If there was any anxiety about the spread of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the marketing ecosystem, the 390 delegates at this year’s PHD BrainScape conference are no longer feeling it.
The conference at the Bluewaters Forum by Banyan Tree, which gathered marketers, agency professionals and media owners, presented them with a broad perspective of the opportunities and benefits for the marketing community, businesses and the creative economy.
The event featured Mark Holden, PHD’s Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, Alex Connock, Senior Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, author and entrepreneur, and social scientist, researcher, author and entrepreneur, Léa Steinacker.
They shared their individual take on what the future holds for marketing and media professionals in the world of AI and how to rise and thrive in it.
AI: A tool controlled by humans
The first key take away is that AI, as a tool and a colleague, which relies on training data and prompts to execute commands, will continue to require human intervention.
This keeps us in control. Another is that creative work and innovation, requires motivation and emotion. However, current AI models of creativity focus primarily on cognitive dimensions and lack cultural context and personality factors.
“Our gut is often called our second brain and plays a major part in our ability to feel and analyse,” explained Steinacker. “AI models can’t reproduce that or the irreverence and unpredictability of human genius. This allows us to look and move forward rather than constantly looking behind.”
During the event, Steinacker explained that the future belongs to those who can develop those ‘centaur skills,’ combining human creativity with the computational power of AI.
Connock explained that AI will lead to a creative explosion. “It will happen with AI [and] not in spite of it. It doesn’t mean we’re losing our creative agency to technology, because we remain the ultimate creators,” he said.
Connock also highlighted the opportunity for media to license their data to train AI models, offering a solution to the thorny issue of copyright. He also delved into the crucial issue of the use of AI for reinforcement learning and recommendation engines to surface content, brands and products, while consumers are modelled and readied for optimisation.
“What’s really exciting is the developments in emotionally intelligent models, generative search and AI optimisation,” he said. “Marketers who can master these will get a bigger share of the future. And it starts now, not in five years’ time.”
However, human marketers require better education on AI
At the event, Holden shared the results of a survey of 700 marketers around the world by PHD and WARC, which highlighted the urgency to remove barriers to AI.
The results revealed that 86 per cent of marketers, from in-house brand teams and agencies, do not have the sufficient knowledge levels to lead their respective organisations/clients in AI.
This emphasises the importance of acquiring, developing and applying knowledge to marketers in the region.
Another key barrier is technical apprehension. Holden revealed the lack of technical expertise in Generative AI was more acutely felt among client-side marketers.
“Gen AI is a major Cambrian explosion set to upend the world,” said Holden. “We all need to get ready now.”
Holden also predicted that marketers need to prepare for the next age of GenAI. “After an initial period of experimentation, organisations must gear up for the upcoming acceleration era (2026-2028), where AI integration will rapidly increase,” he said.
Holden explained that investing in AI-focused training and development is critical for scaling AI solutions across an organisation and strengthening the skills of human marketers.
“The real magic happens when we power with Gen-AI and machine learning to build Enterprise AI, leveraging Frontier Models to go from assistants to agents,” Holden said, and further explained that CMOs can expect to become owner-operators of their organisation’s large language models, acting as orchestrators of these interoperable capabilities.
“By then, AI agents may well be seen as staff but taking executive decisions above AI will require human empathy and intuition,” Holden said.
The world of AI is here
Dan Shepherd, co-managing director of PHD MENA, closed off the event, emphasising that AI is ‘here and it’s here to stay’.
According to him, the industry is moving into a ‘synthetic future,’ with more than 13,000 AI tools already available.
“Our message to our colleagues and partners is simple: get out there, test, try and learn, now,” he said.
Shepherd testified that the team at PHD has been integrating AI into its operations for the last 10 years.
“We’re really seeing the shift, the impact and the results. The digital transformation of marketing will accelerate with this impetus and create many opportunities for marketing professionals at every level,” Shepherd concluded.
