For years, digital transformation has been ruthlessly breaking down silos in marketing operations. Now AI is accelerating the pace. Great! Many of us who’ve worked in design and marketing for a while remember those silos very well — but now that they’re disappearing I do think it’s worth talking about how to preserve some of the good things that actually happened inside them. Which is why I’m suggesting Tupperware (hear me out...)
Digital Transformation in Marketing
"Silos" of course are isolated departments or teams that operate independently of each other inside an organization. In marketing this kind of fragmentation can slow down collaboration, create bottlenecks, and lead to inconsistencies in both messaging and brand execution. It gets especially costly when companies need to pivot. One of the core promises of digital marketing is to constantly optimize efforts around desired outcomes, so over the past 10–15 years, digital marketing leaders have gone all-in on dismantling these barriers. They’ve established clear internal communication channels, integrated tech stacks, and promoted cross-functional teams. Designers have played a major role in this kind of data-driven transformation, helping to unify customer experiences across increasingly complex digital ecosystems.
But there’s a tradeoff: in high-growth companies, designers now often spend more time working directly with internal clients (non-designers) and less time with other designers. This shift out of the design silo brings benefits — designers better understand their organizations and develop broader influence — but it also comes at the cost of peer-to-peer learning and deep craft development.
Speed, Creativity, and AI
Now enter AI. Generative tools are letting everyone move faster. Tasks that once required entire teams of specialists from the creative department — copywriting, image creation, video editing, or layout design — can now be tackled solo by anyone with a laptop and a prompt.
The gains in speed are undeniable. But speed can flatten process. A non-designer can come up with a great AI image, but then what? When complex workflows are reduced to a single prompt, we risk losing the iterative improvements that come from seasoned collaboration. The results are often a mixed bag — not just because the tools are new, but because thoughtful, human experience (and the resulting moments of targeted inspiration) isn’t part of the loop.
This is where design leadership matters more than ever. If marketing teams want AI to raise quality, not just quantity, we need to advocate for the values of brand, craft, and coherence—values that don’t come pre-installed with the software.
From Silos to Tupperware
I got my start in the giant industrial silo of graphic production. Around the turn of the millennium, I was among the first generation of digital production artists working on Macs. We had full departments, massive LANs, specialized roles, and strong studio managers who handled communication so we could focus on execution. We talked shop all day — kerning, trapping, separations, workflows. It was an echo chamber, but a productive one. We innovated quickly. Even the art directors were a little scared of us.
That world’s mostly gone. At Prompt Digital, the agency I co-founded, we operate in tiny, nimble, cross-functional teams. We don’t just deliver creative work — we deliver systems. We collaborate deeply with our clients, with developers, and with outside specialists as needed. We move fast, communicate clearly, and share the recipes so our clients can keep evolving long after the project ends. Not a silo in sight.
But I still carry some of that old production methodology with me. It’s not locked away in a silo anymore. It’s stored in a container I carry in my head. Compact, portable, sealed for freshness. I open it when I need it, share it when it’s useful, and keep adding to it.
So yes — let’s keep breaking down the silos. But let’s also keep the stuff worth saving. Tupperware works just fine.
