CMO Responsibilities in Generative AI

CMO: "In a year I slashed my marketing team by 94% - 180 to 10 people & replaced them with AI" Reality hasn't kicked their butt yet. This isn't a success story. This is someone who just replaced strategic marketing judgement with pattern-matching algorithms and called it innovation. They're about to learn why AI excels at workflow automation but fails catastrophically at strategic thinking - the hard way, when competitors with actual marketing strategies eat their lunch. And the terrifying part? The LinkedIn echo chamber is cheering. Other CMOs are taking notes. Here's what they missed: This isn't about AI being bad - it's transformational for workflow automation, scale, and speed. This is about confusing what AI can do (optimise existing processes) with what it can't do (strategic thinking, market judgement, creative positioning) What AI does brilliantly today: - Workflow automation & process optimisation - Content production at scale and speed - Campaign execution and coordination - Data analysis and pattern recognition What AI can't do yet: - Strategic thinking about market positioning - Original creative insights (GenAI is trained on what exists - and most marketing content isn't good) - Understanding nuanced competitive dynamics - Marketing judgement calls about the 4Ps: Product strategy, Pricing leverage, Place/distribution, strategic Promotion The 2026 Reality Check Timeline: - Q1: First competitor with actual brand equity starts stealing deals - Q2: Sales team realises they have no competitive positioning when objections hit - Q3: Board asks why market share is declining despite "marketing efficiency" - Q4: Emergency hiring begins. Spoiler: Good marketers cost more than the people your fired What getting AI right actually looks like: - Use AI for scale & speed: Content production, campaign optimisation, data analysis - Use humans for strategy and judgement: Market positioning, competitive analysis, creative direction - Combine both for competitive advantage: AI-powered execution of human-crafted strategy The bottom line is AI is an incredibly powerful tool. But you still need someone who knows how to use it strategically. Getting AI right in go to market requires understanding the technology capabilities AND sales & marketing strategy. I've built the tech, sold the solutions, and scaled the marketing - that 360-degree experience is exactly what executives need to navigate this transition without making expensive mistakes.

From Chief Marketing Officer → Chief Market Orchestrator 🎯 A year ago, I was managing a 180-person marketing org. Today, I orchestrate 10 humans and more than a dozen AI and automation agents, tools, apps across content, pipeline, research, outreach, and GTM. It’s not a downgrade. It’s an upgrade in complexity. Being a CMO used to be about budgets and branding. But now it seems to be about: Coordinating multi-modal workstreams across AI agents, analysts, contractors, and internal teams. Driving go-to-market and product direction based on signal data from dozens of daily marketing experiments Running cross-functional orchestration: product, sales, content, comms, and market feedback loops in real time. 📍In Q2, in one 90-day sprint: We rewrote product positioning based on agent outputs and B2B buyer feedback We built a messaging engine that fed real-time campaign data into product launches We ran weekly orchestration sessions that merged pipeline blockers with use case prioritization We built a system where the marketing team was responsible not just for MQLs but for helping shape what should be built. This isn't just accomplished with delegation. This is real stretch operating. As Nikki Vegenski put it: “The CMO seat today is less about ownership and more about orchestration.” “You’re syncing humans and machines to move in harmony toward real growth.” Deloitte backed it up: 95% of CMOs are on the hook for revenue. But only 32% feel equipped to grow market share. Meanwhile, AI-native orgs are compressing execution time from months → days. I have seen this first-hand What used to take weeks - a segment analysis, a message test, a partner activation - can now be triggered, launched, and measured in a 48-hour window with the right orchestration model. But this is not easy. The work is heavier and the compleity is non linear. Keeping evertyghin in my mind sometimes feels impossible. Is this working out? Time alone will tell. But it has been the best kind of stretch. The modern marketing leader is an MARKET OPERATOR working at the intersection of: Tech (agents, automation, AI) Narrative (messaging, ICP, feedback loops) Revenue (pipeline, motion, pricing) System Design (how it all runs together Are you seeing this shift in your org too? Comment below and let me know!

