By Shafqat Islam
As debate rages among CMOs about AI’s role in marketing, it’s marketing itself that requires a fresh perspective in the AI era. Often, marketing is oversold as a magical force that can save brands and transform markets, but this has created a credibility problem. Overpromising leads to disappointment and erodes trust in marketing.
Marketers tend to hype big ideas like viral campaigns as business saviors, but marketing can’t fix fundamental flaws in products or operations. This overpromise problem leads executives to doubt marketing’s value, seeing it as more art than science. Instead of addressing this, marketers often focus on complex metrics that don’t align with core business goals like sales and pipeline growth.
Marketing’s true power lies in collaborating with strong products and operations to drive growth. It can amplify strengths and highlight weaknesses but can’t create substance where none exists. Marketing is often misunderstood and misrepresented as a cure-all, which undermines its status as a driver of scalable growth.
The way forward is honesty and learning. Marketing should focus on results, embrace failures as learning opportunities, and communicate openly about what works and what doesn’t. By prioritizing business outcomes over vanity metrics and sharing real customer feedback, marketing can shift from a perceived cost to a strategic business partner.
Shafqat Islam is president of Optimizely and formerly CEO of Welcome (NewsCred). He is a lifelong builder of marketing technology and advocates for a data-driven, honest approach to marketing in the AI era.
