“It’s Funny Because It’s True” – Timothée Chalamet Just Gave Marketers the Roast They Needed
Timothée Chalamet has unintentionally done more for marketing training this week than most industry bodies have done in a decade.
His new campaign – part parody, part prophecy – holds up an uncomfortably accurate mirror to modern marketing.
The frantic optics.
The surface‑level thinking.
The “Emperor’s New Clothes” energy that still floats around agencies like a bad smell.
And the worst part?
It’s funny because it’s true. Painfully true.
I’ll allow the made-up word “fruitionizing.”
Because honestly, if you’ve ever sat through a meeting where someone passionately explains why everything needs to be brand-coloured, you know exactly what we’re talking about.
But comedic value aside, Chalamet’s sketch shows us the end state we’re hurtling toward if we don’t fix the real issue:
We’ve built an entire industry on untrained marketers.
No foundations.
No discipline.
No rigor.
Just endless tactics pumped through AI and slapped into a deck.
It’s not marketing.
It’s noise.
The Skills Gap No One Wants to Talk About
Here’s the stat that should genuinely worry anyone who gives a damn about their craft:
Nearly half of marketers are not being offered upskilling opportunities to bridge skills gaps.”
Source: Econsultancy
That’s just the training piece. We can infer the broader discipline is similarly under-served.
We now have a generation of marketers who think marketing = content calendars, TikTok trends, “viral” ideas, and “vibes.”
They stumble into the job and assume the discipline is simply:
- social posts
- some OOH
- maybe a brand film
- and big colours because “that’ll stand out”
The fundamentals?
Nowhere to be seen.
And AI has become the accelerant.
Marketers are pumping briefs into ChatGPT like it’s a slot machine, hoping it spits out a strategy so they don’t have to think. and guess what:
Only 29% of marketers have received formal training in using AI tools, despite 75% using them weekly. (Little Black Book)
So, by all means, use it to polish your thought – but not to DO the thinking – you’re not even trained to do that!
And it is terrifying.
Because without training, without grounding, without an actual skillset, what you’re left with is exactly what we saw in that parody:
A room full of people passionately defending an orange square.
No substance.
No insight.
No rigor.
Just optics.
Strategy Still Matters – But We’ve Forgotten How To Do It
Let’s go back to basics – the stuff anyone genuinely trained learned in week one:
- Diagnosis → Understand the market.
- Strategy → Make decisions based on that understanding.
- Tactics → Execute the strategy.
Simple.
Obvious.
Timeless.
But right now, the industry’s working the wrong way around:
TACTICS → panic → more tactics → “why isn’t it working?”
It’s creative decision-making disguised as marketing.
We’ve never had more “strategists” in the industry
…and never had less actual strategy.
Most marketing departments today are glorified comms teams.
Promotion has swallowed the other 3Ps whole.
Everything else is outsourced.
- Product? Someone else handles it.
- Price? Someone else’s problem.
- Place? Haven’t thought about it since launch day.
But tactics?
Oh, we’ve got tactics.
We’ve got mood boards.
We’ve got brand colours.
We’ve got energy.
We’ve got enthusiasm for Pantone selections that borders on religious.
And none of it means anything without a strategy.
If You Want to Avoid Becoming a Meeting Like the Chalamet One…
Here’s what trained marketers do differently:
- They choose a target audience – clearly.
Most companies cannot articulate who they’re actually targeting.
If you ask, they give you a demographic soup.
Strategy is choosing what not to do.
Who not to target.
Where not to play.
- They define a positioning so clear it fits on a single page.
Not a 120-page brand book full of abstract nonsense.
Just:
What do you want to stand for?
Why should anyone care?
How will anyone know it’s you?
If you can’t say it in a sentence, you can’t expect your consumer to remember it.
- They write proper objectives.
Not “grow awareness.”
Not “become culturally relevant.”
Not “unlock brand love.”
Objectives you can actually measure.
SMART, OKR, whatever – just something real.
Show me a marketer with four tight, specific objectives, and I’ll show you someone who will deliver actual commercial results in twelve months.
If We Don’t Fix This Now…
The Chalamet sketch won’t be satire.
It’ll be a documentary.
The industry will become more reliant on AI, more disconnected from fundamentals, and more seduced by the shiny, the fast, the “just post it and see.”
And that’s where we end up with campaigns that cost six figures and deliver absolutely nothing except…
an orange square.
No substance.
No insight.
No challenge to the brief.
No commercial impact.
Just noise before defeat.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
The future of marketing depends on whether we take training seriously again.
Not the superficial, “I read a LinkedIn thread so now I get brand strategy” training.
Real training.
Real capability building.
Real strategic thinking.
Because the alternative is clear:
More frantic meetings.
More tactical fads.
More untrained marketers defending creative that means nothing.
More Chalamet-style chaos.
And honestly?
We deserve better.
Our clients deserve better.
Our industry deserves better.
It is funny.
But only because it’s so painfully, obviously true.
