AI can make marketers faster, but speed alone won’t make them better. Learn how to build AI fluency without sacrificing human judgment from members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank.
Make AI Fluency a Core Marketing Competency
Kurt Allen, Vice President of Enrollment, Marketing and Communications at Notre Dame de Namur University, believes marketing leaders should treat AI fluency as a core competency, not a technical specialty.
“Give teams opportunities to use AI on real work—research, personalization, analytics, content development and workflow automation—while teaching them to question outputs, validate insights and recognize bias,” he says. “The goal isn’t to create better prompt writers; it’s to develop better marketers who know when and how to use AI.”
Allen adds that leaders should also establish clear ethical guardrails around data, transparency and brand integrity. And while he acknowledges that AI strategy and proficiency are essential focuses for modern CMOs, Allen says that the technology doesn’t diminish what only humans can bring to the table.
“As AI makes execution faster and more accessible, strategic judgment, creativity, empathy and critical thinking become even more valuable,” he says. “The strongest teams will combine AI’s speed and scale with the distinctly human ability to understand context, customers and consequences.”