The T-Shaped to V-Shaped Marketing Career Path
Want the full story? Listen to my complete interview with Adam Miller, where we discuss his journey from healthcare marketing to becoming a marketplace expert and more.
The traditional career advice for marketers has long centered around becoming “T-shaped” - developing deep expertise in one area while maintaining broad knowledge across many others. But according to Adam Miller, former Director of User Acquisition at companies like Uber, Postmates, and Turo, that model may be evolving into something more dynamic.
The Evolution from T to V
“I think being T-shaped is really important early on,” Adam explains, “but what’s gonna happen is that you’re gonna have all these translatable learnings and transferable skills that are gonna push you into other fields.”
This evolution creates what Adam describes as a “V-shaped marketer” - someone who starts with deep expertise in one area but gradually develops comparable depth in adjacent skills and domains. It’s a natural progression that happens as you apply your core expertise to new challenges and contexts.
Why The Traditional T-Shape Still Matters Early On
The T-shaped foundation remains crucial for early career marketers. As Adam notes, “You really have to go and become excellent at one particular thing. And once you’ve done that, then move on, move on in your mastery journey and go and excel at something else.”
This aligns with what author Cal Newport calls “sequential excellence” - the idea that mastery is best achieved by focusing intensely on one domain before moving to the next, rather than trying to develop multiple areas simultaneously.
The Practical Path to V-Shaped Growth
So how do you actually evolve from T to V? Based on Adam’s experience and insights, here’s a framework:
- Master Your Initial Domain
- Choose a specific marketing channel or skill to focus on
- Develop deep technical expertise
- Build a track record of results
- Expand Through Adjacent Skills
- Look for natural connections to your core expertise
- Apply learnings across different channels
- Stay curious about emerging opportunities
- Build Cross-Functional Understanding
- Learn how your expertise connects to other business functions
- Develop working knowledge of adjacent areas
- Start seeing patterns across different domains
Becoming an “Insights Machine”
A key element of the V-shaped progression is developing what Adam calls becoming an “insights machine.” This means:
“You have to become an insights machine and everything that comes along with that,” Adam explains. “You have to be able to develop those insights and figure out where else they might apply.”
This ability to generate and apply insights across contexts is what allows T-shaped marketers to evolve into V-shaped experts. As Adam notes: “If I’m seeing something really resonate on one channel, it might resonate on another channel. Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t and be prepared to react appropriately, but you want to be able to draw on a specific insight or a specific finding and then ultimately leverage that across as many channels and as many surfaces as you possibly can.”
The Role of Channel Expertise
While the V-shaped model emphasizes breadth, Adam still advocates for developing deep channel expertise:
“Go and get really good at a couple of channels that have really common supply and demand dynamics such that you learn how bids are sent into the ecosystem, that you learn how to actually bend the economics of these channels to suit your needs, that you learn about creative development because that’s just becoming too important to ignore.”
This foundation in channel mechanics provides the base from which you can expand:
- Understanding bid dynamics
- Learning creative best practices
- Recognizing patterns across platforms
- Developing platform-specific expertise
Translatable Skills Across Channels
One of the advantages of the V-shaped approach is how skills translate across channels. As Adam points out: “If you can manage Facebook, you can probably also manage TikTok. Like that is not out of the realm of possibilities, but creative does change from one platform to the next.”
The key is recognizing which skills are universal and which need to be adapted:
Universal Skills:
- Bid management
- Audience targeting
- Performance analysis
- Testing methodologies
Platform-Specific Skills:
- Creative formats
- Platform mechanics
- Best practices
- User behavior patterns
The Impact of AI on Marketing Careers
The emergence of AI is adding another dimension to the V-shaped career path. As Adam notes, AI is “going to help you iterate really, really, really fast, going to be able to consume a lot more data a lot quicker.”
This means marketers need to develop:
- AI literacy
- Prompt engineering skills
- Data interpretation abilities
- Strategic thinking about AI applications
Building Your Career Path
Based on Adam’s insights, here’s a framework for developing your own V-shaped marketing career:
- Start Deep
- Choose your initial specialization
- Develop technical mastery
- Build a strong foundation
- Look for Connections
- Identify adjacent skills
- Find natural expansion points
- Build bridges between domains
- Maintain Balance
- Keep developing core expertise
- Add new skills systematically
- Focus on transferable insights
- Stay Current
- Keep learning new platforms
- Understand emerging technologies
- Adapt to changing dynamics
- Think Strategically
- Look for patterns
- Develop insights
- Apply learnings broadly
The evolution from T-shaped to V-shaped marketing expertise isn’t about abandoning specialization - it’s about building upon it strategically. As Adam’s career demonstrates, this approach allows marketers to maintain deep expertise while developing the broad capabilities needed in today’s rapidly evolving landscape.
Want to hear more insights from Adam Miller, including his thoughts on marketplace dynamics and the future of AI in marketing? Listen to the full interview here.