Most CMOs seen as execution-focused as AI reshapes strategic marketing roles

Most CMOs Risk Irrelevance as AI Reshapes Markets

A significant gap has opened between what business leaders expect from marketing and what they believe their CMOs can deliver. While 82% of executives say their company's brand and culture must evolve to keep pace with AI, only 15% of CEOs view their marketing leader as strongly AI savvy, according to Gartner research.

The disconnect matters because AI is already changing how customers discover products, evaluate options, and make buying decisions. Brands now compete in environments they cannot fully see or control. At the same time, generative AI is flooding markets with undifferentiated content, eroding trust.

Many organizations still evaluate marketing leaders primarily on campaign execution rather than strategic guidance. Gartner found the average marketing leader has only an 11% chance of exceeding CEO and CFO expectations-a statistic that reflects a deeper problem. Marketing is treated as an execution engine, not a strategic partner.

The Market Shaper Profile

Some marketing leaders are breaking this pattern. Gartner identifies a specific profile that outperforms peers: "market shapers." They excel at innovation, positioning, and insight generation. They adapt their approach based on what the business needs most.

Market shapers use AI differently than their peers. Rather than focusing on efficiency gains, they apply AI to monitor shifting customer needs, synthesize fragmented signals, and run rapid experiments that inform strategic decisions. They translate macro signals into decisions about where to compete and how to differentiate.

Teams led by market shapers demonstrate higher proficiency in strategy, critical thinking, customer understanding, and data literacy. This allows them to ask better questions of AI systems, challenge generic outputs, and turn recommendations into executable actions.

Four Behaviors That Matter

Market shapers operate through four distinct behaviors, each accelerated by AI:

• Customer influencer: Shape preference by keeping the brand visible and trustworthy in AI-mediated journeys. This includes optimizing content for AI discovery and detecting misinformation early.
• Customer advocate: Guide enterprise priorities by synthesizing voice-of-customer signals. AI aggregates direct, indirect, and inferred feedback to ground decisions in real customer value.
• Market designer: Direct innovation toward ideas that reinforce future brand ambition. Synthetic data and rapid prototyping allow teams to test concepts before scaling investment.
• Market wayfinder: Translate disruptive signals into coherent narratives for the enterprise. AI-powered scenario planning helps anticipate risks and opportunities while brand provides the story that aligns action across functions.

Brand as Strategic Anchor

As AI accelerates commoditization and misinformation, brand becomes one of the few levers organizations can use to claim a distinctive and trustworthy position. Companies with high-performing brand strategies are twice as likely to exceed growth goals.

Market-shaping leaders treat brand as an enterprise discipline. They use AI-generated insight to update value propositions, guide innovation priorities, and protect trust. Brand strategy becomes the channel through which AI-driven insight translates into direction.

The Skills Question

Success depends on identifying which market-shaping behavior matters most and using AI to accelerate it. That requires investing in skills as much as tools, and ensuring teams can reason with AI rather than simply operate it.

Chasing every new AI capability is a mistake. Redefining success matters more. In an AI-driven world, marketing's value is measured not only by campaign performance but by its ability to guide strategic choices, protect trust, and shape how the enterprise shows up in the market.

AI will not diminish the importance of marketing leadership. It will expose the difference between those who execute and those who shape direction. Leaders who step into the market-shaper role will help their organizations navigate disruption and unlock sustainable growth.

For CMOs looking to build these capabilities, AI for CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) provides targeted training on strategic AI application and market-shaping approaches. Executives managing broader organizational transformation may find AI for Executives & Strategy resources helpful for understanding how AI reshapes competitive dynamics across functions.