What you need to know:

• Fresh, exclusive initial data from the Australian Centre for AI in Marketing’s first benchmarking study into AI has found CMOs are overwhelmingly feeling cautious – if not downright anxious – about gen AI adoption across marketing.
• For both ACAM cofounder Douglas Nicol, and NRMA GM of marketing and propositions, Kate McBean, the data is a solid temperature check on the challenges marketing teams have getting out of the short-term performance, efficiency wheel and their fears of job insecurity.
• The findings are also a reflection of the fact marketing has lost its centre of gravity and is stuck in process and stakeholder management, versus the true role of marketing: Growth and lowering the cost of sale, Nicol and McBean agree.
• Adding to the challenge of adopting AI is marketing leaders worried about their own lack of AI knowledge before leading marketing teams through another round of transformative, disruptive tech-led change.
• But if you don’t get on the front foot now with AI, Nicol and McBean warn CMOs risk getting stuck in a cost-out game all over again with the CEO and CFO, instead of saving themselves from the burden of process, efficiency and more cost reduction and overly-eager job cuts.

According to initial data from ACAM’s AI benchmarking study, the majority of Australian marketing leadership respondents feel excited but overwhelmingly cautious towards Gen AI in their marketing teams. A minority specifically reported feeling negative or scared.

They’re findings that echo a global Gartner study released in February, which reported 27 per cent of CMOs have “limited or no GenAI adoption” within their marketing campaigns as many cautiously sit on the sidelines.

According to ACAM, adding to AI caution is the fact only 19 per cent of leaders talking to ACAM feel ready to lead their teams through AI transformation, with over six in 10 citing a need to elevate their own AI skills first. With the majority of Australian CMOs female, Nicol attributes this conservatism in part to a gender skew in the data and that age-old chestnut of women having less confidence in their abilities than men. But he agrees the war wounds inflicted by martech adoption over the last decade could also figure.

ACAM’s benchmarking effort so far covers 21 different data points across more than 60 Australian CMOs from different industry sectors and company sizes. The full report is due in July.

Nicol isn’t surprised by ACAM’s findings, nor the anxiety reflected in the data, which he’s also been picking up in one-on-one conversations with CMOs. He agrees an obvious input into these fears is what’s happening to jobs. As reported by Mi3, quiet and not-so-quiet redundancies across marketing and advertising in the last two years off the back of ruthless and relentless optimisation, as well as a marketing jobs market still stacked to employers rather than employees, all play a role.

“I think there’s also an anxiety around what’s happening in other parts of the organisation,” Nicol says. “The anxiety is terrible – really awful – and it actually stops you doing things.

“Then there’s the people who doubt themselves; am I personally ready? Or I might be up for it, but am I ready to lead my team through this? What is the narrative I should use to maximise their productivity, but also their emotional wellbeing? It is a question of leadership. I do think the conversation has to move on from 'how many platforms have you played with today', to 'how am I going to be a better marketer, how am I going to be a better leader and take my team through this transition'.”

McBean doesn’t dismiss the criticality of balancing people requiring upskilling for future focus – even as near as it is with AI – with needing to perform in the job today and job security either.

“I think for most people, because the market is awful right now, and there is that lack of confidence in job security, particularly in marketing, it has gotten people really focused on what they need to perform, and to do their job. Potentially, training is something they put on the back burner,” she admits.

What worries Nicol most about AI reticence is it’s putting marketers on the back foot. That leads to a situation where you’re inevitably more likely to end up reacting to a CEO or CFO asking for savings from AI, rather than being able to apply AI strategically to do better marketing, he says.

“The danger of being on the back foot is you get someone in finance who says, okay, I want a 20 per cent headcount saving attributed to the adoption of AI. That’s not where you want to be as a CMO,” Nicol warns. “You want to be the CMO on the front foot with a clear vision for how marketing can deliver better results through AI. Yes, there will probably be restructuring and yes, potentially some people will lose their jobs, but it’s way better to be on the front foot with your CEO, than on the back foot with a number you’ve got to make in terms of savings. That’s why you shouldn’t hold back on AI.

“You want to be on the front foot with a plan for a better and more productive team that delivers bigger results and commercial gain for the organisation.”

NRMA’s McBean gets it – and agrees marketers need to flip the narrative on AI. While some businesses out there may have a mandate to use AI to cut costs, she insists it’s not the case at NRMA.

“I think that fear surrounding AI and marketing is really when the possibilities for use of AI are only connected to efficiencies and all of what that encompasses,” says McBean. “We as leaders need to drive understanding within our teams that AI will help us drive growth and reduce waste, and that the possibilities are immense in terms of being able to do the things we’ve never done before. We need to make sure we are positioning this as an advantage, and that we’re all perceiving we’re going to gain through efficiencies. AI is a real opportunity to invest in further driving growth, retention and delivering the outcomes your business needs, rather than this fear mongering purely based on the efficiency piece.

“I am talking a lot to my team about the opportunities to use AI to really get rid of some of those small manual tasks and allow us to really focus on our growth drivers.”

Marketing has lost its centre of gravity

The need for marketing to take control back of strategic decision making more broadly is also clear in ACAM’s new data. More than eight in 10 either strongly agreed or agreed to the statement marketing has become too much about process and stakeholder management and not enough about marketing principles or growth.

