AI Is Making Marketing Specialists Obsolete #ChangeMyMind

Brandi Starr [00:00:40]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandy Star and we have another amazing episode for you today. AI is changing the game in marketing. Automating content creation, optimizing campaigns and even making strategic decisions. As these capabilities advance, marketing leaders faced a tough question. Do you still need the same mix of specialists or is it time to rethink your team structure? Some say specialists will always be critical. Others argue the future belongs to generalists, strategic leaders who connect the dots while AI handles execution. So is AI making marketing specialists obsolete or is this just the next evolution of the industry? Let's get into it.

Brandi Starr [00:01:36]:
So today I am thrilled to be joined by Jorge Alvarez. Jorge is a seasoned B2B, SaaS, marketing leader, four time CMO and co founder of Advizr, which achieved a successful exit over two decades of driving growth at cutting edge fintech and data driven organizations including SESAMm, Two Sigma, Betterment and Advizr. He specializes in data driven marketing strategies, ABM and funnel optimization. Before his startup success, Jorge managed a 500 million dollar investment portfolio at American Express. Today he integrates the latest generative AI tech tactics to streamline teams, boost efficiency and deliver high impact results at his startup EvolveIQ. Jorge, welcome to Revenue Rehab. Your session begins now.

Jorge Alvarez [00:02:40]:
Hi Brandy, so happy to see you. Thanks so much for having me here.

Brandi Starr [00:02:44]:
Thank you. I am excited for our topic today. AI is so such a hot conversation. But before we dive in, our industry loves its fancy jargon. But let's be real, some of these buzzwords are just fluff and they can hold us back more than they can help. So I'd love to hear what is your overused buzzword that you'd like to erase from existence?

Jorge Alvarez [00:03:13]:
Look, it's I guess not so much of a, you know, war that would get out of existence, but I think that ABM, the methodology so overused. I think that people throw ABM for many things that are not ABM and it kind of cheapens a little bit the impact of such an amazing methodology. I wish people were using it more thoughtfully for the actual thing. It is.

Brandi Starr [00:03:39]:
Yeah. And that is one I think that's been banished a few times and consistently the challenge with it is not only that it's overused, but it's often used so incorrectly. So I am with you because way back when my career started, we just called it target accounts and you know, there was a strategy around those targeted accounts and then it became ABM and then abx and you know, there's so many different things there.

Jorge Alvarez [00:04:11]:
Now we have PBM.

Brandi Starr [00:04:14]:
Oh, I hadn't heard. What's PBM?

Jorge Alvarez [00:04:17]:
Well, actually we're going to talk about that a little more, but PBM is Persona based marketing. So you're able to do ABM for every single one of your contacts, not just your key accounts.

Brandi Starr [00:04:30]:
Ah, okay, I will have to come back to that. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, let's transition into today's topic because this, this issue is impacting so many companies. Like right now it is impossible to avoid AI. And thinking about AI, there's so many implications and I think most companies are really thinking about how do they use it, what tools do they need. But thinking about team structure and career pathing and you know, some people say, oh, AI is going to replace certain roles, say it's going to evolve certain roles. And so, you know, I, I know. Just going back to how this conversation initiated, I read something that you wrote on LinkedIn where you were responding to a hot take and your perspective was that marketing specialists have value, but that the future belongs to the generalists as a result of AI. And so I'd love to hear you explain, expand on your perspective around how our marketing team structure is going to change with the use of AI.

Jorge Alvarez [00:05:46]:
Yeah, no, sure, happy to do that. So I guess that on the spectrum of marketers, I'm definitely on the more aggressive side when it comes to AI. I've seen so many changes over the years and I've never seen a technology that can, can revolutionize all disciplines, to be honest, like this. Like the power of AI, it's huge. And when you start digging deeper into agentic AI and the possibilities that that enables, you see that it's going to change fundamentally. The way we work, like the way we set up our teams is going to be very different. I'm sure you've heard of the now solopreneurs building companies with, you know, one person. We, we've heard that there was this, you know, post on LinkedIn that was making the rounds with a list of what was that, five, seven companies that were in the air levels of 20 million, 100 million with you know, 20 team, 20 people team or less.

