Influential Voices in the Marketing and Advertising Industry Today

Last year I tried to resist AI. I had my reasons, and have them still, but I’m adopting a different, more curious, and accepting posture now. That’s what led me to ask my AI Assistant, Claude, to name the 10 most influential voices in the advertising industry today.

Claude quickly named Seth Godin and Bob Hoffman, plus unnamed heads of trade organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), and researchers and analysts at firms like eMarketer, Forrester Research, etc.

To strengthen my prompt, I asked Claude to name 10 other people who are shaping the conversation around marketing and advertising today. This is what Claude said.

Here are 10 other influential people shaping the conversation around marketing and advertising today:

1. Scott Galloway – NYU professor and author of several bestselling books on digital business and marketing, like The Four
2. Mark Ritson – Columnist for Marketing Week and outspoken commentator on branding and marketing effectiveness
3. Faris Yakob – Founder of Genius Steals and expert on digital transformation and customer experience
4. Philip Kotler – Considered the “father of modern marketing”, author of seminal textbooks on marketing
5. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz – Author of Everybody Lies and writer on using data to understand consumers
6. Susan Wojcicki – CEO of YouTube, influencing the world of digital video advertising
7. Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO, driving Facebook’s powerful advertising platform
8. Gary Vaynerchuk – Entrepreneur and author focused on digital marketing, social media branding
9. Martin Sorrell – Founder and head of WPP, the world’s largest advertising and PR group
10. Ha-Joon Chang – Cambridge economist and critic questioning some dominant marketing ideology

It’s a good list. Hard to argue with, but I do wonder how this shortlist matches up with your shortlist of influential people working in marketing or advertising today. My assistant works fast. Claude skims from the top sources and I have no problem with that, but to offer you greater value, I’d like to share something more than the contents of another standard issue listicle.

When it comes to understanding media and the business of motivating people today, here are a few of the people I listen to: Alex HM Smith of BasicArts in London, Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy UK, Rob Schwartz of TBWA\Worldwide, Rishad Tobaccowala, professors Douglas Rushkoff and Cal Newport, and my friends Todd Anthony, Marshall Kirkpatrick, and Dan Goldgeier. Plus, one gent from the list above, Mr. Faris Yakob.

In conclusion, ask the machine whatever you’d like (including the latest data on job losses in creative fields due to AI). But also ask yourself. Check your AI-generated results, also known as the work of your assistant, and then form an educated opinion.

If AI helps to foster curiosity and accelerates the spread of high-quality information that can become knowledge, we advance and AI assistants find a place in our workflows. If AI is used to trick people with fakes and lies while autolifting terabytes of copyrighted materials, we lose. If AI becomes the default and we don’t bother to inspect the work and personalize the results, we lose.