When I was in high school, I used Cliffs Notes, but never instead of reading the book. That’s because I didn’t trust it to catch everything I might catch on my own.
I feel the same way about AI. I say that as someone who uses it every day and thinks it’s one of the most transformative developments for the CMO role in decades.
Forrester’s recently published report on what AI means for the CMO role makes the argument that AI doesn’t end the CMO job, it raises the stakes. The CMO becomes an enterprise growth orchestrator, spending less time managing campaigns and more time making high-level trade-offs. Growth gets hard-coded into marketing operations. Brand stewardship expands beyond what CMOs can directly see or control, as AI agents represent your brand in conversations you’re not part of.
That’s a compelling picture. From where I sit, it’s largely accurate and it’s already happening.
What AI has genuinely changed
The speed of insight is different now. Analysis that used to take a week now takes hours, along with first drafts, competitive research, market sizing, and pressure-testing an argument. I use AI to move through the early stages faster so I can spend more time on the decisions that actually matter.
Forrester’s point about the CMO becoming a growth orchestrator resonates. AI is handling more of the execution layer, which means I have more bandwidth for the strategic trade-offs like where to invest, where to pull back, and where human judgment still needs to lead. That’s a better version of the job.
And on brand stewardship: when your brand increasingly lives in AI-mediated spaces you can’t directly control, the foundational decisions about positioning, voice, and values become more important, not less. You’d better have done that hard thinking before the machines start representing you.
What the technology can’t replace
Here’s where I’d add something to the Forrester picture. The expanded CMO role only works if the judgment behind it is actually yours.
Reading a client’s hesitation across a conference table, knowing when a strategy is technically right but organizationally wrong or sensing a market shift before the data has caught up are invaluable judgment skills. That kind of judgment comes from decades in rooms where the answer wasn’t obvious. AI speeds up a lot of things, but it doesn’t speed that up.
The highest-value conversations in marketing strategy are still the human ones. What does this company actually stand for? Who are their most valuable customers? What story earns their attention? AI helps me sharpen those answers. It can’t originate them.
Where CMOs get caught up
The mistake isn’t using AI. It’s using it without staying in the driver’s seat.
I’ve watched smart marketers defer to an AI output they should have pushed back on. The answer came fast, it looked credible, and the pressure to move quickly never lets up, so they moved on. They outsourced the perspective without realizing it.
My rule is simple: the tool handles the volume and I handle the judgment. Holding that line requires discipline, especially when the output is fast, packaged nicely and sounds right.
The CMOs excelling in their roles are leaning into AI hard while staying skeptical at the same time. They treat it like I treated Cliffs Notes: useful for getting oriented, not a substitute for doing the thinking yourself.
After 30 years, I still believe the advantage belongs to those who do the deep thinking. AI can get you to an answer faster. It can’t tell you if it’s the right question. Use it but just don’t let it read the book for you.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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For another point of view, check out Boathouse’s annual survey on how CEOs view CMOs.
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