UK AI Exposure · Managers, directors and senior officials
Marketing, sales and advertising directors
Marketing, sales and advertising directors plan, organise and direct advertising campaigns and market research and formulate and implement an organisation’s marketing, sales and social media policies.
- Employees (UK)
- 216k
- Median annual pay
- £90,000
- Exposure score ?
- 0.3/10 Minimal direct 0.3 · with tools 9.2
- Wage exposure
- £583m
Higher exposure than 16% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.
What this score means
Most of this role's work is still genuinely hard for AI to do. Physical presence, bodily skill, high-context judgment, direct human care - the things that don't translate to text.
If you're in this role, here's what to do now
You're not in the firing line today. But the frontier moves. Build enough AI fluency now that you can direct it for the parts of your work that could benefit. People in unexposed roles who understand AI become unusually valuable inside their organisations.
The tasks in this role, ranked by AI exposure
Below are the real tasks O*NET records for this occupation, sorted highest exposure first. "AI can do this" means a language model can already handle the task directly. "AI can help" means an LLM can assist but not replace. "Human work" means today's AI doesn't touch it. Importance is O*NET's 1–5 rating of how central each task is to the role.
1 of 20 tasks in this role are things an AI can already do today. Task list mapped via O*NET "Marketing Managers" (11-2021.00).
Compile lists describing product or service offerings.
Identify, develop, or evaluate marketing strategy, based on knowledge of establishment objectives, market characteristics, and cost and markup factors.
Formulate, direct, or coordinate marketing activities or policies to promote products or services, working with advertising or promotion managers.
Evaluate the financial aspects of product development, such as budgets, expenditures, research and development appropriations, or return-on-investment and profit-loss projections.
Develop pricing strategies, balancing firm objectives and customer satisfaction.
Direct the hiring, training, or performance evaluations of marketing or sales staff and oversee their daily activities.
Consult with product development personnel on product specifications, such as design, color, or packaging.
Use sales forecasting or strategic planning to ensure the sale and profitability of products, lines, or services, analyzing business developments and monitoring market trends.
Negotiate contracts with vendors or distributors to manage product distribution, establishing distribution networks or developing distribution strategies.
Coordinate or participate in promotional activities or trade shows, working with developers, advertisers, or production managers, to market products or services.
Consult with buying personnel to gain advice regarding the types of products or services expected to be in demand.
Consult with buying personnel to gain advice regarding environmentally sound or sustainable products.
Initiate market research studies, or analyze their findings.
Conduct economic or commercial surveys to identify potential markets for products or services.
Confer with legal staff to resolve problems, such as copyright infringement or royalty sharing with outside producers or distributors.
Recommend modifications to products, packaging, production processes, or other characteristics to improve the environmental soundness or sustainability of products.
Advise business or other groups on local, national, or international factors affecting the buying or selling of products or services.
Select products or accessories to be displayed at trade or special production shows.
Develop business cases for environmental marketing strategies.
Integrate environmental information into product or company marketing strategies, policies, or activities.
Where a project with Alex usually starts for this role
This role's strict α score is low because its top tasks are judgment, not drafting. But those same tasks compress dramatically when AI is paired with the right context and tools. The three highest-stakes tasks below are usually where we start.
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Identify, develop, or evaluate marketing strategy, based on knowledge of establishment objectives, market characteristics, and cost and markup factors.
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Formulate, direct, or coordinate marketing activities or policies to promote products or services, working with advertising or promotion managers.
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Evaluate the financial aspects of product development, such as budgets, expenditures, research and development appropriations, or return-on-investment and profit-loss projections.
Every role has three or four wedges like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days. Talk to Alex about a project →
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Methodology
This role's exposure score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 GPT task labels, aggregated by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 via ISCO-08 (ONS Vol 2 coding index) and US SOC 2010 (BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional. ASHE covers employees only, so self-employed workers are not counted.
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