Artificial intelligence has dramatically lowered the cost of producing content. It has not lowered the importance of judgement, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, editorial discipline or numerous other soft skills particular to humans.
Today, organisations can generate articles, imagery, video, summaries and commentary in minutes using sophisticated AI tools. As a result, content production is rapidly becoming commoditised. However, commoditised content is not necessarily valuable.
As our digital environment becomes saturated with AI-generated material – much of it ‘ content pollution ’ – the competitive advantage is shifting away from volume and towards credibility, discernment and strategic relevance.
The following selected content and content-adjacent roles show why human soft skills remain critical across modern marketing and communications functions.
A content strategist defines the organisation’s content direction, priorities and strategic messaging framework. The role’s focus is ensuring the organisation creates the right content for the right audience, through the right channels, at the right time and for the right commercial reasons.
Most people associate editors with proofreading for spelling and grammar mistakes. But a managing editor does far more than correct copy. A managing editor is responsible for maintaining editorial quality, consistency, governance and credibility across an organisation’s content ecosystem. This includes ensuring content:
They also play a critical role in fact-checking, source validation, editorial governance and identifying misinformation, inaccuracies and reputational risk before publication.
As organisations favour generative AI tools to assist with drafting, summarising and repurposing content, managing editors must also help mitigate AI-generated inaccuracies, plagiarism, artificial expertise and hallucination and other risks.
Every piece of effective content begins with a story. Whether communicated through text, audio, video, imagery or live experience, storytelling shapes how people interpret information, form emotional connections, remember ideas and assign meaning.
Strong storytellers help organisations communicate in ways that feel credible, distinctive, human and emotionally resonant. It’s about helping audiences understand why something matters, who it affects, what is at stake and why they should care. This necessitates:
In most organisations, storytelling is not the responsibility of one individual. It is a capability that should exist across leadership, marketing, communications and content teams.
There is now a dizzying array of platforms, applications and AI-powered tools designed to make marketing more efficient, scalable and personalised. Organisations can automate everything from content production and workflow management to audience segmentation, analytics and distribution.
The challenge is no longer access to technology. It is understanding:
Your marketing technologist sits at the intersection of marketing, technology and operations. Their role centres on ensuring technology supports broader commercial and strategic objectives by way of:
As AI adoption accelerates, marketing technologists are helping organisations balance efficiency, scalability, governance, creativity and human judgement.
As organisations produce more content across more channels, managing organisational knowledge becomes more challenging. Images, video, documents, templates and AI-gene…