Clark reveals the terrifying truth about martech vendors: they're exploiting marketers' fear of job loss to sell them the very tools that will eliminate their positions. From Sam Jacobs' manipulative Pavilion post to eight figures in martech waste, this episode exposes how the industry profits from anxiety while systematically replacing human judgment with software. A wake-up call about funding your own obsolescence.
Key insight: Every tool that promises to make you better at marketing is actually designed to prove you're unnecessary.
Referenced: BurnItDown.Marketing intent data article
REACH_Ep4_Faust
Clark Barron You ever try something new? Some plug in, some platform, some AI tool for a
split second. You feel like a fucking genius. The copy comes out cleaner. The data is tighter.
The meeting goes smoother, and you don't say it out loud. But in your head you're thinking, oh,
yeah, this is it. This is the thing that finally makes me better. Tread lightly because you're
wrong. It doesn't make you better. It's making you dependent. Because the next time you know
what's going to happen, you're going to reach for it a little sooner. In the time after that, you
don't even try without it. Before long, you're not even sure where your ability ends and the tool
begins. And I guarantee that some of you listening would rather hand over your unlocked
phone than your ChatGPT chat logs. That's the part nobody warned you about. Not that AI is
going to take your job, but that it's going to convince you to give it away voluntarily. One clever
feature at a time. Let's play a game. I want you to think of an answer to this question, and I'm
going to read your mind. What are you afraid of right now? As a marketer, not hitting your
numbers. Not getting that promotion. Not being seen as strategic? Nope. I didn't think so.
You're afraid of becoming irrelevant. You're afraid they won't need you anymore. That you're
one AI agent away from being replaced. So ready. How terrifying is it, truly, to be in constant
fear of losing your job? Because that's it. That's the one. Universal fear pain point that keeps
every marketer awake at 3 a.m.. Not campaign performance, not attribution. Not lead quality.
Job security. Will the next restructuring include your role? Will AI make your skills obsolete?
Will automation eliminate your entire department? Ooh, is that new CMO going to bring their
own team? That fear is so visceral, it is so immediate and so constant that it shapes every
single decision that you and I make. Every marketer makes even the ones of us that actually
run our own business. Everything you do is filtered through one single question will this help
me keep my job? and that's exactly how they want you to feel. They who is they? Well, an
entire industry has built its business model around that exact fear. Vendors, consultants.
Communities. Vendors who profit from your insecurity. Consultants who monetize that anxiety
and communities that charge you for reassurance. Copium platforms that sell you peace of
mind. They've discovered that you can't monetize competence. But guess what? You can
monetize fear. And the most profitable and the most profitable fear of all is the fear of
becoming obsolete. Hands down. So they feed it. They amplify it. They weaponize it. They
create problems you didn't know you had. Invent solutions you didn't know you needed. And
boy, do they love building technologies designed to replace the very people buying them. And
then they sell you those technologies, and then they sell those technologies to you as
salvation. Hold. Hold tight, I want to I want you to see something. If you follow me on LinkedIn,
I'm sure you've seen me take swings at communities like exit five, Pavilion, whatnot. Most
recently Sam Jacobs and Pavilion and his Country Club for bougie marketers. But recently,
seven members of his own organization sent me something, something kind of odd. Seven
different people from inside Pavilion. Now, keep in mind this is the same Sam Jacobs of
Pavilion who blocked me for calling out their manipulation tactics, right? Well, these people
wanted me to see his latest post. Nothing new there. They recognized exactly what I'm talking
about. Here's what he wrote. Last week I flew 12,000 miles to host one dinner, ten in-seat high
powered Cros and CMOs, collectively representing about $5 billion in AR. But guess what? It
was the same vibe as everywhere else these days, because nobody has seen a market like
this before. Nobody. All caps has been a CRO or CMO in the age of AI. Nobody knows what
they're doing right now. Nobody. Half the people at the table privately worried that they were on
the chopping block, even though they're sitting in roles most folks would kill for. The minute
you've outlived. And here's where it gets real fun. The minute you've outlived your perceived
utility. There's an executive search firm running in the background looking to backfill you and.
