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Navigating AI: Fear, Bold Bets, and the Crash Before the Boom

August 26, 2025

AI is reshaping marketing, but the road ahead is anything but smooth. From marketers anxious about being left behind without the right skills, to Wayfair’s bold playbook of blending creativity and rigor, to looming warnings that a crash may precede AI’s true golden age—three stories capture both the promise and perils of this transformation. Together they reveal a hard truth: success in the AI era will depend less on hype and more on leadership, discipline, and the courage to steer through disruption.

Before the Boom: Why AI’s Golden Age May Start with a Bust

FT.com looks into how AI may feel like it’s racing toward a golden age, but history suggests a crash is likely before the rewards fully arrive. Massive investments, shaky returns, and speculative hype echo past technological revolutions, where bubbles paved the way for lasting infrastructure. The question now is whether society can steer today’s AI boom toward broad prosperity—or risk letting disruption outpace direction.

  • The scale of AI investment and investor anxiety: Tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are pouring unprecedented sums into AI infrastructure, with global spending projected to hit $3 trillion by 2029. While this is the fastest rollout of a general-purpose technology in history, many investors worry about returns. Historical cycles suggest such overinvestment often precedes financial bubbles and painful crashes.

  • The “installation phase” and the likelihood of crashes: Economist Carlota Perez frames AI as part of the ongoing information revolution, now in its manic installation phase. This phase is marked by over-investment, social upheaval, and speculative bubbles—patterns seen in past revolutions from railways to electricity. MIT research showing that 95% of companies see no ROI from generative AI, alongside Sam Altman’s admission that investors may lose heavily, underscores the risk of imminent crashes.

  • Differences in today’s AI revolution: Unlike earlier industrial revolutions, AI is driven as much by software as hardware, enabling rapid global scaling and network effects. Tools like ChatGPT reached 700 million weekly users in under three years, amplifying both opportunities and risks. Cheap challengers like China’s DeepSeek already unsettle U.S. tech valuations, highlighting global volatility in AI markets.

  • The role of society in shaping AI’s “golden age”: Perez stresses that crashes don’t prevent golden ages—they often finance the infrastructure that enables them. But for AI to truly deliver broad benefits, governments and civil society must curb corporate concentration, reform financial markets, and address broader crises like populism and climate change. Without deliberate direction, the AI revolution risks reaching a turning point—and failing to turn.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: History tells us that every technological revolution comes with turbulence before transformation. AI is no exception: unprecedented investment, minimal returns, and mounting hype point to a bubble that may need to burst before real progress takes root. The leaders who thrive won’t be those chasing the frenzy, but those building resilient strategies, infrastructure, and policies that ensure the eventual golden age benefits more than just the few.

When Creatives Grab the Wheel, Performance Follows

Wayfair is proving that in the AI era, bold experimentation paired with disciplined execution can redefine the customer journey. Under CMO Paul Toms, the company is blending personalization, measurement innovation, and creative empowerment to stay ahead of shifting consumer behaviors. Google Business looks into his approach as it underscores a crucial lesson for marketing leaders: AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a catalyst for breaking silos, rethinking strategy, and driving growth.

  • Reimagining the AI-powered customer journey: Wayfair CMO Paul Toms is using AI to transform the shopping experience, introducing generative tools like the Discover tab to let customers create photo-realistic room designs. These designs are seamlessly matched with Wayfair’s 30 million–item catalog, helping customers move from inspiration to purchase. The result is a more personalized, frictionless experience that aligns marketing with technology leadership across the company.

  • Balancing first-mover instincts with data-driven rigor: Toms envisions future purchases happening through emerging devices such as headphones and AR lenses, positioning Wayfair to lead in agentic AI adoption. While eager to be a first mover, he emphasizes disciplined measurement, calling attribution and incrementality tracking the “billion dollar question.” AI is central to unifying fragmented data sources, helping marketers pinpoint what’s truly driving growth.

  • Breaking down silos between creative and media: Toms challenged the traditional wall separating creative teams from performance accountability, giving them ownership of how their assets perform in-market. Initially hesitant, creatives embraced this shift as AI tools enabled faster testing, trend identification, and imagery generation. The change created a daily feedback loop that improved campaigns in real time and empowered creatives to directly influence business results.

  • A mindset of bold risk-taking and iteration: Toms’ leadership combines growth-hacker instincts with rigorous testing, embodying the CMO’s evolving role in the AI era. His philosophy is to push forward with innovation, even if it requires course corrections later, rather than stall out of fear. This approach positions Wayfair not only to redefine customer experience but also to set a new standard for how marketing teams harness AI across strategy, measurement, and creativity.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: Wayfair’s AI playbook shows that true transformation comes from pairing bold bets with operational discipline. By weaving AI into personalization, measurement, and creative workflows, Paul Toms is turning customer experience into a competitive edge rather than a buzzword. For marketing leaders, the lesson is clear: AI isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about rethinking ownership, breaking silos, and creating the agility to lead in markets that won’t wait.

Fear of Irrelevance Looms

Marketers may be eager to harness AI, but enthusiasm isn’t enough without the right foundation. A new ADWEEK survey exposes a critical gap: while confidence in AI’s potential is high, most organizations lack the skills, leadership clarity, and training needed to put it into practice. The result is a growing tension between ambition and execution—leaving teams both excited about AI’s promise and anxious about being left behind.

  • A recent ADWEEK reader survey reveals that while marketing and advertising companies are eager to adopt AI, the biggest obstacle is a lack of skills and practical knowledge. Legal issues and budgetary constraints add further challenges, making implementation uneven across organizations. Despite these barriers, more than 80% of marketers remain confident that their companies can eventually integrate AI into daily operations.

  • Leadership around AI adoption is fragmented, with no single department taking clear ownership in many companies. About 23% of respondents said marketing was leading the charge, 19% pointed to IT, and 13% named operations. Yet for 25% of organizations, no department was formally spearheading an AI strategy, leaving efforts scattered and inconsistent.

  • Employee fears reflect the uncertainty surrounding AI’s impact on work. Many respondents worry about becoming irrelevant or sidelined if they fail to adapt to AI-driven tools. Additional concerns include layoffs, data privacy risks, and ethical challenges such as bias in algorithms, showing that anxieties extend beyond just technical barriers.

  • Training and resources remain a critical gap, with most companies offering only minimal support for employees to learn AI. The majority of marketers reported receiving just “a little” or “moderate” training, while over 20% said their company provides no AI education at all. This lack of structured learning opportunities could widen the gap between ambition and execution in AI adoption.

AI Trailblazer Takeaways: The real barrier to AI adoption in marketing isn’t vision—it’s infrastructure. Leaders are confident in AI’s potential, but fragmented ownership, limited training, and scarce resources are stalling progress. Without a clear strategy and investment in upskilling, enthusiasm risks turning into frustration, and the gap between AI ambition and execution will only grow wider.

Quote of the Week

“Not using AI means being left behind.”

- Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

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