Jorge Alvarez [00:06:49]:
Right. So I see this, that you know that this is going to happen in marketing and it's already happening. And the way I see teams evolving is where you're not going to have all these specialists doing every single function. I can see easily having one person that understands the whole activity and that has multiple agent systems under this person taking care of multiple strategies. More than generalists, I see more like strategists, but I don't see the need for an email marketer, a copywriter and so forth. Even many function of product marketing are going to be able to move to this. And I'm talking about this as if it was in the future, but the reality is that it can happen today for many of them. So yeah, that's where I see things going.

Brandi Starr [00:07:50]:
So some would argue that AI is streamlining execution and that that because it's streamlining execution, that that increases the need for specialists who can optimize and guide those tools effectively. Because, you know, with AI, it very much is garbage in, garbage out. Same way we talk about data. And so if there isn't someone behind the machine with those more specialized expertise and understanding, how do we still get that same quality out?

Jorge Alvarez [00:08:27]:
Yeah, no, and that's. That, that, that's fair. Right. So my point is that we, we do need to have the knowledge to train those, you know, the agents and to train the systems. Right. Like there's no way you're going to be able to, to have a successful campaign without that knowledge. But that's where the CMO comes in. Right? Like the CMO should be able to have that experience and be able to come with what's the right strategy for each channel and for each activity that you perform.

Jorge Alvarez [00:09:04]:
The way I see it is that you have your CMO that should be super experienced and that should know how these different activities work and what are the ins and outs. And then you have generalists that are actually executing on those tasks and they work alongside maybe an engineer that is taking care of setting up the agents in the proper way. And it's also important to note here that an agent, there are many misconceptions of what they are. But when you come and create a very sophisticated agent, it's something that you require a lot of knowledge to do. I do think that all that knowledge should come from the cmo and maybe it depends on the size of the company. So if we're talking about a small startup, I don't think you need a specialist. But if you're talking about an American Express, of course you have right now armies of marketers. Those armies will not be huge.

Jorge Alvarez [00:10:05]:
They're going to become probably 10% of their size today. But maybe some of those roles are specialists. So I guess it comes back to what's the size of the company, what's the focus, what are the activities? But for some, you definitely will need certain level of specialization to make it work.

Brandi Starr [00:10:26]:
Okay, so I want to think about two. You gave me two thoughts. So first, I want to jump forward to the future. So if we say that the CMO has all of these expertise because they have come up, they've, in most cases the CMO has led a lot of these specialties within their career, that would mean that we're going to get to a point, as, you know, the current CMOs and those that are already, I'd say, at least at the director level probably have the experience and knowledge to move up those ranks and be able to do that. Jumping way in the future. If we, if the career path then eliminates the specialist, then how do we have future CMOs? How do we have those future leaders with those specialized expertise that can continue to think and drive the machine? Or do you think by the time we get there the machines are going to be sophisticated enough, not need it?

Jorge Alvarez [00:11:36]:
Yeah, no, obviously, like, you know, it's so hard to predict the future. Like honestly, I would say more than five years, 10 years. I think that's going to be impossible for us to predict right now. But the way I can see it working, at least in the short to medium term, is that, you know, you have, you know, again, you go back to cmo. The cmo, you know, has their own playbooks, right? So every CMO has their own playbooks and they know how to implement them. And, you know, for the most part, they should understand many of these disciplines within marketing, right. In the future, I can see those generalists learning from them, right? And becoming stronger at every single one of those areas. And there are things that, the fact that there's not a single person doing email marketing, for example, doesn't mean that that person, that the generalist that is managing the agents is not learning from them.

Jorge Alvarez [00:12:34]:
They're implementing the strategies and they're seeing them work in front of them. They become specialists for a different level. They become more like strategists than actual specialists doing the heavy lifting. So they're seeing how the campaigns work, how the content is the results of the content and many other activities or ads. You have your, your, your ad program on through agents, right? But you see how those results are evolving and you learn from that. So I don't think, I think that there's, there will be all that knowledge still happening and still being digested by, by the people that are managing the, by the generalists and they will be able to become CMOs. Now your second point, I think that's, that's spot on. Like the fact that today we don't have still the, the tools through AI to do the whole strategy for, let's say an email campaign doesn't mean that's not going to happen.

