This study reports what AI has done to the marketing agenda by 2025. It is organized in four parts: 2025 as a pivotal AI year, the move from brand growth to business growth, the CMO as AI change partner, and a leadership call to action.
The evidence base combines an AI meta review of reports about AI, more than 25 expert perspectives on marketing and AI, more than 50 practitioner CMO accounts, and an online survey of more than 300 CMOs and C-suite leaders, analyzed against revenue growth overperformance.
Key findings
- The study dates the adoption curve: discovery in 2023, experimentation in 2024, adoption in 2025.
- The 2024 experimentation phase was all about efficiency, through synthetic research, economical creative, efficient localization and workforce optimization. The study’s verdict is that this produces no long-term competitive advantage and has become the new marketing table stakes.
- AI leads the CMO priority list by a wide margin. Asked what will affect marketing, 69 percent name AI, technology and data developments, against 41 percent for changing consumer attitudes and behaviors and 39 percent for economic uncertainty, on a base of 188 senior marketing and C-suite leaders.
- The mindset flipped between years. The study contrasts a reactive 2024 CMO mindset with a proactive 2025 one, and reports a 95 to 5 split between reading AI as opportunity and as risk.
- Where AI is now common it no longer differentiates. On measurement and insight, media and personalization, and creative and content, over-performers and under-performers index within a few points of each other, around 100.
What separates the winners
Two indexes carry the argument. Top CMOs index 136 on understanding the impact of AI on business strategy, and winning CMOs index 149 on using AI today to drive business growth.
The framing is a move from marketing impact to business impact, and from the urgent to the important, reaching business transformation, operations, objective setting and logistics rather than campaigns.
Partnership across the C-suite is the differentiator, indexing 138 for three or more highly effective C-suite partnerships. Under-performing CMOs concentrate on partnering with IT, indexing 115, while winning CMOs partner with HR, indexing 123.
AI inside the humanized growth method
The study maps AI onto the same five moves used elsewhere in IRG’s work. Ground means AI-powered stakeholder understanding and celebration of corporate roots. Reimagine means AI-powered scenario planning and a company purpose and values tool.
Focus is where the widening of value shows. Brand value is customer focused, while business value covers colleagues, customers, community and capital markets. AI value creation indexes 122 for colleagues, 118 for the community and 105 for the capital markets.
Organizing means interdependence and capability building. Working more interdependently runs 67 percent against 7 percent.
Capability, and the leader’s own use of AI
Capability is the acknowledged gap. 93 percent say their teams will need more support to understand and adopt AI, and early movers show a large advantage, indexing 237 on having teams equipped with the relevant AI skills.
Capability building is described at three levels: marketing AI capability, business AI capability and community AI capability.
Personal use splits the same way as business use. All CMOs use AI professionally, indexing 105 on using it to increase professional efficiency, but winning CMOs index 141 on using it for personal wellbeing. 82 percent say they personally need more support to understand and adopt AI.
The call to action is three lines: focus on business growth, build AI capability, and personally lead by example.
Scope and limitations
The document is a draft presentation of the findings. The priority ranking rests on 188 senior leaders, and several results are reported as index values against a base of 100 rather than as percentages.
Source
This page summarises Humanized Growth in the era of AI Study Findings, by IRG (Institute for Real Growth), University of Oxford Saïd Business School Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, ANA Global CMO Growth Council, 2025.