And of course, what do you want to bet is coming next? You need a dedicated GTM
community built exactly for moments like this. You need pavilion. Good lord. Like I just. What
are we doing? Like, seriously, what are. What are we doing? This is not leadership like this.
Like you understand this is manipulation. Like this is textbook fear based manipulation. And
the funny thing is, his people. And the funny thing is his people know it. Sam's post is just one
example. I'm not going to continue to pick on him. It's not polite to play with your food. And
look, Sam's post is just one example of something much bigger. I'm not going to continue to
pick on him. It's not polite to play with your food. The most destructive thing in this industry
right now is how the most destructive thing in this industry right now is how vendors, whether
it's Sam with Pavilion or Sixth Sense or Zoominfo or Gartner or anybody else, the thing that
they've all figured out is that confident job secure marketers don't panic. Buy by marketing
tools. I'll repeat that. The thing that all of your favorite martech vendors have figured out is that
confident, job secure marketers don't panic. Buy marketing tools. I have a trophy case. Okay.
Not of campaigns. Not of wins. Of vendor invoices. It's seriously AI. It is a folder on my
desktop. I keep a private archive of how much money I've found that's been wasted on
martech tools from clients I've consulted. It is a graveyard of how much money marketers have
wasted out of fear, out of hype, out of being sold snake oil. Now, I want you to take a guess.
What? That number is higher. Whatever you're thinking, I'm whatever you're thinking, it's safe
to probably double it Because the actual number is dancing right over into the eight figure
range. Last time I checked, it is still above 10 million. Last time I checked, it is still above 10
million. And that's just the clients who've been honest with me. The thing is, martech stack
bloat is one place I tell people to look if they want buried treasure. It's always there. Always.
The reason I know it's always going to be there is because it's easier to buy something that
promises to give you the deliverable required to keep your job, rather than to get good enough
at marketing to be able to accomplish that on your own, especially with time constraints and
limitations and budget. I get it. It's tempting. Now, are there extremely helpful tools out there?
Yeah. Of course. Yeah, obviously several that that I love that I'm not going to mention because
they don't sponsor this shit. Of course, the entire profession wouldn't be able to exist without a
lot of. Of course, the entire profession wouldn't be able to exist without a lot of what we have.
But a really need to express to you just how desperate things get sometimes with marketing
leaders. And here's the part nobody wants to say out loud. The market is not going to wait for
you to catch up. There are already tools on the market right now, right now, that can tell a
vendor exactly who visited their website, what pages they read, what company they worked
for, and even their name. And most of those tools, they do it without the user's knowledge or
consent. Deanonymization. I'm sure if you're familiar with me in any regard, you've heard me
drag them as much as humanly possible. Deanonymization. It used to be a security term. Now
it's a marketing feature. Why? If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, it should, because
the arms race is already here. And it's not about innovation at all. Unless you start acting like a
strategist instead of a buyer, You're not just going to lose your budget, you're going to lose
relevance permanently. We all are. And that's the thing that kind of eats me alive. That's if
someone were to ask me what keeps me up at night. That's it. That is absolutely it. Because
when we're all forced into this co-dependent relationship with sales and hyper growth and
growth at all costs, all this coming back, GTM and AI agents. Oh, yeah. I've seen founding
marketers sob uncontrollably after after realizing that that if their seat that if their CEO, much
less their board, saw just how much money they wasted on absolute bullshit, they were out of
a job. And I mean right there on the spot. Get the fuck out. Kind of fired. Okay, let's really talk
about this for a minute. Take, for example, the entire purpose of marketing and B2B. The holy
grail of deliverables is what? What is it? It is the name and contact information of a human
being that is willing to give your company money for your thing at that exact moment, right
then. So, um. So you start and see where I'm going with this. Well, unfortunately. Well,
unfortunately, intent data, as it turns out, is absolute bullshit. It is recycled data laundering so
much that every single one of those vendors are part of a giant. So much that every single one
of those intent data. So much so that every single one of those intent data vendors are actually
part of a giant data co-op, or different data co-ops that are essentially just guessing. If you
want to read more on the technical side of this, Go to burn it down. Marketing and read my
article on intent data. Let me just say that the Emperor truly, truly has no clothes. But what
happens is this the marketing leader is terrified they're going to lose their job. The vendor
offers to hand them the magic antidote on a silver platter, if only they'll hand over their budget.
