AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455)

If there’s one thing I hate to see, it’s marketers, e-commerce, and customer acquisition folks who talk about AI as if it’s going to solve every problem their business has. Yes, AI can be an incredibly valuable tool. But it’s only a tool. The fact is that AI can’t save your business from bad strategy. Only you can.
Thinking about AI as a “magic bullet” is a big reason why so many businesses still aren’t seeing the returns they’d hoped for from their AI efforts. Instead, the businesses succeeding with AI in marketing and customer acquisition are those that have figured out their core strategies first, then examined how they can use AI to execute against those strategies faster, easier, or more cheaply.
How can you do that? How can you avoid the “bad strategy” gap for your business? And how can you make AI work for you to gain more customers and drive more revenue? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about.
Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.
AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) — Headlines and Show Notes
Show Notes and Links

* The State of AI: Global survey | McKinsey
* Gil Amelio – Wikipedia
* Quote Origin: No One in This World Has Ever Lost Money by Underestimating the Intelligence of the Great Masses of the Plain People – Quote Investigator®
* Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition?
* AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450)
* Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454)
* When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446)
* What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447)

You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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