Bronwyn Heys – CEO Australian Marketing Institute – March 2026

Everyone is debating whether AI will replace jobs.

The more interesting question is why most companies are barely using it.

A recent labour market study from Anthropic (Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence \ Anthropic) analysed millions of real interactions with its AI assistant Claude to understand how AI is actually being used at work. This body of work is not forecasts or theory but is real behaviour.

The finding that stands out is the adoption gap.

Across 19 occupational categories, the gap between AI capability and AI usage is enormous. The radar chart from the research illustrates it clearly as you will see below.

In Computer and Mathematical roles, AI could theoretically assist with around 94% of tasks, yet actual workplace usage is only about 33%.

Similar gaps appear in:

• Business and Finance
• Management
• Strategy and planning roles

These are knowledge-heavy professions. The same kind of work marketers do every day.

Meanwhile, manual labour roles show far smaller gaps because the work itself is harder to digitise.

So the risk right now is not AI replacing marketers, it is marketing teams not adopting AI fast enough.

I was reading a post this week from Entrepreneur and podcast host Stephen Bartlett who also referred this article and made a blunt point that captures the shift perfectly:

“AI will not replace you. The person using AI will replace the person who isn’t.”

That line sounds dramatic but the Anthropic data supports it.

Even in roles where AI could support most tasks, organisations are still using it for only a fraction of what is possible.

For marketing leaders this matters because marketing sits in the centre of AI’s strongest capabilities. AI already performs well in areas such as:

• writing and content production
• summarising research and insights
• analysing campaign performance
• generating creative ideas
• synthesising customer data

Yet many teams still treat AI as a novelty rather than redesigning workflows around it, that that is where the real shift in marketing is happening and needs to happen. It needs not a bolt on but new workflow with AI included.

The Future of Marketing Work

AI is quietly reshaping marketing roles in three important ways.

1. Content creation is becoming commoditised

AI can already produce decent copy, social posts, summaries and even basic video scripts in seconds. The value is shifting from writing content to directing content systems.

Marketers become editors and orchestrators rather than producers.

2. Insight synthesis becomes the new advantage

The best marketers will not be those who create the most content. They will be those who ask better questions and interpret AI-driven insights faster.

Research, strategy and pattern recognition become premium skills.

3. Marketing productivity will expand dramatically

A marketer working with AI can now test more ideas, analyse more data and produce more variations of campaigns than ever before.

That does not reduce the importance of marketing. It increases the importance of judgement, creativity and strategic direction. The marketers who thrive will not simply use AI tools. They will redesign how marketing work happens, as the real disruption is not the technology.

It is the gap between what AI can already do and what most organisations are actually doing with it.