Marketing is entering a sharp AI-driven divide.
“The challenge is that AI is everywhere, but knowing how to learn it in meaningful ways is still difficult,” she told Fortune.
According to Jessica Jensen, LinkedIn’s chief marketing officer, the course will provide learners with the AI skills employers are looking for within areas like audience segmentation, message testing, campaign building, creative development, and ROI analytics.
“It’s mission-critical that all marketers embrace AI,” Jensen told Fortune.
The stakes for upskilling in marketing couldn’t be higher. Artificial intelligence is triggering one of the most significant reckonings the industry has faced in decades. Tasks like building marketing plans, generating creative assets, and conducting market research—which once could take weeks—can now be completed in hours or even minutes.
Even amid AI-related headwinds, Thornton and Jensen remain bullish on marketing as a profession—if practitioners can adapt.
For Thornton, those who will be best equipped for success are those who can see the writing on the wall and “look around corners,” meaning if change is afoot in the broader business community, they stay ahead of it.
“People who are excited, people who are energized about change, people who are excited about looking around corners, people who can work well in a little bit of ambiguity—I think those types of skill sets are going to serve any grad, or really anyone, really well,” Thornton said.
It’s a view Jensen echoed: those who don’t sit on the sidelines of change will be best equipped for the future. And when it comes to AI skills in particular, she said be prepared to show—not tell—your abilities.
“Get your hands dirty. Experiment. Create. Build agents. Learn how AI actually works, not just how it’s talked about,” Jensen said. “And be prepared to show in a job interview real examples of how you’re using AI. It’s about showing what you can build with AI, and that you have great human creativity and judgement.”
