01 · Context
Electric power took 17 years to go from 10% to 50% of American households. The internet took 9. Radio, the fastest of the pre-digital era, took 6. Generative AI took 2.
Its adoption is not only the fastest; it also breaks every diffusion pattern observed until now. From the young to the old. From professionals to novices. From the rich to the modest. None of that held.
Adoption grew more than four times faster in the lowest-income countries than in the highest-income ones (NBER, 2025). And among adults over 50 it tripled in two years, faster than in any other age bracket. All at once.
Years to go from 10% to 50% of American households
Two new universal laws came out of that speed and magnitude.
01
The essence of many digital technologies, smartphones and generative AI included, is to make skills once reserved for professionals available to everyone. That is exactly what just happened to content. Photo, audio, video, text: none of it belongs to professionals anymore.
94%
of the nearly 2 trillion photographs taken every year are taken on a smartphone · Rise Above Research, February 2026
74.2%
of roughly 900k web pages published in April 2025 contained AI-generated text · Ahrefs
44%
of daily uploads to Deezer are now AI-created tracks · Deezer, 2026
02
Vibe coding tools let non-technical people build sites, apps, and software in hours or days, at a fraction of what it cost four or five years ago. Lovable reports that 60% of its users are not developers.
60%
of Lovable users are not developers
The platform we spent two years building at acracy could be cloned in a few days, for a thousandth of the price.
02 · Risks
01
If content production is close to infinite, attention is not. In fact, we have already reached the ceiling.
2022
peak of time spent on social platforms, down close to 10% since, to two hours and twenty minutes a day at the end of 2024 · GWI for the Financial Times
+15-20%
the average price of an ad on Meta rises by 15 to 20% each year
02
Tech infrastructure is no longer a sufficient barrier to entry. Product-market fit is no longer irreversible.
Build vs Buy
Vibe coding is precisely what calls that build-or-buy trade back into question, and it is what fuels the current debate around SaaS valuations
Years vs Days
to clone the platform we spent two years building, for a thousandth of the price
The scissor effect puts overall profitability at risk · the LTV/CAC ratio degrades from both ends at once
The combination of invisibility and replicability is starting to break the economics of companies operating in saturated markets.
Winning is not about having the best solution anymore. It's about having the strongest hedge against invisibility and replication.
03 · Defense
Why marketing
A competitor can copy your product in weeks. Copying the reason someone wanted it is a different matter.
Code, features, pricing, interface, software: all of it can be copied easily by AI, and it is. What marketing builds is not material. A preference, a familiarity, a reason to choose that nobody can quite put into words: these are emotional constructions, and they sit far outside the reach of replication tools.
That is the difference between a barrier made of engineering and a barrier made of meaning. The replication cost of the first has just collapsed. The replication cost of the second has barely moved.
What it produces
This is why marketing is probably your most defensible asset. It is the only function whose output is distinctiveness, pricing power, proprietary audiences, and client retention.
Business benefits
IBM
IBM had settled into being a 1980s computing name. By the end of 2025 its generative AI book of business passed $12.5 billion, roughly tripling over the year. Around 80% of it is consulting, not software.
Netflix
In July 2024, Netflix raised $1.8 billion in senior notes, its first issue since shedding junk status. Moody's and S&P had upgraded it weeks earlier, citing revenue growth, margin expansion, and deleveraging.
Hermès
In April 2025, Hermès announced it would pass the entire US tariff increase through to its American prices from May 1.
Yet.
Most companies fail at turning their marketing into that line of defense. It demands incompatible timelines, long term for brand and short term for acquisition. And it rests on a seat that rarely holds:
CMO tenure at S&P 500 companies averages 4.1 years, against 7.6 for CEOs.
Spencer Stuart, 2025 · Every exit resets the narrative, the agency roster, and the roadmap.
04 · Method
01
Building a unique narrative, closer to founders' beliefs and internal culture, weirdness included, that creates immaterial distance from commoditization, cuts through an ocean of content, and gives your brand the ability to price.
02
Building proprietary channels and communities, so acquisition is not held hostage by paid digital and its rising cost. In-housing creative capacity, so production scales on expertise you own rather than rent from agencies at increasing rates.
03
Setting up a production system that makes the most of technology and delivers volume without loading internal teams accordingly or sacrificing quality.
This is what we do at acracy.
Romain Brignier, CEO · Magali Pasquiers, COO