McKinsey: Rewiring Marketing for an AI-Enabled Era

According to McKinsey, 90% of CMOs are experimenting with AI use cases – but less than 10% have scaled this or captured value across marketing workflows. 

This lack of progress may be due to what the consultancy terms as an "AI marketing cognitive dissonance" – with 86% of marketers saying they are excited about AI’s potential, while 57% say they are anxious about its potential implications. 

Despite this, McKinsey estimates that when organisations redesign marketing to be powered by AI, they can see significant productivity gains, an increase in savings and revenue and conversion value growth.

Tjark Freundt, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, tells Marketing Chief: “AI is making marketing infinitely more powerful as a growth, productivity and ROI accelerator. But it isn’t as simple as pressing down on the AI pedal. Marketers need to evaluate the component parts of the engine, the vehicle and the driver, and determine when AI should drive and when the human does.

“The 10% of organisations that have got this right are seeing real gains. In some cases, we are seeing 4 – 7% revenue growth, 2-3 times productivity gains and up to 30% higher marketing ROI. 

“To get there, the CMO has to set a clear vision for both growth and productivity. This includes breaking down each task associated with data insights, creativity and go-to-market, and then assigning new roles with the marketing team, from agent whisperers to orchestrators.”

Slowing down AI transformations 

McKinsey’s research finds two key issues preventing growth through AI in marketing. 

The first is unaligned leadership. According to McKinsey’s survey, marketers and those in the C-suite see AI as an opportunity to drive both growth and productivity – with 53% of those surveyed saying they value AI for efficiency, and 47% saying they value it for potential cost savings. 

However, McKinsey reports that marketers believe that the C-suite values AI for productivity – a concern that is amplified by the fact that marketing can often be viewed as a cost centre. Therefore, marketing teams are more likely to prioritise AI as a cost cutting tool, rather than a growth lever, which can lead to a misalignment on goals and slow progress. 

The second is a disconnect between marketing leaders and their teams. In conversations with CMOs, the company found that few marketing leaders felt that their teams had AI related anxiety – despite the fact that more than three quarters of respondents reported otherwise. According to the research, this can lead to frustration, where leaders expect faster progress but teams feel unsupported. 

To combat this, McKinsey recommends that marketing leaders focus on growth when developing their AI strategies, reframe AI as an “amplifier” of human capability rather than a replacement and rewire the marketing operating model to determine where AI can have the most impact. 

AI capabilities to drive growth

As marketing teams adapt around AI, the technology represents a significant opportunity – with McKinsey research finding that the global B2C market could potentially generate between US$3tn and US$5tn through AI. 

The companies most likely to succeed in the AI era, the research says, will most likely lean on five specific capabilities: 

• Continuous insights: Deploying gen AI can provide marketing teams with continuous insights, which can reduce costs and speed up timelines
• Scaled creativity: By producing large volumes of content tailored for consumers while maintaining a consistent brand, McKinsey finds that organisations are seeing two to fivefold increases in creative productivity and 10%-30% reductions in creative costs
• Hyper-personalisation: McKinsey finds that AI-driven personalisation can enhance customer satisfaction by 15% to 20% – with real time decision engines able to tailor experiences to individual consumers
• ‘Agent whisperers’: The introduction of a new role that ensures a brand is accurately represented in AI systems
• Always-on orchestration: The report predicts that campaign cycles will be replaced by continuously optimised marketing through human-agentic teams. 

Together, these capabilities can create significant value for marketing teams, says McKinsey.