Author: Greg Kihlström

CMOs need to build AI governance and readiness infrastructure now, before the agentic commerce wave fully arrives. The technology is outpacing organizational capability, consumer trust is more fragile than vendor narratives suggest, and budget authority is shifting toward finance. Those who will lead in the months and years ahead…

The promise is intoxicating: “instant users” available 24/7, capable of testing a prototype in minutes rather than weeks, all for a fraction of the cost of recruiting human participants.

What if your AI system is working exactly as designed… and still making your business worse? If you can’t clearly measure AI performance, you can’t confidently say it’s working. Many organizations deploy AI with strong pilots and impressive dashboards but lack a consistent evaluation framework once the system is…

This article was written for CustomerThink by Greg Kihlström. The Medallia 2026 State of Customer Experience Report reveals a disconnect between how brands perceive the quality of experiences they provide and the consumer reality. While 66% of customer experience practitioners believe experience quality is on the rise, only 17%…

Three interconnected themes dominate the latest enterprise marketing intelligence: the rapid maturation of agentic AI as a commerce and customer experience layer; the growing consumer trust deficit around AI-generated brand content; and the organizational readiness gap that is preventing marketing teams from capturing AI’s full potential. Together, these themes…

The AI conversation in marketing has officially moved past “should we use it?” to “who owns it, and is our data good enough to make it work?” Two HBR pieces this week hit on something CMOs need to take seriously: the C-suite battle over AI governance is happening right…

Recent intelligence points to a single strategic imperative for CMOs: the marketing function must be rebuilt for an AI-mediated world, not just augmented with AI tools. The shift from human-driven to agent-mediated discovery, purchase, and loyalty is not a future scenario — it is an active transition. McKinsey’s $3-5…

After decades of “spend-to-learn” advertising, are you still paying for consumer insights that AI can generate for free, before a single dollar of media spend?

In short, “creation sprawl” refers to the AI-driven proliferation of small tools and automations across marketing that outpaces oversight, leading to inconsistency, risk and rework. Let’s explore how we got here, and what can be done about it

The latest intelligence converges on a single, urgent message for marketing leaders: the AI transition is no longer a future planning exercise — it is a present-tense leadership test. Three interconnected themes dominate the landscape: