If you've spent time on LinkedIn, you’ve seen a new class of professionals talking about "vibe marketing” as a new way to approach traditional marketing tasks through the heavy use of AI automation, orchestration, and experience-building.

"[Vibe marketing is] this fusion of a smart person with domain expertise using artificial intelligence in ways that extend your capabilities far, far beyond what you as an individual could do," said Marc Sirkin, founder of Marc Sirkin Consulting and former CEO of Third Door Media, "whether that's data analysis, copywriting, design, strategy, frameworks, etc."

While marketing leaders have not agreed on the exact definition, there's consensus it could greatly impact all advertising teams.

Definition and use

Vibe marketing is about forming a deeper connection between your brand and consumers, meeting them on a more emotional level than traditional marketing.

"[Vibe marketing] builds community. A strong vibe creates a place where people feel they belong," said Chris Auman, president of digital marketing group Sanctuary. "This can turn customers into a self-sustaining tribe that also works for you."

While this has long been a goal of marketers, scaling it has been challenging.

A traditional campaign took weeks of market research, creative development, and optimization to set up activations for a wide group. Now, with AI tools, marketers on small teams can activate a tailored campaign to connect with hyper-specific audiences.

"Advertising makes you pay for every eyeball," said Auman. "Vibe marketing creates a flywheel, and I believe in this metaphor deeply. If you nail your vibe, your passionate community will spread your message organically."

Vibe marketing is seen as a cousin of the "vibe coding" trend, where a person relies on AI tools to prompt their coding project. In vibe marketing, marketers use AI tools to create many parts of a strategy, if not an entire campaign, to fill expertise gaps, and exponentially scale the activation.

"If we're going to realize a true one-to-one marketing environment, that means if I have 1,000 customers, I have 1,000 marketing campaigns tailored to each person," Sirkin said. "There's no way a human team can do that, that's why I think AI is intrinsic to vibe marketing."

Pitfalls and challenges

Vibe marketing has promise for marketers, but experts caution against using it as a remedy for all marketing woes.

While vibe marketing can enhance your brand story, it shouldn't establish a company's foundational character, according to Merry Carole Powers, founder of Unicorn Kreative.

"You need to know what your vibe is before you do vibe marketing," she said. "You cannot automate your brand promise. You cannot automate your brand purpose, and you cannot automate your brand voice. You have to take those steps first, then AI can [create] something that's uniquely yours."

Using AI to build a brand identity could leave a company with a generic mix of ideas, the antithesis of vibe marketing efforts to forge unique audience connections.

"[Brands are] jumping on to answer engines and saying, 'Give me some vibe marketing language for my tech,'" said Powers. "But if you're a brand, then you're getting the next generation of jargon as everyone's going to start saying the same things, and then you've got the emperor's new clothes."

For Sirkin, maximizing vibe marketing requires both AI and the experience to use it well.

"If you take an intern and say, 'Hey, here's powerful AI. Go run a marketing campaign,' you're bound to screw it up," said Sirkin. "The chances of success are very small versus with somebody who knows what they're doing and with some domain expertise."

Who should start and where

As AI and agentic tools advance, the use of vibe marketing will only grow.

"If you're in a five-person company, and you're the one marketing person who has to do everything, this is going to save you," said Sirkin. "Now you have in your pocket a podcast producer, a social media content manager, a copywriter, a designer, you just inherited a team of people."

Persistence is key. Just as crafting a resonant brand identity takes time, so does mastering the technology to create and target memorable campaigns.

Powers warns marketers that they can become "biased against the tool and not able to take advantage of it" if early results don't meet expectations.

"Slow down. [Vibe marketing is] a really catchy phrase, so everybody wants to jump on it," she said. "It's just a technique. And a technique and a tool is only as good as the person using it."

For marketers with an established brand identity and experience with new optimization tools, vibe marketing could build loyalty with new customers.

"People still think that they have to do more and more, but vibe marketing can actually allow you to do less, in a more sustainable way," said Auman. "Especially over time, as your brand resonates and grows."

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