Vibe Marketing Isn't "AI Marketing"

Vibe marketing isn't about AI doing everything. It's about orchestrating modern tools while you stay in control of strategy, direction, and decisions.

Hey marketer! 👋🏻

I’ve been noticing how much the term vibe marketing has been getting twisted lately. A lot of people think that vibe marketing = letting AI do everything for you. You type a command, AI generates an Instagram post, you just copy it and you’re done. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what vibe marketing is all about. 🤦

Vibe marketing doesn’t mean handing over control of everything to artificial intelligence. It’s about using today’s advanced tools so you can work faster, more efficiently, and smarter. It’s orchestrated activity - human intent effectively processed using modern tools. You’re still driving the strategy, you’re still determining the direction, you’re still deciding on the tone of communication. AI is just a tool that helps you get to your goal faster.

Think of it like the difference between a craftsman who uses an electric grinder instead of a hand file, and someone who thinks the grinder will create a masterpiece on its own. The first one still needs to know what they’re doing, how to hold the tool, how to work with it. The second one just holds a running grinder and hopes for a miracle. That’s exactly the difference between vibe marketing and AI marketing.

So what actually is vibe marketing?

Vibe marketing is a term for a strategic approach where an experienced marketer orchestrates AI tools to achieve specific goals. It’s a way of working that keeps you competitive into the future. It’s a combination of knowledge (so I understand what I’m doing), practical experience (so I know what works), and AI-first thinking (so I work efficiently). All three of these components are equally important.

• Knowledge - you still need to understand marketing. You need to know what copy sells, how to reach your target audience, how to create a sales page, how to measure results. You should be comfortable with technologies and tools. At the same time, this is also an area where AI can help you improve and learn new things.

• Experience - you should know what works in practice and what doesn’t. What resonates with your customers. What tone of communication is right for your brand. Without experience, you’re not able to steer the tools you’re using in the right direction. If you don’t have your own experience, it makes sense to reach out to someone more experienced to share their knowledge with you. For example, through mentoring.

• AI-first thinking - this is where modern tools come in. When you know what you want, when you have experience, then you can use AI to speed up your work. To automate routine tasks. To create content more efficiently. To do anything that would take you a long time to do yourself or that you’d previously need assistants for.

There’s no heroism in doing everything “the old way.” Using an electric grinder instead of a file isn’t cheating - it’s just smart use of available tools. Similarly, it’s not cheating to let AI help you with routine tasks when you’re clear on what and why you’re doing it.

What does this look like in practice?

Vibe marketing allows you to do a lot of things on your own. Technical solutions and complexity no longer have to be obstacles. Marketing is primarily working with information and content - and that’s exactly where AI tools excel. With their processing.

I still highly respect crafts like graphic design, copywriting, or programming. But I approach them differently. Strategic points (tonality, style, strategy, goals) are created by professionals. Routine and drudgery are already done (or significantly helped with) by AI. When I need to write a newsletter, AI doesn’t write the whole text for me - but it helps me quickly organize my thoughts, clean up grammar, shorten or expand passages. I still provide the core ideas and strategy.

Here are a few more practical examples from my daily work (with highly customized AI tools):

• Programming - I’m able to do a lot of simple things on my own, quickly and my way. I’ve created my own WordPress plugins for things I often need. For example, a floating tab with news on a website, export of entire website content to RTF, etc. Before, I would have had to find a programmer or learn to code at a professional level. I’ve also created many useful tools - for example, for clients on top of their e-shops on Shoptet (a Czech e-commerce platform, similar to Shopify) or my own software for more efficient order management. Thanks to vibe coding (and experience from previous collaboration with professionals), I can often solve these simple things myself.

• Data work - when I need to translate product data, extract information from tables, or perform bulk actions, AI helps me do it in a minute.

• Problem-solving - when I run into errors in WordPress or other systems, I always solve them immediately with AI’s help. Same with more advanced configuration of various services or connecting them together.

• Content creation - I dictate thoughts using Wispr Flow or AudioPen and AI helps me process them into smooth, clean text. But the strategy, main ideas, tonality - that’s still my work. Or thanks to properly set up agents, I’m able to quickly and efficiently create things like personalized transactional email templates, etc.

• Emails and conversations - AI helps me navigate through long conversations and quickly find the information I need. Both in email and in my second brain.

• Organization and productivity - I use Claude Cowork, for example, to organize files and documents. Instead of manually sorting hundreds of files, AI helps me do it in a few seconds. It made my work easier, for example, when naming hundreds of files provided by a client according to what was in them.

See the pattern? It’s always me who determines the direction. AI is just an assistant that speeds up my path to the goal.

There are several reasons why this approach makes sense:

• Marketing is increasingly complex - you need to master dozens of channels, understand data, create content, build customer relationships. Without the help of modern tools, you simply can’t keep up.

• Speed and competitiveness - when your competition works smarter and faster thanks to modern tools, you can’t fall behind.

• Self-sufficiency - you can now handle a lot of things yourself. You don’t have to pay an expert for every minor task. And you can also educate yourself and learn things you need with AI’s help.

Be critical

It’s important to learn to recognize limits - both yours and AI’s. Artificial intelligence is here to stay with us, and it’s foolish to resist it. And it’s equally foolish to rely on it blindly. Don’t adopt generated content uncritically. Verify, think about the result, test it.

For topics you don’t understand at all, it’s better to continue entrusting them to experts if you’re not able to assess the quality of outputs. Unfortunately, I still encounter people who treat AI tools as a magic box that grants wishes, and whatever comes out of it, they take as a finished thing and the truth. Watch out for that, there’s regret from it later.

YOU decide:

• Strategy and goals

• Tonality and style

• What is/isn’t acceptable

• Final approval

AI processes:

• Routine tasks

• Structuring thoughts

• Technical problems

• Bulk operations

Vibe marketing is actually just a temporary name for an efficient way of working as a marketer. In a few years, the ‘vibe’ prefix will disappear and just ‘marketing’ will remain - because it will be the new standard. Just like vibe coding for programmers.

Today you still have an advantage - you can learn this before others. You can be among the first to master this approach. Or you can wait until it becomes a necessity. The choice is yours. But time is ticking.

Looking forward to the next article! 👋🏻

Jan Barborik

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