Marketing by Design – Design thinking that makes marketing work
I test the AI tools, design trends, and brand moves marketers are talking about, then tell you what holds up and what doesn’t. Written by the author of the bestselling The Visual Marketer, after 20+ years leading brand, creative, and digital experience marketing teams.
Share
MBD113: Is Your Marketing Effective?
Published about 1 year ago • 5 min read
12 October 2025 | Issue #113
In this issue:
Is Your Marketing Effective?
Is Affinity Going the Subscription Route?
No, AI Isn't Making Engineers 10x More Productive
Book Cover Design Help
Is Design Dying?
Evolving Content Without Losing the Human Touch
I've been on a bunch of podcasts recently. Have you listened?
Design Quote of the Week
Midjourney prompt: an archer hits a bullseye. A vibrant, high-contrast illustration using flat vector-style shading with neon and duotone color blocking. The characters are stylized with exaggerated lighting in yellow and magenta tones, set against a cyan background. There’s a strong use of shadow and highlight to create depth without using gradients. It uses clean lines and a minimal background to keep focus on the figures and objects. --ar 16:9
Is Your Marketing Effective?
It's a simple question that never has a simple answer.
As more of the marketing space is taken up by AI, zero-click searches, and social media made to enrage, brand is becoming more necessary than ever.
But how do you measure the efficacy of brand?
This has been the question that pushed so many leaders to over rotate on performance marketing. With performance marketing, we can see that if you put a dollar into the machine, you'll get two dollars back.
But with brand, it's much harder to measure, so it's harder to quantify the results. How can you tell if your brand marketing is effective?
You have to look at the long-term growth of the business.
Instead of just talking about trends in marketing and content marketing, this year's report looks at the results through the lens of effectiveness.
Over the past 12 months, here is how marketing leaders describe the effectiveness of their work:
12% say they're highly effective (exceeded goals).
47% say they're somewhat effective (met most goals).
31% say they're neutral (mixed results).
7% say they're somewhat ineffective (fell short of most goals).
3% say they're highly ineffective (failed to meet goals).
Tools or People?
The report goes on to say that while people are important to making change, adding headcount isn't a high priority.
Rather than augment their teams, businesses are planning for teams to get better at their jobs. I wonder how much of this is due to the poor job market for white collar workers (I know this can be debated based on which news you watch, but I can tell you that it's not a great job market for some folks). Leaders can make better defined future plans knowing their people are unlikely to leave for a new opportunity.
Teams get better at their jobs with time. AI wasn't seen as a deciding factor, but it could show some gaps in capabilities.
The strategy behind marketing and content marketing was seen as a major driver for improvements. This isn't driven by a tool, but rather leaders having better understanding of what the audience, and the business needs. The technology was used to sharpen those strategies, but the human had to do the work in the first place.
As Robert Rose, author of the report says, "tools don't erase fundamentals." The basics of marketing are still needed, even with all of the "gains" that AI is supposedly creating.
While productivity continues to grow thanks to AI, the performance (efficiency) isn't growing with it.
So, What's Effective?
Brand marketing is going to be driven by people, not AI. In many ways, it's also the antidote to AI. Your job as a marketer is to convince the higher ups that they're not going to easily measure the efficacy of brand.
It's no different than design. Great marketing design doesn't necessarily lead to more sales. But it helps the audience take you more seriously.
You'd never buy a medical device if the box was drawn by a toddler. Spending extra to improve the design will help the customer take you seriously. Which means their odds of buying your product goes up. Which leads to more sales.
It's not a simple 1+1=2 equation. But with the right story, you can explain to leadership that 1+X=3.
NEWS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MARKETING, DESIGN, & AI
Is Affinity Going the Subscription Route?
On October 30, we will find out if Affinity (the one true challenger to the Adobe Creative Cloud) will continue with lifetime license options, or if new owner, Canva, will move users to a subscription model.
In the meantime, if you want to get Affinity 2 apps on your iPad, they're currently free!
Download the apps from the Apple App Store
Activate the free trial
Then switch to paid ($0)
Free pro-level design software on your iPad!
I don't know if you'll be able to register the products anymore, but you'll be able to use the apps until they're no longer supported by an iOS update in the future.
No, AI isn't Making Engineers 10x More Productive
While AI is making a lot of things easier, Colton Voege has some thoughts on the real impact AI is having. I'm not sure I fully agree with him, but it's an interesting read.
Recently my friend Joeri was showing off the AI-generated book cover for his new book, The Future CMO. I offered to make some minor edits to the cover to help with legibility and hierarchy.
Below you can see the before and after.
Now the subtitle isn't fighting for attention with the title. And everything is properly centered.
Transmutative AI: Evolving Content Without Losing the Human Touch
Lee Judge introduces the concept that AI is more than just repurposing. We're using AI to transform human-generated ideas into new executions, but reframed with intent.
(we can all agree that's too many photos of me in a small space)
DESIGN QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Technology over technique produces emotionless design.” – Daniel Mall
My AI disclaimer: This week, I wrote the main article and the news items. If AI generates the images, I include the prompt so you can see how I got to that image.
Marketing by Design – Design thinking that makes marketing work
Jim MacLeod
I test the AI tools, design trends, and brand moves marketers are talking about, then tell you what holds up and what doesn’t. Written by the author of the bestselling The Visual Marketer, after 20+ years leading brand, creative, and digital experience marketing teams.
Read more from Marketing by Design – Design thinking that makes marketing work
09 November 2026 | Issue #139 In this issue: Marketing is your starting pitcher MPB2B Design quote of the week Marketing is Your Starting Pitcher In baseball, the starting pitcher is the star. Fans pick the night they buy tickets around who is on the mound, and an ace can make a game must-see and nearly guarantee a win. Teams pay for it. In 2026, a pitcher was the highest-paid player on 12 of 30 MLB teams, and Zack Wheeler leads the way at $42M. Middle relievers carry the game to the closer,...
26 October 2026 | Issue #138 In this issue: Creativity is less important than consistency Amazing real-world video effects Design quote of the week Why Consistency Beats Creativity in B2B Branding Your audience isn’t nearly as familiar with your brand as you are. And that’s a problem when you’re constantly changing it. Years ago, I worked with a CMO who had a habit of explaining our solution story to the marketing team. Over and over again. He’d stand at a whiteboard or one of the glass walls...
11 October 2026 | Issue #137 In this issue: Avoid these AI design tropes Don't use Muse if you like privacy Design quote of the week I Know You Used AI for Your Design You already know the em dash is a dead giveaway of AI writing (sorry, Ann Handley). Design has its own tells, and there are a lot of them. None of them is wrong on its own. A good writer can use an em dash on purpose, and a good designer can use any pattern below on purpose. They become a tell when they show up because nobody...
