The accountable marketer
Will CMOs choose to be one, or abrogate to AI?
Welcome to Exodus 25. If you’re a new reader, this is where I take a weekly look at the forces which persuade us in the modern world, and how we operate within them, as people, businesses and brands, to persuade each other. Please comment or restack on what has, or has not, persuaded you about what you read here.
This week I’m thinking about accountability in marketing and design strategy.
Signalling we are accountable is a powerfully persuasive device for a leader to employ. It creates confidence in our teams, is attractive to our prospective customers, and strikes fear into our competitors. But CMOs, and leaders in general, seem very reluctant to wield that power.
Late last week I was at a networking event and spoke to the founder of an Agentic AI business (effectively an AI receptionist for dealing with incoming calls). I listened to a few people cooing at how amazing his solution was and then asked a simple question: “Does your service self-declare?”
He admitted, currently it did not. I suggested to him that there was a fundamental design decision to be made. That, if his service did not self-declare, it was very possible his clients would perceive what he was building as a way of fooling people. If he insisted on self-declaration in the core design, he would ensure it was perceived as helping people. This simple choice could be the difference between, to put it starkly, doing good in the world and doing evil.
I’m pleased to say the founder paused and then said he would go away and think very carefully about that. Who knows where that thought will lead, but at least I was able to put thoughts about accountability into his mind.
Current standards of responsibility
A few other perspectives on accountability have caught my attention in recent weeks and inform this article:
The first was an article, What we Lost by Matthew Smith, which contained this quote:
I want the products I use on a daily basis — that we all use — to get better. I want to equip you with the ability to articulate how, in specific terms, things have gotten so bad. Because we can only fight against something we can understand and describe. And, crucially, I want tech companies to stop taking the piss.
The second was an challenging perspective about an “a war between accountable and non-accountable classes in business” posited by the US journalist Richard Miniter. He was attempting a defence of Elon Musk (ouch), but if you can get past that, the principle is one we might agree with in some respects.
The final one was an article by Ted Gioia, highlighting the “annoyance economy”, which suggested:
Here’s the new marketing playbook of 2025:
Do NOT try to close.
Do NOT try to sell.
Do NOT try to persuade.
Don’t even listen.
The goal now is merely to ANNOY. The big companies do it on purpose.
These voices are not all on the same side of the political divide but they are all complaining about the same thing, a lack of accountability in business and how we design and market products and services. When both the right and left are fed up about the same thing, but for different reasons, I figure that’s a problem worth highlighting.
Selling addiction and confusion
In uncertain times it’s easy to gloss over intent as “the way things have to be”, when we would help ourselves by questioning the morality of selling things that are bad for people BY DESIGN.
There was a time when this only seemed applicable to the tobacco industry but now problematic digital products are everywhere, from the myriad forms of online gambling to horrifically harmful content unmoderated on major platforms.
Even when the product isn’t necessarily bad by design, the marketing often is.
We talk about making user journeys easy and frictionless and then design the exact opposite. We talk about business culture, but the dominant culture is “don’t beat them, join them” in ensnaring prospects in content webs like a predatory spider.
This “befuddle marketing” philosophy is now in every channel: Search, Content, Advertising, Social, Email, Events… everywhere.
Behavioural Science has largely been used for evil in marketing, I am sad to say. It could be used for good. If anyone actually wanted to make that investment. But, let’s be clear, CMOs do not make that choice in what they commission. They need to be accountable for that.
Some years ago, Mike Monteiro gave what I consider one of the great keynote speeches called “How Designers Destroyed the World” (and he followed up with a book that expanded on it). Here’s that talk, please watch it to understand what design accountability really entails.
Selling cheap
I have my own grudges about accountability in marketing, perhaps typical of my Gen X perspective. My marketing agency career was underpinned by the adage of “you’re as good as the work you produce and what it achieves”.
That value has been washed away by the democratisation of technology, replaced by “you’re as good as the relentlessness with which you pump out more content, using cheap tools, every day”.
But of course that’s only true if you’re selling affordable things that are easily desirable to people who don’t have to think too hard about the purchase. Selling things of value still takes some quality of marketing.
Every day I see people say how sick they are of the tsunami of cheap valueless marketing content. And yet they cannot stop themselves from making it. When do we hold ourselves accountable for this?
Hiding in the metrics
I am at the coalface of this, as a freelance strategist and consultant trying to sell my services to CMOs and business owners. A lot of the excuses for not hiring me are the “can’t afford it” ones because of investment in tools and tech systems.
Recently I spoke with a prospective client about email marketing. I had some creative ideas which could make their comms a lot more persuasive to generate better conversion. But the CMO demurred based on the fact he was already committed to an agency retainer to send out the poor quality messages that I’d highlighted were his problem. He told me he wanted to work with me, but I could sense his internal thought “Am I just throwing good money after bad? This feels risky.”
The idea that he’d made a bad investment decision by spending only on productivity tools rather than persuasive content, for which he needed to be accountable, was something he couldn’t face. Partly because he got a report of positive vanity metrics each month and partly because it was ‘cheap enough to tolerate as mediocre’.
The fact the activity wasn’t positively impacting sales was easy to bat away, because of low barrier to entry and low risk. The alternative, a bigger investment for better results, was much harder to countenance. Loss aversion is powerful, especially combined with having to be accountable for sunk costs.
The great temptation
AI makes such tempting promises and is extremely persuasive via its ability to provide detailed answers instantly with confidence. It makes us feel smarter and more certain in a world of information overload.
The old adage of “No one ever got fired for buying IBM” is going to have new life with AI. The idea that “No one will ever get fired for relying on AI” is a soothing balm for marketers. I can imagine marketers preparing their arguments for what is not their fault, when the LLM gets things wrong or is found to only persuade certain people about certain things effectively. I understand why we make sub-optimal decisions better than most, but it doesn’t stop me being frustrated by their impact.
We live in a time of great challenges where fantasy storytelling is a very desirable escape. But the better world we seek has to be designed. Choices have to be made. Methods of persuasion have to chosen. If we abrogate responsibility for those things we will make ourselves redundant. Choosing accountabilty, retaining the ability to design good into the world, may be the last superpower designers and marketers should keep for themselves.