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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#683: Navigating the effect of AI on marketing jobs and the job market with Sue Keith, Landrum Talent Solutions
00:23:28
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- [00:00]
Greg Kilstrom
Your brand may be staying on top of current trends, but are you agile enough to stay relevant, resilient and successful as customers, competition and the world continues to change at a breakneck pace? I'm thrilled to share the newly revised version of my first book, the Agile Brand. I'm calling it the Agile Brand Revisited. It's been updated to reflect our continually changing world, and it provides seven principles that form the backbone of an agile brand, offering detailed insights and actionable steps for incorporating them into your business strategy. This is the book that started it all and I'm excited to share it with you. It's now available in print and digital formats and available everywhere. Learn more by going to the Agile Brand guide website at www.agilebrandguide.com.
- [00:46]
Sue Keith
The Agile Brand.
- [00:55]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trend, trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing, technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show. This episode is brought to you by Landrum Talent Solutions, a national recruiting firm specializing in marketing and HR positions. My guest today has been keeping us up to date with the current state of hiring for marketers on a quarterly basis, which has taken us on quite a rollercoaster ride. Today we're going to look at how marketing and communication execs are responding to the latest developments in the world while still needing to get their work done. To take a look at the latest here, I'd like to welcome back to the show Sue Keith, Corporate Vice President at Landrum Talent Solutions. Sue, welcome back to the show.
- [02:24]
Sue Keith
Thanks Craig. Always great to talk to you. I'm laughing a little bit about the roller coaster because that is very true.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yep, yep. Maybe there's other metaphors as well, but.
- [02:35]
Sue Keith
We'Ll stick with an amusement park for now.
- [02:38]
That works.
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So for those that haven't caught you.
- [02:42]
Greg Kilstrom
On the show before.
- [02:43]
Sue Keith
Why don't we start with you giving a little background on yourself and your.
- [02:46]
Greg Kilstrom
Role at Landrum Talent Solutions?
- [02:48]
Sue Keith
Sure. Well, I'm actually on career number three, and I like to say only the first one was intentional. I have a dual degree in accounting and French, which I know is a weird combination. And I started my career in audit at Deloitte and then I stumbled into a reporting job in the marketing department of mci, which was a large telecom company company that certain people of a certain age may remember. And that kick started my marketing career. And then for the last 12 years, I've been with Landrum Talent, as you said, a national recruiting firm that specializes in two functional areas, HR and marketing. Marketing is the practice that I lead and marketing is a big category. So we see it as four buckets. Marketing, communications, product and creative. And then we place full time contract and fractional positions within those areas.
- [03:27]
Greg Kilstrom
Great, great.
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Sue Keith
So, yeah, let's, as, as we've done, you know, as, as I mentioned, you know, as we, as we do on a, on a quarterly basis here, let's check in and you know, talk about state of hiring for marketers today. Where do things stand? And you know, what's changed from a marketing hiring manager or a leader's perspective since we spoke a few months ago?
- [03:47]
Not much has changed. Unfortunately, given the political and economic uncertainty that we continue to operate under, companies are still sitting on the sidelines. Meaning. And what I mean by that is they're holding off and making investments, which includes hiring, as we've talked about on past shows, marketing. Unfortunately, marketing, the marketing function, I'd say, has been hit particularly hard. And as you know, being here in Washington with me, the doge cuts to federal agencies have been pretty brutal. And we're also seeing government contractors. You know, there's companies that sell products or services to the federal government doing preemptive layoffs with the expectation that some of their major programs may be cut. And there's another contributing factor. At the macro level, people simply aren't leaving their jobs. So if you think about how voluntary attrition is usually a normal part of any hiring cycle, people come and go from jobs throughout the year, but people are really spooked right now. So if you're in a steady job, you're staying put, even if you're really unhappy. That all said, I hope I'm not jinxing this by saying that the uncertainty seems to be slowing down a little bit. The administration has backed off on some of the more extreme tariffs and policies the market has mostly recovered, although it could be down a thousand points right now as I'm saying this.
