Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing

CMOs have always sought to build best-practice marketing teams – it’s one of the first things they’ll have on the to-do list when they take up a new gig. But what does the marketing team of the future even look like in a world where AI is disrupting everything? How do you as a CMO chart a path through the changing AI landscape as organisations continue to pile on pressure to leverage AI tools, and as headcount cuts and productivity efficiencies become an even more expected output of AI adoption?

CMOs from Unicef, RAA and Accenture Australia, joined by Adobe ANZ head of Gen AI content and commerce, took to the mics in the latest CMO Awards podcast series, powered by Mi3, to unpack how they’re beginning to recast roles and build AI fluency, while managing the very real fear of AI existing across teams.

Accenture’s Carrie Smith says marketing team was ground zero for adopting AI agents from optimisation to entire workflow remodelling. Not an early journey to go on, it started with centralised planning, transparency and a focus on the marketing discipline first – not the tech – to understand which parts are difficult across workflows to get to great outcomes, she says.

RAA’s Michael Healy cites the first aha moment when the team saw what AI creative production was going to achieve. The second catalyst was adopting enterprise-grade Claude inside the organisation. “Very quickly, I formed a view as a marketing leader that with AI, one of a few things is going to happen. One, you'll get the tools in the hands of the people, and you'll figure out how to use it together, and thus, generate competitive advantage. Or two, you will eventually have a consultancy in with your CEO or board saying, this is how your marketing team should be using AI, and if they're not, you're already behind, which I have openly said to my team is a very problematic place to find ourselves in.”

Giving people time to experiment was critical at Unicef, but equally, a CEO-wide mandate to not shrink with AI and instead, drive incremental revenue proved transformative. It’d led to temporarily bringing the full technology team into the marketing remit to unite the technical experts with the marketers using those tools and driving those business needs. “It's been a big learning curve on both sides, and it's not a permanent structure, but I think it will leave a deeper way of working and understanding between the two teams,” says Libby Hodgson.

When it comes to where AI is having greatest early impact in marketing, Adobe’s Sheerien Salindera points to content supply chain efficiencies as the first unlock. “We call it content economics, and the throughput of a piece of content, the ability to remix it, send it off for legal approval, bring it back all of those sort of steps and hand offs that used to take a long time, making that more automated,” she says. “But the next piece is getting the AI to not just give you speed to market … but really embedding the AI on your brand, on your tone of voice, on your creative and bringing your own IP and brand models to life.”

Tune into this highly informative, relevant marketing conversation here.