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If you’ve been anywhere near the marketing world lately, you’ve heard the same message on repeat: you have to lean into “vibe marketing.”
Every fakexpert with a ring light is out there (perhaps one is holding onto their lapel mic with their fingers and raising it to their mouth to speak … do they not know how those function?) insisting that your brand won’t survive unless you build an aesthetic, engineer an emotional experience, and let AI churn out content that “creates connection” for you.
And because they say it with such confidence, it’s easy to feel that internal pressure creep in … the quiet questions you don’t always say out loud.
Is vibe marketing really the new standard?
Does it actually work as well as they claim?
If I’m not doing this, am I already behind?
Is AI really supposed to replace my marketing strategy now?
Those questions are normal. They’re also exactly what the vibe-marketing crowd relies on. When you’re overwhelmed, stretched thin, or tired of sifting through conflicting advice, “just use AI” sounds like a shortcut. It sounds modern. It sounds easier than sitting down and building a real, strategic foundation.
The problem is that vibe marketing is being sold as a strategy when it’s really just another buzzword distraction: a shiny promise wrapped in a mood board. And smart entrepreneurs are getting pulled into it because the loudest voices in the room keep pushing the same oversimplified narrative. (Sometimes those loud voices are only loud because they don’t know what else to say).
That’s where this goes off the rails.
Here’s the industry version of vibe marketing in a nutshell:
AI-driven content that builds a feeling or emotional atmosphere around your brand. Faster execution. More “culture fit.” More resonance.
In theory, it sounds compelling.
In practice, it collapses almost immediately, because it depends on abilities AI doesn’t actually have. AI can help you produce content faster, absolutely, and yes this is one of the things that I absolutely use it for. It can help you maintain consistency in voice once the real voice is defined — by you, not by AI.
But emotion? Intuitive resonance? The kind of psychological understanding that creates trust, urgency, or confidence in a buyer?
AI is a machine. It cannot have emotions.
That’s where the whole concept falls apart.
This is the same category of nonsense I called out here:
https://unscrewedmarketing.com/total-bs-alert-these-marketing-tricks-are-wasting-your-time-and-money/ … Just dressed up in a new outfit.
Entrepreneurs fall for vibe marketing because they’re exhausted. Believe me, I get it!
When you’re pulled in a dozen directions, the promise of a strategy that skips the hard thinking and jumps straight to “connection” sounds incredibly appealing. And fakexperts know this. That’s why they lean on emotional language: “magnetic,” “intuitive,” “energetic alignment.” All buzzwords. None of which give you a real plan for generating leads, increasing revenue, or growing your business.
Add the AI hype cycle on top of that, and suddenly it feels like if you’re not generating content at lightning speed, you’re already behind.
You’re not behind. You’re simply being targeted by people who benefit from selling shortcuts.
This is the technical gap the vibe-marketing sales pitch never mentions.
AI doesn’t feel anything. It has zero heart and a questionable “brain” at best. Remember, AI was trained on the entire internet a couple years back, and 99% of the internet is total crap. Not exactly the brain I want running my marketing.
Ai can describe emotion using words that other people have used, based on language patterns it has seen before. It can mimic tone, but it doesn’t understand why a particular audience reacts to certain messages. It doesn’t grasp cultural nuance, lived experience, or buyer psychology.
It’s a machine, and the entrepreneurs that use it best remember that fact.
When people talk about AI “creating emotional resonance,” what they actually mean is:
“It wrote something that sounds emotional because the training data contained emotional language.”
That’s it.
This is why so much “vibe” content feels hollow — it’s manufactured sentiment layered on top of shallow messaging. If you’ve read my breakdown of why AI can’t replace strategy, you already know this.
AI is powerful, but it is not perceptive. That distinction matters.
Here’s where vibe-first marketing does real damage, and none of this is theoretical. I see this with struggling entrepreneurs every single day.
The content that leads to revenue depends on clarity. Precision. Specificity. Actual expertise. Not a curated robot feeling.
Vibe marketing isn’t built for that.
AI becomes an incredible tool when it’s used properly, which means inside a real strategy, not instead of one.
AI supports strategy. It doesn’t create it, replace it, or diagnose what’s actually holding your marketing back.
Instead of asking, “How do I start doing vibe marketing?” ask yourself (not AI) questions that actually move your marketing forward:
This is the work fakexperts skip because it’s not as easy to package or sell.
Treat AI like an intern. It only works when you have a solid strategy, brand voice, selected differentiators, and a real human expert in your corner to help you with those things. Then you can let AI loose within the parameters which you have carefully set.
It’s ONLY then that AI will be able to capture any “real” vibe for your marketing.
You’ve done what you were told and followed the trends. And if the results still aren’t showing up, there’s a reason — not a flaw in you, but in the advice itself.
If you’re ready to stop chasing vibes and start building marketing that actually works, this is your moment to pivot.
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