AI changes what marketing people do all day: less making, more directing, checking and orchestrating. The org chart should follow the work.
How roles shift
- Creators become editors and art directors of AI output, focused on ideas, taste and quality.
- Marketing operations becomes the engine room: workflows, tools, data, guardrails, cost control.
- New or growing roles: marketing technologists, content operations leads, AI producers, prompt and workflow designers, measurement scientists.
- Brand and legal partners move earlier in the process, setting rules rather than only reviewing outputs.
Signals from the market
- Klarna said in 2024 that it had built in-house AI tools and was using AI for most copywriting, while cutting external marketing supplier spend.
Communicate the change well
In April 2025, Duolingo's CEO sent an "AI-first" memo saying the company would gradually stop using contractors for work AI can handle. It drew public backlash on social media. In August 2025 he told the New York Times "This was on me. I did not give enough context," and said the company had never laid off full-time employees and didn't plan to. For a consumer brand, how you talk about AI and jobs is itself marketing.
A design process
- Map tasks, not roles: which tasks AI does, assists or doesn't touch.
- Redesign workflows around those tasks, with human checkpoints.
- Then redesign roles and skills, and decide on hiring, reskilling or reduction.
- Train with your own brand examples; name champions in each team.
- Communicate: what changes, what doesn't, how decisions are made — internally first.