Good morning. Today, marketing leaders expect the bill for AI to land partly with them; customer pushback sinks Instacart’s price experiments; and the Ralph Lauren Christmas trend on TikTok wasn’t all luck.

After three years of conversations on the possibilities and pitfalls of artificial intelligence in marketing, The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute’s Patrick Coffee writes, some executives say the demand for promised savings is about to get all too real.

In a new survey from executive search firm Spencer Stuart of approximately 90 CMOs and other marketing leaders:

• Thirty-six percent said they expect to reduce head count over the next 12 to 24 months “by utilizing AI or eliminating redundancies.”
• And 47% of respondents at companies with $20 billion or more in revenue said they expect to cut staff over the next 12 to 24 months, and 32% already did so this year.

The key factor is growing pressure to show returns on companies’ significant investments in AI, said Richard Sanderson, who leads Spencer Stuart’s marketing, sales and communications officer practice.

“We’re hearing, particularly from the largest....companies, that they have to deliver, and it may have to be through blunt-force of head-count reduction,” Sanderson said.

Speaking of AI investment: Alphabet has agreed to buy Intersect, which builds renewable energy plants to power data centers for AI, for $4.75 billion. [WSJ]

Shoppers don’t want stores to experiment on them with price.

Instacart is ending all price tests following customer pushback to a report that the online shopping platform was charging different prices for the same items, Chris Wack reports.

That report said 437 shoppers across four cities who added the same items simultaneously to their Instacart shopping carts from the same store, saw an average difference of 13% between the highest and lowest prices, with some differences as high as 23%.

Instacart earlier this month said that the tests helped retailers understand consumer preferences. On Monday, a spokesperson said that the tests fell short of expectations.

“At a time when families are working hard to stretch their grocery budgets, customers should never have to question the prices they see on Instacart,” the spokesperson said.

Because if they do, they just might shop elsewhere. Or the government might start asking its own questions.

Instacart last week agreed to pay $60 million in refunds to settle FTC allegations that it used deceptive practices to raise costs for shoppers.

Not every TikTok trend comes down to luck.

After years of resisting the preppy brand worn by some of their parents, the youths of TikTok have decided that Ralph Lauren is actually pretty cool.

They have embraced the brand’s aesthetic in a Ralph Lauren Christmas trend, posting TikToks of decorations and gifts in coordinated tartan.

President and CEO Patrice Louvet told The Journal’s Suzanne Kapner he can’t take credit for that, but he’s been laying groundwork with Gen Z by:

• collaborating with other relevant brands, communities and artists
• developing new products that would appeal to younger shoppers
• and tweaking and styling its icons to suit different generations.

The brand also boosted its digital and social-media presence as well as marketing more broadly, which now totals about 7.3% of annual sales, up from 3.3% in 2017, the year Louvet started.

But let’s not write off luck entirely.

Taylor Swift’s engagement photos sparked a run on a striped Ralph Lauren dress this summer. And Ralph Lauren benefited from the tailwinds of other trends popular with Gen Z—like nostalgia.

“When you have the aesthetic of a Ralph Lauren Christmas in your house,” said 24-year-old Lindsey Hyams, “it brings back memories of what your parents would have done.”

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