Is AI “Vibe Marketing” Hype or Help for Professionals and Professors?

Vibe Marketing produce a product in minutes

It’s been a month since my last post. I was looking for a topic. It found me listening to the Marketing AI podcast on my morning run Thursday. There were big model drops with Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o image generation. That’s big news, but my interest sparked when Paul and Mike mentioned “vibe marketing.” Huh? My first thought was how younger Survivor players talk about “vibing” with their tribe.

Can You Feel The Vibes?

Vibe marketing sounds like winging it. Trying new products and strategies based on feeling is not not something I’d embrace. I’ve taught for years the value of data based decision making in marketing. There’s an art to marketing but there’s also a science to it.

Mike and Paul explain how AI leader Andrej Karpathy posted on X about vibe coding – giving into vibes talking to AI over and over while it coded to complete projects. Others applied it to marketing. Marketers go from individual executors to orchestrators of AI systems. Mike Kaput explained, “So basically, marketers will start operating on vibes … while AI handles all the messy execution.”

To get a better handle on this concept I turned to the new Gemini 2.5 Pro which AI expert Christopher Penn says is the best AI model right now. It has surpassed other models on key benchmarks by significant margins (click for benchmarks table). Gemini 2.5 reasons through “thoughts” before responding improving performance and accuracy.

Nailing Down A Definition?

Gemini first defined vibe marketing as an established approach to creating content with a feeling to connect with consumers emotionally. Emotions are key, but rational appeals play a role. I’ve found story is a great way to deliver both as evidenced by my research and explained in my Brand Storytelling book. That’s not this new trend.

I prompted Gemini to focus on the emerging trend of AI in vibe marketing. It’s new description was “using AI tools to generate marketing ideas, content (text, images), and campaign elements that align with a specific vibe or aesthetic … for speed and automation in creating assets that embody a chosen vibe.” It is closer but still mixing the established term with the new trend.

With my background in cross-discipline creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, I thought it might be more about ideas that can go back to product design, business plans, and marketing concepts. Vibe is more about getting an idea and using AI to run with it, researching, illustrating, and iterating as it quickly gains steam combining design thinking with marketing and innovation.

Vibe Marketing In Action.

I was still fuzzy on the concept until my Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) class later that day. Student teams complete an IMC campaign for a business. They gather market and consumer research, set objectives, budget, media mix, creative strategy, and execute digital and traditional creative with a storytelling approach.

During an in-class exercise, I asked students to apply what we learned about using PR for marketing objectives. They brainstormed a PR event based on a creative brief for Hush Puppies water-resistant leather dress shoes. While students worked, I came up with my own ideas sketching them on the board.

As evidence of the creative process I teach, I took random general information (a book I read to my kids when younger I Wish I Had Duck Feet) and combined it with specific information about the project (PR event for Hush Puppies water-resistant shoes). I sketched a person dressed for work walking in a city on a rainy day in rubber duck feet near a Hush Puppies pop-up store.

IMC focuses on marcom for problems and opportunities. But, I teach other classes that identify opportunities and come up with product ideas. Towards the end of class, we talked about duck being an actual product – a fun way to protect dress shoes.

Vibe Becomes A Product And Business.

Fun rubber shoe protector was in my mind back in my office. I let the marketing vibes roll using new AI tools to rapidly advance this idea from concept to product design, prototypes, with an outline and some basic research for business plan and a marketing plan for my entrepreneurial startup.

Vibe Marketing produce a product in minutes
My product idea went from sketch to photo-realistic product image, product shot with feature call outs, brand logo and tagline using Google AI Studio with Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.0 Flash Image and OpenAI ChatGPT 4.o Image Generation https://aistudio.google.com https://openai.com/

In no time, I had a photo-realistic product sketch, product name, logo, target market, positioning, price, and place (distribution) strategy. I also had a basic promotions strategy with marketing channels, marketing ideas, content with text and images, and campaign elements. I even had ideas on how to create a working prototype for investors by creating by hand, using a 3D printer, or a rubber molding prototype.

With tariffs in the news, I also wanted to consider manufacturing. Working with Gemini 2.5 Pro, I had a beginning outline of materials, fasteners, and packaging I would need and options for rubber injection or compression molding. I had Gemini look into supply chain and manufacturing partners from overseas, in North America, and in the U.S. It gave me ideas to find those partners through online platforms, industry directories, trade shows, and networking.

Gemini helped with my marketing plan, but I turned to Open AI for my product illustrations, logo, and examples of social media ads. I was inspired by Ethan Mollick’s Substack and wanted to try the new image capabilities of GPT-4o.

