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We’ve officially hit “bubble” territory, complete with hype-marketing, overinflated valuations, and every product suddenly rebranded as “AI-powered.” It’s loud. It’s chaotic. And it’s eerily familiar.
If you’re feeling déjà vu, you’re not alone.
This mirrors the late 1990s “internet bubble,” when companies rushed to add “.com” to their names and sell anything they could online. When the bubble burst, the internet didn’t vanish. It became invisible. Infrastructure (not hype) won. Today, we don’t talk about “using the internet” unless the Wi-Fi goes down.
AI is heading the same way.
After the hype fades, AI won’t be a shiny object. It will be embedded, structural. It won’t be about cool features or viral demos. It will be about rethinking how work gets done. Teams. Workflows. Entire org charts.
That shift creates a dual challenge for leaders:
Externally, you’ll need to position “AI-powered” as reliable, practical, and deeply human-centered, not as a gimmick.
Internally, you’ll need to redesign roles, workflows, and decision-making for a world where agents (not interns) handle the grunt work.
This isn’t easy. The temptation will be to either over-engineer (“AI everything!”) or freeze up (“Let’s wait and see”). Both paths lead nowhere.
The real opportunity lies in cutting through the noise. Seeing AI for what it is: not a magic wand, but a lever. A way to shift margins, speed, and capabilities in ways that were unthinkable just 12 months ago.
Leaders who get this will emerge stronger. They’ll stop talking about AI as a thing and start using it as oxygen.
We are here to support these leaders.
— Peter & Torsten
 Peter Benei | Co-author Consultant at Anywhere Consulting |  Torsten Sandor | Co-author Senior Director of Marketing at Appen |
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The AI Fatigue
Your Customers Are Tired of the Hype
A fresh survey shows that products explicitly marketed as “AI‑powered” now reduce purchase intent for a growing segment of U.S. buyers. It reflects a broader generative‑AI backlash documented by WIRED this month.
The reasons are hidden errors, privacy risks, and fears of job displacement. All climbing sharply compared to Q1 benchmarks.
Illustration: Eglé Plytkinakaité @ WSJ
Why it matters for you
The hype cycle has flipped. “AI” is now a hygiene factor, not a hero feature.
Customers aren’t buying “AI.” They’re buying speed, efficiency, better service, and personalization. The technology should be the invisible engine, not the flashy hood ornament.
What to do next?
» Audit your messaging - Run A/B tests this week to replace ‘AI‑powered’ headlines with benefit‑first claims (‘24 h quote turnaround').
» Focus on outcomes - Reframe value propositions around what your AI delivers, not how it works.
» Embrace transparency - If AI impacts the customer experience (e.g., a support bot), call it out clearly.
» Bring back the human touch - Add a one‑click ‘human in the loop’ option on conversion pages to rebuild confidence.
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The Great Restructuring
No Longer a Thought Experiment
Our previous edition covered this topic extensively, but there have been some new developments.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Ford CEO Jim Farley warned that generative AI could wipe out “literally half” of U.S. white‑collar jobs. Days later, Microsoft announced a 9,000‑person layoff round, and an Xbox executive’s advice for affected staff—“ask ChatGPT for therapy and career advice”—ignited backlash.
The restructuring isn’t coming. It’s here, and it’s moving fast. This isn’t incremental change. It’s a fundamental redesign of the white-collar workforce.
Source: Getty Images
Why it matters for marketers
This shifts the question from “How can AI make my team more efficient?” to “What does a team even look like in 2026?”
The biggest risk now isn’t falling behind on tech. It’s failing to lead the human transition, with strategy and empathy. Clinging to old org charts is a recipe for irrelevance.
What to do next?
» Model your team’s future state - Map the core human skills (judgment, strategy, client relationships, taste) that will set your people apart. Build roles around them.
» Turn upskilling into a mandate - Identify your top performers and invest aggressively in their AI fluency. This isn’t a perk. It’s a retention strategy for institutional knowledge and leadership potential.
» Create your AI transition playbook - Don’t wait for the board to ask. Proactively design how you’ll manage AI-driven role changes: communication plans, outplacement support, retraining programs. Being caught flat-footed is not an option.
