Entry-level jobs have never felt more closed-off.

In the world of engineering, the embracement of AI is making life extra difficult for the next generation of brainiacs. Essentially, the field at large is exploring ways to use AI for bottom rung work like testing and debugging - the stuff a fresh-faced graduate engineer would normally hone their skills from. But that’s just engineering, right? Entry-level marketing roles are surely protected from the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence… right?

- Devin Pike, Guest Editor 💜

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN MARKETING TODAY?

Robots are making dinner, Nvidia is building its own AI & Maybelline’s micro-drama is masterful

We really have robots that make dinner now.

We’re officially catching up to the "2015" Back to the Future Part II predicted lol. Posha, the robot chef, is a countertop appliance that can actually cook whole freaking meals for you – chopping, stirring, sauteing, the whole shabam (as long as you load in the ingredients and follow its guided recipes.)

No, it’s not cheap. And no, it’s not replacing a human chef anytime soon. But the fact that this exists at all feels… wild. This isn’t some novelty smart toaster, like its genuinely a functional step toward domestic automation, and it signals where consumer tech is heading next: less optimisation of screens, more help with real-world labour. Flying cars can wait. I’ll take not having to cook after work thank youuuuu.

Nvidia is no longer powering AI. Instead, it's building it.

With the release of Nemotron-3, the company is now creating its own large language models designed specifically for enterprise use. Translation: Nvidia wants to be both the arms dealer and the general.

Nemotron-3 is tuned for reasoning, instruction-following, and enterprise deployment, positioning Nvidia as a serious competitor to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, as opposed to just being their infrastructure partner. It’s a biiiiig strategic shift, and a reminder that the AI stack is collapsing inward. The companies that control compute don’t want to rent power anymore, they want to own the intelligence layer too.

Maybelline’s holiday micro-drama is a masterclass in modern brand storytelling.

The brand just ran a holiday campaign built around a short-form “micro-drama” and yes, before you eyeroll into 2026, it worked. Instead of a glossy seasonal ad, the brand leaned into episodic, TikTok-native storytelling that showcases the mini soap opera phenomena, replacing the need for a boring, traditional commercial.

This is exactly what I’ve been banging on about (if you know you know): micro-dramas aren’t just a creator thing, they’re a whole brand format. They reward attention over time, invite emotional investment, and actually give people a reason to come back. Maybelline just became a great example of a brand understanding that in 2025, narrative > novelty, and continuity beats one-off viral hits every time people!!!! 

DEEP DIVE

The entry-level job is disappearing. Marketers should pay attention.

There’s a panic unfolding on engineering campuses, and it isn’t really about code.

It’s about something far more structural: the slow dissolving of the entry-level job itself. Engineering is simply where the collapse is easiest to spot, because AI automated the bottom rung first.

Debugging, testing, routine execution… the work juniors were supposed to learn by doing, is now handled instantly by machines that don’t need onboarding, mentoring, or patience.

If you’re in marketing and thinking, “couldn’t be us,” I am here to tell you honey, it very much is.

AI hasn’t replaced marketers, obvs, but it has kind of eaten up the apprenticeship layer.

Think about it this way: the assistant work, the coordinator tasks, all of the parts of the job that once gave you a safe place to observe, experiment, and mess up before being asked to make decisions that mattered. Those tasks still exist. But they’re now bundled into expectations of speed, output, and strategic thinking from day one.

The work is still there. The buffer, is not.

For a long time, marketing careers followed a fairly predictable rhythm.

You started by executing. You learned how briefs actually worked, watched how strategy was formed. You made mistakes quietly and usually off-slide. Over time, judgment arrived.

Now, new marketers are expected to show up already strategic, already commercially aware, already fluent in tools that barely existed when they enrolled. AI speeds up execution, so the assumption is that thinking should speed up too.

What’s happening isn’t mass job loss. It’s role compression.

Responsibilities that used to be spread across junior, mid, and senior roles are collapsing upward. Entry-level marketers are being asked to manage platforms, interpret performance, communicate with stakeholders, and justify decisions, often without the institutional support that used to make that learning curve survivable.

This is why so many marketers feel underqualified and overexposed at the same time. You’re expected to think like a strategist before you’ve been allowed to become one.

Education hasn’t caught up, and that’s not a moral failing. Degrees still teach theory in neat little boxes, while the industry now demands context, judgment, and taste.

Platforms evolve faster than curriculums and tools change faster than job descriptions.