Jorge Alvarez [00:13:38]:
Like we are getting close to AGI. Like that could happen this year. Right. And from that it keeps getting better and better. So I could easily see in five years having tools that will be able to strategize and create those campaigns. I don't see though a point where a human won't be needed in the, in the medium term, let's say in the future probably. I actually don't know. Like it's, it's when you start seeing the way an agent can execute and you see them working like the, you know, the agent, the agent specialist with each other and you see the product they can, they can create, you start like understanding the level of complexity and sophistication they have and what they're learning and they're able to, they will be able to execute.

Jorge Alvarez [00:14:34]:
So I think there's a little bit of both things that we discussed.

Brandi Starr [00:14:38]:
Okay. And so I want to jump back more to today. And so we know that right now that there is a lot that AI can do, but we also know that right now it still hallucinates. It's still, you know, some of the agentic technologies are, you know, they are improving, but they're not quite there yet. And so thinking about how organizations are defining their team structure today can do you feel like at the point we are with technology and let's just say in the next 12 months that a generalist really can rely on AI to replace that knowledge of a specialist who has had years of experience in the niche. Or do you feel like that's something that is more medium term?

Jorge Alvarez [00:15:38]:
I'll tell you what we're doing at Evolve iq. What we're doing is we're helping companies implement agents. We do come up with a strategy, we help the company, we work together, couple with strategy and then implement the agents. The agents run autonomously, I would say 90% of the time there is a human component. So for example, you have an ABM campaign, we're talking about abm, a PBM campaign. You have them going on and we have quality controls at different points of the campaign to make sure that the content is at the quality level we expect it to be, but it runs by itself. Even for content. We have other agent systems that create content and of course there's a lot of content purists that are going to push back on this.

Jorge Alvarez [00:16:35]:
But the content that comes out is very high quality. You get pieces 80% ready, 85% ready. We do have always there's a copywriter in our team that looks at the copy before it goes out. We never let it go. Except for SEO pieces. SEO pieces are different and they don't require that much, you know, that conversational and more like storytelling part. But the other piece is, yeah, there's, there's a, you know, person that is looking, a copywriter that takes a look and make sure that everything's fine, that there were no hallucinations or that there is no editing to do. Most of the times there's a little bit of editing, light editing, but to answer your question, you cannot do it today.

Jorge Alvarez [00:17:20]:
Like, the little sophistication of these tools is huge. I'm actually surprised not more people are doing it. I think it's just a matter of adaptation curve. It's going to take a few years for people to really get on top of them and implement it. But the technology, it's very much ready.

Brandi Starr [00:17:42]:
Okay. It's one of those things that I definitely would say. I do not consider myself an AI expert expert, but I would say that I am a moderately early adopter and I'm all in on, on figuring this out. And one of the things that has come up is, you know, AI technologies, leveraging AI, it's not free. And so as a leader, thinking about budgets of headcount versus tech resources and how to, you know, I mean most companies like looking at all the state of this, that and the other in 2025, we're seeing across the board, most people are seeing less budgets. And so we have to figure out where to spend in order to be effective. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on, you know, if I've got, let's just say I'm at least a medium to large company. Small companies have, you know, have their own challenges.

Brandi Starr [00:18:47]:
And I'm trying to figure out where I should be pushing for headcount versus spend on technology, specifically AI. How do you think through and make those decisions?

Jorge Alvarez [00:19:02]:
Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So the first thing I would say is that the, the, the, the technology cost is not very high. Like if you use any of those technologies, we use Crewai we use Relevance AI, we use clay. The technologies are not prohibitively expensive, they are fairly affordable. Particularly the agentic tools are very affordable. So what I would say is it's more a matter of training and changing your paradigm, like making sure that you are open to it and start testing it. Because the moment you start seeing and really getting, you know, learning what you can achieve with them, you know, it's, it's a no brainer. So what I would, what I would say is more about training and taking the leap.