Gemini came up with the idea for an influencer marketing post, wrote the caption, and suggested the hashtags. I had the idea for the brand promotional post headline, subhead, and image but it wrote the promotion copy. Gemini gave me tagline suggestions, but I didn’t them so I wrote “Being Safe Has Never Been So Fun.”

GPT-4o created all images. The bottom left below was Gemini 2.0 Flash image. I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted especially with type. The top right is ChatGPT’s first attempt from my prompt on the top left. Gemini 2.5 Pro may be best all around, but ChatGPT-4o image is superior, but Google may be planning a Gemini 2.5 image model release.

My product idea went from sketch to photo-realistic Instagram influencer ad and brand product ad using Google AI Studio with Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.0 Flash Image and OpenAI ChatGPT 4.o Image Generation https://aistudio.google.com https://openai.com/

Can Anyone Can Be A Vibe Marketer?

Yesterday was fun, but I agree with AI expert Christopher Penn that vibe marketing isn’t a magic bullet of entering a couple of prompts, walking away and it does everything. As with any trend you need to see beneath the hype. He says, the more you hand-off the more that can go wrong. Fun and vibes alone don’t make successful marketing.

Penn explains using AI well is like managing employees. I had to know how to get good work out of Gemini. I had to figure out ChatGPT was better at images. You also need discipline expertise, good data, discernment, and skills in prompting.

I got good results quickly because I worked in marketing over 15 years in product design, launches, communications campaigns, and pitches. I’ve researched and taught marketing, judged and mentored student business competitions the past decade. I’ve researched and experimented with AI for two years including AI Use Frameworks and AI Prompt Frameworks. I also ask Gemini if anyone can do vibe marketing.

Gemini indicates “You Definitely STILL Need Core Marketing Fundamentals:”

  • Strategic Thinking
  • Audience Understanding
  • Brand Knowledge
  • Critical Evaluation
  • Marketing Channel Knowledge

Gemini suggests “NEW Skills or Competencies for AI-Driven Marketing:”

  • Prompt Engineering
  • AI Tool Literacy
  • Editing and Refinement
  • Ethical Awareness
  • Data Interpretation

I asked how this impacts teaching. Gemini suggested ways to teach the foundational and new skills. But emphasized a mindset shift, “Teach them to view AI not as a threat or a magic bullet, but as a powerful collaborator. The marketers who succeed will learn to leverage AI effectively to enhance strategic thinking, creativity, and efficiency, while always maintaining critical oversight and ethical responsibility. You’re preparing them to be the pilots, not the passengers.”

I don’t see new AI tools as a replacement for marketing experts or an easy way for students to get As. There’s a lot to learn in the fundamentals and new skills to use AI tools and practice vibe marketing properly. As I’ve posted, you can’t use AI to shortchange the learning process. But I can see my students feeling the vibes of using AI to help them learn and practice concepts and projects.

Wish You Had Duck Feet?

Duck feet shoe savers may not be the best idea, but it helped me learn the concept of vibe marketing and experienced it all in one day. To advance it, I would use my expertise and involve other discipline experts to fact-check and fill in gaps with more specific data.

I also change the name. I’m not happy with Gemini’s “Quackers.” I’d write my own like “Duckies” and do a trademark search. I’d also have human designers and photographers complete final designs and images for copyright and ethical consideration.

I really enjoy teaching, but if any of the Shark Tank investors are out there and see promise in my idea, I’ll entertain investment offers.

This Post Was 100% Human Written. I did use AI in research and execution which enabled me to learn, apply, test, and refine thoughts quickly. I used Gemini to optimize my headline for engagement and SEO. Thanks to AI tools this post went from idea to research and published in record time.

How Will AI Agents Impact Marketing Communications Jobs & Education? See Google’s AI Reasoning Model’s “Thoughts” And My Own.

AI image generated using Google ImageFX from the prompt “Create a painting depicting the British army in red coats as AI robots coming into town to take people's jobs." https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx

In my last post, I warned of the AI agents coming to take our jobs like Paul Revere warning of the British coming. Large language model companies like OpenAI, Google, and SAAS companies integrating AI are promising increased autonomous action. Salesforce has even named their AI products Agentforce, which literally sounds like an army coming to take over our jobs!

Whether you’re in marketing, advertising, PR, or communications or a professor in these areas it’s important to remember AI agents and new reasoning models aren’t magical or human. They’re simply really good prediction machines. But they’re so good AI will increasingly take parts of our jobs now and potentially replace entire jobs in the not-too-distant future.

