You'd be nuts to ignore Vibe Marketing

How smart brands are using it to crush the game.

Vibe marketing is everywhere right now. You’ve seen the posts, the tweets, the thought leaders telling you that you need to “serve vibes” to stay relevant.

It’s become the go-to phrase in every marketing Slack channel.

Funny enough, this whole thing didn’t start in marketing. It started in tech.

In early 2025, Andrej Karpathy, the big AI brain and legend, dropped this concept called vibe coding.

The idea was wild but simple. Instead of writing detailed lines of code, developers could tell AI what they wanted in plain English.

Just the vibe of what they were aiming for.

The AI would figure out the rest and build it out.

And that sparked a question in marketing circles:

Could we do the same thing with creative campaigns?

Turns out, we could.

That’s how vibe marketing was born.

The concept flipped the old-school workflow on its head.

Instead of marketers sweating every single word, pixel, and layout, they could focus on the bigger picture, such as the mood, the tone, the energy they wanted the campaign to give off. AI would take care of producing the actual assets.

In plain English?
You set the vibe. AI does the heavy lifting.

And now by mid-2025, this idea isn’t just floating around tech Twitter (yeah, I’m still calling it Twitter). It is everywhere. Marketers have started ripping up their old playbooks. Industry panels are hyping it. Newsletters can’t shut up about it.

Suddenly, we are building an atmosphere.

The lazy take on Vibe Marketing

A lot of people still think vibe marketing is just AI replacing humans. That’s the lazy hot take. Couldn’t be more wrong.

The real win is using AI to offload the mindless stuff. The repetitive tasks that chew up your day and drain your creativity. When AI handles that, you get to work on the things that move the needle— like crafting emotional hooks, sharpening brand stories, and keeping your message tight.

We moved from "let’s get this done" to "let’s make this hit."

Right now, we are fully in the vibe era. There is no turning back.

The brands that stand out today are showing up with purpose and making people feel something every single time.

That’s where we are.

Why Vibe Marketing exploded

In one word— speed.

The old way of working was a slog. One campaign took weeks. You’d plan it out, write the copy, design the assets, send it through rounds of approvals…nightmare. Slow as hell.

That’s now gone.

With AI baked into the process, a single marketer can now run what used to take an entire team.

Copy gets drafted. Ads get mocked up. Video edits roll out while you’re still finishing your coffee.

Quite similar to strapping a rocket to your workflow.

Investors love to hype the numbers, and for once, they’re right. Vibe marketing can push your output 20× faster. Stuff that used to take two months gets launched in two days.

And the agility is unmatched.

You can now spot a trend in the morning and have a full-blown campaign live that night (Remember when the Ghibli trend took off?). Brands that had their vibe game tight were all over it by the end of the day.

Responsiveness used to be a luxury. Now it’s the price of entry.

However, moving fast only works if you keep your eye on the strategy. Vibe marketing lets you produce quicker, but the vibe still has to hit.

The new differentiator

Every brand can crank out content on demand. Everyone is running the same playbook— blog posts, LinkedIn updates, polished videos.

And most of it is forgettable.

What cuts through the noise today is how your brand lands with your audience.

That’s where vibe marketing pulls ahead.

We’re seeing this divide clearer than ever. On one side, you’ve got brands churning out generic AI material that feels flat. On the other hand, you’ve got brands that stick in your head because they show up with a clear, human vibe.

In a world where everyone can post fast, the winners are the ones who post right. The ones who build trust, emotion, and recognition every time they show up.

This is how brands stay human, even when AI is doing most of the production work.

But don’t get lazy

Vibe marketing is incredible for testing.

Marketers can now run a dozen creative tests at once. Headlines, visuals, CTAs— you name it. AI helps you spin up variations in minutes and start learning what hits.

The old process was slow. You’d build one campaign, launch it, wait weeks to gather data, and then maybe test a new angle later. Now you can put out micro-experiments on the fly and get feedback fast.

It’s a dream setup. But it’s also really easy to mess it up.

Marketing is not code. You can’t just run a script and expect clean, predictable results. Human emotion isn’t binary. Numbers tell you what got clicks, but they don’t explain why something worked or didn’t.

The trap here could be you chasing surface-level engagement. Likes and clicks look good, but they don’t always mean people care.

The best vibe marketers move fast, but they don’t lose their gut. They combine AI speed with human instinct. They watch the data but trust their creative judgment to make sure the vibe stays strong.

The underdog advantage

It’s no accident that startups and SaaS companies jumped on vibe marketing first. These teams are strapped for resources. Budgets are tight. Headcount is light.

And still, the pressure to deliver keeps climbing.

Vibe marketing changed the game. Suddenly, a team of two can put out work that looks like it came from a full-blown agency. AI handles the grunt work. The humans steer the ship.

HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan put it best: an AI-powered marketer today can match the output of ten traditional marketers.

That’s huge for lean teams.

Midsize brands can now hit the same creative quality as the big dogs. Startups don’t need huge budgets to look polished and professional. It levels the playing field.

For founders, this is a gift.

You don’t have to burn out chasing every detail. You can stay focused on vision and strategy while AI handles the grind. The gap between idea and execution is almost gone.

And that’s why vibe marketing (beyond being a trend) is survival for a lot of teams.