Will AI Take Your B2B Marketing Job? – Forrester

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Ask business leaders why they are investing in AI technologies, and the answer is often emphatic and clear: it’s about efficiency. In Forrester’s 2025 B2B Brand and Communications Survey, 86% of marketing leaders said efficiency was the likeliest impact of AI technologies.

Will AI Bring About A New Industrial Revolution?

If we believe some of the most fervent supporters of AI, we are on the precipice of a white-collar industrial revolution. Just as manufacturing automation upended ways of working in the 1800s, these supporters also claim that AI will automate office work. In the pursuit of greater efficiency, they believe AI agents will not only take over routine, repetitive tasks and liberate us from drudgery, they will also seamlessly replace much of marketing, HR, accounting, and numerous other office roles. In this narrative, efficiency is really a euphemism: it stands in for ‘doing more with less’, and the ‘less’ in this logic is people.

B2B Marketers See AI As Transformative To Roles Not Displacing Them

Forrester data suggests B2B marketing leaders aren’t so glum or as hyper-focused on using AI to do more with fewer people. While 80% say AI will automate work currently done by people, just 27% think it will make jobs obsolete, and only 8% believe their jobs are at risk. In this narrative, AI will still be a revolution that presents new opportunities and drives career gains. But it’s less a ‘rip-and-replace’ strategy for workers and more a technology transformation that will proliferate new roles and skills that are more strategic and valuable.

Luddites Will Lose

Wherever you are on this debate, one thing is clear: AI will change white-collar professions. Some changes will be profound, some subtle, but being a Luddite in this new industrial revolution isn’t a winning strategy. B2B business leaders must build a foundation for successful AI adoption, including assessing existing governance processes, IT alignment, and current skills. Then, they must prioritize competing AI use cases to focus on the best opportunities with the highest chance of success. Our research suggests that B2B organizations with strong CTO-CMO ties, an entrepreneurial culture, and a well-managed data infrastructure lead AI adoption and reap the rewards faster. However, as these leading adopters proliferate AI in their companies, they tend to also experience an AI talent shortage. The bottom line is that the best way to safeguard your professional future is to embrace today’s AI revolution and not sit on the sidelines.