the marketer. It's the role that only did repetitive work. What remains is the marketer who plans.
Everyone uses AI now. The tools are advanced enough, and anyone can use them at a solid level with AI's help. We're all holding the same weapon.
That's exactly why it's time to go back to basics.
While everyone swings AI around in every direction, marketers need to refocus on our customers. Revisit the persona, redefine it, explore it more deeply. You need a humanistic eye, a real curiosity about people, to use AI well. In the end, it comes down to planning.
But planning can only stand on accurate data. Marketing data governance has to be solid and the right data has to come in. Only then can we analyze our users accurately and make the right decisions.
That's why I want to become a marketing data pipeline manager. Someone who makes sure data flows properly across these four axes, so marketers who plan can see their customers clearly.
What You'll Find Here
On this blog, I'll share what I learn and feel across three categories:
- Posts: Marketing insights from everyday life and work
- Projects: Records of projects I've worked on
- References: Reverse-engineering campaigns that were done right
Wrapping Up
AI took away the marketer's waiting. With that time, I want to become the person who guards the paths data flows through. Because only when those paths are solid can good planning stand.