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Right.
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And honestly, some of the administration's actions are becoming normalized. So we're cautiously optimistic about the second half of this year when it comes to a pickup in hiring.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Sue Keith
So how are marketing leaders adapting hiring strategies in response to some of these things that you just mentioned?
- [05:15]
We've talked about this before. So many marketing leaders are being asked to do more with less. It's become a bit of a mantra in the marketing world. When someone says that phrase, everyone nods knowingly. Right. Marketing teams are being stretched really thin. They've had layoffs or they've had people leave. Although, like I just got done saying, no one's leaving, but occasionally someone does. And they haven't been able to backfill those positions. But the expectations of what marketing's supposed to deliver are just as high or sometimes higher than ever before. So to get the work done, marketing execs are turning to contractors, help fill the gaps when they can't get headcount approval to hire full time positions. So what does that mean? They're using their own budgets to bring out a contractor, thus avoiding any tricky negotiations with hr, which means they're dipping into their own program dollars and striking a balance between investing in programs and investing in people to help execute those campaigns. The other interesting thing we're seeing is what I call a proof of concept. So this situation, the hiring manager, like I said, can't get approval to hire for a position they really need on their team. So they bring in a contractor to demonstrate to their leadership team, to their management team, the value of having someone in that position and then use that proof, if you will, to eventually secure the headcount. And we've seen the strategy be effective numerous times with our clients. And what's really interesting in a perverse way is that this spike in demand for contractors is very similar to what we experienced during the first year of COVID where companies put all hiring like fully on hold. But our clients came to us because they still needed to get the work done. So they brought in contractors because that was the most effective way to have enough people to get their jobs done without having. Without being allowed to hire full time employees. So it's a bit of deja vu for our team right now.
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Yeah, yeah. You know, on this show we talk quite a bit about AI and you know, I would consider myself generally an optimist when it comes to things like that. But there, you know, there are many that have Been saying, you know, AI is going to kill marketing. Some slightly less extreme things, but still kind of towards the same ends. You know, first is, is that hyperbole or is there truth to it? And you know, how soon is is soon?
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So this is a hot button issue for me. You're right. There's a narrative out there that AI is going to eventually replace the marketing function. In fact, the AI Marketing Institute just published their 2025 survey where more than half of the response believe that more marketing jobs will be eliminated by a AI, then created by AI. Do I believe the entire marketing function will be replaced by robots? No. But I do think it's important for all of us to acknowledge that certain responsibilities will likely be replaced by AI or agentic technology. However, and this is where the hot button comes in. I think it's also really important that we, as marketing leaders, or former marketing leader in my case, step up and start to reframe that narrative to one that says we're going to leverage AI to do our jobs better. This may be oversimplifying, but I've been saying we need to demonstrate that AI will help marketers do marketing better.
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Yeah, definitely. And so, you know, to, to that point, how should marketer marketing leaders respond to this? And you know, and, and do what? Do what you're talking about there.
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So boards, CEOs, CFOs, are all asking their functional leaders, all functional leaders, whether it be marketing, finance, hr, ops, to show how they're incorporating AI in order to run their teams more efficiently and, or more effectively. And the unspoken part of that question is, can you use AI to do your jobs with fewer people? The majority of the marketing leaders I talk with, we host a CMO roundtable every month, are still talking about using AI to generate more content, faster content in our imagery. That's not the answer your CFO is looking for. And it's not going to protect your team. So that's why I'm encouraging all the marketing leaders I talk with to start talking more about what I call strategic use cases for AI. So whether it's pipeline acceleration, better icp, intel, hyper personalization, streamlining your overall campaign execution process. So these are use cases that demonstrate that AI will help marketing contribute even more to the company than ever before. I'd also say your marketing team should have an AI. Call it an AI strategy, call it a roadmap, call it a plan that lays out the AI use cases in your projects for the next one or two years. Now, of course, this is best you can, knowing that this technology is changing, getting more intelligent every second. But according to that same marketing AI Institute report I mentioned something like, I think it was around 75% of marketing leaders who responded said they don't have a plan for incorporating AI into their, their daily lives, if you will.
