When Seth Godin speaks about marketing, the industry listens. With over 21 bestselling books and a career spanning decades of marketing evolution, Godin has witnessed every major shift from direct mail to digital transformation. Now, he's sounding the alarm on what he calls the most significant change since electricity: artificial intelligence.

But Godin's perspective on AI isn't what you might expect from most marketing gurus. He's not preaching AI adoption for its own sake, nor is he fear-mongering about robot replacements. Instead, he's offering something far more valuable: a strategic framework for how marketers can harness AI's power while amplifying their uniquely human strengths.

"AI is the biggest change in our world since the invention of electricity, a bigger change than the internet," Godin declares. This isn't hyperbole, it's your call to action. Just as electricity transformed every industry it touched, AI is reshaping the fundamental nature of marketing work.

The comparison is deliberate. When electricity first emerged, businesses that adapted quickly gained insurmountable advantages over those that didn't. Today, Godin sees the same inflection point with AI, recommending that marketers spend at least 30 minutes daily exploring AI tools, not as a hobby, but as professional necessity.

Where many marketers see AI as either a threat or a simple productivity hack, Godin sees AI as something better: a strategic thinking partner. His approach with AI tools like Claude reveals a masterclass in leveraging artificial intelligence for high-level decision making.

Take his business plan analysis technique. When Godin uploads a 40-page business plan to Claude, he doesn't ask for content creation or basic summaries. Instead, he prompts: "Please read this, highlight the inconsistencies, and challenge me on five things that don't make sense to you." The result? "A thorough, MBA-level summary in less than 30 seconds" that was "more accurate than most people would be."

This isn't about replacing human judgment, it's about augmenting it with AI's pattern recognition and analytical capabilities.

Godin's philosophy centres on what he calls the "human-centric" approach to AI marketing. The framework is elegantly simple:

Use AI extensively for execution of repetitive marketing tasks (content creation, data analysis, campaign management) to scale productivity.

Shift attention toward uniquely human capabilities understanding behaviour, creativity, building connections and trust. These remain areas where AI struggles and humans excel.

Maintain strategic oversight by using AI as a thinking partner for analysis and ideation while reserving final judgment and creative direction for human decision-makers. Manage the machine.

The most interesting insight from Godin's AI perspective isn't about which tools to use, it's about mindset. And this is key for your work. He emphasises that marketing "is ultimately about connecting with people, not machines," warning against becoming too dependent on AI recommendations without human validation.

His advice is particularly pointed: "If you're not using this free, always-on, thoughtful assistant to make your work better when you are doing mediocre work, that's malpractice." But he couples this with a crucial caveat about maintaining focus on "strategic, creative, and empathetic aspects" that define meaningful marketing.

One area where Godin sees AI providing exceptional value is in ideation and gap identification. "If I give it a list of five things and ask for ten more, it's off the charts," he explains. This isn't about letting AI generate ideas wholesale, but using its pattern recognition to expand thinking and identify possibilities human minds might miss.

This approach transforms AI from a content generator into a strategic brainstorming partner, one that can process vast amounts of information and suggest connections at superhuman speed while leaving creative judgment and strategic direction firmly in human hands.

When asked about AI's impact on brand authenticity, Godin offers a characteristically counterintuitive response: "I think authenticity is a crock, and I think it's a trap." His reasoning cuts to the heart of professional marketing practice.

"Friends should be authentic. Professionals should be consistent," he argues. What matters isn't whether AI is "authentically" creating content, but whether it's helping marketers deliver consistent, valuable experiences that serve their audience's needs.

Godin's approach suggests a clear implementation strategy for marketers:

Daily Practice: Dedicate at least 30 minutes daily to exploring AI capabilities, not as casual experimentation but as professional development.

Strategic Analysis: Use AI for business plan review, competitive analysis and strategic questioning rather than just content creation.

Ideation Partnership: Leverage AI's pattern recognition for brainstorming and gap identification while maintaining human creative control.

Execution Scaling: Automate repetitive tasks to free up mental bandwidth for strategic thinking and relationship building.

Human Focus: Double down on empathy, emotional intelligence, and human connection… areas where the machine currently remains limited.

Perhaps most importantly, Godin frames AI adoption not as optional innovation but as competitive necessity. The marketers who learn to effectively partner with AI while maintaining their human strategic advantage won't just survive the transition, they'll dominate it.

Those who ignore AI or become overly dependent on it will find themselves increasingly irrelevant, regardless of their experience or previous success.

Seth Godin's vision for AI-powered marketing isn't about human versus machine… it's about human with machine. The marketers who thrive in this new era will be those who learn to direct AI's capabilities toward human-defined goals, using artificial intelligence to amplify their strategic thinking rather than replace it.

The electricity analogy is apt: we don't fear electricity, we harness it. We don't compete with it, we direct it. And we certainly don't ignore it.

The question isn't whether AI will transform marketing (sidenote: it already has). The question is whether you'll learn to manage the machine before someone else uses it to outmaneuver you or your business.

As Godin might say, the choice is yours. But the window for making that choice is closing fast.

It’s always good to hear the viewpoints of marketing pioneers. I place Seth Godin in that bracket. It’s reassuring, as marketers, to know that AI isn’t just some passing fad, some piece of tech that becomes obsolete in a year. Instead, we can all be assured that AI is here to stay, to become a foundational part of our work and to help us do our best work yet… once we learn how to manage the machine.