AI turns up on most of the marketing briefs Lilian on our Marketing desk sees now. She says if you ask a marketing candidate whether they use it, the answer is yes, usually before you’ve finished the question.
The trouble is, once everyone says yes, the answer stops telling you much.
Using AI every week is different from using it well
Last year, ADMA’s survey of more than 1,000 Australian marketers found 75% use AI weekly, while only 29% have completed formal training. ADMA’s then-CEO, Andrea Martens, said AI can generate at scale but “cannot imagine, empathise or judge.”
So when a candidate tells you they’re great with AI, they’re probably right about the using part. The judgement part is what you need to find out.
What AI judgement looks like in a marketer
For Lilian, it comes down to knowing where AI helps, where it adds risk, and where a person should make the call.
The risks tend to sit in three places: customer data and permissions, facts that sound right and aren’t, and copy that drifts off-brand. Lilian uses one question to get to this quickly: “What data would you refuse to upload into an AI tool, and why?”
In her experience, a strong answer is specific. It might mention customer lists, consent, or a time the candidate caught something before it went live.
Three things to do before your next marketing hire:
- Describe a real task in the brief. Ask how they’d use AI on it, and where they’d stop and check.
- Ask the refusal question. What data wouldn’t go into an AI tool, and why?
- Look at the edit. Ask for a piece of AI-assisted work and have them walk you through what they changed before it went out.
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