“What CMOs are saying is marketing has lost its way and been burdened by process. And anecdotally talking to CMOs, they feel the burden of process and stakeholder management has robbed the true mission of marketing, which to drive growth and lower the cost of sale. That’s the context in which we’re operating in,” Nicol says. “The great dream is that generative AI can play a role in getting marketing back onto its proper centre of gravity, which is being strategic, delivering growth and lowering the cost of sale; our origin story as marketers. But in my view, there’s a whole generation of marketers who have grown up with process rather than the real focus of marketing, which is strategic and delivering value to the business.

“They agree marketing used to be about growth and lowering the cost of sale, but now it has become too much about process and stakeholder management.”

McBean is disappointed to hear people only see cutting where there is net new gain to be had with AI. “We are a 105-year-old business, and we've been strongly directed by our board and by our leadership team to make sure that we are all as a leadership team leaning into AI. How can it benefit our people internally? How can it benefit our member experience? That’s really what we're being driven by – we are not being driven by a mandate to cost cut,” she says. 

“It is very much a requirement of CEOs, boards and leadership teams to make people feel comfortable in this world. There will be businesses out there that just say, 'okay, AI will mean cost cutting across the board'. I think then it becomes a decision for those businesses around how they want to think about that as an opportunity. Is that a catalyst for growth? Does it mean you're freeing up manpower to do something else, or is it just about the bottom line, and that's it? That's a decision each individual business has to make.”

Upskilling and living with the grey

For marketing to have a chance of getting strategic with AI, McBean and Nicol both see upskilling and capability building as absolutely critical. The problem is there isn’t a concrete framework for AI you can simply adopt. Business cases are coming, and working with the CFO on business casing is one way to connect the dots between marketing and business gain. But things are frankly moving too quickly to expect certainty, the pair agree.

“People want to understand a framework for AI, and quite often they see the framework as a technical thing,” Nicol comments. “But actually, it’s as much a leadership thing. Marketers also want to know how to measure AI – they want to know the business case, different use cases. The fact is we’re in an uncertain world, and there is no best practice for AI yet. There are no true experts in this area, so you do have to have a pioneering mindset and be comfortable with the fact that best practice is only emerging. Some people don’t like that. Some people want certainty. The fact is, you have to live with some grey areas and sometimes, unintended consequences to build your proficiency.”

McBean also doesn’t discount people being scared of what’s next and being given permission to learn, not just do. She agrees AI has done away with being able to stick tightly to your multi-year marketing plan.

“Twelve or 24-month planning cycles may need to have some flexibility in them to really allow us to make the most of these opportunities, because we don’t know what they’re going to be in 24 months’ time,” she says. “That’s what leaders are challenged with. I’m including myself here: How can you plan for 12-24 months ahead when you don’t really know what tools we’re going to have to enable us to do our jobs?”

As a result, McBean says she’s looking to carve out specific time for training and working with her HR partners to make sure there is training around AI that encompasses the big picture around AI, and how's it going to change things at a macro level.

“I really want to make sure we have a clear schedule of training opportunities around AI, and to encourage my leaders to have their teams carve out that time: Is it a day, a quarter, or whatever that that right amount is for each individual? There will be some individuals who need to obviously to upskill and learn a lot more than others, so we need to tailor training to people's skill sets and job functions,” she says,

One small step

McBean also believes in starting small and having that test, learn and iterate mentality, making space within plans for flexibility and experimentation – practically and psychologically.

“Sometimes, we might be using tools that we trial and they don't work and don't suit us. So it's making sure people feel comfortable sharing those learnings, and that we are very much all learning together on this. There's no textbook that someone can read where they suddenly know all about AI,” McBean says.

Rather than hard KPIs, McBean also emphasises open dialogue around sharing learnings, how you think, what you think the practical application of that training is going to be. “I'm actually carving out time in each of my monthly all-hands for people who have done the training to come and share those learnings with the rest of the team,” she says. “That, in turn, drives that motivation and curiosity around the tools that we all know available today and are coming at us so fast.”

Whatever the way forward, McBean sees AI bringing leaders closer to the tools than they have been in a long time.

“We’re all in the trenches learning about AI together,” she says. “I’m starting from a position of how can we use AI ethically and in a way that’s really aligned to the values of a mutual and seeing that AI will be a tool to drive those cost efficiencies but also growth.

“I really want to make sure that most AI is not a standalone function. You've got to have data, technology, martech, and all of those pieces of the puzzle working together. That's obviously a challenge when every team will have their own priorities and getting people aligned on this is the job we need to do. But I'm really focused on the end outcomes. What are we wanting to deliver here? And that's what we're using as our North Star, and to say, okay, so what tools can help us get there?”

Nicol also advises building confidence through simple use cases where some back-end work is automated, you gain some cost and productivity savings.

“But the real value is going to come from being a better marketer, strategist, understanding consumers better, analysing your data better and all those fundamentals,” he says. “That’s the goal, and that is the thing you’ll be remembered for. You won’t be remembered for the fact you got rid of two people two years ago. But you will be remembered if you raise the reputation and ROI of the marketing team.”

It’s not about trying to use every AI tool out there either, says Nicol. “Tool time is a black hole that actually robs you of your time,” he says. “What’s clever is adopting two or three tools and getting the best out of them – because each requires work, not just prompting, but setting up with the right data, profile, needs and use cases.”