Jorge Alvarez [00:19:55]:
Like you know, getting one of those tools like Relevance I would say is the easiest one because it's no code, but just you start testing and start playing and start creating simple agents and, and so, so the shift there for me is more like start training your people and start seeing how could those tools affect your team in the, in the, in the short term and the medium term. And then you can start making decisions on headcount.

Brandi Starr [00:20:25]:
Okay. And that, that is, is interesting because I know as I've been looking at different tools, most of them, I'd say seem relatively affordable, at least for mid to large size companies. But it, at least my perception has been that in order to accomplish all of the things, you end up needing a lot of tools. And what I'm hearing from you is I may be wrong in that perception in that there are ways to get the same power of scale that you're talking about in having AI agents a part of the team without carrying a high dollar cost. Is that accurate?

Jorge Alvarez [00:21:11]:
100%. 100%. And particularly when you see the output you can get from those tools, the cost is actually, it could be almost negligible because again, instead of hiring a new copywriter and you have one copywriter because you know, again, I'm sure like many companies wouldn't be comfortable with, you know, using agents for, for copywriting. So if you already have a copywriter and you're planning to get another one, I would say try the tools. You're going to save 80% of the cost of hiring a new copywriter with, by implementing, you know, implementing a system like this. And probably you will need some engineer at your company to help you do the implementation. There are going to be things that may be a little harder to do, but it's not rocket science for any engineer that is developing products. It's super, super easy.

Brandi Starr [00:22:09]:
Okay, thinking about this, the other thing that comes to mind is risk and accountability. So when we hire a human there that human has a certain level of risk tolerance they are aware of. You know, it's like, you got morals, you got ethics, you got, you know, company rules. And, you know, we all kind of know what's okay, what's not to a certain degree. And there's a level of accountability that I know if I completely go off the rails, I'm gonna lose my job. You don't have those same things with AI. And so I know that that is the hesitation or that is one of the hesitations for a lot of marketing leaders, especially the more seasoned ones, because, you know, we started with like, I know my career started, I was doing design because we were sending marketing via fax machines. So to think about, you know, programming AI, when I started my career, like, seemed like something, you know, only in a movie.

Brandi Starr [00:23:22]:
And so you have a lot of, you know, most of the companies that I see are a bit of laggards when it comes to implementing AI. They're only comfortable where it's like a human using a technology, but the human is still fully in control. And so how do you address the concern with risk and accountability when we are turning it over to a machine?

Jorge Alvarez [00:23:50]:
Yeah, yeah, and that's a great question. And first of all, what I would say is I would not recommend having the agents running by themselves. Like, you know, that's, that's just not, not advisable because as you said, like, there's some hallucination. Depending on the models that you're using, some of them are more prone to it, some are less, but there's hallucination that's going to happen. There are ways to set up your systems to minimize part of it. Basically, you can even tell the LLM make sure that all information you used is coming from these sources. It minimizes the risk. It still can happen.

Jorge Alvarez [00:24:33]:
There's another thing. For example, for one of our content creation systems, we have a quality control agent. The agent actually goes back and checks for accuracy and checks for making sure that everything is following instructions that you followed. It works actually pretty good. But yeah, again, as I said, at the end of the day, you need to have a human making sure that all the content, all the emails, everything that you're doing is to your level of quality. Right. And you know, I worked for Two Sigma, which is a hedge fund. We had a lawyer in our team that was looking at every single social media post, for example.

Jorge Alvarez [00:25:17]:
So companies like that, I'm sure that's not going to change. Right. There's a lot of risk for them to do that. If you're a small startup, you're getting started, your risk tolerance is going to be much higher. So it also depends on where you are in that spectrum.

