How CMOs Win in an AI-First World

Many AI-in-marketing conversations still start with the tool. Which platform are you using? Where does it fit in the stack? How are you applying it to campaigns? Those questions are useful, but they don’t tell you whether AI can actually improve the way marketing operates.

Technology has always shaped marketing, but the speed has changed. Teams can now use data, AI, and human judgment while the work is still in motion. They don’t have to wait until a campaign ends to see what the market is telling them. Unfortunately, many organizations still operate the same way.

The sequence is the strategy

I’ve seen this pattern play out many times. Teams get excited about AI, invest in AI capabilities, and feel frustrated and disappointed with the results. That isn’t because of some flaw in the tools. It’s because the team needed to do the very unglamorous, unfun work of fixing their organization’s data and workflow problems before investing in shiny AI tools. Putting AI on top of broken processes just automates more brokenness.

What’s the answer? Focusing on the kind of work that rarely gets attention or applause. Cleaning up and unifying customer data. Ensuring that information moves throughout the organization in a smooth, logical manner. It’s the hard work that, if your organization is like many, you’ve been putting off. But it’s also the difference between whether your AI or any other new technology will deliver results or fall short.

Orchestration is the real job

Scott Brinker has argued for years that the modern marketing role is fundamentally one of orchestration: orchestrating teams, systems, and the connections between what you know about a customer and what the business does next. Most organizations are still staffing and structuring marketing as a campaign management function, even with better software.

So what does this look like in practice?

• Teams that focus as much on its systems as it does on its pipeline.
• Marketing leaders who know that a broken workflow is just as important as a missed number.
• Planning process that embraces constant iteration rather than campaign-launch cycles.

On the human side

In marketing conversations, the AI topic is still generating a lot of anxiety. But I don’t think it’s warranted.

Judgment still matters. Taste still matters. And understanding your customer well enough to know what they truly need, not just what the data says they engaged with, still matters enormously. When every team is running the same tools, your humanity is what separates good marketing from forgettable marketing.

AI isn’t what makes marketing good. At its best, it gives teams a little more room to notice what customers are asking for and respond with more care. For teams that have been stretched thin, that’s not a small thing.

The question we should ask isn’t whether AI will replace what we do. It’s if we’re building the right foundation to get the most from it.

What the mandate looks like now

Growth only happens when the foundation can support it and when systems can handle greater complexity, greater intelligence, and greater scale, without breaking. That's true for the organizations we work with at Sparq, and it's equally true for marketing functions.

In 2026, CMOs must both design that system and curate the team that runs it. Gone are the days when we could simply focus on the brand narrative. We now have to create and maintain the systems that ensure the narrative is true.

That's a harder job than managing a campaign calendar. It requires being as rigorous about how work moves through the system as about what the work says. I think it's also more interesting. Marketing has more leverage now than it has had in a long time, for teams willing to build the foundation to earn it.

For further reading, see the recent interview in Martech: Martech Top Voice Interview With Christa Patrylak, CMO at Sparq