T-Shaped Marketers

This blog was originally featured in the August 6th, 2025 newsletter found here: INBOX INSIGHTS, August 6, 2025: T-Shaped Marketers, Dataset Validation

Why Being a T-Shaped Person Matters More Than Ever

Last week marked exactly 10 years since I started working with Chris. Ten years. Yikes, where does the time go?

I remember being intimidated by pretty much everything in those early days. I was coming from this weird academic-wannabe-commercial space where I understood theory but had zero practical experience in the real business world. Terms that everyone else threw around casually? Completely foreign to me. And one of my first responsibilities was writing for the company blog on a regular basis.

As the person responsible for the output, Chris’s standards for what was “acceptable” for the company blog were really high. I was about a decade out of practice for writing anything original other than a project plan. The ironic part? I’d always wanted to write. In undergrad, I took every writing class I could get my hands on and absolutely loved the process. But once I started working full-time, those opportunities disappeared. Until I landed at the agency.

All of a sudden, my opinion mattered. I needed to have something to say.

So here I am, 10 years later, wanting to revisit one of my very first posts: the idea of a T-shaped person. The original post has long since disappeared from that company’s website (lesson learned about keeping offline copies of your work!), so I’m working mostly from memory here.

What I Thought I Knew About T-Shaped People

Back then, I probably wrote something along the lines of: “A T-shaped person is well-rounded in a lot of areas and deeply focused in one or two.”

Classic textbook definition, right? The horizontal stroke of the T represents broad knowledge across multiple disciplines, while the vertical stroke represents deep expertise in a specific area.

It turns out, I wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t thinking big enough.

Why the Stakes Are Higher Now

Here’s what’s changed in the past decade: our industry has evolved dramatically, and the biggest shift is that being well-rounded isn’t just nice to have anymore – it’s absolutely crucial for survival.

With AI dominating conversations, tasks, processes, and the overall job market, flexibility has become your most valuable asset. You can’t just be the “social media person” or the “analytics person” anymore. Those narrowly defined roles are exactly what AI is coming for first.

The New T-Shaped Definition

If I had to redefine what it means to be T-shaped in 2025, here’s how I would break it down:

• The vertical stroke (your deep expertise): Critical thinking
• The horizontal stroke (your broad knowledge): Understanding all the areas that comprise a business

Let me explain why this matters.

Critical Thinking as Your Superpower

AI can generate content, analyze data, and even write code. But it can’t think critically about whether the output makes sense in your specific context. It can’t question assumptions, identify blind spots, or make judgment calls based on nuance and experience.

Critical thinking means:

• Asking “why” and “what if” instead of just accepting information
• Connecting dots across seemingly unrelated data points
• Identifying patterns and anomalies that others miss
• Making strategic decisions when you don’t have complete information

This is your insurance policy against automation.

Business Literacy as Your Foundation

The horizontal stroke isn’t about being mediocre at everything – it’s about understanding how all the pieces fit together. You need to grasp:

• How marketing impacts sales (and vice versa)
• Why legal considerations affect creative decisions
• How customer service insights inform product development
• Why financial constraints shape strategic priorities

When you understand the whole business ecosystem, you become the person who can translate between departments, spot opportunities, and solve problems that span multiple functions.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I’ve watched this play out countless times over the past decade. The people who thrive aren’t necessarily the most technically skilled in their specific area. They’re the ones who can:

• Take a data analysis and explain what it means for the sales team
• Look at a marketing campaign and immediately spot potential operational challenges
• Understand why a “simple” website change requires input from five different departments
• See connections between customer complaints and product roadmap decisions

These are the people who become indispensable – not because they’re irreplaceable in their technical skills, but because they’re irreplaceable in their ability to think across the entire business.

Your Action Plan

So how do you become (or stay) T-shaped in this new reality?

1. Strengthen your critical thinking muscle: Question everything. When someone presents data or makes a recommendation, dig deeper. What assumptions are we making? What aren’t we considering?
2. Get curious about other departments: Sit in on sales calls. Read customer service tickets. Attend finance meetings. Ask questions about how other teams measure success.
3. Practice translation: When you’re in cross-functional meetings, make it your job to help different departments understand each other. Become the bridge.
4. Stay learning: Not just about your specific area, but about business in general. Read about industries outside your own. Understand macro trends that could impact your company.

The beautiful thing about this approach? The more you understand about how businesses work, the better you become at your own specialized area. It’s not about spreading yourself thin—it’s about giving yourself context that makes your expertise more valuable.

And honestly? It makes work much more interesting when you understand how all the pieces connect.

What does being T-shaped look like in your role? Reply to this email or join our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.