Launching 'The Agentic CMO': Why Marketing Leaders Need to Evolve
Why I wrote The Agentic CMO — and why the marketing leadership model needs a fundamental rethink for the age of AI agents.
Originally published in Chronicles of Change, 2025.
After two years of writing this newsletter — exploring AI’s impact on marketing, the ethics of data, the mechanics of transformation — I’ve reached the conclusion that the conversation we need to be having isn’t about tools, tactics, or technology. It’s about leadership.
Why a Book, Why Now
The Agentic CMO began as a framework I developed while leading global marketing at S&P Global. The question that kept recurring — from my team, from peers, from boards — was deceptively simple: “How should marketing leadership change when AI can do most of what marketers do?”
The answer, I discovered, isn’t “it shouldn’t” or “just adopt AI tools.” It’s far more fundamental. The entire operating model of marketing — how teams are structured, how decisions are made, how success is measured, how talent is developed — needs to be reimagined for a world where AI agents are first-class members of the marketing organisation.
The Core Thesis
The Agentic CMO isn’t about becoming more technical. It’s about developing a new kind of leadership literacy — the ability to design, deploy, and govern hybrid teams of humans and AI agents. This requires:
Architectural thinking. The Agentic CMO designs marketing functions, not just marketing campaigns. They think in systems — workflows, feedback loops, governance frameworks — rather than channels and tactics.
Governance instinct. When AI agents can make thousands of decisions per hour, the leader’s role shifts from decision-maker to decision-architect. You don’t approve every action; you design the guardrails, set the parameters, and monitor the outcomes.
Human-AI fluency. Understanding what humans do best, what AI does best, and how to orchestrate the two is the core competency. This isn’t about technical AI knowledge — it’s about organisational design in a new paradigm.
Ethical clarity. AI amplifies both capability and risk. The Agentic CMO must navigate questions of bias, transparency, data ethics, and algorithmic accountability that previous generations of marketing leaders never faced.
What the Book Covers
The book is structured around five pillars:
- The Agentic Framework — A model for understanding how marketing organisations evolve from traditional, through automated, to truly agentic
- Designing the Hybrid Team — Practical approaches to structuring human-AI marketing teams
- The Governance Layer — How to maintain control, compliance, and brand integrity when AI agents are executing at scale
- The Transformation Playbook — A phased approach to evolving your marketing function, based on real-world implementation
- The Human Element — Why the most important skills for an Agentic CMO are deeply human: judgment, ethics, creativity, and empathy
For Whom
I wrote this for the marketing leader who senses that the current playbook is becoming obsolete but isn’t sure what replaces it. The one who’s been told to “use more AI” without anyone explaining what that actually means at an organisational level. The CMO who knows that adding a few AI tools to existing workflows isn’t transformation — it’s renovation.
The Chronicles Continue
This newsletter will continue alongside the book. If anything, writing The Agentic CMO has given me more to say, not less. The ideas are evolving, the landscape is shifting, and the conversation is just beginning.
The age of the Agentic CMO isn’t coming. It’s here. The question is whether you’ll lead the transformation or be transformed by it.