Brandi Starr [00:25:33]:
Okay. And so I want to talk a bit about just almost the dangers of this argument to the marketing function. There have been an abundance of conversations around marketing's role in the organization, how significant it is. We all know that everybody thinks they can do marketing's job, like, I don't know, ahead of marketing. That has not fought that battle of somebody randomly trying to give them advice on, on, you know, how to do the things. And so thinking about AI and the fact that, you know, moving from that more specialized knowledge to generalist with AI, isn't the argument a little bit dangerous? Because it's, it's. If the mentality is just a generous generalist leveraging AI can do all of the things, what's to stop? Especially in startups, but even, you know, in some of the other organizations where marketing isn't as valued and marketing is already, already fighting for the seat at the table, what's to stop an organization from going, yeah, let me get an engineer and you know, a generalist that kind of knows marketing and just give them the AI tools.

Jorge Alvarez [00:26:56]:
Yeah, that's, yeah, I think that's, that's a risk. That always happens with marketing. And as you said, like, you know, the number of times I've heard like, oh, why don't we do this, why don't we do that from like anyone in the company. That's very common. Right. And we always are like, well, we tried this, we already did, blah, blah, you know, there's always a reason. But yeah, you're right, that happens a lot. What I would say about this in particular is that the, the reason why we exist as marketers is because the order functions.

Jorge Alvarez [00:27:30]:
Just don't understand the details. One of the ways we help companies that evolve IQ is through coming up with strategies that actually work. I've seen many times and this is one of the big things that we help with. I've seen many times CEOs pushing to do a webinar on their product. What are the great things that my product does? Those never land. Right? So yes, you can try it, of course you can try it, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. Right? Like how many cold emails you get that are about a product. Right.

Jorge Alvarez [00:28:09]:
They offer no value, but trying to sell you on their value prop. Right. And that just doesn't land. So I can see that happening. Yes. And it's going to happen, but it already happens today without the technology. Right. The reason again why cold emailing gets such a bad rep is exactly that, that people that really don't understand marketing try to do it and it just doesn't work.

Jorge Alvarez [00:28:33]:
Right. So technology aside, it's not going to work either way. So my point is, yeah, AI will make it easier, but it doesn't mean it's going to work. So the need for, for a marketing team for, for, you know, the right strategies that, that know how to do it, that have done it, you know, there will still be there for the, for the, you know, I would say at least short, medium term, they will be there.

Brandi Starr [00:28:59]:
Okay. And where, you know, kind of I want to go last is let's. I mean, I do believe that your vision of what the future is going to look like, I think you're pretty spot on just looking at all the trends and seeing how the technology is evolving. And so assuming that what's being predicted is the future, what advice do you give to those, you know, for any of the folks that are earlier in their career that are, you know, in those specialist roles today? What advice do you give them so that they don't find themselves, you know, without a career path?

Jorge Alvarez [00:29:44]:
Yeah, I think that's, that's a very important point right now. And it's not just for marketing. I think that anyone that is starting their career, they should start looking at how, at learning the most advanced tools on AI they can, because it's going to come too fast and if you're not ready, if you're rejecting them, you are going to be in trouble. So I would say start learning about all sorts of tools, start implementing them at your job, if it's possible. Right. I know that certain companies may not allow it, but even at your personal time, just start testing them. You don't need to go as far as your agents, but even using ChatGPT, you can use projects. You can train your projects with instructions with some files.

Jorge Alvarez [00:30:33]:
You can, you can start like testing different things, you know, be on top of, of everything that's coming out. I see, I follow many, many, many podcasts and, you know, YouTubers and on a weekly basis, the number of advancements we get, new models, new tools. It's crazy. So I would say anyone, I would say not not only starting their career, but anyone right now that is in a workforce shoots should be looking at this because it's going to, it's going to, if you don't, it's going to hit you in the face at some point.

Brandi Starr [00:31:06]:
And, you know, it's a really good point. I know that was one way that I got started with. I eliminated paying for a personal trainer by leveraging ChatGPT. And I have trained a custom GPT on all of my physical limitations, my goals, all the equipment that I have in my home gym, all those sorts of things. And week over week it is giving me new workouts and I print them, I go down in my gym, I, you know, I do them and if there's any, you know, move I don't understand, it can give me a video on how to do that particular one. And that's been really effective for me. And you know, it was one of those places where I was like, let me figure out something that I can build that is low risk. You know, starting using it at work can come with some risks.

