It's never too late to experiment with AI. Heck, three years after launching AI Marketers Guild, we launched a pilot of our own, and it’s one that wouldn't have been possible when the community debuted.

Here's how it came together and how you can run a similar playbook. 

When AIMG launched in 2023, AI tools were nascent. The term "vibe coding" wasn't coined until February 2025 by former OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy.

After bringing AIMG and Serial Marketers under Marketecture, I didn't want to mess with the site and load it up with experimental tools. It had to work within the broader company's architecture.

But, AI kept changing, as did how marketers used it. Meanwhile, last year, I got hooked on vibe coding. And scores of AIMG members kept launching projects of their own. One initiative, in the works for years, even helped organize AIMG's weekly AI Insiders recordings and make them more interactive. How could the community help shape AIMG's presence?

My proposed experiment to the Marketecture team: launch a companion property that's community-driven. I chose aimarketersguild.org as the simplest alternative. It would incorporate any tools members built to add value to AIMG, and then link out to members' projects and thought leadership.

Its star feature right now is member-powered. Karan Bavandi, founder of Optimal Access, shows up to every weekly call, and he asks our guest speakers questions nearly every week. He created an instance of his Kurator tech to allow people to ask questions about AIMG's sessions, and he offered the full experience to us.

Now, it has a home. He gave me several versions of the code so I could pick how I wanted to run it. Instead of deciding, I gave it to my trusty vibe-coding app Lovable to sort out. Lovable integrated it so well that it even surprised Karan. As Karan has offered suggestions to improve the experience, I’ve told Lovable, "Take what Karan's saying and see what you can do with it." I can sometimes show him updates five minutes after I read his suggestion.

I don't know how long this would have taken before 2025, but I know I never would have attempted something this ambitious myself. I don’t have to be a developer. I get to be the strategist and project manager, and Karan serves as a subject matter expert who's a key human in the loop.

Another human also proved inspiring. Communications strategist Sally Ann O'Dowd is a bit newer to the community than Karan but no less enthusiastic, and she helped push for more ways to feature member-driven work such as Karan's. Thanks to her input, I added a section for members' bylines. Iris Flex founder and recent AI Insiders guest Idil Cakim was the first to submit one. The community is coming together here.

If I have to distill the process simply and repeatably, here's how to run with this:

1) Determine your goals. As Simon Sinek says, “Start with why.” For this .org site, if it gets a small set of involved AIMG members more excited about participating in a community that recognizes their work, those members become bigger evangelists, and we’ll attract more brilliant people into the community. Make the functionality flow from the purpose.

2) Respect your current guardrails. Restrictions are usually in place for all kinds of reasons. I've had vibe-coded sites mostly disappear. You can trash your SEO or GEO reputation in a single click. The best tools break. If your business’s main site or app goes down, you do not want to be the one breaking it, especially if you are not the most tech-savvy person at your organization. Move fast, but don’t break things.

3) List what you need, and what you don't need. One startup exec I'm advising who I discussed this process with said he initially got pushback internally because of a ton of critical security protocols on their corporate site. But for the scrappy ways he wanted to share thought leadership and pitch materials on a vibe-coded site, he didn't need to collect personally identifiable information or any sensitive data. That streamlined the scope, and it also made it easier to get buy-in from his colleagues.

4) Get buy-in. You don't want to break your corporate architecture, and you don't want to surprise someone stumbling across a new corporate-related site. My pitch to my Marketecture colleagues was, "You approve and own it. I don't want any budget or resources for it." I made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Leave the gun, take the cannoli.

5) Build the prototype. The "how" is irrelevant. I'm partial to tools like Lovable and Base44 where you can instantly see what you're building, and you don't need to subscribe to separate hosting tools. Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Replit, Vercel, and tons of others work. Get it done, or find someone who can quickly pull it together. The whole point is not to overinvest in this. Plus, you need to be able to update it yourself. More importantly, you should want to update it yourself. 

6) Test, ship, and learn. See if it works. Send it to at least someone in your target audience. Get feedback. Adapt. The new AIMG site works way better now than when it launched thanks to input from Karan, Sally, and others. It will evolve further as more members use it.

A classic definition of innovation is an initiative with maximum upside and minimum downside. So much of what you build with this approach can fit the bill.

So, go ahead. Find a way to tap into AI by extending your capabilities rather than disrupting your business. You can have your cannoli and eat it too.

— David Berkowitz, Chief Community Officer, Marketecture Media

Who: Brand Marketers, Creative Directors, CMOs, Consumer Research Teams

What: A major national survey reveals that nearly half of American consumers hold a negative view of brands using AI to build ads. The skepticism is highest among Gen Z and younger adults, while background workflows like brainstorming and early concept drafting remain widely accepted.

Why it matters: The consumer backlash isn't against AI overall. Consumers don’t like synthetic polish replacing authenticity. Brands must be cautious with AI-generated people and final customer-facing assets

(Gallup News)

Who: Brand Strategists, Creative Directors, CPG Marketers, Copywriters

What: Liquid Death and Garage Beer teamed up with Jason Kelce for a video campaign addressing the massive water usage of AI data centers. The satirical PSA promotes a fictional coolant collector and aims to rally consumer attention around tech resource consumption.

Why it matters: Tapping into public skepticism toward AI infrastructure gives challenger brands a fresh angle for culture-jacking. And this ad is yet another example of how strong the backlash is toward data centers. Their target audience is likely strongly in favor of the cause.

(Marketing Dive)

Who: Performance Marketers, Creative Directors, Media Buyers, Brand Strategists

What: As generative AI drives down asset production costs to near zero, brands and agencies are finding that flooding ad networks with hundreds of slight creative variants delivers diminishing returns. Major platforms are actively consolidating similar creative under single entity IDs, pushing performance marketers to slash ad volume, focus on truly distinctive creative bets, and structure long-tail content for answer engine discovery.

Why it matters: Flooding ad sets with micro-variations no longer tricks modern platform delivery algorithms, making distinct creative concepts and structured relevance far more valuable than raw AI production volume.

(The Current)

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