Optimizely, the leading digital experience platform (DXP) provider, today released new research, The Passion-Pressure Paradox, examining how AI pressure and complexity are impacting marketing teams' work. Based on a survey of more than 200 marketers, the findings point to a growing disconnect between the work marketers are passionate about and the work that fills their day-to-day. The research reveals a growing "passion–pressure paradox," as AI saves time but fails to restore creative and strategic work.
Quick Intel
41.8% of marketers say their role is only "50/50 creative on a good day."
37.9% report their work is primarily focused on coordination rather than creative or strategic output.
61% say AI saves them time; 55% say it makes certain tasks easier.
Only 36% say AI meaningfully frees up space for strategy.
28% say AI is increasing output expectations; 13% say it is making workflows more complicated.
Survey of 227 marketing professionals, 72% at manager level or higher.
While marketers remain motivated by creativity, strategy and impact, their day-to-day reality tells a different story. Instead of creating, they're coordinating, with many spending increasing amounts of time navigating tools, teams and workflows that pull them away from the work they value most. The issue isn't that marketers have lost their passion; they've simply lost the space to act on it. It isn't due to a lack of effort; it's due to complexity. More tools, more channels and more stakeholders are fragmenting the work.
AI is becoming a bigger part of marketing workflows, but its benefits are not always translating into higher-value work. While 61% of respondents say AI saves them time and 55% say it makes certain tasks easier, only 36% say it meaningfully frees up space for strategy. This suggests that while efficiency gains are real, how AI is applied plays a critical role in whether those gains translate into more time spent on the work marketers value most. If teams are only using AI to increase their output, they're just accelerating the chaos. By connecting workflows, cutting down coordination and giving marketers more space for strategy and creativity, AI has the potential to bring more structure to how work gets done.
Marketers are fairly clear on what would help. More focused time, clearer priorities and fewer reactive demands came up consistently as ways to improve effectiveness. And despite the pressure, most are not looking to leave the field – but they are questioning whether the current pace and structure of the work is sustainable. Growing operational demands can eat into the time and focus needed for strategic thinking, creative development and meaningful business impact. For marketing leaders, improving outcomes isn't just about adding new tools. It's about rethinking how work gets done, how priorities are set and how technologies like AI are used to support – not complicate – the work itself.
About Optimizely
Optimizely is on a mission to make the lives of marketers better with Optimizely One, powered by Optimizely Opal, the world's first AI orchestration platform for marketing and digital teams. Optimizely One combines industry-leading solutions across content management, content marketing, experimentation, commerce, personalization, and analytics—powering the entire marketing lifecycle through a single agentic workflow designed to support and scale work across marketers' most critical tasks. With the flexibility of a fully composable platform, Optimizely is proudly helping global brands like Salesforce, Zoom, New Era and Mazda deliver experiences of the highest quality.
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