Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my role in the marketing ecosystem, the kind of thinking that seems to really kick in at 4am when you should be sleeping. In the quiet, unsettling moments when you wonder if the work you’ve built your career around still has the same meaning. Is anyone else also going, “What the heck is happening?”. Or maybe this is something everyone goes through in their careers and life. Spoiler alert… yes, it could just be a mid-life crisis.

The cover picture you ask? Andrew Marriott with short hair alongside an image of Bruce Willis from Die Hard. Deep fake old skool. Well an attempt. Need I say this is not an AI image?

Its hard not to see the writing, texting, blogging, vlogging on the screen? Industry analysts are predicting big shifts in 2026 for advertising agencies: up to 15% job losses…ouch; a move away from traditional roles (traditional makes me sound so old and outdated); and a future where agencies are expected to be more than just creative shops but do everything…nothing new there. They will become orchestrators of client strategy, resellers of software, owners of proprietary products, and purveyors of diverse marketing solutions (Adobe, MS360, Google?). On paper, it makes sense: clients demand measurable ROI (Return On Investment, not Reuse Old Ideas), marketplaces are leaning toward performance-based models, creative work is increasingly commoditised, and AI (that’s short for Artificial Intelligence) is infiltrating workflows everywhere.

All of this makes me uncomfortable, like slowing bowl movements. Maybe it would excite a younger me, but mid-life Andrew is maybe a bit resistive? And by resistive, I mean passive. Not because I don’t understand the logic—but because I can’t help but question my own place in this new reality. How is it that I use ever more powerful tools to do my marketing trade but the target seems to drift off into the distance farther and farther, never reached but elusive. If AI can generate content, optimise campaigns in real time, and automate workflows, where does that leave human strategists, planners, and designers like me? File 13? 404 error? If agencies are being forced to pivot to performance-based outcomes, what happens to the craft and nuance we’ve spent years honing? And there is one of my favourite words… “Pivot”.

I find myself oscillating more than this graceful sounding action of “pivoting” between anxiety and curiosity. Part of me wonders if the industry I’ve invested so much of myself in is shrinking beneath my feet. Another part wants to embrace it—to figure out how to blend human intuition with AI, how to stay relevant in a world that seems to reward speed, scale, and measurable metrics over creativity for creativity’s sake. Faster, faster, faster, faker.

There’s also a sense of humility humanity creeping in. I thought there was with the newly revived Experiential Marketing favouring experiences over clinically defined products. But the experience is seemingly becoming really fake. Maybe this is the moment to be honest about what I truly bring to the table: not just tactical skills (like nerdy computer stuff), but perspective, judgment, and the messy, human understanding of clients, teams, and learners that no algorithm can fully replicate. Maybe my role isn’t disappearing—it’s evolving, in ways I can’t yet fully see.

As I fumble through this uncertainty,  I’m reminding myself that it’s okay to feel a bit foggy. Change is disorienting, especially when it challenges the foundations of what you thought defined your career. I have also recently relocated to Finland from South Africa… a seismic shift. But perhaps there’s an opportunity here, too: to reimagine, to experiment, to discover what value humans—creators, strategists, thinkers—can uniquely offer in an AI-enhanced, performance-driven marketing world.

For now, I’ll sit with the questions, accept the discomfort (and cold Finnish winter), and try to remember that uncertainty doesn’t equal irrelevance. It might just be the starting point for the next chapter of my work. But right now while typing this I still feel crappy about it. And thats OK.