A quiet shift is underway in boardrooms and Zoom meetings across businesses. Marketing teams are taking too long to hire new people. The LinkedIn job boards for brand managers, planners, and digital leads, once very busy, now seem very empty. The marketing hiring freeze isn’t just a one-off; it’s becoming a pattern. While it may seem like a short-term move to save money, it will have a lasting impact.

What’s Driving the Decline?

Being careful with money is the most apparent cause. Due to rising costs and uncertainty about return on investment (ROI), many businesses are eliminating jobs that don’t generate revenue. Marketing is often one of the first areas to be cut. There’s also AI: many executives are trying out smaller teams because they think tools can do the heavy work.

However, there is also a change in what people expect. No longer are brands just looking for experts; they want marketers who can code, analyze, tell stories, lead teams, and (almost literally) read minds. Because the job is now more general, there are fewer openings, more demand, and longer job openings.

Why This Is Risky

The freeze doesn’t just hurt people looking for work; it also stifles new ideas from emerging. Fewer thoughts in the room make it harder to generate ideas. Burnout goes up. There is less variety of thought. Even worse, brands start relying too heavily on short-term success metrics and not enough on long-term brand building—a flawed approach that has never proven effective in the past.

Many young talents are caught in the storm. It’s becoming increasingly challenging to navigate the process that will drive the future of marketing. Internships often transition into unpaid work. Entry-level jobs are gone. It starts to look more like a warning tale than the promise of an artistic career.

What Smart Brands Are Doing Instead

The most intelligent people in marketing aren’t just holding on; they’re changing. Some are changing their current teams to be more flexible, creative, and skilled in multiple areas. Others are outsourcing only some of their work and building ties with freelancing networks and small companies. Some are moving toward co-creation models where buyers and makers work together. This shifts the marketing work (and creativity) outside the company.

Brands with a clear goal also understand that marketing isn’t just a cost, but a way to grow. Someone else will tell your story if you don’t. And in today’s noisy, busy market, being quiet is the most expensive move of all.

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