By: Anika Sharma, Markets Head - CMO Services, LTIMindtree

AI Brings a Sea Change to Marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the poster child for innovation in today’s business landscape. It’s a total game changer—an enabler of efficiencies, hyper-personalization, and predictive insights across industries. McKinsey estimates the generative value of AI at a staggering $4.4 trillion, with a significant portion of that value stemming from marketing and sales. This transformation is definitely augmenting marketing—and fascinating to witness it rewriting the role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Marketing is at a pivotal moment. The explosion of massive data sets, layered with AI-driven tools, is catalyzing rapid growth opportunities. Gartner’s 2023 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey shows marketing budgets currently holding steady at 9.1% of company revenue. However, by 2025, 75% of marketers anticipate budget increases, with 20% foreseeing boosts beyond 20%. Additionally, the LTK & Northwestern University 2024 Brand Study reveals that half of brands plan to significantly escalate their spend on creators—indicating a clear trend toward digital and personalized marketing investments.

The truth is undeniable—marketing, powered by AI, is shaping a future that demands agile, data-rich, and technologically adept CMOs.

“The CMO Matters”

Historically, CMOs have been tasked with three core objectives—brand strategy, customer engagement, and driving business growth. Today, the rise of AI is dramatically reshaping this role, enabling CMOs to harness technology to gain a competitive edge. What’s changing? The sheer scale and complexity of data-driven marketing.

A study in the Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing sheds light on this. It shows that the presence of a CMO in the C-suite positively correlates with stronger customer satisfaction, increased market capitalization, and improved shareholder value. It’s further proof that “The CMO matters!”

Yet, challenges remain. Larger data sets promise tailor-made engagement, but they also present logistical and technical difficulties. CMOs must master not only AI but also how to integrate siloed data, ensure quality, and create cohesive systems to realize actionable insights in real-time.

The Double-Edged Sword of Data

The promise of abundant data is both a blessing and a curse. By 2024, global data volumes are forecasted to hit a staggering 149 zettabytes. To put that into perspective, one zettabyte equals a trillion gigabytes. This explosion of data provides CMOs with unprecedented opportunities—and profound challenges.

Some of the biggest hurdles include:

• Data Integration: Bringing data together from various sources isn’t as simple as it sounds. The differences in formats, platforms, and systems can post technical challenges, requiring a lot of time, effort, and resources to make everything work seamlessly and making it compatible.
• Data Quality: Keeping data clean and reliable is just as important. It means tackling issues like duplicate entries, outdated information, and inaccuracies to ensure the insights you rely on are sharp and drive meaningful strategies.
• Fragmented Information Silos: Data dispersed across departments hampers unified customer views, impacting decision-making and personalization efforts in the marketing department.

The pressure to meet rapidly evolving consumer expectations is immense. Consumers now demand brands communicate authentically and at scale, across diverse languages, cultures, and preferences. This underscores the importance of AI’s toolbox in helping CMOs simplify the data complexity.

AI as the CMO’s Power Tool

AI is dramatically changing how marketers craft personalized messages, streamline campaigns, and measure success with precise analytics. Two of its strongest capabilities are targeted promotions and large-scale content generation.

Two powerful innovations connect brands with consumers in this age: AI-driven targeted promotions, and the use of gen AI to create and scale highly relevant messages with bespoke tone, imagery, copy, and experiences at high volume and speed. With machine learning algorithms, CMOs can now utilize large datasets for predictive analytics, to understand customer behavior, create targeted campaigns, and deliver hyper-personalized experiences. Through tools like AI-driven chatbots, automated content creation, and programmatic ads, artificial intelligence is enhancing marketing workflows and boosting productivity. It empowers CMOs to design highly customized campaigns featuring unique copy, imagery, and tone, delivering them at unprecedented speed and scale.

By processing large volumes of data in real-time, AI provides marketers with insights that were impossible to obtain before. This analytical approach helps CMOs make well-informed choices, distribute budgets wisely, and track campaign performance more accurately.

What does this look like in action?

• Predictive Analytics: Machine learning forecasts customer behavior, informing campaign strategies with pinpoint accuracy.
• Automated Tools: Chatbots, programmatic advertising, and AI-powered content creation save time and deliver hyper-personalized consumer experiences.
• Scalable Storytelling: AI enables marketers to co-create experiences with their audiences, building trust and community-driven brand advocacy.

However, the balance between technological efficiency and creative authenticity is crucial. While AI provides invaluable data-driven insights, the emotional and cultural connections that define impactful marketing remain irreplaceably human. CMOs must blend computational power with real-world intuition to make informed and empathetic decisions about messaging.

Looking Ahead to 2025

The evolution of AI will continue to transform both the marketing landscape and the CMO’s responsibilities. According to ZoomInfo, 83% of organizations consider AI a strategic priority, and 84% believe it is critical for maintaining a competitive advantage.

Yet even as 98% of marketers experiment with AI, fewer than 30% have fully integrated it into their everyday workflows. This signals a significant opportunity for CMOs to take the lead in championing AI adoption across their organizations.

The CMO of the future will masterfully balance a flexible strategy known as “marketing fluidity,” seamlessly merging automated solutions with human ingenuity.

The magic—and lasting success—lies in this confluence of technology and human insight.