Let me tell you about the worst Thursday of my marketing career
I was in a meeting, feeling pretty good about our upcoming campaigns. The team was hyped about our latest metrics, bragging about our latest advancements, and I was mentally calculating the next steps towards a personalised campaign.
Then my phone buzzed. One message that changed everything:
“OpenAI launches GPT-5: this changes the game completely.”
I spent the next hours diving deep into what this means for people like us. What I found kept me up at night. Not because it’s scary (okay, maybe a little scary), but because the opportunity is massive.
And most marketers have no clue what’s coming.
Here’s what happened when I tested the beta
My friend Jake works at a startup that got early access. He let me play around with it for an afternoon.
And OMG.
Remember when GPT-4 first came out and we all thought “this is pretty cool for writing email subject lines”? Yeah, we had no imagination.
I fed GPT-5 our customer database (anonymized, obviously), our past campaign data, and our product catalog. In 20 minutes, it had:
- Identified 47 micro-segments I’d never thought of
- Written personalized email sequences for each segment
- Created landing page copy that matched each customer’s browsing behavior
- Suggested optimal send times based on individual engagement patterns
The crazy part? It wasn’t just good. It was better than anything our team had produced in six months.
Mike looked over my shoulder and just said “Well, fuck.”
Why everyone’s getting this wrong
The marketing Twitter sphere is going nuts with predictions about GPT-5. Most of them are missing the point entirely.
This isn’t about better copywriting. It’s not about faster content creation.
It’s about the complete collapse of one-size-fits-all marketing.
Think about your current campaigns. You probably have what, 3-5 audience segments? Maybe you’re fancy and have 10?
GPT-5 makes it possible to have a unique marketing approach for every single customer. Not templates with their name plugged in. Actually unique strategies.
I’m talking about:
- Email campaigns that rewrite themselves based on whether someone had a good or bad day (yes, it can tell)
- Product recommendations that factor in everything from purchase history to social media activity to weather patterns
- Customer service responses that adapt to personality types in real-time
The three-month window (and why you need to move fast)
Here’s the thing nobody’s talking about: there’s about a three-month window between when GPT-5 launches and when everyone figures out how powerful it is.
During those three months, the companies that get it will absolutely demolish their competition. After that? Everyone’s playing catch-up.
I’ve seen this movie before. Remember when Facebook Ads first launched? The smart money got in early when CPCs were dirt cheap. Same with Google AdWords in 2002. Same with Amazon PPC in 2014.
The pattern is always the same:
- New platform launches
- Early adopters dominate while everyone else figures it out
- Platform gets saturated
- Advantage disappears
We’re about to hit step 1 with GPT-5.
What I’m doing differently (starting today)
I’m not waiting until August. Here’s my game plan:
Phase 1: Data prep (happening now) I’m becoming obsessed with first-party data. Every interaction, every click, every email open. If someone looks at our pricing page for more than 30 seconds, I want to know about it.
Why? Because GPT-5 is only as good as the data you feed it. Garbage in, garbage out.
Phase 2: Team education (next 30 days) I’m making everyone on my team spend 2 hours a week playing with current AI tools. Not because the tools are great (they’re not), but because they need to understand how to work WITH AI instead of being replaced BY it.
Phase 3: Campaign restructure (60 days out) I’m scrapping our standard “awareness-consideration-decision” funnel and building something that can adapt to individual customer journeys in real-time.
This means:
- Dynamic content that changes based on engagement
- Personalization that goes way beyond “Hi [FIRST_NAME]”
- Automated optimization that doesn’t need me to babysit it
The uncomfortable truth about job security
Look, I’m going to be honest with you. Some marketing jobs are going to disappear. The people doing cookie-cutter campaigns, generic social posts, and basic email blasts? They’re in trouble.
But here’s what I learned from Jake’s startup: they didn’t fire anyone when they implemented GPT-5. Instead, their junior marketer started producing work at a senior level. Their senior marketer started thinking like a CMO. Their CMO started thinking like a CEO.
The tool doesn’t replace you. It amplifies you.
The question is: are you going to be the marketer who gets amplified, or the one who gets replaced?
My prediction for the next 12 months
By this time next year, there will be two types of marketing teams:
Type 1: Teams that integrated GPT-5 early and are now operating at a level that seemed impossible in 2024. Their campaigns are converting 3-5x better. Their customers feel like the brand truly understands them. Their teams are smaller but more effective.
Type 2: Teams that are still arguing about whether AI will “replace the human touch in marketing.” They’re losing customers to Type 1 companies and can’t figure out why their campaigns feel so generic and ineffective.
Which type do you want to be?
What you should do right now
Don’t wait for your company’s “AI strategy committee” to figure this out. Don’t wait for your boss to give you permission. Don’t wait for the perfect moment.
Start today:
- Audit your data collection. What customer information are you NOT capturing that you should be?
- Learn prompt engineering. Yeah, it sounds nerdy, but it’s going to be as essential as Excel was in the 90s.
- Experiment with current AI tools. They’re clunky now, but they’ll teach you how to think in AI terms.
- Build relationships with AI-forward agencies. When August hits, you’ll want partners who already know what they’re doing.
- Start having conversations with your leadership. Show them what’s coming and position yourself as the person who can guide the company through it.
I’ve been in marketing for over 16 years. I’ve seen social media go from “just a fad” to the center of every campaign. I’ve watched mobile transform from an afterthought to the primary channel.
GPT-5 feels bigger than both of those combined.
The companies that figure this out first won’t just win a few campaigns. They’ll define what marketing looks like for the next decade.
The question isn’t whether this is happening. It’s whether you’ll be part of it.
P.S. – I’m keeping a close eye on this space and sharing what I learn. The next few months are going to be wild.
