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At Cannes Lions 2026, Mark Abraham, BCG's global leader, marketing and sales, talked about how CMOs are in the "driver's seat" of AI transformation, and how generative engine optimization is forcing leaders to think strategically about where and how content shows up.

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00:00So if there's one skill that CMOs need to have in the future,
00:04it's curiosity.
00:06I don't think we have all the answers.
00:08And no CMO does.
00:11But the curious CMO will find them.
00:18They're setting up teams of AI wizards who
00:22are testing and learning the new tools
00:24and constantly moving forward the way they do marketing.
00:29And then they take the best of those experiments
00:32and scale them quickly.
00:33I think that spirit of curiosity will
00:36have to start at the top but also permeate the entire marketing
00:39organization of the future.
00:41So this year at Cannes, CMOs are really
00:44feeling in the hot seat.
00:46For the first time ever, more than half of CMOs
00:50told us in our annual CMO survey that they're
00:52in the driver's seat of their own AI transformation.
00:56That means they're making the decisions
00:58on the AI investments in the marketing function.
01:01But with great power comes great responsibility.
01:04They actually have to deliver on the ROI and the results now.
01:08So in Cannes, they're looking to have the real conversations.
01:12They're looking to dig into what works and what doesn't.
01:15And how they can close the gap between a transformation illusion
01:19and transformation reality.
01:21So a great example of how agentech marketing is playing out
01:25is in the beauty industry.
01:27Beauty brands are investing in new tools and new approaches,
01:31not just in content creation, but in insights generation,
01:35how they write briefs, then how they create the content,
01:39and how they optimize and activate that content.
01:42So what it means for marketers is a much more strategic process
01:47where they get to spend time not on the manual work,
01:50but on the joy of creating great campaigns with strategic targeting,
01:54with better ideas, and better back and forth with the agencies
01:58spent on the creative process.
02:00And for customers, that means much sharper targeting
02:03of what the brand stands for, much easier discovery,
02:07including in the LLMs and on the websites and ads of brands themselves,
02:13so they can find the products they love more easily.
02:17Brands are having to build an entirely new capability
02:20around discoverability in LLMs.
02:23And they're setting up new teams around AEO and GEO to do that.
02:28That means they have to rethink their entire content strategy,
02:33not just on their own website, but also around the entire internet.
02:37Because LLMs, at the end of the day, look at the brand
02:40in all the places that they show up, not just to consumers,
02:44but also in a way that a machine can move.
02:47Now, I think strategic brands are not just trying to optimize their content.
02:54They're actually thinking about what part of the journey
02:57customers should have in the LLMs, how they provide the best information,
03:03the best context for that, where they even think about advertising
03:07directly inside the LLMs, and then where they want to own
03:10that conversation themselves and their own channels.
03:13In the age of agentic commerce, brands have to develop a strategic capability
03:18around how they want to be discovered, have conversations with customers,
03:23and then actually transact with customers inside and outside of LLMs.
03:28They're setting up AEO teams that curate content across the internet
03:32and their own websites so that LLMs can help customers discover them.
03:36But then they're making strategic choices on where they want to continue
03:40that conversation inside the LLMs versus direct it to their own websites
03:45and channels they directly control.
03:48These are some of the most strategic choices brands are making now for the future.
03:52And, we'll see you later.
03:52We'll be back in the next video.
03:52We'll see you later.
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