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Yeah.
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I also have another recommendation and I can't take credit for this. I was listening to CMO Huddles podcast and I think this is a really good idea. So if your company has an AI council, so, and a lot of companies are doing this, they're, they're establishing a cross functional group that's overseeing AI strategy implementation and governance across the entire company, across the enterprise. Make sure you're a part of that group. In fact, make sure you take on a leadership role in that group. And even better, if your company doesn't have an IA counselor, whatever you want to call it, in place, start one. So position yourself, the marketing leader for the organization, as the leader in your company who's going to help oversee the strategic imperative for the organization. And it's smart for a lot of reasons, but if you think about it, it's. If you're a key member of the overall company's AI team, you'll be a part of, and more importantly, you can get ahead of any conversations about AI technology that could affect the people on your team.
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Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's a great, great idea. I mean, you know, be, be part of the solution, so to speak. Right, Exactly.
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Not the problem.
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Greg Kilstrom
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- [12:20]
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- [13:12]
Sue Keith
In terms of planning out and I agree with you, it's good to plan out knowing that you know the world's going to keep evolving and changing. But it's good to at least have a plan and understand potential implications. One of the things, and you know, there's been a few high profile articles about this topic as well. One of the, one of the particular threats that's been talked about is just AI being a threat to entry level jobs, whether it's in marketing or otherwise. And so those, those recent or soon to be college grads out there, you know, potentially not even getting an opportunity to, to get into the workforce because AI is doing some of those, those jobs. What should leaders be doing about this as they're planning, you know, doing some of the planning that you've already talked about.
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I have to admit I'm not sure I would land on this, this topic. I struggle to see how it plays out, but I also understand, I think it's going to play out. So I was thinking about this. So let's take an entry level marketing coordinator as an example. So you know, this person is really a jack of all trades. One day they might be working on the logistics for an event, the next day they might be pulling zoom lists, zoom info list. And then the next day they, they might be updating pages on the website. So these are all discrete and, and unrelated tasks. So the coordinator is obviously managed by someone who directs their work. So I guess how it would play out with AI, that instead of hiring a human, that manager would use AI agents to do those various tasks that I mentioned.
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Right.
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So I guess that's how this plays out. So I, my originally I reacted to, when we were talking about this question, I reacted to say, thinking well that can't work, you need a human. But I, I could see a world where that would happen.
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Yeah.
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And then, but the, the other thing you And I briefly talked about how do you become a seasoned strategic marketer if you haven't done the stuff, if you haven't done the entry level stuff and grown into that role. I think someone would have an argument for me with that. But that's what I, I struggle a little bit. But to answer the question about what leaders should be doing, I say be prepared for your cfo, your CEO, your board basically to challenge you on every headcount request you make and honestly to challenge you on the headcount you currently have. So their default response is probably going to be why can't AI do that role? So I say just make sure you have a good answer. Ready?
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah.
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Sue Keith
And I think, you know, to, to the point, I think there's lots of things to be uncovered here and discovered as well. But you know, I think to your point about how do you grow not only grow as an individual in marketing as to be strategic, but also how do you grow and sustain a sophisticated marketing operation if you don't know how it's being done?
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Right, exactly.
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Those are two sides of the same coin really. I think to me this, this speaks to it at the very least, the AI agents and the agentic approach and all that stuff needs to, it needs to be very transparent and it needs to teach its managers whether that's a marketing manager, director, vp, cmo, what at whatever level it is. But it needs to be able to talk about what it's doing. So that, I mean A, it, it, you know, the, the CMO can make sure that the right things are being done, but also B, to educate those that aren't familiar with some of the details. In other words, I think AI becomes a teacher and an intern or entry level marketer all at the same time if it's done successfully. Right, but that's just a hypothesis. Right. So yeah, more, more to come on all of that, but it's definitely something to consider. And, and, and, and it's, it's something where again, those that are being pressured for reducing headcount make sure that you have a sustainable plan for the org. If you are replacing with AI, it doesn't mean it can't be done. You could come back three years later and realize that you don't actually know how your marketing work is being done.
