As artificial intelligence transforms nearly every corner of the business world, marketing leadership is no exception. Gartner’s latest research shows that the CMO role is set to evolve more dramatically over the next two years than ever before. 65% of marketing leaders believe advances in AI will fundamentally reshape their job descriptions, highlighting a shift from intuition driven marketing to a technology enabled approach.
By 2026, this transformation will be unmistakable. AI powered tools, data models, and automation systems have already pushed marketing teams toward entirely new ways of working. A CMO’s responsibilities now extend far beyond managing brand communication. Designing tech aligned decision making frameworks and creating smarter workflows across the organization have become essential needs of modern marketing. With AI delivering unprecedented speed and scale, customer behaviors can be analyzed with far greater precision, making decisions more data driven and reliable. As a result, marketing leaders must strengthen their technical literacy and fully embrace data driven thinking to stay competitive.
Gartner’s findings also show how this shift is directly reshaping the future of brands. 82% of business leaders say their company’s brand identity will need significant redefinition under the influence of AI. This shows that along with marketing strategies, organizational structures and cultural foundations also must adapt to a technology focused future. For brands to maintain coherence, CMOs must keep pace with technological changea while interpreting these advancements in ways that stay true to the brand’s core identiity.
Looking at the broader picture, it’s clear that the CMO role will require a wider skill set moving forward. In the age of AI, successful marketing leaders will be those who can bridge creativity and data science and guide their organizations through meaningful transformation. If we consider 2025 as the year AI entered every part of our lives, we can assume that 2026 will be the year of AI driven transformation. It marks a significant period to build stronger brands, more agile organizations, and a more holistic marketing vision.