LinkedIn's B2B Marketing Benchmark report is in. 🤨

It's too late to get 20 minutes of my life back, so let me save yours.

AI is everywhere. Obviously.

Unless you've been living in a cave on Mars, with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears, you'd know it wouldn't have been any other way.

Here are 3 key points you should internalise:

1. 58% of B2B marketers now leverage Generative AI (Gen AI) in their marketing activities.

2. 142x growth in AI-related skills added to LinkedIn profiles globally.

3. 72% of B2B marketing leaders are focusing on bolder creative strategies.

I see you yawning in the back. Give me a couple more minutes...

First, marketers are always the first to hop on a trend. We've got to sell emotion, and what better way to do that at scale than with a robot?

The problem is, in the words of Dead Prez, "all y'all records sound the same".

Second, unless you've thrown down some Python (to create something awesome in your org using an LLM API), adding any AI-related skill to your profile is a dog whistle for "I know how to use Auto-Complete."

Stop it.

Third, for "bolder creative strategies," read "personalisation on steroids." The report reckons that 17 meaningful brand interactions are needed before making a purchase decision.

Leaving aside what "meaningful" might mean, personalisation is not synonymous with precision. Get ready to be hammered with messaging tens of thousands of times to land those 17 interactions.

In the short term, things are going to get very messy and annoying as we all squeeze as much 'value' out of our marketing budgets as possible, saving 0.01 cents on CAC.

My prediction: Just as Wayfarers made a comeback, advertising will return to its creative roots.

In the meantime, strap in your dopaminergic system; we're in for a hell of a ride.