That's it. So what they're doing is they outsource their entire job to vendors that couldn't care
less if they end up getting fired, because they know that the last thing a new CMO is going to
do is completely rip out parts of the legacy tech before they've seen if it's even working yet.
Vendors know this shit, and they exploit it constantly. Has anybody read Faust in Faust? A man
trades his soul for knowledge and power, only to find that he was tricked. Marketers are doing
the exact same. You're not buying tools. You're signing contracts with the devil. Offering up
your own relevance in exchange for temporary relief. Seriously? Read Faust or don't. It's
weird, but the lessons there. Now, why is it so important to what I'm trying to communicate to
you right now? Listen to me very carefully. You are funding your own obsolescence. Every
martech purchase is a vote for fewer martech. Every martech purchase is a vote for fewer
marketing jobs. Every platform that promises to automate marketing is designed to automate
marketers out of existence. Every tool that claims to replace manual processes is replacing the
people who do those processes. Every AI that can write your content is training your
replacement. Every intent data platform that identifies prospects in market is teaching
companies that they don't need marketing teams. They don't need marketers. Period. Every
attribution tool that's show, every attribution tool that shows what's working is convincing
executives that marketing is just data entry. You think you're buying tools to make your you
think you're buying tools to make you better at your job, but you're actually buying tools to
completely eliminate it. And the vendors aren't trying to help you succeed. Get that out of your
head. These vendors do not care to make your team better at marketing. They're trying to
prove you are unnecessary. And every time you hand over budget for another platform,
another automation, another AI solution, you're proving their point. You're literally paying them
to build the case for why companies don't need as many marketers. Think about this for a
second. Really think if intent data can identify all your prospects. If attribution can measure all
your impact. If automation can nurture your leads or whatever that takes the shape of. And if I
can create all your content. What exactly what exactly do they need you for again? Seriously,
it's not a hypothetical question. Regardless of what you feel about different attribution.
Regardless of what you feel about different pieces of attribution software or. Or whether or not
you think I slop is useless, and nobody could ever fall for that. Whatever. I'm. I'm being 100%
serious when I say that. That's not a hypothetical question. That is the question your CEO is
asking right now. And I'm not here to scare you. I'm trying to snap you out of the trance,
because the only thing that's going to save this entire profession from being outsourced to a
bunch of vendors with tech that can't think or discern or judge or adapt like marketers can. So
if you want to survive this, if you want to actually matter, you better start fighting back. because
the devil never tells you it's a trade, only that it'll make things better. That's one of the things
that I have a really hard time with. When marketers reach out to me for help or guidance,
whether it be in career or the job they're currently in, whatever they're working on, there's
something that I really have a hard time saying, but it's necessary. And I'm going to say it to
you right now. No one is coming to save you. No vendor is going to build the tool that keeps
your role safe at all. No influencer is going to tell the truth until it's too late. And no, no
community, regardless of how much you pay them to reassure you and pat you on the head
that everything's going to be okay. The only one who can save marketing is a marketer, one
who remembers what this job actually is. Am I saying it's me? No. Am I trying? Maybe. But I
know that it's going to be one who's willing to stop chasing convenience and start actually
reclaiming the craft. It's going to be the marketers that see the fear and choose not to build a
career around it, to actually make authentic connections, to actually to actually reclaim what
this was supposed to be about in the first place. So your homework read Faust but then when
you're done, do something that Faust never did say no.