Paul’s Perspective:
AI collapses the historical boundary between marketing and IT. The CMO can’t deliver personalization, content velocity, and measurement without reliable data pipelines, identity, and governance—and the CIO can’t prioritize platforms without a clear view of customer growth bets.
The leadership move is to treat AI as an enterprise capability with shared outcomes, not a set of departmental tools. That forces decisions on ownership (who runs what), guardrails (privacy, security, model risk), and funding (platform vs. use-case budgets).
Companies that align early will compound learning faster and scale repeatable patterns. Those that don’t will burn cycles on disconnected experiments, inconsistent data, and escalating compliance exposure.
Key Points in Article:
- AI success depends on first-party data quality, consent, and access—forcing tighter coordination on data architecture, privacy, and security.
- Shared KPIs help prevent “pilot purgatory” by tying AI use cases to measurable revenue impact, cost-to-serve reduction, or cycle-time improvements.
- Operating-model choices matter: central platform teams can standardize tools and guardrails while embedded squads keep use cases close to customer needs.
- Vendor and tool sprawl increases cost and risk; rationalizing the martech/AI stack reduces duplicated spend and fragmented customer insights.
Strategic Actions:
- Define a joint CMO–CIO agenda for AI tied to customer and growth priorities.
- Inventory priority AI use cases across marketing, sales, and customer experience.
- Assess first-party data readiness: quality, identity resolution, permissions, and access.
- Establish shared governance for privacy, security, and model risk management.
- Agree on a target architecture and operating model (central platform with embedded delivery teams).
- Rationalize overlapping tools and vendors to reduce stack complexity and cost.
- Set shared KPIs and accountability for business outcomes, not activity metrics.
- Scale successful pilots into standardized, reusable capabilities and workflows.
Dive deeper > Full Story:
The Bottom Line:
- AI turns marketing and technology into a shared operating model, not separate functions, and weak alignment slows growth and raises risk.
- Align your CMO and CIO on joint priorities, shared data governance, and clear accountability for AI outcomes.
Ready to Explore More?
If you want to tighten CMO–CIO alignment around AI, we can help you prioritize the highest-value use cases and put the data, governance, and operating model in place. Reply if you’d like to compare notes on what that looks like in your organization.
