Should advertising and marketing professionals worry about losing their jobs to AI?

In the not-so-distant past, major tech and tech-first companies such as Google, Paytm, Duolingo, and InMobi, amongst others, have made headlines for significant layoffs in their ad-sales and marketing teams, citing AI-induced cost restructuring.

The narrative surrounding these terminations has sparked debates, with some attributing them to a genuine effort to optimise costs through AI and others speculating that companies are using AI as a convenient cover to mitigate fixed costs and meet the expectations of shareholders and venture capitalists.

Reflecting on the recent wave of layoffs and drawing parallels with the significant workforce reductions witnessed in major tech companies globally in 2013, Kushal Sanghvi, Digital Transformer and Media-Content-Specialist, stated that it feels as if the newer edition of the bloodbath has just begun.

Kushal Sanghvi

According to him, companies, particularly those listed on stock exchanges, are under immense pressure from investors to enhance profitability, which is why they have resorted to layoffs and not because of AI. However, he would still give the benefit of doubt to the large and very first digital companies such as Google and Microsoft for they may perhaps have a little merit as they’re moving in the direction of AI and automation very strongly.

With this, he also emphasised that given the fact that marketing and advertising are a blend of science and art, he personally doesn’t think AI is going to eat people’s jobs yet because organisations would need people to manage the same. If AI were to impact the jobs in marketing, it would only do so in very operational roles like proofreading, data entry, image creation, research, etc. and not in executive roles, but even then it would lead to a reduction in the team and not doing away wholly.

“It's still for us to see and realise how much AI can come into play in a field like marketing and advertising where a lot of strategic thinking is required for development, ideation, sales, communication etc,” he said.

Sharing an example to support his take here, Sanghvi said, that if you want to run an advertising campaign, you may consider automating some creative work through AI. However, you're not going to suddenly let go of four creative directors because you'll still need their creative thinking and big ideas. AI won’t assist in idea generation on its own; it will need someone to input their thoughts into it.

Jay Morzaria

Sharing a similar viewpoint on corporates laying off people citing AI, Jay Morzaria, Ex-Creative Head of Rephrase.ai, stated that he isn’t very sure if AI is the primary reason behind the industry-wide job cuts.

“The fact is that economies are cyclical in nature and given the fact that these cycles have become more extreme and violent in recent times, when there is euphoria, there is overhiring and when there is a recession, there is understaffing. However, a bad economy can never become a legitimate excuse for bad planning, which I believe is happening in a lot of places. So, many times, I feel they come up with excuses to lay off people when actually I don’t see much changing in their operations except the downsizing,” he said.

He also mentioned that if it weren’t for the macroeconomic conditions and only AI was to eliminate and replace an entire job function, its first victims would have been coders, IT engineers, or website developers.

“I feel that a lot of companies need to cite a better reason than ‘cutting costs’ to justify layoffs during harsh times. The reason can be AI, funding winter, pandemic, demonetisation, GST or whatever else sticks. I don’t blame the companies also, because the backlash of such a move can be quite aggressive at times, especially if it is not conducted respectfully. The layoffs are a survival mechanism to stay afloat and often has little to do with the talent and skill sets of those employees who get affected,” he emphasised.

But as far as job cuts in marketing are concerned, he wonders what the hype is all about because he is yet to know of any marketing professional who has lost a job because of AI, so to speak, which is why he is not sure if AI can do the job that humans do.

He personally believes that AI, or any other piece of tech can replace one’s job only if the individual doesn’t bring anything of value to the table and adding value could take any form- be it by contributing ideas, opinions, providing perspective, etc. But since value can be provided even by making use of tools like AI effectively, it’s not really an Artificial Intelligence vs Human Intelligence conversation for him, because what’s needed is to have an AI combined with HI conversation.

“Remember, without human input (prompt), there is no AI output,” he claimed.

To simplify things further, he elaborated, “Would you fire a researcher in your staff just because Google search has all the answers? Would you fire your maid at home just because we have a combination of virtual assistants, dishwashers, roti makers and ready-to-make subzi packets? The researcher may still use Google search to conduct research. The maid may still use any of those tools or a combination of them to make her work better or easier. But nothing can come close to replacing her, unless he/she makes food that’s worse than those ready-to-make packets also.”

And that is precisely where he feels that we are getting it all wrong.

“The time is to be more human and less robotic right now. The idea is to be a master rather than a slave. We cannot be so easily threatened by every new piece of tech that waltzes in and advertises itself as the next human replacer when it is made by a human in the first place!” he said.

Moreover, he also emphasised that for him and his team at Rephrase, the sentiment of AI being an enabler rather than a job snatcher was more or less the same since the AI startup was largely in sync with the latest happenings in the world of AI and its real-life applications.

“I still remember being in awe when one of the founders at Rephrase explained the difference in capabilities between ChatGPT 3 vs ChatGPT 4 or even ChatGPT and Bard for that matter,” he recalled.

But in terms of leveraging AI for marketing operations, he mentioned that the team at Rephrase tried their best to utilise the Rephrase platform and showcase its abilities in the videos, and at the same time used other tools like runway.ml, Canva etc. However, predominantly, these tools mentioned were only used to get a part of the video made quicker. The final video, which was essentially a sum of its parts, had to be assembled on an editing platform manually in most cases.

“Although I am not very sure about most brands, the way I see it is many of them have been leveraging AI more as a trend than leveraging it as an effective tool to make marketing operations or comms better/easier. We have mostly seen a slew of posts designed on Dall-E or Midjourney or brands personalising a video/voice of a celebrity with AI so far. However, only some campaigns where the usage of AI was relevant have been the most effective,” he opined.

With this, he also pointed out that in his view, leveraging AI just for the sake of leveraging it, isn’t a long-term strategy.

Adityan Kayalakal

Similarly, Adityan Kayalakal, Head - Marketing and Founding Team Member, Veera, also said that working in a consumer tech company himself, he doesn’t think that it will cut down marketing roles because of AI at their end for now.

“I don’t think using AI reduces the number of people in teams. But it does increase the importance of having some AI-based skill sets since that allows people to execute spec work quickly to test and experiment before investing further. Therefore, we at Veera are right now putting together teams that have GenAI-based skill sets to augment the existing marketing team - definitely easier for us to do since we are at an earlier stage,” he mentioned.

That being said, he also emphasised that big companies have had a different impact when it comes to AI for they have had a ton of operational resources (lots of them hired when workflow was at its peak) who have been affected by this.

On the other hand being an early-stage startup with a lean team, Veera, in his opinion, is able to adapt better and instead put together a more rounded team where people can learn from each other more effectively.

“Since some people are advanced and some are just beginning to play with it for the first time, the learning curve will vary for each person and the team will work together to identify strengths and build on those. But honestly, Gen AI skills won’t be the only skills that matter because that is only a factor in the team’s day-to-day life and the way we use it, it’s a great aid for skilled resources,” he said.

In fact, in its tryst with GenAI, the consumer-tech company, as per Kayalakal, is already experimenting with the same and has been focused on how they can really aid employees in creating more interesting work for internal and external use.

“For marketing specifically, artificial intelligence has been used to generate unusual assets, give us quick turnaround work (through images, VOs etc) so that we can experiment frequently. However, ideation is still people-led, but using AI generally helps us reduce the executional load on the team quite a bit,” he said.

In his opinion, those who have definitely benefitted from GenerativeAI are the design teams and edit teams. To support his take here, he shared the example of how the need to go to a studio multiple times to change the VO’s for videos multiple times earlier was eliminated with the usage of artificial intelligence.

But that being said, he also highlighted the fact that Veera being a consumer tech startup has also seen some of the limitations of Gen AI tools and understood where they can contribute and where they fail.

“We are a lean team and will continue to be so for some time so we are better insulated to these changes in technology and are able to better adapt,” he opined.

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