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While marketers find AI a great help, they are increasingly concerned about organizational readiness and the long-term impact of technology on the profession. That’s according to a new academic study, “The AI Paradox in Marketing: Fascination, Resistance, and Reinvention.”
For the study, published in the “Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity,” researchers surveyed 24 marketing professionals from organizations around the world. Participants said AI’s handling of routine and repetitive tasks gave them more time for strategic thinking.
“Even if you spend a few hundred dollars a month on AI, you feel like you’ve won an entire team,” said one participant. “It’s honestly mind-blowing.”
They also said technology supported them in ways they might not expect.
“AI acts as real psychological support,” said another participant. “This helps reduce the stress linked to work overload by automating certain tasks, which allows me to save time and concentrate on more strategic aspects.
How will new marketers learn the trade?
The immediate benefits of AI are clear and appreciated by marketers. Their unease begins with what this means in the long term, as AI increasingly does the work that builds marketing expertise.
Writing copy, testing campaigns, refining messages and analyzing results are not simple production tasks. This is where marketers learn what resonates, develop their instincts, recover from their mistakes, and gain the judgment that prepares them for a more strategic role.s.
The interviews also revealed organizational gaps that make AI adoption more difficult.
The main problems are lack of AI expertise, rapid obsolescence of skills, and resistance to changing established ways of working. One participant pointed to “a real lack of essential skills” needed to carry out AI projects.
AI is more than just software deployment
Researchers say companies need targeted training that combines technical capabilities, such as rapid engineering and tool selection, with soft skills, including creative judgment, ethical reasoning and change management. Rather than treating AI as another software deployment, organizations should approach it as a workforce transformation that requires trust, experimentation, and continuous learning.
AI is becoming easier and easier to adopt. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to build teams that know when to trust it, when to question it, and how to use it responsibly.
Participants said that as AI takes on more and more routine work, skills such as rapid design, data analysis and technical fluency become more important as marketers increasingly evaluate AI’s work instead of producing every first draft themselves.
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This places judgment at the center of the profession. Someone still needs to recognize when AI misses customer context, draws the wrong conclusions, or produces an answer that seems compelling but isn’t correct. Participants identified creativity, ethical judgment, cultural understanding, and relationship building as the capabilities that AI is least likely to replace.
Marketing organizations face a challenge far beyond AI adoption. As AI handles the work that once taught marketers the craft, businesses will need new ways to develop the judgment, creativity, and experience that traditionally come from that work.
The study can be downloaded here. (No registration required)
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