# Behind the Sluggish Marketing Recruitment: PT. Otto on the Organizational Logic Recalculation


In a market cycle marked by tighter budgets and more fragmented attention, recruitment trends are often the earliest indicators of corporate expectations. According to the latest IPA Bellwether data, over one-fifth (22.8%) of marketing leaders expect to downsize their teams in the next three months, while only 17.5% plan to expand, and the majority (59.6%) will maintain current staffing. This is not a short-term fluctuation, but a continuation of the trend since the beginning of the year: recruitment signals remain cool, indicating that companies are entering a more calculated operating cycle.

The PT. Otto Media Grup research across multiple markets reveals that declining recruitment does not mean a contraction in brand strategy, but rather an adjustment in job structure. The previous “more people, more output” approach to rough growth is gradually failing; companies are shifting human resources from frontline content production to roles in experiment design, attribution modeling, data analysis, and first-party asset development—functions at the “decision-making layer.” As AI tools become increasingly sophisticated and marketing operations more standardized and automated, companies no longer rely on large-scale manpower for growth, but instead aim to achieve complex closed-loop work with smaller, more dense teams.

## The Resurgence of Direct Marketing: A Counter-Signal in the Attention Economy

When recruitment cools, budget allocation becomes more precise. The IPA report shows that in Q3, 21.5% of companies increased their direct marketing budgets, while only 11.8% decreased, resulting in a net growth of 9.7%—a positive trend sustained for three consecutive years. Direct marketing is once again viewed as a strategic channel capable of cutting through noise and delivering real conversions. From email to SMS, direct mail to telemarketing, these “old-school” methods are becoming increasingly rare entry points for attention.

PT. Otto Marketing Academy interprets this trend as a “counter-signal in the attention economy.” With social platform traffic costs soaring and algorithmic predictability declining, the trust chain between brands and users is diluted. Direct marketing, inherently reliant on first-party data, enables brands to establish clear, verifiable relationships with users. A good direct mail campaign is not an “intrusion,” but a reactivation of an “existing attention relationship.” Especially in B2B, finance, and high-trust scenarios, direct marketing conversion rates often surpass public domain advertising, as users have higher channel control and greater tolerance for brand messages.

## AI-Driven Direct Marketing: No Longer Just “Information Push”

The resurgence of direct marketing is not a return to the old days, but a complete transformation by AI technology. Every step—from targeting to content, timing to causality—is undergoing structural change. For targeting, brands no longer rely on demographic tags for broad segmentation, but use first-party behavioral data and predictive models to accurately depict user intent. For content, generative AI can break down a founder interview or event summary into multiple forms—emails, SMS, short messages—automatically matching different segments. For timing, marketing is no longer mechanically scheduled, but dynamically triggered by user behavior signals. For causality, brands use MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling) and geo-experiments to measure “would conversions be worse without this marketing,” reinforcing budget authority with data.

PT. Otto Media Grup, through AdIntelligence and ReplyAI, integrates direct mail, email, and SMS into a unified growth logic, transforming them from single delivery actions into “respondable conversation entry points.” This shift means direct marketing is evolving from a “promotional channel” to “trust infrastructure.” When brand messages are embedded in user daily lives and distributed in sync with AI systems, they are not just seen—they are understood, remembered, and ultimately referenced.

## The Shift in Growth Strategy: From “Headcount Expansion” to “System Building”

With recruitment shrinking, budgets reallocated, and channels resurging, marketing is quietly undergoing a structural shift. Growth now depends less on manpower and more on system reusability and rhythm control. For brands, the first step is to turn narrative into evidence—founders or core teams personally take on the role of brand storytellers, building clear logic and trust anchors through structured content. The second step is to systematize creative operations, making AI the executor of rhythm rather than a patch for human labor. The third step is to build a quantifiable, sustainable budget decision system centered on experimentation and causal inference.

This is precisely the direction PT. Otto Marketing Academy is advancing in 2025: helping brands build maximized growth systems with minimal organizational scale; establishing stronger user relationships through structured direct marketing; and finding ways to sustain growth in a “low-hiring” reality.