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“You don’t find out who’s been swimming naked until the tide goes out,” renowned investor Warren Buffett once said to characterize how vulnerabilities become apparent when adversity hits. It applies perfectly to marketing today.
Consumer brands once found success by excelling in a single area—whether that was advanced performance marketing or standout branding. But the rise of generative artificial intelligence has changed the game. To unlock its full potential, generative AI demands more across four Cs of marketing, as shown in the chart.
To understand what separates the fastest growers in market share and revenue, Bain & Company surveyed more than 1,200 senior marketers globally. Compared with other companies, the leaders achieved median revenue growth that was six times higher, while their average marketing outlays were just one-and-a-half times greater. This implies a four-times-higher marketing return on investment.
AI has become critical to such success. Marketing leaders are 10 times more likely than laggards to view AI and machine learning as core capabilities—ones correlated with more than double the sales growth, on average. And they scale generative AI broadly, from customer experience to media buying, campaign optimization to creative testing.
These leaders don’t stop at AI-driven workflow redesign. They enrich first-party data and use predictive analytics to better anticipate consumer needs. They experiment relentlessly with formats, channels, and audiences. And they own the creative process, integrating emerging tools like agentic AI search.
In a content-saturated, always-on world, relevance is harder—and more critical—than ever to achieve. The best marketers marry technical fluency with insights that inform human storytelling, and it’s paying off in market share and growth.
Published in June 2025