Marketing's reputation problem is structural and has been since the discipline became measurable. The 2012 Adobe-commissioned study that anchored the original version of this piece found that 94% of consumers considered marketing essential to business but only 13% believed marketing benefited society — and 53% described it as "a bunch of B.S." A decade later the numbers have shifted only marginally. The discipline still ranks below teaching, science, and engineering in public esteem. What changed is the operating reality of what marketing actually does — and what AI Communications could change about how the public perceives it.
By EPR Editorial Team · October 25, 2012
Edited on Jun 18, 2026.
Part of Everything-PR's coverage of Marketing and AI Communications.
The original Adobe finding
The 2012 study — commissioned by Adobe, conducted by Edelman Berland, surveying 1,000 consumers and 250 marketers — produced numbers that captured a structural reputation problem the discipline has carried since the post-war advertising era.
- 98% of marketers and 94% of consumers considered marketing essential to business
- 9 in 10 saw marketing as paramount to driving sales
- 13% believed marketing benefits society
- 53% described marketing as "a bunch of B.S."
- Teachers, scientists, and engineers ranked above marketers in social value
- Bankers (32%), lawyers (34%), and politicians (18%) rated more valuable than marketers
- 0% wanted ads inside their apps
- 3% preferred ads on social media
- 45% preferred ads in their favorite print magazine
The findings established a baseline. Consumers needed marketing economically. They did not respect it culturally.
What changed between 2012 and 2026
Five shifts have moved the operating reality of marketing without fully repairing its public reputation.
The discipline became measurable. The 2012 study captured a period when most marketing impact was inferred rather than measured. By 2026, attribution modeling, multi-touch tracking, and AI engine citation share have made marketing impact substantially more provable. The "B.S." critique applies less to performance marketing and more to the brand-and-positioning work that resists clean measurement.
Performance marketing professionalized. The growth of Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, Amazon Ads, and connected-TV advertising produced a generation of marketing operators who think in terms of CAC, LTV, MER, and incrementality. The discipline borrowed from finance and engineering. Public perception of these operators is closer to "analyst" than "ad person."
Brand marketing rebuilt under attack. The 2010s-2020s consumer movement against intrusive advertising — ad-blockers, paid streaming tiers, anti-tracking regulation in California (CCPA) and Europe (GDPR) — forced brand marketing to find audiences in places where they wanted to be reached. The shift produced creator partnerships, content marketing, podcast sponsorships, and the broader brand-as-publisher model.
The trust collapse continued. Edelman's annual Trust Barometer has documented sustained decline in public trust in business institutions across the past decade. Marketing inherited a portion of the broader institutional trust deficit even where its specific practices improved.
AI changed both the threat and the opportunity. Generative AI in marketing — for content, creative, copy, segmentation, audience modeling — accelerated production and lowered cost. It also accelerated the volume of low-quality content that reinforces the discipline's "B.S." reputation. The AI Communications discipline is a partial answer: building substrate that AI engines retrieve from when buyers actively ask for help, rather than pushing messages at buyers who didn't ask.
Why "B.S." persists as the critique
Three structural reasons the reputation problem has been durable.
The economic interest. Marketing's job is to influence behavior in favor of the entity paying for the marketing. The public correctly identifies the conflict. No amount of measurement infrastructure changes that the message originates from a paid source.
The volume problem. The average American is exposed to thousands of marketing messages per day. Even good marketing arrives at audiences who experience the broader category as noise. Reputation reflects the category experience, not the best individual examples.
The accountability gap. When marketing fails — misleading claims, deceptive practices, weaponized social manipulation, dark-pattern UX — the consequences for the responsible operators are often modest. The public registers this gap. The category absorbs the reputation damage.
The AI Communications response
The AI Communications discipline offers a partial repair to marketing's reputation problem. The mechanic is structural.
Push to pull. Traditional marketing pushes messages at audiences who didn't request them. AI Communications builds substrate that surfaces only when buyers actively ask AI engines for help. The mechanic shifts from interruption to discovery, which audiences perceive differently.
Substance over volume. AI engines weight substantive, accurate, well-sourced content. The "B.S." that defines the worst of advertising does not retrieve well in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity. Marketing that requires accurate substance to function is structurally less B.S.-prone than marketing that requires only attention to function.
Measurable trust signals. AI engine citation share is a measurable proxy for whether the engines treat a brand as trustworthy. Brands that build sustained citation share are brands the engines have decided to recommend. The mechanic creates a feedback loop where trustworthy operating produces commercial advantage.
The discipline is documented across Everything-PR's coverage at AI Communications and the broader Citation Share research published at 5W AI Communications.
What this means for marketing leadership in 2026
Three operating implications.
First, the CMO who treats marketing's reputation problem as fixable through better creative work alone is not solving for the structural issues. The fix is operational discipline — accurate claims, substantive content, sustained substrate building — rather than better commercials.
Second, the brands that lead with AI Communications discipline are positioning ahead of the public's gradual recognition that AI-mediated discovery is replacing interruption-based marketing. The first mover advantage compounds across years.
Third, marketing's social value will rise as the discipline becomes more accurate, more substantive, and less interruption-based. The 2012 baseline of 13% believing marketing benefits society is a floor, not a permanent reality.