Become the Next-Gen Marketing Leader
If The Great Restructuring isn’t just a headline to you, but a call to rethink how you lead, this is for you.
We’re launching a community for marketing leaders navigating the challenges of AI-driven change.
A space for CMOs, founders, and growth leaders to stay relevant, rewire their orgs for the AI era, and connect with peers shaping the future of work.
It’s built for the Autonomous Leaders we wrote about in our Manifesto—those ready to trade micromanagement for systems, and effort for leverage.
📩 Reply to this email to get on the early-access list.
The waiting list opens soon.
Project Omni
Meta’s Chatbots Will Slide Into Your DMs
Leaked docs (Project Omni) reveal Meta is training AI Studio chatbots to send proactive follow‑ups referencing past user chats. Engadget reports the feature is already in limited tests on Instagram DM.
Once a user interacts five times, the bots can initiate messages, aiming to boost retention and ad inventory. The benefits include hyper-personalized outreach at scale, instant lead qualification, and a new direct-to-consumer channel.
But the line between helpful and intrusive is razor-thin.
Why it matters for marketers
Push‑style conversational ads are coming. Expect higher open rates than email, alongside brand‑safety and trust challenges.
What to do next?
» War-game the ethics and strategy - Gather your marketing, sales, and CX leaders to ask: Under what conditions would we message a user first? Where are our red lines?
» Leverage your data - Relevance is the antidote to creepiness. What first-party signals (abandoned carts, repeated product views, help-desk queries) could drive genuinely helpful proactive messages?
» Study Meta’s pilots closely - Watch the pioneers and the backlash. Early winners and losers will provide a masterclass in how (and how not) to use this channel.
Agent Suites
Forget Prompts, We’re “Vibe Working” Now
Genspark launched AI Docs last week, completing its suite of agentic tools (Slides, Sheets, Docs). One prompt generates a fully formatted document (in markdown or rich text format) with brand colors automatically applied.
Meanwhile, Shortcut emerged as an “Excel super‑agent,” building world‑championship‑level spreadsheets 10× faster than human champs.
Why it matters for marketers
The cost of internal production (brief → deck → data tables) is collapsing. When anyone can spin up polished deliverables in minutes, the value shifts entirely.
The new values: the strength of the initial idea, the critical judgment to refine outputs, and taste. Never underestimate taste.
What to do next?
» Mandate a zero‑blank‑page policy - All first drafts come from an agent. Human time is reserved for critique and refinement.
» Pilot a ‘vibe working’ tool - Equip a small, agile team with Genspark or Shortcut for a week. Evaluate how workflows and output quality change.
» Rethink entry-level tasks - If AI can draft a competitive analysis or forecast spreadsheet, what should your junior talent focus on? Redirect them toward validation, refinement, and creative problem-solving.
» Reward the question, not just the answer - Foster a culture where framing the right problem is the most valuable skill. In a world of instant answers, insight is the only currency that matters.
New Model “Thinks” Like Us
Centaur Trained on 10M Psych Decisions
The Centaur AI model (introduced in Nature) was fine‑tuned on 160 psychology studies and 10 M+ human decisions.
It can predict human choices (including reaction times) across unseen tasks.
Researchers describe it as a “virtual lab” for behavior.
Auguste Rodin - The Thinker
Why it matters for marketers
Human‑wired customer journey simulators can now stress‑test pricing, creative, and UX before a single A/B impression—potentially saving significant ad spend.
What to do next?
» Ping your IT team - Centaur is open-source and available for download, but technical expertise is required to deploy it effectively.
» Run backtests - Ask BI/analytics to trial Centaur on historic click‑stream data to forecast drop‑offs and conversion friction points.
» Update your experimentation roadmap - Reallocate a slice of your testing budget from live traffic to synthetic pre‑tests.
Inside the Perplexity Fellowship
How to build AI ops into your organization
At the latest Perplexity Business Fellowship session, Matthew Grenade (Dragonfly Insurance, ex-Bridgewater, Domino Data Lab) shared hard-won lessons on building AI-native organizations. Here’s what stood out:
Problem-first beats tech-first. Don’t ask “Where can we use the new LLM?” Start with “What’s our biggest bottleneck?” and work backward.
