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The CMO Balancing Act II

A playbook for the CMO entering the AI era: achieving equilibrium to build human-led, AI-enabled competitive advantage

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  • Marketing strategy
  • Artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Customer experience
  • Customer retention
  • Marketing Trends
16 Jun 2026
20 minute read


The CMO Balancing Act II: Lead the Growth Agenda in the AI Era.

 


Today’s CMO faces a new balancing act: harness the power of AI while amplifying human creativity. Deliver operational efficiency while building lasting customer value. Orchestrate enterprise-wide transformation while strengthening the brand’s role as a growth engine.

 

It’s no longer enough to market the business. Increasingly, CMOs are being asked to help redesign it.

 

Deloitte Digital’s latest report, ‘The CMO Balancing Act II’, explores how marketing leaders can achieve equilibrium in an AI-enabled world. Combining AI-powered analysis of more than 110 industry reports with insights from senior marketing leaders, the report provides a practical playbook for navigating the next era of growth.

 


Download 'The CMO Balancing Act II' and discover how to:

 

  • Reimagine Your Operating Model: Move beyond traditional marketing structures and become the orchestrator of end-to-end customer experiences. Simplify operations, unlock efficiencies and reinvest resources into the capabilities that create sustainable competitive advantage.
 
  • Build the Tech Stack of the Future: Shift from adopting individual tools to creating connected, AI-enabled systems. Harness the power of AI agents, strengthen your data foundations and develop technology strategies that create value for both customers and the business.
 
  • Rethink the Agency Power Play: Redefine the role of agency partnerships in an AI-driven world. Blend external expertise with in-house capabilities, reshape commercial models and unlock new ways of delivering creative excellence at scale.

 

  • Recraft Creativity for the AI Era: Cut through the content deluge and build brands that people trust. Balance AI-powered production with human insight, originality and creative judgement to create distinctive experiences that drive loyalty and growth.
 
  • Win the War for Talent: As AI reshapes marketing, uniquely human skills become increasingly valuable. Develop the capabilities, leadership models and talent strategies needed to combine human ingenuity with machine intelligence and create an enduring competitive advantage.

 

  • Become the Architect of Growth: Move beyond functional leadership and step into a broader enterprise role. Align customer experience, technology, talent and brand strategy to shape new opportunities, unlock growth and lead transformation from the front.

 

 

REPORT

The CMO Balancing Act II