Brandi Starr [00:32:04]:
So it was like, okay, let me just try this. And it's been great for me. Now could everyone do that? No. Different people hire personal trainers for different reasons, but for me it really was to have them program workouts for me so that I knew what to do. And now I'm able to leverage AI with that and I'm sure that there's a ton more that I could go back and do and revisit. And so my last question before we get to the lightning round is really for the cmo and I'm going to start with thinking about larger organizations where there are multiple roles and lots of specialists. If I am looking at my org chart for the next 12, 18 months, what are the roles that you think are most ripe for shifting to leveraging AI as opposed to having a person in that seat?

Jorge Alvarez [00:33:11]:
Yeah, it's definitely content driven roles, which is a lot in marketing. But, but starting with like purely, you know, writing blog posts, writing, you know, FAQs, all those sorts of things. Case studies. Case studies are super easy to do with with AI. All of those types of jobs. I would say those are the first ones. Then I would say like email marketing, ads, even, like, if you think about it, you don't need to use AI to come up with your ads, but you can use it as a brainstorming tool, right? So even if you don't want to implement it in full and take the output, you can use it for brainstorming, right? So I would say most, most activities can rely on it for different, in different ways, right? So again, the obvious one are the content ones. But even a product marketer can be doing that, right? Like you can be using, you know, AI to, you know, polish a product page, for example, or you know, come up with, you know, the outline for a presentation for your sales team.

Jorge Alvarez [00:34:20]:
You know, there are, there are many, many ways. So long, long, short answer. I guess now it's for anything, but I would say more on the content side.

Brandi Starr [00:34:32]:
Okay. All right. Well, we've talked about the challenge, and the challenge being really where to leverage AI versus specialist resources. And now it's time to fix it. So this is our lightning round and so fast answers only want to make sure that our listeners leave with actions that they can take right now to start making an impact. And so finish this sentence. If your company is struggling to figure out where to leverage humans versus AI, the first thing you should do is.

Jorge Alvarez [00:35:10]:
Start implementing it with simple workflows, simple activities. Just start doing it. Start. Jump right to it.

Brandi Starr [00:35:18]:
Okay, what's one red flag that signals a company may have a challenge balancing human versus AI, but doesn't realize it.

Jorge Alvarez [00:35:28]:
Yet if you just don't allow to use it? If there's a company that doesn't allow to use AI, they have a problem.

Brandi Starr [00:35:37]:
Okay. What's the most common mistake people are making when trying to determine human versus AI.

Jorge Alvarez [00:35:47]:
That they are not trying? The new things are coming every time because the improvements are crazy. So if something didn't work two months ago, and I'm saying a year ago, I'm saying two months ago, try it now.

Brandi Starr [00:36:00]:
Okay. And what's the fastest action someone can take today to make progress?

Jorge Alvarez [00:36:06]:
I would say just start, as I said, start implementing. Start. Start testing, implementing, trying different ways. And you know you're going to find you're going to be pleasantly surprised.

Brandi Starr [00:36:18]:
Awesome. Well, every good session ends with a plan for progress because just talking about the problem won't fix it. Well, Jorge, I, you know, I have really enjoyed our discussion and where can our audience find you if they want to continue the conversation and definitely give us the shameless plug for Evolve?

Jorge Alvarez [00:36:41]:
Of course, of course. Thank you. Thank you. That's great, Rachel. Really, really enjoyed being here with you. So Evolve IQ, you can find us@evolve-iq.com you can also subscribe to my new my newsletter, that is CMO Blueprint. And you can find me on LinkedIn. Jorge Helvares, New York.

Jorge Alvarez [00:36:59]:
I believe it's my hand.

Brandi Starr [00:37:01]:
Awesome. Well, we will make sure to link to everything that you just shared, so check the show notes wherever you are listening or watching this podcast. And again, thank you so, so much for joining me. This was such a good discussion and I know it is something that every leader is constantly debating right now in figuring out where to best leverage AI in their organizations.

Jorge Alvarez [00:37:27]:
Thank you so much.

Brandi Starr [00:37:28]:
Awesome. Well, I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Jorge. I can't believe we are at the end. Until next time. Bye. Bye.