This is the interim findings session for the study on humanized growth in the era of AI, held on 19 December 2024. The agenda ran through an objectives recap, a project plan update, initial interview learnings, discussion and interpretation, further areas to probe, and next steps.
The study asks how marketing has been leveraging AI to drive growth, who the most important C-suite partners are for marketing AI initiatives, what organization-wide AI initiatives marketing is involved in, where the biggest opportunities for AI-enabled business growth are, and how marketing can help ensure a humanized business approach.
Key findings
- Current use is concentrated on short-term efficiency: analytics and real-time data application, content creation, and operations. The interim read is that there is no real competitive advantage there, and possibly smaller budgets.
- The second learning is a creativity dilemma between automation and brand differentiation, with ethical challenges including using real consumers and avoiding biases, and a fear of vanilla solutions.
- The third is that upskilling is essential. Middle layers mainly need to learn how to prompt and apply the tools, personal leadership shows interest in the topic, and external partners are used for scale.
- The fourth is that the key partnerships are narrow, described as a magic circle of IT for infrastructure, legal for compliance, and data science teams for analytics.
- The fifth is that AI has potential to create incremental value through digital agents, customer experience, and product innovation. But most CMOs admit to feeling insufficiently informed and want to be more knowledgeable about the long-term growth opportunities, which the session translates into a request for tangible, concrete case studies.
What the interim findings rest on
At the interim point the evidence base was more than 30 publications from desk research, input from partners still arriving, and more than ten dedicated CMO conversations, with more to come.
The plan places the CMO vision interviews at a target of 30, running alongside desk research, a quantitative survey, integration with the IRG100 program, and narrative development toward Cannes 2025.
What the session decided to probe next
Two topics were carried forward. The first is AI and the opportunity to deliver value for all stakeholders, with a focus on communities and the planet. The second is how Google is perceived and positioned among CMOs, and the future opportunities that follow.
Scope and limitations
The learnings are explicitly marked as work in progress and are drawn from an interview program that was still running, with a second interim findings session still to be scheduled.
Source
This page summarises Humanized Growth in the era of AI: Interim Findings Session, by IRG, Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, 19th December 2024.