Almost a year ago, I recommended that chief marketing officers should “hire an economist or chief economist” to weather a perfect storm of challenges that included changing consumer behavior, rapid technological advancements, and economic uncertainty.
Earlier this month, nearly 200 economists and tech leaders signed a letter to policymakers warning that AI “could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement.” Basically, the letter called for policymakers to do more to understand and respond to potential disruptions from artificial intelligence.
Very few CMOs have hired an economist or chief economist. And I’m skeptical that policymakers are going to move as quickly as artificial intelligence, which is transforming the economy faster than any previous technology. So, as most managers, directors, and executives plan their marketing budgets for 2027 sometime after Labor Day, they may want to recall what the poet June Jordan wrote back in 1978, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” What should they do?
They should start by using an audience research tool to find out who their target customers are, what they are doing, and why they are doing it.
Then, they should craft a prompt like this one:
“Based on original reporting, research, data analysis, or evaluation from authoritative and trustworthy sources with industry experience and expertise, should I consider shifting my budget into some entirely new categories? Yes, I know this could trigger the dreaded reorg or agency review. But now is the time to analyze what’s working and what isn’t without fear or favor. How should I proceed over the next six weeks before I need to submit my budget for 2027?”
Next, they should enter this prompt into Google to compare what the AI Overview and AI Mode recommend. They should also enter this same prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to evaluate what all three recommend. In addition, they should fact-check, ground truth, and look for the receipt of whatever recommendations search and AI tools make.
Finally, they should adopt David Ogilvy’s old-school practice of “going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret,” which he recommended in his classic book, Ogilvy on Advertising.
I did most of this last week, although I updated Ogilvy’s suggestions. Instead, I came up with some critical data, market trends, strategic insights, and tactical advice.
The legacy channel buckets on most 2026 budget templates are measuring a version of the customer journey that is disappearing. Ewan McIntyre, the Gartner analyst who runs the firm’s CMO Spend Survey, put numbers on how fast. CMOs are now allocating 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, yet only 30% say their organizations are actually ready to scale that investment. At the same time, awareness and conversion now claim 62.6% of total media spend, a jump of more than 10% since 2024, while spending on loyalty and retention has fallen 29% to…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