Last week’s CMO roundtable in San Francisco Bay Area was about - Agentic Marketing: What’s Keeping CMOs Up at Night? Here’s what surfaced: “We need an AI‑CMO!” 1. Imagine a strategic AI leader that ingests your entire tech stack and marketing playbook, then orchestrates tactics in real time. Start small: choose one decision (e.g., budget reallocation) and automate it with predictive models. Validate ROI over 30 days, then expand. 2. *Forward‑Deployed Engineers, but for Marketing Instead of embedding coders in product teams, think “embedded growth engineers” within your marketing squad.* Their sole mission: rapid prototyping of experiments - SEO hacks, personalization scripts, automated A/B testers - so you can move at engineering velocity without the IT back‑and‑forth. Pepper is building the above :) 3. AI‑Driven Skill Mapping - Who on your team has latent expertise in data science, creative automation, or growth hacking? An AI‑powered skill‑mapping tool could audit your org chart, pinpoint gaps, and recommend upskilling or hiring needs - ensuring you always have the right talent for tomorrow’s AI demands. 4. Automate the Mundane - From daily dashboard updates to content tagging and sentiment analysis, CMOs are drowning in low‑value grunt work. What if an autonomous agent could assemble data, generate weekly exec summaries, even draft first‑pass creative briefs - so your team can focus on big‑picture strategy? Our next one is in San Francisco city in 10 days from now! DM to grab an invite! Thank you for joining everyone! Varun Kohli - CMO at Sequence Security Greg Schneider - CMO at Qualia Frederique Covington Corbett, Ph.D. - CMO at UNICEF and Ex -Global Brand Startegy Head at Visa Sandeep Singh Kohli - Ex CMO Venafi, Kong Christina Lang - VP Global Marketing, Mozilla Natalie Cann - Senior Director, Marketing at USC Michael Sen - Director of Marketing, NextInsurance Anne Goodrich - VP, Product Marketing and Growth Colman Murphy - Former Director of Marketing at Smartcat Amit Pande - GM at C3.ai, Former CMO at Aviso Sandra Chim - Senior Director of Growth Marketing at Netapp Nandita Ghosh - VP Marketing, Thoughtspot Joanne Dimitrakopoulos MSc (Hons) - Director of Marketing, Takara Bio Todd Nelson - former CMO Padmini Murthy - Founder, Content Sense Chitra Rakesh - Former head of content strategy, sigma computing Kishan P. Shabin George

CMO's don't have an enviable role right now. Theres always been a lot on their plate, but with AI transformation, there is even more. We’ve entered a new era in marketing, where understanding how to build, run, and optimize AI-augmented systems is just as important as managing people. Don't believe me? Look at mandates from the CEO's of companies like Shopify who are encouraging AI purchases over human hires. It’s no longer just about campaign strategy or brand leadership. Today’s CMOs are expected to: ➡️ Architect systems that track, score, and prioritize every signal ➡️ Build brands that are recognizable ➡️ Position products to succeed in the market ➡️ Be fluent in conversations with sales teams ➡️ Automate full-funnel programs across ads, content, and sales ➡️ Integrate AI into workflows without sacrificing brand ➡️ Manage a marketing team and a stack of increasingly autonomous tools ➡️ Prove ROI, attribution, and business impact in real-time Here’s where you shift to your core belief: The best CMOs aren’t just creative or data-driven—they’re systems thinkers. They don’t have to build the infrastructure, but they must understand how it works and how to lead through it. That’s the new job: managing people and machines with equal fluency. At CGM, we work with CMOs who want to lead in this new model. Our focus is on separating what is valuable from the noise with AI. We believe there is hype that is leading to bad purchase decisions around AI, and companies need to think about the systems they are going to architect so AI can be most useful.