Customer Centricity in the Age of AI

AI Marketing Transformations: 96% of CMOs claim it, only a third are actually building it. Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s 2026 survey reveals a stark reality: most marketing leaders are merely testing disconnected tools rather than fundamentally overhauling their operating model. To move from illusion to reality, organizations must shift investments from isolated applications toward a robust infrastructure powered by data, brand intelligence, and multi-agent orchestration. The leaders pulling ahead aren't just buying technology; they are radically rewiring their teams and processes to turn AI into a scalable, commercial growth engine. #AI #MarketingLeadership #AgenticCommerce #GrowthEngines Link to report: https://lnkd.in/ejv-25Xz

68% of CMOs have an AI problem that isn't really an AI problem. BCG found that only 32% of CMOs have reached the "Leader" tier in AI transformation. The other 68% are struggling to scale beyond pilots. The issue isn't AI. It's the operating foundation. 🔸Fragmented planning. 🔸Disconnected workflows. 🔸Inconsistent measurement. 🔸Siloed teams and technology. AI doesn't fix these fractures. It can amplify them. This reinforces what I wrote earlier this year in The Fractured Machine: Why Your Marketing Isn't Scaling With You. Before asking, "Where else can we deploy AI?" Ask, "Is our operating model ready to scale it?" Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s research is worth the read. I'm also sharing my paper on the structural cracks holding marketing organizations back. Link in comments. https://lnkd.in/gNQXGhzi

I like this POV a lot - do fewer, better things with humans involved instead of doing a ton of "meh" things with AI. Human experience (the "scar tissue" referenced in the article) is always going to give you the better edge in the long run. There's lots of things that AI and process automation are great for, but you risk losing yourself (and your brand) if you rely too much on it for the wrong things.

AI doesn’t just make good thinking faster. It can make mediocre thinking look much better. That’s the trap 🎓 Dr Laurent FLORES - Phd 💫 and I explore in our latest ADWEEK piece - and why marketing leaders increasingly need to become “hybrid” thinkers: using AI extensively, while knowing exactly when to distrust it. Eda Sayin Thierry Campet Dushinka Karani Kerry Parke

"Frontier AI models can now write a business plan in a few minutes. Input a market summary, some consumer data, and an overall growth ambition, and you will get back something that looks very decent: a clean structure, innovative ideas that sound plausible, and a SWOT analysis, all in a professional tone. Is it impressive? Of course. But it is also where the danger begins—because AI can produce below-average plans that look great." In this Voice piece, François Bazini and 🎓 Dr Laurent FLORES - Phd 💫 detail how marketing leaders can avoid being misled by AI.

AI is rewiring how organizations work, with implementation being a leadership challenge for putting the technology to good use across the marketing function. Success will require thinking about change management. That means identifying the problems where AI implementation will make the most impact, redesigning workflows around AI, coaching employees continuously, rethinking your organization’s shape, and focusing on customer value over labor efficiencies.

AI is reshaping how work gets done, and the marketing organizations adapting fastest are: • Investing more time in narrative clarity, not less. • Defining human accountability clearly, especially at the strategy layer. • Treating AI as a multiplier of leadership quality, not a replacement for it. As #AI makes execution faster, cheaper and easier to scale, clarity and discernment become the real advantage. The strongest teams will know what matters, where to focus and when human judgment must take the lead. The new rule of AI-powered marketing: Technology expands what teams can do; #leadership determines what deserves to be done. https://lnkd.in/ebn2QVRK #cmo #cx #trust

AI isn't changing marketing because it can generate content. It's changing marketing because it's improving the way work actually gets done. That's the core idea behind this piece in Inc.'s Leadership Forum. Shachar Scott points out that AI compresses execution. Projects that once took four weeks may now only take four days if you're using AI to streamline tedious, time-consuming tasks. My favorite line from the article: "Automate the predictable, elevate the judgment." Scott's advice is to automate structured, rule-based tasks, while keeping human oversight for tasks that require judgment and intuition. I think about this a lot in digital marketing. Speed is important, but speed without human oversight can actually be counterproductive. The businesses that will come out on top in this digital era aren't the ones automating every single task. They're the ones getting more deliberate about where human expertise still has to lead. Worth a read: https://lnkd.in/dsspnyvy #Leadership #AI #MarketingLeadership #BusinessStrategy

Marketers have spent years worrying about whether customers understand their brands. Now there's another audience in the middle: the AI systems explaining those brands to customers. Contentful surveyed 350 marketing decision-makers across the US, UK and Australia. Eighty-five percent believe AI-generated summaries will make most brands sound alike, while 95% believe companies with strong, well-codified identities will widen their lead. That combination is worth paying attention to. AI search engines, chatbots and agents don't experience a brand the way a customer does. They piece together an understanding from websites, product information, metadata, reviews, citations and third-party coverage. If those sources are inconsistent or vague, the resulting representation can be inconsistent or vague too. The research also found that 37% of executives see structure and clarity of content as the main factor helping brands remain distinct when AI systems do the summarizing. That puts brand identity, content structure and AI visibility much closer together than marketers may be used to thinking about them. There is also a measurement gap. Eighty-three percent said accurate AI representation is a top or high priority for the coming year, yet only 55% regularly measure how their brand appears across the agentic web. As AI becomes another layer of discovery, defining the brand clearly is only part of the job. Marketers also need to know whether those systems are actually interpreting it the way they intended. #AIMarketing #BrandStrategy #AEO https://lnkd.in/gRsFcYEY

Fascinating findings from the CMO Survey led by Christine Moorman. If you work marketing / communications, it will be well worth your time to give this a read.