Amazon’s decision to cut 14,000 jobs this quarter – roughly half the number initially feared – confirms what most boardrooms already know: artificial intelligence isn’t just a productivity tool, it’s a restructuring driver.
Forget the polite language about “culture” from CEO Andy Jassy or “people and customers” from HR chief Beth Galetti. The driver is efficiency. Investors want AI-level margins, not human-level headcount.
And Amazon isn’t the outlier. Nestlé plans to remove 12,000 white-collar roles over the next two years. Salesforce has already replaced 4,000 customer people with the rise of AI agents. UPS has shed nearly 50,000 jobs since 2024, citing machine learning. Agency Dentsu has trimmed 3,400 worldwide. Not all job losses are liked to AI or marketing – but many are.
Check your LinkedIn feed and you’ll see the fallout: marketers, analysts, planners – ‘open to work’.
The pattern is clear. AI is collapsing the space between strategy and execution – the white-collar layer where much of marketing, operations and customer service used to live.
5 marketing jobs already under pressure
SEO. The search-optimisation industry – worth billions globally – exists largely to please algorithms, not customers. As users move from classic search to AI search with Perplexity, ChatGPT and Claude, traditional SEO will fade. It’ll be replaced by a new layer of ‘generative engine optimisation’ (GEO) equally detached from customer value, perhaps just more automated.
Social media management. Posting, scheduling and A/B testing across Meta and TikTok are already automatable. The ‘digital native’ roles created in the 2010s – once seen as the new frontier – are now the first to go. The irony: the generation that disrupted traditional marketing is now being disrupted by its own tools.
Content creation. Routine copywriting and influencer work are being commoditised fast. Virtual influencers have already fronted campaigns for beauty brands like L’Oréal offering perpetual, low-cost exposure – without mood swings, agents or scheduling conflicts. The majority of consumers cannot tell – or do not care – that the presenter isn’t human.
Ad production. Coca-Cola’s first AI-generated classic Coke caravan holiday commercial marked a turning point. Writing on X, Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch captured the industry’s unease: “FUN FACT: @CocaCola is ‘red’ because it’s made from the blood of out-of-work artists!” The Verge, meanwhile, described Coke’s latest 2025 AI Christmas ads as “a sloppy eyesore”.
But it’s early days and the shift is inevitable. I once flew 30 people to South Africa for 30 seconds of beach footage. If AI can render 50 versions of the same ad overnight, be my guest. Mondelez just spent $40m on generative video platforms promising to halve production costs. In that kind of math, efficiency always wins the budget battle.
Marketing analytics. Good news. AI may bring rigour to an area marketers have long avoided: measurement. The excuse that “it’s too complex to track” is eroding. AI-driven attribution and modelling could finally give the industry what it has lacked for decades – a standardised way to diagnose growth and prove ROI. For a discipline often allergic to evidence, there’s a cultural reset coming.
The real issue: relevance
I’ve read 20 corporate layoff memos this quarter. Beyond AI, they all mention “less critical roles” and “unnecessary layers”.
Context matters. European GDP (the UK included) will grow just over 1% this year; the US a tad more. Across most markets, budgets are tightening. In that climate, CEOs are asking one question with increasing regularity: does this role contribute to growth?
If the answer is unclear, the role is at risk.
I’ve said it for years – if marketers don’t stand for growth, they stand for nothing. Growth is the reason marketing exists. Yet large parts of the discipline still retreat into comfortable abstractions of ‘brand love’ and ‘storytelling’. In a world where CEOs get more serious about growth, those arguments won’t survive the meeting.
Staying relevant in the AI age: Try this
Look at your role like a CEO
Ask: what are my company’s top three priorities? What are my customers’ top three priorities? The overlap is where growth happens. That’s the value creation zone.
Maybe a competitor has a better product. Maybe your pricing’s off. Maybe your media strategy is underpowered. Whatever your job description says, if you operate inside the value creation zone – and make that visible – your role will be relevant.
Audit yourself
Which parts of your job could AI do better or cheaper? If large chunks can be automated, they will be. You can’t out-AI AI. Replace yourself before someone else does. Let machines handle the routine while you trade up to what they still can’t do well: judgment, creativity and the courage to ask questions no dataset can answer.
Rediscover the creative leader in you
AI will add mediocrity – at scale. Boston Consulting Group ran a revealing experiment: two groups solved the same marketing problems; one using AI, one without. AI helped the group perform 40% better in a product innovation task but resulted in 41% less diversity of ideas. Machines replicate knowledge; they can’t generate intuition. AI makes average things for average people (hello, Mico). Great marketers work on the edges – where ideas still feel slightly dangerous.
The choice ahead
Very soon, every marketer will face their own ‘Matrix moment’ – accept automation’s illusion of control, or take back the job of creating growth. Here’s the choice:
Take the blue pill, and hand over your marketing to the machines (Meta and co are building that version of the future). Take the red pill, and step up as a growth leader who uses AI as leverage.
The choice is existential. In the AI economy, marketing rainmakers stay. Everyone else may become optional.
Source: Thomas Barta, Growth and Marketing Leadership, 21 Nov 2025