For the last two-plus years, the proliferation of AI-powered tools has captured the zeitgeist. As a major change in the way people get things done, AI is legitimately exciting, and among other use cases, it’s been touted as a key solution for a slew of marketing tasks, from coming up with ideas for campaigns and strategies to identifying audiences and creating visual and written content.
In the midst of all this hype, the use of AI has spread quickly. According to the research study that Lightricks published together with the American Marketing Association (AMA), 90% of marketers are using AI now, up from 73% a year ago.
However, that impressive statistic hides a world of complexity. Our study shows that senior marketers are all in on AI, while junior marketers are lagging behind. We found that 61% of executives use AI at least once a week vs. 42% of entry level staff and 48% of executives see GenAI as critical vs. 34% of juniors. According to the Pareto principle, it could take the remaining 10% a far longer time to adopt AI than the 90% who are already using it.
There’s a significant discrepancy here, with AI use spreading from the top down. AI is embedded into strategic planning but not into daily tasks, which is good news, but not great news. Marketing team leaders who wish to truly unlock all the benefits of AI should see that it’s leveraged throughout the organization, from the top to the bottom and back again.
AI has been around long enough that all the early adopters have already adopted it, and anyone who hasn’t yet adopted AI isn’t likely to do so organically. If everyone is left to experiment with AI at their own pace, you won’t find over the course of 2025 that your team as a whole has gotten the most out of AI.
It’s time to be proactive about encouraging AI adoption among your junior team members.
Professional Training Makes All the Difference
It’s not surprising that junior marketers are adopting AI at a slower pace when you realize that few organizations are providing AI training for all their employees. Our research found that 27% of junior employees want more training on how to get the most out of AI, while only 13% of executives feel the same way.
Meanwhile, 65% of executives have experienced company led training, compared to 34% of junior marketers, and a third more junior marketers than executives said they’d explored AI through self-directed learning.
Self directed learning may increase overall confidence towards AI tools but it’s not enough to get junior employees ready to use AI in the workplace. There’s no substitute for professional AI training focused on marketing.
Nurture Trust and Watch Adoption Grow
Another reason junior marketers are hesitant to adopt AI is lack of trust in the technology. There are headlines about hallucinations, deepfakes and costly mistakes caused by people relying too much on GenAI. The marketing world is full of cautionary tales about GenAI-driven campaigns that flopped.
Naturally, people are reluctant to use AI tools for tasks like identifying a target audience or choosing the best social media channels if they can’t understand how they produce results. We found that 27% of executives are happy for AI solutions to take the lead in planning marketing campaigns, but only 5% of their juniors shared their confidence.
It’s vital to continuously improve transparency for your AI tools. Look for solutions that have high explainability, prioritize ethical use cases as well as ethical use of model training data, and don’t offer a black box system. At the same time, it’s important to educate your team about AI algorithms and processes, so that they have a reliable, comfortable understanding of how AI tools reach their outcomes.
Prove Value to Raise Confidence
As well as believing in the tools themselves, marketers need to know they’ll see real ROI from mastering the tech. As things stand, they aren’t convinced. Our research revealed that while 55% of executives are very confident that AI can improve their creative marketing outputs and just 7% have no confidence, only 34% of juniors share their positive outlook and 19% have zero confidence.
Juniors need to know that AI will make their working lives better. They are drowning in repetitive tasks and would love to delegate. If they’re not using AI for this purpose, it’s because they don’t believe it can deliver.
It’s important to demonstrate the ways that AI will make their daily lives more enjoyable, how it will take over the tedious grunt work and free them for more creative tasks.
Remove the Fear Barrier
Inevitably, fear remains a serious barrier to AI adoption. Junior marketers are wary about many things to do with AI in marketing, from fear of making a big mistake when using AI and ending up as a headline, to fear that AI will take over their jobs and they’ll be left out of work.
Interestingly it’s the people who use AI the most who are the least concerned that it will put them out of a job. So while leaders should reassure employees they won’t be replaced by AI, the best step you could take might be to enable them to start using it.
We’ve seen people learn how to use AI just by interacting with the tools on a regular basis. Setting up consequence-free safe spaces for junior employees to practice using AI, or to build workflows that include AI by default, can help them get used to the tech and overcome their fears.
Spread the Light of Marketing AI
Waiting for your junior marketing employees to start using AI tools won’t work. But a few simple steps can make all the difference.
By offering your entire marketing team training programs in AI use, you can help them to understand the value they have to gain, helping them to get over some of the unfortunate stigmas surrounding AI while empowering them to dive in so they can start feeling that value. By encouraging experimentation with AI tools, you can help the team to gain confidence and reinforce the feeling that AI helps them to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
In short, taking action to increase their confidence and understanding around AI can help them to feel willing to integrate AI into their workflows, and help you spread AI adoption throughout your organization.
