Will AI Replace Marketers? What We Told the New York Stock Exchange

TLDW; No. AI is not going to replace marketers. What it is doing is quietly splitting them into two groups: the ones using it to do the same work a little faster, and the ones rebuilding how the work gets done. That was the throughline when our co-founders, Max Finn and Jeremy Adams, sat down with Jane King on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The full interview is above. This is the short version, the parts worth keeping if you run a business and you are trying to decide what to actually do about AI over the next year.

Will AI replace marketers?

No, and the reason is the split between what AI is good at and what it is not. There are two schools of thought once a tool can make everyone ten times more productive. One says cut the workforce by ninety percent and pocket the difference. The other says keep the people and accomplish ten times more. Unicorn Marketers is firmly in the second camp, because the point was never just to make money, it was to build something.

So the human does not disappear, the human moves up. AI takes the data work and the repetitive execution. The person handles the creative strategy, the thinking, the decisions about which tools to connect and how to build the flows between them. As Max put it, it's a productivity booster and a tool, and you still need the person spearheading and leading it. One person can now do a lot more, but there still has to be a person.

If every agency has AI now, what actually makes the difference?

Almost nobody is using it well yet, and that gap is the whole opportunity. Out of the businesses Unicorn Marketers deep-dives with every week, roughly forty to fifty percent are barely using AI at all or treating ChatGPT as a search box. Another forty percent are dabbling. Maybe ten percent are genuinely using it.

The difference is not the prompt, it is the infrastructure behind the prompt. The businesses pulling ahead are building a knowledge layer for their company, an AI brain that everyone on the team plugs into. They codify the jobs of their different roles into Claude so nobody is re-prompting from scratch every morning, and they connect the platforms they run on, Facebook, TikTok, Google, their website, their analytics, back into the models so the whole system gets a little sharper every day. That is a different activity from typing "make me an ad" into a web app, and it is the line between the ten percent and everyone else.

How is AI search changing paid advertising?

The shift worth watching is discoverability collapsing from a page of options down to a single recommendation. On Google you are used to scanning results across page one, page two, page three. Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity the same question and you tend to get one answer: use this. There is far less room for competition, and a lot of businesses are getting pushed out because there are simply fewer slots to occupy.

The ad formats built on top of AI search are still early. ChatGPT ads and the new AI search placements exist, but they are not very good yet, and it is too soon to know how they play out. Paid social is still where the leverage is. And markets move in pendulums: Unicorn Marketers still meets businesses winning with direct mail, because every time people rush off a channel, they leave an opening for whoever stays.

What is the one move a founder should make in the next 12 months?

If you run a smaller business, get your own hands dirty in these tools, and do it now. For companies under roughly fifteen million a year, the founder or president should be inside Claude or a tool like it every day, learning it, because it changes the math on everything. Once you are in it, you stop waiting on a technical person to build the thing you need. You have an idea on a Friday and you can build a version of it over the weekend yourself.

Bigger companies can hire AI experts to come in and build the infrastructure for them. But the deeper point is that ninety percent of the businesses Unicorn Marketers talks to are not scratching the surface, and that includes companies doing anywhere from ten million to five hundred million a year. If you feel behind, that instinct is correct, and it is good news. The opportunity is still wide open precisely because so few people have moved.

Which AI platform do they actually use?

Claude. Unicorn Marketers has been building on Anthropic’s models for around sixteen months and has put much of its own infrastructure there, on the view that it is the most advanced and most cutting edge option available. There are strong teams around ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and the honest answer is that the right tool keeps moving, which is exactly why staying on the frontier is part of the job.

The takeaway

The bet underneath the whole interview is the one the company is built on: one expert marketer, using AI the way the top ten percent use it, doing what used to take an entire agency team, and dealing with you directly instead of hiding behind a junior account manager juggling thirty other logos. AI did not remove the marketer from that picture. It raised the ceiling on what a great one can do.

If you want to see what that looks like on your own account, apply for a Unicorn Assessment. It is a full diagnostic of your accounts, your funnel, and your creative, and it happens before any engagement conversation, so you learn what is actually working whether or not you end up working with us.

Related reading: how many accounts should a media buyer manage if you are weighing the model, and switching from your ad agency without losing momentum if you already know a change is coming.

Frequently asked questions

Will AI replace marketers?

No. The realistic outcome is that AI takes over the data and repetitive execution while people move up into creative strategy, judgment, and the work of connecting tools into systems. It splits marketers into those who use it to go slightly faster and those who rebuild how the work is done, and one skilled person still has to lead it.

What did Unicorn Marketers say at the NYSE?

Co-founders Max Finn and Jeremy Adams told Jane King that AI is a productivity multiplier rather than a replacement, that most businesses are barely using it, and that the real edge is building an AI knowledge layer for your company. Their main advice to founders was to get hands-on in the tools now, because the opportunity is still wide open.

How is AI search changing paid advertising?

It is compressing discoverability. Search engines showed you pages of results, while AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity tend to return a single recommendation, which leaves far fewer slots to compete for. The ad formats built on AI search are still early and not very effective yet, so paid social remains where most of the leverage is.

What should a founder do about AI in the next year?

If your business is under roughly fifteen million a year, the founder should be using these tools personally, every day, rather than waiting on a technical hire. Larger companies can bring in AI experts to build the infrastructure. Either way, most businesses are not scratching the surface, so moving early is still a real advantage.

Which AI tool is best for marketing?

Unicorn Marketers builds primarily on Claude and has for around sixteen months, on the view that Anthropic’s models are the most advanced available. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity all have serious teams behind them, and the leading tool keeps changing, so staying current matters more than committing to one name forever.

What makes an AI-powered marketer different from an agency that also uses AI?

Most agencies are in the dabbling group, using AI at the surface. The difference is a marketer who has built the knowledge layer and the connected systems behind the work, and who handles your account directly rather than passing it to a junior team covering a dozen other businesses.