Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

Panacea or Emperor’s New Clothes?

Has AI has turned marketing into a live experiment?

In my interviews in The Drum with senior-level marketers, the variety of AI adoption is huge. Where some teams are barely touching it, others are using it daily, across insight, planning, production and optimisation. Most are somewhere in the middle: curious, slightly wary, and trying to separate what genuinely helps from what merely makes a nice demo or rapidly becomes an expensive mistake.

In this breakfast briefing we want to hear from our community: senior-level marketers currently incorporating AI into their systems and workflows.

We’ll look at the brands using AI to real effect, and explore the moments where leaders have been burned by tools that over-promise and under-deliver for teams, budgets, governance and even outcomes.

Hosted by Rachael Pollard, CMO at Uswitch

Our guest curator, Rachael Pollard, has championed digital change for years, approaching AI with pace and rigour. Her fire-side chat will be followed by a panel of marketing leaders – Cassandra Hall (Motorway), Jay Safdar (Lloyds Bank), Nicola Collins (EDF), Adam Evans (Domestic & General), Olivia Butter (Klarna) and Jakob Nielsen (Broadlab) – sharing what’s working, what’s failed, and what they’d do differently with the benefit of hindsight.

We also have Ian Crocombe (Deft) giving us his report from AI implementation for large organisations and small. What works. What does not.

And the cherry on top: comedian Ken Cheng will offer unparalleled expertise on how all CEOs should behave when presented with AI.

What we’re hearing from the front line

What’s proving useful:

• AI is far more valuable than post-writing and summarising decks.

• AI is strong in kind learning work: structured tasks where feedback is clear and repetition improves output.

• Used well, it can remove friction, shorten cycles, and free teams for higher-value thinking.

• “Vibe coding” is here to stay. Marketers should understand what it changes inside a team and for workflows.

Where it disappoints:

• Serious businesses are not trusting AI to predict marketing results with any confidence.

• AI doesn’t deliver strategy. It can support strategic work, but will never lead it.

• Automating all creative is a direct route to sameness. Blandness scales beautifully but flattens effectiveness.

• AI struggles with wicked learning work: ambiguous problems, shifting contexts, and decisions where judgement matters more than pattern.

(With thanks to Tim Clancy for the kind vs wicked learning metaphor.)

What you’ll leave with:

• A clearer view of where AI can improve your marketing function, quickly and safely

• Practical examples from peers, including mistakes worth avoiding

• Collective insight you can take straight into planning, capability building and governance

The format:

Breakfast, sharp conversation, and plenty of time with peers.

We’re bringing together 100 senior marketing leaders across B2B and B2C brands for keynote conversation, a candid panel, and roundtable discussion engineered to inspire and inform.

Register now to secure your seat for what promises to be a punchy September session.