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It could be, yeah.
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So we've been talking a lot from the leader and the manager perspective here. What about the job seekers out there? How can job seekers best navigate what continues to be a challenging job market?
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It certainly continues to be. So let's lift up from the AI conversation and go back to the overall hiring market. My first piece of advice and my probably only piece of if I had to pick one piece of advice, it's not revolutionary, it's not brilliant. It's to network as hard as you can because chances are you are not going to get a job from applying online. It happens. But for applying online for a job with you and 300 of your other marketing friends. So there's a couple things you can do. And I know networking just sounds really awful to everybody, but it's particularly challenging for certain people who just really aren't comfortable with it. So couple ideas. Join professional associations. Whatever your functional area is, join those associations. So they create these built in networking groups for you and they they're also can be a good source of job leads. Volunteer. So I have yet in 12 years to meet somebody who likes looking for a job. So it can be isolating, it can be frustrating, it can be demoralizing. So if you get out there and volunteer, first of all get you out of the house and away from scrolling LinkedIn. It's a really good way about feeling how you've passed some time in the day. And importantly, you never know who you might meet during those volunteer opportunities, who might be connected to someone who could help you. It opens a network that you chances are would never have. And then to the point about certain people really uncomfortable in networking. Create your own networking group with other job seekers. I know from a few years ago a group of about 10 or 12 people who did this and they all found it to be really helpful. In fact, I think they all landed jobs and they're still in touch. So especially if what I call cold call networking is really challenging for you with people you don't know well. Makes you, you know those people that doing all that makes you uncomfortable. This is a nice way to bring together people you know and have some camaraderie as you go through this process.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Sue Keith
And then my last piece of somewhat random but I think is important advice I said this last time we talked, I strongly recommend you keep politics out of your LinkedIn posts. So it's important to be active on LinkedIn if you're, especially if you're looking for a job that is important but it's try to do your best to keep politics out of it. It's really important to remember that about a half the audience on LinkedIn will be on the other side of wherever you stand.
- [20:06]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Sue Keith
Yeah, great, great advice. Well sue, thanks as always for, for joining here, one last question. I know I've asked you this before, since you've been on before, but how are you staying agile in in your in your role amidst the roller coaster we we mentioned earlier?
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Well, apologies to you and our listeners. I'm going back to talking about AI and I say that facetiously, but I am doing everything I can to stay current on AI. It could be a 24.7job if you wanted it to be, but AI is having a significant impact on marketing. I'm hearing it, I'm seeing it, I'm living it. And I really don't think it's too dramatic to say that AI is creating an existential crisis for marketing. So as I mentioned, we host virtual CMO roundtables every month and I'm constantly quizzing our participants on how they're using AI. I'm also sharing with them what I've learned about new AI use cases. As I said, I want to talk about more strategic use cases, not Hey, I spit out seven blog posts this week which would have taken me three weeks earlier prior, but ultimately I'm going to use a borrow a trite term, but it really takes a village when it comes to AI.
- [21:18]
Yeah, yeah. Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Sue.
- [21:21]
Greg Kilstrom
Keith, Corporate Vice President at Landrum Talent.
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Sue Keith
Solutions, for coming back to the show and thanks to our sponsor, Landrum Talent Solutions, a national recruiting firm specializing in.
- [21:29]
Greg Kilstrom
Marketing and HR positions.
- [21:31]
Sue Keith
You can learn more about sue and.
- [21:33]
Greg Kilstrom
Landrum Talent Solutions by following the links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.greggkillstrom.com. that's G-R E G K-I H L S T R O M.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [22:31]
Sue Keith
The Agile Brand.
- [22:36]
Greg Kilstrom
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- [23:32]
Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to the show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. Tech Systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more@techsystems.com that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.