Expert Advice for Marketing Leaders on MarTech, AI, & CX
Expert mode marketing technology, AI, and customer experience articles for marketers and other professionals from The Agile Brand Guide®.
The old playbooks, the reliable dashboards, and the comfortable strategies of yesterday are proving to be liabilities today. In this environment, agility isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the fundamental requirement for survival and, more importantly, for dominance. The question is no longer *if* we need to adapt, but *how* we build an operational model that can thrive amidst constant instability.
We are on the cusp of an era where our carefully crafted brand messages, sophisticated user experiences, and multi-million dollar campaigns may be interpreted not by a person, but by a machine. This is the world of agentic commerce, where consumers deploy their own AI agents to research, negotiate, and purchase on their behalf.
For enterprise marketing leaders, the mandate is clear: grow. But the path to that growth is a landscape of paradoxes. We’re tasked with building a powerful, recognizable national brand while simultaneously forging authentic, personal connections within hundreds of disparate local communities. We must harness the immense power of sophisticated MarTech stacks—AI, automation, and predictive analytics—while also recognizing that sometimes the most effective tactic is sponsoring a high school football team’s new uniforms.
In enterprise marketing, data is never in short supply. Insight, however, is a far scarcer commodity. We are swimming in dashboards, reports, and terabytes of user events, yet the fundamental story of the customer—their intent, their frustration, their multi-session, multi-device reality—often remains elusive.
Just when we thought we had a handle on the omnichannel chaos, along comes the generative AI revolution, adding a powerful, and at times bewildering, new dimension. The pace of change is no longer just fast; it’s blistering. The fear of being left behind is palpable, and the pressure to demonstrate quantifiable impact amidst this whirlwind has never been greater.
As marketing leaders, we live and die by digital metrics and measurements. We obsess over click-through rates, scroll-depth, and algorithmic favor. We’ve become masters of a world measured in pixels and milliseconds, constantly striving to capture a sliver of attention in a deafeningly loud and crowded space.
By 2026, market research won’t be defined by tools, methodologies, or new data streams. It will be defined by something far simpler: the choices researchers make about how to work with artificial intelligence.
Expedia’s research reveals how emotion, authenticity and the right mix of video and human-guided content inspire traveler wanderlust and drive bookings. This article was written by Greg Kihlström for MarTech.
The transformative potential of AI in customer experience (CX) is undeniable. While the hype around AI can be overwhelming, its practical applications are already reshaping how businesses interact with their customers. For marketing leaders, understanding how to effectively leverage AI is no longer optional, but a critical competency for success.
The rapid adoption of generative AI is transforming the customer experience landscape in profound ways. We’re moving beyond simply automating tasks and entering a new era where AI-powered interfaces adapt to individual needs, creating seamless and personalized interactions.