But they’re not good at everything and not always right. That’s why you need to be involved in determining how AI will be used in your job. Don’t let AI happen to you. Make AI work for you.

AI image generated using Google ImageFX from the prompt “Create a painting depicting the British army in red coats as AI robots coming into town to take people’s jobs.” https://labs.google/fx/tools/image-fx 

Productivity gains are already happening with AI.

Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI recently shared a study that found 30% of U.S. workers are using AI every day and that it is tripling their productivity (reducing a 90-minute task to 30 minutes). If you are not in that 30% there is still time to catch up. Honestly, as much as I write about AI and implement it in my classes I don’t use it as much as I should for my everyday tasks.

That’s why I turned to Gemini for help with this post. I wanted to test a new reasoning model and see how it thinks but also use it as a research assistant. Writing an article like this takes a lot of time. In addition to testing the new Gemini “reasoning” model, I was looking for time savings in researching how AI agents may impact marcom jobs.

In this post, I look under the hood to see how AI crafts responses by seeing what Google’s new reasoning model “thinks” about the future of marketing related careers. Will AI agents take our jobs? If so, how soon? For my test, I gave Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking a prompt that I know worries many in my field. Below is my prompt. I wanted a brutally honest assessment.

I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted.” From https://aistudio.google.com/
I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2 Flash Thinking to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted. https://aistudio.google.com/

What does AI think about AI agents taking our jobs?

First, let’s get to know the reasoning model I used. Google explains it by saying, “the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model is an experimental model that’s trained to generate the “thinking process” the model goes through as part of its response. As a result, the Flash Thinking model is capable of stronger reasoning capabilities in its responses than the Gemini 2.0 model.

How do you see its thinking? In the screen capture above you have an option to click on “Expand to view model thoughts” before you read the response. I did this to see its chain of thought and include the thought process in the screen capture below.

Gemini took a 10-step process to get to the final answer:

  1. Acknowledge the User’s Need
  2. Frame the Initial Message
  3. Structure the Timeline
  4. Brainstorm Areas of Impact (Current & Future)
  5. Assign Percentage of Impact – Now (Base Reality)
  6. Incrementally Increase Percentages Over Time
  7. Directly Address Jobs Replacement – Hard Truths
  8. Focus on Skill Sets Needed for Survival and Success
  9. Maintain a “Brutal but Constructive” Tone
  10. Refine and Sharpen Language.
I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted.” From https://aistudio.google.com/
Google’s Gemini 2 reasoning model showed me the thinking process for responding to my prompt. https://aistudio.google.com/

Seeing AI’s thought process and its self-correction.

Before my brutally honest prompt, my prompt was to get an honest, yet reassuring answer to the question. In the screen capture below you can see how numbers 1 and 2 in the thinking process varied from above. I imagine that is how I think when writing for different audiences. That is why tools such as personas are great for marketing professionals crafting content.

In that first prompt, I also saw how it “self-corrected” in the process. An initial prediction of AI automating 50% of marketing content within a year was second guessed as Gemini talked to itself saying “That’s likely too high and broad. AI can automate some content creation tasks like basic … but not complex storytelling, brand voice development, or strategic content planning.” The self-correction resulted in dropping the number to 20-30%.

I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted.” From https://aistudio.google.com/
Gemini 2 Thinking showed how it self-corrected a prediction about AI taking on 50% of content marketing tasks next year. https://aistudio.google.com/

Let’s get to its final response. How worried should marketers or communications professionals that support marketing be? What should we be doing to prepare ourselves and our students for this AI revolution?

The response is broken into three “Brutal Truths.” From my research and study, most of this feels accurate. Honestly, much of the first category is already happening and has been done for years by other forms of AI. So it is not surprising to me.

Brutal Truth 1: Some parts of your job will be replaced and some jobs will be eliminated.

Below is a screen capture of Gemini’s response. It predicts 5-20% of tasks will be outsourced to AI in an “efficiency overhaul.” It includes mundane repetitive tasks, basic content creation, customer segmentation plus lower-tier performance reporting and analytics. This fits what I know.

In the last two years, we’ve seen more basic content creation being done by AI whether through LLMs like ChatGPT or AI integrations into SAAS platforms such as Owly Writer in Hootsuite. For customer segmentation, I can see AI helping with data collection, but overall segmenting audiences requires more human insight.

The final one isn’t surprising. Creating auto-generated reports off previously set-up dashboards has been around for years. The important part is knowing what KPIs are important – the realm of a seasoned human strategist. A new aspect may be auto-generating initial language around the reports and a prompt overlay. But I would not rely on AI to understand the full context.

