Inside Fortune 500 boardrooms, chief marketing officers are grappling with a new and uncomfortable reality: the playbook they’ve relied on for decades no longer applies. As product discovery moves from search engines to AI-driven interfaces, CMOs are being forced to rethink how marketing is measured, how teams are structured, and what it means to lead the function.
Discussions about budgets and brand strategy still happen, but they are increasingly overshadowed by a more urgent set of questions. Which marketing metrics still matter when consumers begin their search in ChatGPT rather than on Google? How should companies structure marketing organizations when AI can produce campaigns, analyze performance, and personalize experiences at a scale that once required entire departments? Which skills matter most when the technology changes every few months?
One executive hearing those conversations firsthand is Lara Balazs, Adobe’s chief marketing officer. She spends much of her time speaking with peers who are navigating those questions.
“For years it was always, ‘Spend less with more impact,’” Balazs says. “Now I hear, ‘There’s AI. Do that.’”
The directive is vague and expansive because no established playbook exists. AI is evolving faster than most marketing organizations can adapt, leaving CMOs to build one in real time.
