Going From Sizzle to Impact: Transforming Marketing to Unlock GenAI

By Alex Baxter , Derek Rodenhausen , Renée Laverdière , Raakhi Agrawal , Mitch Krogman , Alexandra (Oli) Gurley

Generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping marketing: Accelerating content creation, enhancing personalization, and streamlining execution. Yet, while GenAI tools continue to advance, most marketing organizations haven’t kept pace. Many teams remain stuck in experimentation, unable to integrate GenAI into core operations and decision-making.

Capturing GenAI’s full value requires more than new tools; it demands an organizational and operational model built for scale. According to BCG’s 10-20-70 framework, only 10% of GenAI’s success comes from the models themselves. The real unlock—70%—lies in people and process transformation. Unless marketing leaders rethink workflows, upskill talent, and strengthen governance, even the most advanced solutions will remain pilots rather than drivers of sustainable growth.

2025 is the year for marketing teams to move from promise to practice. Those who build the right operational foundation—focusing on a holistic, end-to-end strategy with skills and systems at its center—will turn GenAI into a lasting competitive advantage. Those who don’t risk falling behind.

Marketing’s GenAI Surge: Leading Adoption, Yet Slow to Transform

Among all business functions, marketing is at the forefront of GenAI adoption, followed by operations and research and development (BCG Build for the Future 2024 Global Study). It drives 44% of GenAI initiatives across organizations, yet its integration remains uneven. While 70% of marketing teams are actively experimenting with GenAI, just 8% have fully embedded it into core processes, showing that adoption is still in its early stages.

Even within marketing teams, daily use is not yet the norm. Only 34% of marketing-led initiatives align with broader, organization-wide strategies, and 74% of marketing leaders report that fewer than 25% of their teams use GenAI daily. This suggests that while testing is widespread, many efforts remain isolated rather than part of everyday workflows.

GenAI Roadblocks: Why Marketing Organizations Struggle to Scale

So why, despite leading in adoption, are marketing teams struggling to fully integrate GenAI? Many remain stuck in the pilot phase due to key organizational and operational gaps.

• Integration Hurdles Delay?Adoption: Organizations?are currently adopting?a diverse range of tools: 40% rely on third-party solutions like ChatGPT and Adobe, while 44% use a combination of custom-built and off-the-shelf tools.?Yet, many of these tools are still point solutions and are not yet integrated to work together.?As a result, 56%?of organizations?struggle with coordination and customization, hindering end-to-end integration.
• Teams Lack the Skills to Keep Up: Over 40% of marketing roles require significant upskilling to use GenAI tools effectively, highlighting a critical challenge: many professionals lack the skills to leverage GenAI. To address the gap, half of marketing leaders plan to overhaul hiring strategies and redefine job descriptions within three years.
• Weak Governance Creates Risk: Responsible, compliant, and ethical GenAI use is critical, but only 12% of companies have comprehensive governance frameworks. Legal risks, approval hurdles, and employee change resistance further delay organization-wide adoption and make it difficult to prioritize GenAI projects.
• GenAI Speeds Up Content Creation, But Approvals Lag: While GenAI can accelerate content generation, compliance-heavy industries like finance and health care often require manual revisions. Approximately 43% of marketing organizations must rethink their review processes to streamline workflows while maintaining quality and compliance.
• Scaling Stalls Without Clear ROI Benchmarks: Many organizations remain stuck in experimentation phases because they haven’t defined clear ROI benchmarks or best practices. Without a data-driven scaling approach, it’s challenging to prove GenAI’s long-term value to stakeholders, limiting investment in broader transformation.

GenAI’s Dual Advantage: Faster Execution, Greater Impact

While daunting, overcoming these roadblocks is a business imperative: successful GenAI integration creates transformative and quantifiable advantages. By driving both efficiency and effectiveness, GenAI enables marketing teams to scale faster, work smarter, and deliver higher-impact campaigns.

• Driving Efficiency: Streamlined Work, Smarter Spend: GenAI automates and accelerates key marketing tasks—across research and insights, content creation, and execution and measurement. By helping teams work 35% faster and reducing creative costs by up to 20%, GenAI enables more efficient workflows and improves decision-making. This, in turn, allows teams to focus on strategic, high-impact work while meeting the demands for speed and scalability.
• Boosting Effectiveness: Better Content, Bigger Results: A recent BCG survey of chief marketing officers reveals that 44% of marketers see increased output with GenAI, enabling teams to scale production and execute personalized campaigns (BCG GenAI and Marketing Operations 2024 Survey). GenAI also accelerates creative testing and improves content quality, with 30% of marketers reporting better relevance, engagement, and brand alignment—driving measurable improvements in click-through rates and overall campaign performance

The GenAI Roadmap: Building the Right Operating Model for Lasting Success

GenAI is not just a tool; it’s a growth engine. But realizing its full value requires more than layering it onto existing workflows. To scale its impact, marketing teams must focus on the 70% that drives success: how teams work. This means embedding GenAI into daily operations by transforming three key areas: workflows, talent, and agency relationships.

1. Reimagine Processes: Build Smarter, Scalable Workflows

Successful GenAI integration starts with selecting tools aligned with strategic objectives. Organizations should critically assess scalability, compatibility, and trade-offs between building proprietary tools or using third-party solutions. Once the right tools are in place, organizations should begin GenAI adoption by testing high-impact use cases and scaling systematically to drive measurable improvements.

2. Empower Talent: Upskill for the GenAI Era

GenAI is boosting productivity, cutting the time spent on tasks like graphic design and social media management by 30%–40%. It is also reshaping roles: content managers now refine AI outputs, while analysts focus on interpreting AI-driven insights. To adapt, organizations must evaluate changing workflows, invest in AI fluency and prompt engineering training, and update hiring strategies to prioritize GenAI expertise. Fostering flexibility, creativity, and experimentation will empower teams to thrive in an AI-driven landscape.

3. Rethink Agencies: Make Strategy the Priority

As GenAI transforms marketing, organizations are reevaluating their agency relationships. 42% of firms anticipate responsibilities shifting from agencies to internal teams within the next three years, with many also planning to build in-house “content factories” to streamline production. This shift enables agencies to focus on higher-value work. To adapt, agencies and organizations must collaborate on transparent GenAI workflows. While 64% of companies report no changes in pricing, flexible, performance-based models are gaining traction to align costs with value delivered.

?Is Your Marketing Organization Ready?

GenAI tools have advanced rapidly, but most organizations haven’t built the foundation to keep up. Without the right talent, skills, workflows, and operating model—the 70% that drives organizational success—companies will struggle to unlock the full value of GenAI.

2025 must be the year marketing teams move beyond ideation and experimentation and embed GenAI into day-to-day processes. Ultimately, maximizing GenAI isn’t a technology challenge; it’s an organizational one. The choice is clear: Will you adapt for scale or risk being left behind?