How marketing roles have evolved across four distinct technology eras

Greg Isenberg has lived through multiple marketing cycles — he started and sold three venture-backed companies across the web, social, and mobile eras — and his key observation is that every time the technology changes, the most valuable kind of marketer changes with it. The Traditional era (the 'Don Draper era') was about making people care through story, psychology, and taste. The Digital era brought websites, email, SEO, Facebook ads, and pixels, making the best marketer the person who could acquire customers through measurable channels. The Growth era, roughly 2008–2012, moved marketing closer to product; pioneers like Dave McClure popularized frameworks around activation, referral, onboarding, and retention, turning the product itself into the growth engine. Now the Engineering era has arrived, where the best marketer uses AI, agents, data, code, and taste to build a marketing system that keeps learning.