Fourteen Jobs, One Title

A lot of marketing roles today aren't really roles anymore. They are multiple departments disguised as a single role.

Strategy, content, performance marketing, SEO, brand, social media, video editing, design, automation, analytics, community, and PR. And somehow, all of this is an individual contributor role.

Now, don't get me wrong, being versatile is valuable. Marketing today absolutely benefits from people who can think across functions. But there is a difference between being multi-disciplinary and being stretched so thin that nothing gets the depth it deserves.

Because if we continue like this, eventually everything becomes good enough, but very little becomes truly exceptional. The copy becomes functional. The design becomes templated. The strategy becomes reactive. The brand starts sounding like everyone else.

One thing I have realised about marketing over the years is that almost everyone feels they understand it to some extent, because they interact with it every single day.

I think AI tools have also played a role in making these expectations feel realistic to many companies hiring today. Because from the outside, it can start looking like, "why hire specialists when one person can just use AI tools for everything?"

But anyone who actually works deeply in marketing knows that entering a prompt is not the work. The real work is still thinking, refining, contextualising, challenging ideas, understanding human emotion, knowing what not to say, and shaping something until it actually feels meaningful.

There is a reason even AI companies themselves still heavily invest in writers, designers, strategists, researchers, and brand teams. Tools can accelerate capability. But they still can't replace taste, perspective, emotional understanding, or genuine creative judgment.

I'm not against AI tools at all. I think they are incredible force multipliers when used properly. But the future shouldn't be one person doing 14 jobs with AI. It needs to be 14 highly capable people using these tools, within their own craft, collaborating to build something truly memorable together.