⊹ the circe brief ⊹
Tumblr girlies, it’s our time to shine.
Something is happening to sales and marketing, and if you were raised on Vine, Tumblr, and Neopets, it’s happening in your favor.
the rebrand
Sales is now “Go-to-Market.”
Marketing is now “Growth.”
The work hasn’t changed: Content, campaigns, brand, pipeline, events, etc. But it all has a new shiny letterhead. Inc. reported that the word “marketing” is vanishing from the very profession that invented it, replaced by titles like director of growth and VP of revenue ops. Marketing Week says these revenue-anchored titles are redefining who “owns growth” inside companies.
We talked about this in our FDE post: the jobs are the same, but now that soft skills command the highest salaries, the roles are getting renamed so they don’t sound “girly.” Marketing was female-coded. Sales was male-coded. GTM and Growth? Everybody’s doing both. The gender lens just... dissolved.
(Unless you’re Corgi, of course. Then you’re just hiring “corgi girls”? We still don’t really get this one.)
creativity got a seat at the table
Timing on this is crucial because AI is making low-budget, low-quality marketing very, very cheap (ie → slop is free). Which means it’s everywhere. Which means it’s worthless.
Worse than worthless, actually, it’s bad PR. Consumers in 2026 are actively scanning for anything that sounds machine-generated, and calling brands out for it. On Reddit, someone spotted AI-ism copy on Nike’s main product page in May and it went viral. Meanwhile Aerie, Equinox, and Almond Breeze ran anti-AI ad campaigns this year, and Dove pledged never to replace people with AI in its advertising. Slop isn’t just bad marketing — it’s anti-marketing.
So what can’t be automated? Taste. VCs are now writing whole essays about how “When everyone has the same jet engine, speed is no longer a moat” — taste is. When AI can spin up a working product in a minute, production is commoditized and lookalike products flood the market. The differentiator is the thing the Tumblr girlies have been training for since 2009:
Curation. Design. Knowing what looks right, feels right, is right. Actually understanding a customer as a human being. And though theres a company trying to crack these things for AI (female-founded, duh), we are convinced they’ll be a moat for a while.
The skills that got dismissed as soft, as girly, as “not technical” (empathy, aesthetics, cultural fluency, vibe calibration) are now what sets your brand apart. Engineering still matters, obviously. But it’s not the most important thing by a long shot.
Creativity got a seat at the revenue table.
We’re not saying this is a women-only moment. We’re saying: if you spent years being told your skillset was low-budget… Well, it just became the moat. And it’s time to lean in.
(Apologies for not one, but two Sheryl Sandberg quotes in this newsletter. But what can I say, she’s got some good one-liners.)
what you should can do: use Claudia carefully 👾
— Don’t filter yourself out of “GTM” or “Growth” roles because the title sounds new. Read the description, you’ve already been doing this job.
— Your taste is a résumé line now and portfolios of things you’ve curated, designed, or made feel right > another certification.
— Audit your own brand output for slop. If anything reads like AI, you need to recalibrate. Believe me —people know when Claudia wrote your email
— Use AI for research and drafting, NOT voice. You are so much more interesting than Claudia
And if you want to go deeper: we’re hosting Go to Market After Dark on September 10th in San Francisco built for founders and growth leaders figuring out how GTM works in the AI era. Which levers to pull, how to make your brand stand out, and why taste wins. 🌙
-Isa and Anna ⊹
upcoming events
check out our full calendar of events.
aug 22 | girls run + brunch | RSVP
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sept 2 | investor/founder pasta class + dinner | RSVP
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sept 10 | gtm after dark | RSVP
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oct 5 | lucy guo tech week masquerave | RSVP
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That’s all from us this week! We’re so happy to have you follow long in our journey, and if you want to officially be part of our community, you can apply here.
