Thandi Khumalo
From Traditional Marketing to AI-Powered Brand Strategy
The campaign I thought would save my career flopped. Engagement down 12%. My boss asked what happened. I blamed the data, but really? I'd let AI handle too much of the cultural nuance. For a South African audience, you can't automate authenticity.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Been doing marketing in Cape Town for 12 years. UCT degree, worked my way up through agencies and brands. Used to hike Table Mountain on Saturdays to think through campaign strategies. Still do, when I have time.
2024 was the year I realized I was replaceable. Junior team member built a complete campaign strategy using AI in under an hour. Took my team a week to do that normally. I smiled during the presentation, felt sick after. Looked up JobRipper that night during a bout of insomnia. HIGH risk for routine campaign work. That hurt to read.
Tried following their roadmap. Google's AI for Marketing course, HubSpot's AI cert, bunch of tools like ChatGPT and Copy.ai. Some of it stuck. Most of it felt like trying to learn a language while drowning. The tools generated content fast but it lacked soul. I kept trying to blend AI speed with human insight. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't.
That failed campaign happened month 8. Used AI-generated personas and machine learning for optimization. The data said it would work. It didn't. Spent two weeks doing damage control. My boss was understanding but I could tell his confidence in me had shifted.
Haven't been promoted. Not sure I will be. Younger marketers on my team are faster with the AI tools because they grew up with this stuff. I'm learning, but I'm always a step behind. Still valuable for my experience with the South African market, the cultural insights AI can't quite get. But valuable enough? Ask me in six months.
Still hike Table Mountain most Saturdays. Need it more than ever. The job feels different now. Less about creative instincts, more about managing AI outputs and hoping they resonate. I'm adapting, but some days I miss the marketing work I used to do. The kind where I knew the campaign would work because I understood the audience, not because an algorithm told me so.