GenAI hit the ground running a few years ago and has not dropped a step since. As the technology continues to develop, GenAI has become an essential tool for marketers, as well as others. 

Three-quarters of marketing leaders say that GenAI will greatly impact their operations within the next couple of years, as marketing roles, skills and how organizations think continue to evolve. However, for most of these leaders, it’s unclear how their teams’ talents will need to evolve to adapt to the changes.

One change that has been apparent is that marketing work is changing from handling tasks to directing strategies, in collaboration with GenAI. In an AI-first environment, marketers will shift from creating campaigns to directing marketing strategies that design multi-channel efforts and integrate customer data that drives highly-personalized strategies.

New Roles Are Coming

Some of the new roles that are evolving for AI-first marketing operations include:

• AI content strategists to coordinate the group effort of content creation between humans and AI.
• Prompt engineers to create the prompts that produce AI outputs.
• Data curators to prepare organizational databases for integration with AI.
• Ethical AI officers to oversee marketing outputs and ensure compliance and awareness of biases.
• Customer journey architects to design customer experiences to respond to consumers in real time.
  

Over 70% of marketers see a remarkable change coming to their staff talent profiles within the next three years in response to GenAI.

Compressed Organization Structure and Timelines

Marketing hierarchies are being compressed, as fewer layers can help with speeding up decision cycles and increasing autonomy. Rather than adding more staff, marketers are adding capabilities. Dynamic content calendars are based on engagement in real time. Predictive models are being used to shift budgets as needed. Campaign launch, testing and optimization are happening within days instead of months.

Upskilling Now a Must

Upskilling is no longer “nice to have.” It’s a necessity. Marketers should be cross-trained to optimize use of AI tools. Organizations who are successful with AI implementation are ensuring AI literacy across their organizations, while the less successful organizations are shunting AI off to their IT teams. According to Deloitte, AI-focused upskilling leads to more significant values achievement.

Mindset of Leadership

A whole new way of thinking is required for successful GenAI adoption: teams, processes, possibilities and culture. Marketing executives must work to ensure their teams and processes evolve as needed.

GenAI is here. What is your organization doing to adapt?