Employers, under pressure themselves, are hiring for immediate usefulness rather than long-term development. The result is a generation of marketers who feel behind before they’ve even started.

I’m aware that this sounds very stressful, and if it’s giving you anxiety, stop, breeeeathe, hold my (virtual) hand. It’s going to be ok.

Marketing isn’t being automated in the same way engineering execution is. It’s being reshaped around the things AI is bad at.

Context. Cultural interpretation. Emotional intelligence. Knowing when something that looks good on paper will fall flat in the real world. AI can generate copy, analyse data, and suggest variations. It still struggles with meaning. It struggles with taste. It struggles with knowing when “technically correct” is strategically wrong.

That’s where marketers still earn their keep.

The market increasingly rewards people who can sit between systems.

Who understand how creative connects to commercial outcomes. Who can explain why a metric matters instead of just reporting it. Who can make calls when the data is messy, the brief is vague, and the stakes are real. Those skills used to develop slowly through exposure. Now, they’re expected much earlier.

It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also clarifying.

If you’re feeling stressed, (me too girl, me too), the answer here isn’t to out-AI the AI or to hoard tools like Pokémon cards.

It’s to make your thinking visible. Show how you interpret trends. Explain why you’d choose one approach over another. Demonstrate judgment, not just output.

Production is cheap now. Taste and decision-making are absolutely not. These are the things you must hold dear.

Careers are also becoming less linear, whether we like it or not. The old assistant-to-manager ladder is wobbling. What’s replacing it is lateral movement, skill stacking, and translation. The marketers who hold their ground in moments like this are usually hybrids. Creative and analytical. Cultural and commercial. Comfortable moving sideways before moving up.

This doesn’t mean marketing is doomed. It means the profession is growing up very quickly, without much hand-holding.

The collapse of entry-level engineering roles serves as a warning about a labour market that automated the starting line and forgot to replace it.

Marketers are feeling the same pressure, just wrapped in phrases like “be more strategic,” “own outcomes,” and “move faster.”

If you’re unsettled, I do not want you to think that’s a personal failure. It’s the sensation of standing in a profession whose shape is actively changing beneath your feet.

And if there’s one thing marketers have always been good at, it’s learning how to read the room before everyone else notices it’s shifted x

TREND PLUG

Things are getting bad again!

You ever get peer pressured by a theatre of 90 people to do your very first attempt of the worm at the ripe age of 24 years old? Just me?

Well, today's trending sound comes eerily close to my internal monologue then. The audio originates from HBO Max's I Love LA show where Rachel Sennott crashes out and goes "Things are getting bad again! Should I kms on Instagram live? Or TikTok live? You have to pick. You haaaave to pick."

With the sound quickly surpassing the 200 video mark, this is an early one to jump on as the show is only getting popular by the day!

The sound has become TikTok's final crashout anthem, like you've just had enough, you're over it, you just can't do it anymore.

My fav TikToks under the sound include:

How you can jump on this trend:

Crash out. Use the sound, name a situation that is REALLY unpleasant for you to be in.

A few ideas to get you started: 

  • When your laptop dies mid client meeting

  • When you realise you scheduled the wrong version and you're on holiday

  • When the client wants one more quick revision after the work is scheduled

-abdel khalil, brand & marketing exec

FOR THE GROUP CHAT

😂Yap’s funniest home videos Gramps is quick with it
Daily inspo This too shall pass
😊Soooo satisfying Chalk breaking
🍝What you should make for dinner tonight Spring roll salad

ASK THE EDITOR

As a founder, should I bother with written content or should I just focus on creating videos? -Ansley

Hey Ansley!

I would absolutely recommend making written content part of your personal brand strategy. You will reach a different audience on LinkedIn compared to a short-form video platform. Sharing not just your knowledge, but your founder's journey, will lend credibility to your brand.

It's ok to start small! Think of a challenge you've had to overcome in the last few weeks and write about how you approached it. Post about a book you've read recently and the learnings you've taken from it. Over time, it will get easier to come up with content ideas. For help getting started, check out our Comprehensive guide to nailing your written content & 6 ways to build thought leadership.

- Charlotte Ellis, Editor ♡

Not going viral yet?

We get it. Creating content that does numbers is harder than it looks. But doing those big numbers is the fastest way to grow your brand. So if you’re tired of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re in luck. Because making our clients go viral is kinda what we do every single day.

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