Thinking Clearly About the Future of Marketing
A Christmas reflection on clarity, community, and the future of marketing🎄
I started this Substack journey in September this year.
No launch campaign.
No growth hacks.
Just a simple idea: to think clearly about how marketing is changing.
Not by chasing every new tool or trend, but by slowing down enough to understand the forces beneath them.
A few months later, something quietly meaningful has emerged:
A community of CMOs, marketing leaders, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and academics who share one common trait: a genuine curiosity about what comes next in marketing … and a need for clear thinking, orientation, and actionable principles to prepare their organizations for what follows.
Thank you for that.
What I’ve appreciated most over the past months is not just the number of subscribers, but the quality of attention. Thoughtful replies. Sharp questions. Constructive disagreement. Signals that people are not here for tactics, but for understanding.
The themes that emerged
Looking back at the essays published so far, a clear set of thematic pillars has emerged, structuring the different essays into coherent domains:
Agentic Organizations & the Future of Marketing Work explore how marketing is reorganized in the AI era: the shift from roles to tasks, from managing people to orchestrating systems, and from execution to ownership in agentic environments.
Marketing Operating Systems, Tech & Architecture focus on how marketing is built as a coherent, scalable system. These articles address operating models, tech stacks, automation, and data strategy, emphasizing architecture and integration over tool accumulation.
AI, Search & Decision Infrastructures examine how visibility and buying decisions are changing as search turns into synthesis and customers increasingly delegate decisions to AI agents. Success moves from awareness to relevance inside machine-mediated decision systems.
Marketing Fundamentals, Trust & the Human Signal return to first principles while confronting the limits of automation. These essays explore clarity, credibility, judgment, and responsibility … what remains uniquely human as marketing becomes programmable.
Together, these pillars reflect one core ambition: to understand how marketing is structurally changing … not just in tools, but in logic, roles, and responsibility.
The most-read articles of 2025
A few pieces clearly resonated most with readers this year:
Top #1
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Why read this article: This article introduces Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as the new logic of visibility in AI-driven search, where machines synthesize answers instead of ranking links. It explains how LLMs choose and cite sources, shifting success from clicks to citations. The 5-step GEO playbook shows how brands build AI visibility through authority, structure, and credibility.
Top #2
How to Automate your Marketing & Sales
Why read this article: It shows why automation is no longer about efficiency, but about reorganizing how marketing and sales work is done. You’ll learn how workflows, automation platforms, and AI agents turn scattered tasks into scalable systems that free humans for judgment and creativity. A practical five-step playbook makes the shift actionable beyond tools and tactics.
Top #3
Marketing in a Nutshell
Why read this article: It gives you a clear, structured big picture of marketing when everything feels fragmented and overloaded with buzzwords. The article condenses decades of marketing thinking into one coherent model with five core steps and three guiding principles. It’s a practical mental map to understand what marketing really is, beyond tools, trends, and tactics.
Top #4
The New Marketing Operating System
Why read this article: It explains why adding more tools no longer fixes marketing’s fragmentation problem and introduces the Marketing Operating System as a unifying framework. The article shows how strategy, data, processes, and AI can be connected into one adaptive, learning system. It offers a clear blueprint for turning disconnected marketing activities into an intelligent, end-to-end operating model.
Top #5
Virtual Influencers
Why read this article: This article explores why virtual influencers are rising fast and what they reveal about the future of trust in marketing. It shows where synthetic personas outperform humans in control, scale, and efficiency and where they fundamentally fall short. Most importantly, it clarifies why trust remains the decisive human signal in an increasingly artificial world of influence.
Top #6
How to Build a Modern Marketing Tech Stack
Why read this article: This article explains why most marketing tech stacks fail and how to design a system that actually creates intelligence instead of tool chaos. It shows how data, processes, and AI must be architected into one coherent revenue engine rather than accumulated as disconnected software. You’ll get a clear 6-step blueprint to build a scalable, composable Marketing & Sales Tech Stack that turns customer signals into measurable growth.
Top #7
The End of Marketing as We Know It
Why read this article: This article explains why the classic funnel and customer journey are reaching their limits and how marketing is shifting toward AI agents as the new gatekeepers of choice. It shows how customer decisions will increasingly be delegated to machines and what this means for visibility, trust, and relevance. You’ll understand why marketing success is moving from capturing attention to being selected by the customer’s AI agent.
Each of these essays circles around the same underlying question:
What remains human in marketing, and what must become systemic?
As we move into the new year, this question will only become more urgent. Not louder. But more structural.
For now, I simply want to say thank you for reading, thinking along, and being part of this early chapter. I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation in 2026 with even more depth, fewer buzzwords, and clearer models.
Wishing you calm days, good conversations, and a thoughtful start into the new year.
Yours,
Prof. Dr. Andreas Fuchs 🦊🎄
Thanks Andreas. I have loved connecting with both you and your writing in 2025. My personal favourites of yours were the virtual influences and GEO pieces, but all of your writing is accessible and engaging. Here's to an even more marketable 2026! 🎉