The market is now flooded with AI marketing tools, most of which are either a thin GPT wrapper or solving a problem that didn't need solving. We've built our own internal stack across the last 18 months and culled it ruthlessly. What follows is the actual list — what we use weekly, why it earned a slot, and what it replaced.
The seven we use weekly.
1. Claude (Anthropic) — for thinking
Claude is our default for strategy work, long-form writing, and synthesis. Where ChatGPT writes confidently, Claude writes carefully — which matters when you're drafting a positioning statement that has to survive a board meeting.
2. Linear AI — for actually shipping
Our project management is Linear, and the AI features (issue summarization, dupe detection, status suggestions) save real hours. We replaced a junior PM hire with this.
3. Granola — for meeting notes
Better than Otter for our use case. The summaries are short, the action items are accurate, and we can search across 18 months of calls.
4. Cursor — for engineering on marketing sites
Our dev team builds 3× faster on landing pages and microsites. We don't use it for client production code, but for "ship the campaign page by Friday," it's transformative.
5. Runway — for video iteration
Not for finals. For exploring. Generating 12 variations of an opening shot in an hour saved us a 4-hour debate.
6. Perplexity — for research
It's just better than Google for the kind of synthesis our strategy team needs. We pay for both Pro accounts and the API.
7. Our own evals stack — for client experiments
Custom internal tooling that runs A/B tests across ad creative, email subject lines, and landing page copy. Nothing off-the-shelf comes close.
What we tried and dropped.
For balance — here's what we tested and stopped using:
- Generic image generators for client work. The output looks like AI output, and our clients can tell. We use them for moodboarding only.
- "AI SDR" tools for outbound. The volume is high, the response rate is catastrophic, and the brand damage isn't worth it.
- End-to-end marketing automation platforms claiming AI optimization. They're glorified rule engines with a chat interface.
The unsexy truth.
AI is leverage on a working strategy, not a substitute for one. Our highest-leverage AI work is paired with the highest-leverage human work: a senior strategist asking better questions, a senior writer rejecting the first three drafts, a senior designer killing what doesn't earn its place.
Tools don't make great brands. Operators do. AI just shortens the timeline between knowing what to do and shipping it.