Future of Marketing Briefing: The brands winning at AI started with process not tech

"They're deploying agents into workflows, mapping tools onto current organization structures and then wondering why the gains are marginal. A strategy agent here, a creative ideation tool there. Useful, but not really transformative. What they're producing, as one person I spoke to put it, are faster versions of the wrong thing."

"The brands that are actually getting somewhere are asking a different question first: not what agent is necessary, but what process needs to change before anything is built. It sounds obvious. Yet, few are doing it. And the ones that are tend to be the ones facing the most acute pressure. The automotive brands rattled by Chinese EVs, the financial services firms staring down fintech competition."

""You've got the ability to plug AI on top of anything right now, but if you don't plug it into something that's structurally built, your outputs are not going to be relevant whatsoever.""

""When you build a home, it can be the most beautiful thing on the outside, but if you forget to pour the concrete foundation, the first storm is going to blow it over." The foundation, in his case, was a year spent cleaning data, fixing taxonomy, and building the infrastructure that makes it possible to prompt a system and get a relevant output in 10 minutes."

AI adoption often fails when agents are inserted into existing workflows without changing underlying processes. Deploying a strategy agent or ideation tool can speed up work but still produce the wrong outcomes, leading to marginal gains. Brands that make progress begin by identifying what process must change before building anything. This approach is more common among organizations under intense competitive pressure, such as automotive and financial services firms. AI infrastructure leaders emphasize that AI outputs become relevant only when connected to structurally built systems. Building AI capabilities requires foundational work like cleaning data, fixing taxonomy, and creating infrastructure that enables relevant outputs quickly.

Read at Digiday