In an interesting article, David Meerman Scott argues that one immediate impact of Ai will be to squeeze out marketing middle layers.
Yesterday we looked at how Ai may be excellent at hollowing out routine production work, but it is much weaker at replacing judgement.
A recent article by David Meerman Scott, RIP Middle Management in Marketing & PR, pushes that idea one step further. His argument is that the real pressure may not just fall on tasks. It may fall on layers.
For a long time, larger marketing departments have had senior people to set direction, and specialists to make things happen. But between them sits a layer whose job is often to report and reassure. My own brief working experience in this sort of environment was exasperating, as it seemed to slow down everything. I guess information has to travel somehow though.
Now that middle layer starts to look less essential than it once did. Work that mainly exists to move information from one place to another is vulnerable. Do we really need meetings to confirm what the dashboard already shows? Maybe Ai will result in teams becoming smaller and flatter. Writers, designers and paid media specialists may be able to work closer to decision-makers.
However, somebody still has to decide what the business is trying to achieve. If the middle disappears, those who remain need to be more useful at both ends.