Marketing: The New Bottleneck in Rapidly Evolving Value Creation

AI has massively accelerated how fast teams can build and launch new products. Engineers, supercharged by AI, might crank out features at 10x speed or more. But the challenge is — marketing and communication aren't keeping pace. They've become the new bottleneck in product growth. This isn't an original idea but it struck me hard when I first read it, having been a marketer for a long time.

Teams often struggle to integrate marketing early in the development cycle. When features are flying out fast, it's tough to pin down clear marketing messages or teasers ahead of time. One practical step is to require engineers to clearly articulate, in plain terms, what exactly they're building, what the final outcome looks like, and most importantly — why it matters to the customer.

Dario Amodei, the boss at Anthropic, the company responsible for the Claude AI models, often points out how shocked he is that most people still don't grasp what AI tech is really unlocking — or the profound impact it's set to have on work, social norms, and incomes. That gap in understanding ties neatly into a metaphor I borrow a lot: that there are two types of AI users — drivers and passengers.

Passengers treat AI like a chatbot: they ask a question, get an answer, take it at face value, and move on. Drivers, on the other hand, get dissatisfied with the first answer. They dig deeper, ask why, explore how to get better responses, build new tools, and ultimately lead the pack in AI adoption and professional progress.

The vast majority are passengers today, and it's extremely hard to articulate exactly what AI can do for them — it's like asking someone to imagine a new colour. Our brains just don't go there until we see it.

So, marketing for AI services — and for fast-moving products in general — must focus on the outcome it delivers, not on nebulous "look what it can do" messages. Those just don't land for most passengers.

We must spend time sharpening the clarity and meaning of product messaging. Even in a services business like Growth Medium AI, the engagement ends with an AI tool — a product in its own right. Users don't buy features, they buy outcomes. The difference matters hugely: "Advanced optical character recognition" is a feature; "hundreds of accounting transactions reconciled in minutes — just show it your invoices" is an outcome. The latter communicates value clearly and immediately.

I believe my job as a driver of AI technology isn't just to build these tools but to communicate their outcomes clearly. That's how you guide customer understanding and build mental models that simplify complex decisions. The real winners will be who make the leap of imagination required to apply it to something that hasn't been done or thought of or necessary before now, in whatever context you're applying it.

It has never been easier to create ideal customer profiles or identify stories that resonate. I use AI notetakers in every meeting because they capture gold in transcripts. When you have this data at scale, it's not complicated to build agents that help you find stories, craft messages, and pinpoint problems your ideal customer will pay to solve. That's the Ikigai of your business — the sweet spot where your skills, what customers need, and what you enjoy intersect — and it's at our fingertips like never before.

Measuring how well your communication accelerates growth should be obvious. Inbound lead volume. If your messaging changes and you see more inbound enquiries, you're on the right track. Whether those leads buy depends on product quality or, in a service, whether they like, trust, and believe in you enough to take a financial risk, which is purchase conversion rate is a muddier metric to use for this.

Marketing narratives act like leverage in today's rapid product development environment. Clear, outcome-focused storytelling accelerates growth by guiding customer attention and understanding. Confusion, on the other hand, creates drag — a bottleneck that slows everything down.

So hopefully it's obvious that the friction here is that while AI has turbocharged how fast we build, it hasn't magically made it easier to explain what we've built. Marketing is no longer just a supporting act; it actually needs to come first. When you have leads or customers desperate for a new feature, service or product they know is coming, you're doing something right - your message is ahead of your delivery, rather than lagging behind it.