TL;DR: This article explores the second of the three distinct eras of marketing and technology that will shape the future: the AI Acceleration Era (2026-2028). It examines the defining characteristics and shifts of the Acceleration era, drawing insights from marketing professionals and experts. The section also identifies and explores the strategic imperative that marketers should adopt to stay competitive during the mid-stages of AI’s impact on marketing.
- The AI Acceleration Era: dramatic acceleration in AI integration and utility
- Building a Human and AI Workflow. Case Study: PHD
The AI Acceleration Era (2026-2028)
Overall, this era will witness a dramatic acceleration in AI integration and its utility within marketing processes. As comfort with the technology increases and its capabilities become more sophisticated, businesses begin to:
- Automate routine work: An increasing adoption of AI platforms will handle simple tasks like scheduling social media posts, creating reports, and answering basic customer questions. This will free up employees to focus on more important work.
- More Holistic Marketing Optimization: There will be increased use of online gen-AI-powered media and marketing platforms. These platforms will automatically make decisions across various factors, such as audience, context, and content. This will free up individuals to focus on more strategic functions.
- Generative Personalization: Generative AI will enable new levels of content personalization based on individual characteristics and preferences. This will particularly impact on-site experiences and CRM systems for consented audiences, creating more relevant and engaging customer interactions.
These changes will make marketing more efficient and effective, allowing companies to do more with their resources.
From Generating to Developing
As we move into the Acceleration Era, the belief in generative AI taking over executive functions begins to increase. The percentage of people believing that the Generating executive function will be replaced by AI remains very high at 38%, with an increasing number now seeing the need for retraining (43%) – as individuals largely move to more of a Developing function.
In essence, everyone is promoted to the executive level, irrespective of their seniority. Junior creative
Joanna O'Connell, Chief Intelligence Officer, OMG NA – Interviewed June 2024
teams function as executive creative directors, assessing the output of the generative AI, refining with feedback, and developing with further creativity. The most junior planner is now an executive planning director, assessing the strategic suggestions from AI and refining and shaping.
In this era, we expect to see the increasing prevalence of enterprise AI clouds with conversational interfaces for their employees – this will significantly change what it means to be able to sense the requirements of the business (a conversation with an intelligent voice to help people discern what is needed to move forward a brand or business). Hence, there is a significant increase in the percentage of respondents who believe generative AI will require retraining for the Sensing function – doubling from 30% to 57%.
This leads to an upskilling of the upstream role of the individual, with time freed up from the procedural. At this point, the Actioning function is predicted to be significantly impacted as an increasing range of AI-automated platforms will have launched, combined with internal utilities created to automate tasks. These will lead to displacement, freeing people to move to other tasks (or organizations) – higher value tasks that drive greater marketing impact.
This will require a significant learning and development investment, with 45% predicting a need for retraining for Actioning functions and highlighting the growing importance of skill development to effectively implement AI-assisted marketing plans.
Building a Human and AI Workflow
Case Study: PHD
Generative AI throughout the comms planning journey
Generative AI holds great potential to accelerate and elevate the practice of communications planning, but its effective application requires careful consideration. With AI configuration at each stage of the process, it is tailored for each specific task required. Engineered prompts reference wider data through a context window or with RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). With reinforcement algorithms, the prompt learns over time—either from user feedback or performance data.
However, it’s not just the artificial intelligence that requires careful configuration – in a sense, that is the easy bit. Human intelligence must also be reconfigured to ensure the greatest benefits from this symbiotic partnership.
By establishing a partnership between human expertise and technological potential, we can create a workflow where every planner has what is, in effect, a team of AIs, each with a different specialist skill—from data analysis to desk research to strategic generation to innovation.
This partnership necessitates the development of the strategist and planner, with existing functions deprioritized for new ones—A ‘re-tooling.’ As such, the roles and required skill sets of communications planners must also evolve.
This new AI-augmented approach to planning requires judgement, and therefore, a more experienced, senior-level, planner. Agencies need to lift their strategists and planners up to what is, in effect, an executive strategy/planning level, where their key role is less about generating the solution but instead sensing, visioning, developing, and judging on what is generated by the AI.
This shift requires an investment in new forms of training for strategists and planners.
Source: PHD
Learning and Development Program: Strategists/Planner Training
The most important aspect will be evaluating ideas and recommendations provided by the cognitive assistant. A highly advanced intuitive sense of what good looks like is required. For this, training must focus on projecting forward from the suggestions towards real-world application, assessing opportunities for extension into other aspects of a connections plan, and a deep knowledge bank of how and why previous campaigns have been effective or ineffective.
Malcolm Devoy, Chief Planning Officer, PHD Worldwide – Interviewed June 2024
With AI generating the output, the strategist/planner must also be able to collaborate with multi-specialism teams (and agencies) and direct the application of the solution beyond their typical specialism. Training must focus on broadening their expertise into areas such as retail and e-commerce, creators and influencers, PR and creative, and measurement and analytics.
The Four Key Training Modules:
Reverse Engineering Excellence: What does good look like – assessing highly effective campaign case studies, decomposing what are the elements that make it successful.
Marketing Science: A grounding in the latest principles underpinning brand growth – essential for effective judgment and development of the campaign.
Slavi Samardzija, Chief Experience Officer, Annalect – Interviewed June 2024
Workflow Working: Training on how to lead
and/or be part of a multi-discipline team across organizations and geographies. With assigned roles at different stages of the campaign development process.
Full-Spectrum Marketing: An understanding of the wider set of marketing capabilities required today – from areas such as creator portfolio management through to brand extension development. Essential for developing the campaign beyond the AI.
Organizations that invest in this development will extract the greatest potential from the generative AI revolution and be ready for the next developments as we move towards an intelligent platform where AI takes more control.
