Hey Google, cue Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
That song can ring a shattered soul from the depths of hell. But it can’t help corporate media and marketing believe in what they’re doing.
Sure, thought leaders talk about impact. Middle managers post about their latest campaign with pride. But no one actually gives a shit about the work itself.
That’s the shift. That’s the fracture line.
The rise of the marketing bro and the death of meaning
We birthed marketing bros. We rewarded fast work that doesn’t land. We built entire org charts around keeping a train on the tracks no one even wants to traverse.
No one is invested in the destination.
They’re just along for the ride, hoping for the best.
Marketing and business development used to be relationship businesses. Built on trust, real dialogue, and long-term thinking.
Delegation disguised as strategy
Now?
The second a marketing initiative gets greenlit, it gets questioned. Every blog, every pitch, every hot take makes you second guess: Is there a faster way to do this where I don’t have to think?
That’s the crux of the matter.
It’s not that people don’t want to think. It’s that decision fatigue has made thinking feel like a luxury. Delegating feels smart. It feels protective. Especially in environments that reward quantity over clarity.
A flood of swindlers and the fall of standards
So what happened?
Digital leveled the playing field. Now anyone can market. And if anyone can market, the guardrails are gone. There’s no code. No ethics. No qualifications. Just a flood of bros promising that spamming 10k emails a week is fine because “everyone does it.“
That spawns the suburban cookie-cutter house effect. All the same facades. All the same fonts.
All the same kitchen signs: Live. Laugh. Love.
So, Is digital marketing in 2025 actually legit?
Yes.
If you’re working with someone who actually cares. Someone with taste, vision, and a point of view. A content marketing consultant you can trust. Someone who’s not guessing blindly.
Marketing can get expensive fast, so it’s smart to stay nimble. Keep your guard up. But don’t confuse skepticism with paralysis.
Murdered eggs and meaningful work
At the end of the day, it takes money to make money.
Omelettes are made from murdered eggs. Sometimes they’re scrambled. Sometimes they’re sunny-side up. But if you don’t break the shell, you don’t get the breakfast.
Spend wisely. Trends are dumb and short-lived. Real digital marketing in 2025 is clean design, authentic story, and media channels that say what you want and help your customers find you.
Because the pages might be pixels now, but the craft is still craft.
The parts they told you were inefficient? That was the whole thing.
Understanding the client. Sharpening the story until it moves. Focusing on long-term strategies that don’t rely on gimmicks and hacks.
That’s timeless.
Patagonia fleece and the performance of power
What we have now is bottled bro in a Patagonia fleece, running decisions on ego and fear, pretending the numbers he loses sleep over actually matter.
They do matter. To like five people in the organization who profit share everything and never learned to share in KinderCare. It’s the greedy leaders at top dressing up corporate hierarchies as noble leadership positions deserving of respect and admiration.
They are pompous, arrogant, and selfish clowns pretending their life’s work can’t be summed up in two words: outsourced creativity.
But those dudes are just sock puppets who stopped believing years ago. They had to convince themselves that the pressure they put on others to perform, the decision to target-market kids, the family events they skipped, meant something.
The work is important.
It has to be.
We used to be a proper advertising country
Say what you will about the misogyny that existed during the Mad Men era but those dudes made today’s leadership look like chipmunks.
Makes the incomplete and fragile masculinity that runs companies today seem like Voldemort’s separated soul at the end of Deathly Hollows.
Empty, misguided and standing for all the wrong things.
I don’t hate marketing, I just hate what you’ve done with it
It’s not that I hate marketing. I love it. The ability to use psychology, strategy and persuasion to help people find things they need — that literally lights my fire.
It’s the shallowness and posturing that comes alongside most marketing efforts.
It cries, “pay attention to me” — but that is not what advertising is about, you don’t beg and plead for attention through a never ending void.
You build something worth talking about and you stand on that.
Everyone today wants to be on third base, waiting for the home-run batter to step up to the plate and bring them home. But you’re not meant to strive to be the incoming run.
You’re meant to try and be the slugger.
The one who brings the whole team home.
Does digital marketing still have a future?
That is like asking if the Pope is from Chicago.
We live in a digital world. AI can do things fast, but they don’t always do things well.
Scientific Advertising was written over one-hundred years ago but the foundational ideas still stand. Mediums have changed dramatically throughout the century but the principles still track.
And now that everyone on the internet can claim to be a marketing professional, an SEO consultant and a content creator – the areas of marketing that were once considered status quo will be the differentiation.
Relationships and trust.
No one will knock everything out of the park, every time. But we live in a world where recycling strategies and shooting for the middle because it’s fast and good enough is catching up.
And so, is digital marketing in 2025 legit?
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
For those who believe trends do not equal trust. Who still believe in craft. In connection.
In something that lasts.
Yes.
In fact, too legit to quit.