Future of marketing?

[Anonymous]

I am wrapping up my summer internship at a finance firm. Rotated across divisions like Private Client Service, Marketing, Portfolio Management, and Institutional Sales.

Going into it, I thought Marketing & Comms would be my favorite as I was never a good math student and always preferred the English and History classes in school where I could write and speak.

Now after seeing what all these teams at the firm do, I find it the least impactful and hard to measure performance. Especially in a high-stress ans busy industry like finance, employees aren't really interested/don't have time to analyze our social media and intranet postings and dread going to the happy hours that our team plans.

Only thing holding me back from doing Sales or Client Service is the fear of AI and how GenZ/Millenials probably won't want to/can't afford a wealth manager in the future so does that hold back on the whole UHNW clientele that many of these firms serve?

On the other hand, I always read that marketing/comms roles are more likely to be impacted by AI, especially entry-level and when budgets are tight at companies.

[Anonymous]

Institutional Sales is not the same as Wealth Management

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Institutional Sales is not the same as Wealth Management

Not the point

[Anonymous]

I’m 25+ years into marketing. Your post concerned me.

You are looking inward not outward.

Real Marketing is about sustainable and profitable growth over the long term. Understanding your customer and their true wants and needs; attracting and retaining the right customers; increasing share of wallet) strategic reach into new or adjacent markets; fighting to stay visible and relevant; gaining favorable press coverage (PR) or ranking by analysts (AR),preserving the brand to maintain customer trust.

Yes - these are measurable.

And no, not every tweet or intranet post needs a statistic. These are called vanity metrics.

Either you didn’t have a great example of marketing during your internship or it’s not a fit for your personality.

Great marketers are both creatives and quants. They can use data to inform
Efforts but also understand that marketing is based in psychology. Humans make 80% of purchasing decisions based on emotion. Even big corporations buying $1B of goods. Still human.

Will AI change some roles, yes. It will minimize the button pushers. AI is a tool - a software application that does things faster.

But, marketing will (eventually) refocus to adding unique value and human instinct that AI can’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am wrapping up my summer internship at a finance firm. Rotated across divisions like Private Client Service, Marketing, Portfolio Management, and Institutional Sales.

Going into it, I thought Marketing & Comms would be my favorite as I was never a good math student and always preferred the English and History classes in school where I could write and speak.

Now after seeing what all these teams at the firm do, I find it the least impactful and hard to measure performance. Especially in a high-stress ans busy industry like finance, employees aren't really interested/don't have time to analyze our social media and intranet postings and dread going to the happy hours that our team plans.

Only thing holding me back from doing Sales or Client Service is the fear of AI and how GenZ/Millenials probably won't want to/can't afford a wealth manager in the future so does that hold back on the whole UHNW clientele that many of these firms serve?

On the other hand, I always read that marketing/comms roles are more likely to be impacted by AI, especially entry-level and when budgets are tight at companies.

Yeah, GenAI is going to probably disrupt marketing — already is. Still need humans, just less of them. The skills you need will be how to use AI in marketing.

As for ROI, there’s a well-known axiom that half of all marketing dollars are wasted. The problem is you never know which half.