Marketing is at a critical juncture where artificial intelligence (AI) can either accelerate growth or quietly undermine it. While AI unlocks new creativity and innovation, a narrow focus on productivity risks shrinking budgets, diminishing marketing’s influence, and limiting its contribution to enterprise value. The role of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in driving the AI agenda will determine whether marketing is seen merely as a cost to control or as a multiplier for growth. Research conducted with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) reveals that leading marketers generate 79% greater total shareholder value than peers and, importantly, explains why. This insight is based on extensive historical data across 11 sectors and interviews with over 30 CMOs and CFOs, linking creativity, brand strength, and financial performance. The findings highlight a vital distinction: using AI narrowly makes marketing cheaper—faster content, smaller budgets, leaner teams—while strategic AI use makes marketing indispensable by unlocking new growth, profitability, and enterprise value. As a CMO from a consumer goods firm stated, AI should be viewed as a growth tool, not merely for efficiency. Data shows companies using AI beyond speed and cost-cutting achieve over twice the marketing-driven profitability by being more creative, relevant, and growth-focused—a process requiring clear strategy, intent, and leadership. To maximize AI’s benefits, marketing leaders must prioritize evidence demonstrating marketing’s role in value creation, forge trusted alliances with C-suite leaders that connect marketing to business growth, and lead with a vision that avoids short-term cost-cutting in favor of reinvestment for sustainable growth. The strategic choice is clear: will AI be used just to manage costs or to drive growth?This depends on how CMOs present marketing’s value to the C-suite. Current economic pressures—high inflation, slower growth, rising capital costs—are tightening budgets, with marketing often targeted as a cost rather than an investment. AI is frequently framed as an automation tool that enables doing the same work with less, tempting CFOs to cut spending for short-term gains. However, such cuts rarely return benefits. Marketers must own the narrative, demonstrating how AI boosts marketing’s impact on enterprise value or risk marginalization in leadership. This is not a typical cost-cutting cycle. As a pharma marketing leader put it, “AI can’t fix a broken system but accelerates what works, ” making orchestration marketing’s crucial skill. Properly applied, AI renews marketing’s mandate rather than ending it. The ANA collaboration analyzed over 190 companies using five years of data and over 5, 000 Cannes Lions awards to measure creative quality and effectiveness—marking the first use of such prestigious datasets to link marketing success with business outcomes. The analysis connects these insights to marketing’s historic value creation: $1. 3 trillion in brand equity across top brands, $170 billion annual marketing spending over 11 sectors, and $1. 8 trillion in shareholder returns annually. One clear truth emerges: excelling across execution, brand strength, and profit creates a flywheel effect where leading marketers generate 79% higher shareholder value by activating all three dimensions synergistically. While each dimension matters individually, their combined effect produces outsized returns. Still, CMOs face challenges. It’s insufficient to cite industry leaders’ success; one must prove marketing’s value within one’s own company.

As a global consumer products executive emphasized, marketing must focus on outcomes, not just outputs, which hinges on effectively engaging the CEO and CFO. Without translating marketing achievements into clear financial terms, efforts risk being dismissed as mere activity rather than impactful value generation. Leading CMOs build trust by converting marketing metrics like marketing ROI (mROI) and brand lift—often seen as unclear—into financial metrics linked directly to revenue, margins, and shareholder value. This approach turns finance from a spending gatekeeper into a growth partner, embedding marketing investments within the company’s financial framework and earning comparable rigor and rewards as other capital allocations. With CEOs, top CMOs act as growth strategists aligned with enterprise priorities, showcasing how marketing drives competitive advantage, short-term profits, and long-term value, thus securing their role as core strategists and marketing as a growth engine. Interviews with CMOs and CFOs revealed stark differences in approach: leading marketers focus on clarity, ensuring every marketing metric supports business outcomes, thereby solidifying marketing’s contribution on the profit and loss statement. AI can automate tasks like content adaptation, segmentation, insights, reporting, and even creative idea generation, freeing time and budget. Typically, B2C and B2B marketers allocate 20-25% and 35-40%, respectively, of their efforts to creative production. AI’s ability to deliver near-term savings makes it attractive to CFOs aiming to do more with less. But stopping at efficiency is a mistake. As a healthcare CMO noted, AI’s greatest benefit is objectivity, eliminating waste and bias and creating space for creativity. Short-term savings risk relegating marketing to a cost center rather than elevating it as a growth driver. AI enhances creative quality and activation, improving ideation, concept testing, and prediction of market trends, enabling highly personalized, dynamic content and precise targeting through predictive analytics. Customer journeys become personalized and anticipatory across channels. Beyond optimizing existing campaigns, AI opens new growth avenues by identifying untapped customers, finding hidden product opportunities, and suggesting new market approaches. Importantly, AI democratizes capabilities, enabling smaller markets and brands access to insights and creativity previously reserved for large budgets—facilitating breakthrough marketing at scale. For example, some consumer packaged goods teams now employ AI for “many-to-many” engagement models. The greatest returns occur when efficiency gains are reinvested into increased marketing effectiveness; such strategies can yield over twice the profitability compared to focusing only on cost reduction. Outstanding marketing drives exceptional shareholder returns. Viewing AI as a growth enabler, not merely a cost-cutter, can further amplify marketing’s impact. A leader from a global energy company summarized it well: “Efficiency is the easy part. Real value comes when AI changes how we create and compete. ” This shift—from short-term efficiency to long-term effectiveness—distinguishes leaders and necessitates clear, evidence-based communication to help C-suite partners grasp marketing’s long-term value. CMOs, working with CFOs and CEOs, must choose whether AI serves this quarter’s margins or fuels growth for the coming decade. The research confirms marketing as a consistent engine of value: execution builds brand strength, strong brands enhance marketing profitability, and this combination drives enterprise returns. AI does not alter this equation but advances it. Marketing leaders now have a limited opportunity to demonstrate to boards how AI can strengthen this value-creation flywheel—an opportunity that will not remain open indefinitely.