I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted.” From https://aistudio.google.com/
Google Gemini 2 Thinking’s brutally honest truth one about the future of marketing and communications jobs with AI. https://aistudio.google.com/

Brutal Truth 2: The demand shift is dramatic. Adapt or fade.

Below is the screen capture of Gemini’s second brutal truth. The demand shift will be dramatic. It tells us to “adapt or fade.” After the brutal message, it does try to reassure us saying that marketing isn’t going away. But don’t feel too reassured because Gemini follows up with an all-caps pronouncement that it will change RADICALLY.

You want to position yourself in a high demand area. This includes strategic marketing visionaries (AI-augmented), creative directors and brand storytellers (AI-guided), and data-driven insight interpreters and storytellers. It includes AI marketing technologists and integrators, ethical AI marketing guardians, and human-connection and empathy experts. I feel confident in these areas and confident teaching students these higher level skills.

They don’t surprise me. My revelation came when I stopped thinking of AI as all-or-nothing. The scary AI agent redcoats became more manageable when I broke my job into tasks and reclaimed my human agency to decide what to use AI for and not to use it for. That’s the purpose of my AI Use Framework.

I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted.” From https://aistudio.google.com/
Google Gemini 2 Thinking’s brutally honest truth two about the future of marketing and communications jobs with AI. https://aistudio.google.com/

Whether you follow my framework or not, I encourage you to break down your job into tasks and find the things that can be automated by AI. You’ll be surprised at what you won’t mind giving to AI to spend more time on what you enjoy more. You’ll also discover things that could be automated but should be kept for humans because the goal is to build relationships and relationships can’t be automated.

The high-demand future list looks accurate. They’re uniquely human-based skills even if parts become AI-augmented or AI-guided. The key is to make this shift yourself now. If you don’t AI will become the thing that happens to you, not the thing that you help shape and influence. Find tasks that can and should be outsourced to AI and start using it. But don’t trust it for everything. No matter how confident it sounds, it doesn’t always get everything right. Use your discipline expertise to discern and verify results.

Brutal Truth 3: Upskilling is not optional. It is survival.

The third brutal truth reinforces what I said above. Upskilling is not an option. AI innovation is coming quicker than any other technology revolution. You can’t opt out (unless you’re retiring this year). Thus, you need to become AI literate, focus on strategy and creative thinking, embrace data, learn to work with AI, and specialize strategically.

I’m not a historian or war expert, but I’ll make a final connection to the theme of my last two posts. Some factors that contributed to the colonists winning the American Revolution include being familiar with their home territory (your discipline), strong motivation (defend your livelihood), and fighting for something they believed in (human ability and agency).

The Continental Army also moved away from traditional methods of battle. Your discipline, whether marketing, advertising, PR, communications, teaching, or something else, may have a long tradition of doing things a certain way. Now’s the time to find new ways to remain relevant to keep humans in the loop during the AI revolution.

I asked Google’s reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash to give me a brutally honest look at the future of marketing jobs and how they will be impacted.” From https://aistudio.google.com/
Google Gemini 2.0 Thinking’s brutally honest truth three about the future of marketing jobs with AI. https://aistudio.google.com/

I’m trusting AI for the predictions, but I’ve studied AI since 2022 and they seem accurate. They also match a similar prompt I tried in Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 and what SmarterX’s custom GPT JobsGPT 2.0. predicts. I shared JobsGPT with my AI use framework to help break down jobs into tasks to outsource to AI. A new feature forecasts AI jobs by industry, profession, or college major by job title, description, and skills required – helpful for professors’ curriculum and professionals’ upskilling.

I asked JOBGPT 2.0 by SmarterX to forecast new jobs that could emerge for marketing majors as AI reshapes the industry from https://chatgpt.com/g/g-wg93fVwAj-jobsgpt-by-smarterx-ai
I asked JobsGPT 2.0 to forecast new jobs for marketing majors as AI reshapes the professional field. https://chatgpt.com/g/g-wg93fVwAj-jobsgpt-by-smarterx-ai

In the end, I feel good about what I’m doing in my classes. I’ve always focused on higher-level strategic thinking and creativity focused on human insight and emotions through storytelling. Now I’m teaching students how to integrate AI into marketing, communications, and learning tasks. What can you do to help prepare for this future?

I asked Anthropic's Claude 3.7 to forecast how marketintg related jobs will change with AI agents and make recommendations for professors. https://claude.ai/
Anthropic Claude 3.7’s forecast on how marketing-related jobs will change with AI agents and recommendations for professors. https://claude.ai/

This Was 50% Human Created Content!