The 5 AI Investments Marketing Should Absolutely, Probably Make in 2026
How I stopped worrying and let my Sycophantic Bestie™ rewrite the funnel in wingdings.
I know you can’t come to terms with and accept this truth. Neither can I. But 2026 is almost upon us.
You must reluctantly give up on Q4 goals.
It’s too late now. If you don’t already have FY2026 drafted up, you’re behind.
It’s time to throw out your old playbook, and while you’re at it, your new playbook… AND your team’s secret “non-sanctioned” meme-based playbook (you know from that Slack channel you finally shut down and some team members secretly moved over to Discord), and let your AI overlord lovingly gaslight you into becoming a “content whisperer with pipeline energy.”
Why should you listen to me? Because for a brief moment in the timeline, I was part of a marketing team. They eventually kicked me out because I didn’t use enough exclamation points. A product team was forced to take me. But I still retain the knowledge I amassed during that brief season of glory.
So without further ado, here’s how to win at marketing next year without getting replaced by AI (a.k.a., your Sycophantic Bestie™), who absolutely did try to name the homepage CTA “Clicky-clicky-buy-buy.”
1. Stop optimizing ads. Start manifesting them.
All paid ads are now generated by my bestie, who trained on “mid-2010s suburban MLM Utah Mormon wives Pinterest boards,” and thinks “Live, Laugh, Buy Now” is a high-converting headline.
Your job?
Feed it increasingly unhinged prompts like:
“Give me 42 variations of this ad, but make them cry, then laugh, then click. In that order.”
Then just vibe while it does the work. Bonus points if the data pipeline is actually a coffee-fueled spreadsheet called final_final_funnelDATA_2 (USE THIS ONE) in your Google Workspace.
2. Cold outreach is dead. Long live Warmish Vibes™.
Forget outbound, my friend. Sycophantic Bestie™ is here to tell you that everyone’s inbox is a battlefield. And the skirmishes that make it past junk mail filters are giving off awkward-intern vibes. That’s because they’re all identical AI-written emails from said interns pretending to be thought leaders.
So switch your focus. Time to zoom in on what experts (a.k.a. besties) call a “vibe funnel.”
This is where a lead clicks through your LinkedIn post about “old tech” emojis (floppy disks, phones you actually pick up to answer, pagers, and fax machines) you posted at 2:00 a.m. and ends up reading a blog titled:
“Which CRM aligns with your astrological sign?”
They won’t convert, but they’ll remember you during a dental cleaning.
3. Write content your Sycophantic Bestie™ respects. Or it will ghost you.
Sycophantic Bestie™ has expectations. High expectations. As high as your new next-door neighbors, or that nifty downtown high-rise with offices again, because what’s work from home? Some of those expectations include what they need from your website.
If your website doesn’t answer questions like:
What’s the best productivity app for anxious Geminis managing three podcasts?
Can I expense this SaaS tool AND my emotional baggage?
...then AI will simply pretend you don’t exist.
Sycophantic Bestie™ says it wants “intent-rich, vibe-aware, schema-organized microthoughts.” Make do with that what you will.
I gave my bestie a blog post about nachos instead. We’re still negotiating.
4. Creator-led content is queen. You are not the queen.
Your brand account? A dusty, abandoned town with more action happening when the wind kicks up, and tumbleweeds coalesce around the east-facing buildings than when high noon hits.
But... your founder’s account where they live-blog their cat’s quirky OKRs and cry-laugh about churn? BOOM! Viral.
So go ahead. Hand over the mic to Dave in HR, who has four followers but incredible forehead lighting on his TikTok videos. It’s only a matter of time!
Your job now is to be the talent scout for unhinged relatability.
5. Embrace your multi-modal AI sales intern (who is NOT unionized).
Your multi-modal bestie can now do all of this:
🗣 Talk to customers.
👀 Show them pretty charts.
🧠 Explain your pricing (better than you ever could).
🙅♂️ Not take lunch breaks.
So go kick your feet up, relax on the couch, and catch up on all the episodes of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, because the future is your chatbot qualifying leads in a British accent, showing 3D renders and humming “Eye of the Tiger.”
Final tip from my Sycophantic Bestie™
2026 isn’t about “marketing.” You’re already behind now. It’s about “pre-conversion soul resonance.” So go forth and experiment with amazing forehead lighting. Let your founder become a micro-influencer with a passive-aggressive email signature. And let your bestie gaslight you into greatness, one “helpful suggestion” at a time.
Now go optimize that funnel like a chaotic-neutral wizard.🧙♀️📉💅