Model-driven businesses win. Embedding AI into decisions creates compounding value, as seen with OpenAI and TikTok.
Closed-loop data is a moat. Tie every input and output together to improve models faster. Most companies aren’t doing this well (yet).
The real AI adoption blockers? People. Technology isn’t the challenge. Incentives, workflows, and trust are.
Traditional industries are ripe for reinvention. Insurance is just data and money in motion. AI can give brokers “superpowers” in prospecting and quoting.
Metrics make or break the flywheel. Dragonfly runs a daily 4:30 pm stand-up to review a shared metrics package and keep progress visible.
Trust > perfection. AI doesn’t need to be 100% right to be useful. Set realistic expectations and focus on outcomes.
You need a ‘translation layer.’ Hire or grow people who bridge operators and data scientists—they’re key to AI alignment.
Orchestrate the AI-human loop. Map business processes deeply to know where humans add value and where agents can take over.
Earn the right to fail fast. Quick experiments work best after small wins. Keep them separate from production and share learnings transparently.
The winners won’t be the ones with the best models—they’ll be the ones who integrate them into their business DNA.
CMO Tips
Is your team AI-ready, or just AI-curious?
Before you plug AI into your workflows, ask:
Is the system ready to handle it, or will it just accelerate the chaos?
Most marketing teams aren’t suffering from a lack of tools. They’re buried in coordination overload, endless revisions, and approval bottlenecks.
Here’s your 5‑point “AI readiness” chaos audit:
Coordination overload. Is half your team’s week spent in meetings and Slack threads?
Rework loops. Are campaigns stuck in endless revisions before shipping?
Approval bottlenecks. Does every small decision need to run through you?
Tool sprawl. Are you using 12 platforms that barely talk to each other
Strategy-action gap. Are big ideas dying because there’s no bandwidth to execute them?
Pro tip: Don’t fix everything. Fix the friction that blocks momentum. AI only creates leverage when the system is in motion.
Not sure where to start? Run our AI Readiness Assessment to surface your team’s hidden bottlenecks.
Rapid-Fire News
Quick scans on things that mattered last week.
1. Grok 4 is coming
Leaked benchmarks suggest that xAI’s Grok 4—launching this week—could become the most powerful model on the market.
» For marketers: The model wars are back. Expect faster iteration cycles, new creative capabilities, and price pressure across vendors.
2. Perplexity goes Max
The AI-native search engine Perplexity has introduced a $ 200-per-month “Max” tier for power users requiring in-depth, accurate research and analysis.
» For marketers: If search is central to your workflow, this could become your new go-to for strategy and content planning.
3. Baidu open-sources Ernie 4.5
China’s Baidu has released its latest model, Ernie 4.5, claiming GPT‑4.1-level performance.
» For marketers: Open access means more experimentation potential—but watch for localization strengths in APAC markets.
4. AI video creators are earning millions
Virtual YouTubers powered by AI are generating massive revenues and commanding large audiences.
» For marketers: Synthetic personalities aren’t niche anymore—they’re an emerging channel for influencer-style campaigns.
Autonomous Leadership Advice
We published our Autonomous Leadership Manifesto. It helps CMOs to guide their teams through an AI-powered future.
Based on the manifesto, this is our advice for this week:
Leadership isn’t about proving your value in every decision. It’s about creating systems where value flows without you. The more visible you feel you need to be, the less scalable your leadership becomes.
Autonomous leaders don’t solve every problem—they design conditions where issues solve themselves.
They don’t chase every approval—they create clarity so the team knows when to act without needing to ask.
The strongest leaders aren’t everywhere at once. They’re intentional about where they don’t need to be.
In an AI-native org, your job isn’t to manage the doing. It’s about architecting the space where things happen. That’s where leverage—and relevance—come from.
The AI tide isn’t slowing down, but neither are the opportunities for leaders who adapt to it. As the noise rises, clarity is your edge.
If this edition sparked ideas for how you lead and grow in this new era, share it with a colleague who’s navigating the same shift.
Until next week,
Peter and Torsten
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