AI Is Making Marketing Faster. Is It Actually Making Marketing Grow?

Written by: The CMO Whisperer

The marketing industry is spending an enormous amount of time talking about how much faster AI allows people to work.

More content. Shorter production cycles. Fewer manual tasks. Hours returned to employees who can theoretically use them for something more valuable. All of that sounds impressive. But Michael Stich, Partner at CourtAvenue, believes marketers are asking the wrong question.

It isn’t simply whether AI makes the organization more efficient. It’s whether any of that efficiency is actually creating growth.

Michael has spent more than 25 years helping companies navigate wave after wave of technological change. His career has taken him through WPP, VML, Rockfish, Bridge Worldwide, Texas Instruments, McKinsey and Dell. Today, he works with organizations including Kia, Epson, General Mills, Dell and the U.S. Air Force.

That experience has given him a front-row seat to what happens whenever a new technology arrives. Companies scramble to create strategies. Leaders feel pressure to show the board they have a plan. Pilots begin popping up everywhere, often without anyone clearly defining the business problem they’re supposed to solve.

Some of those experiments create meaningful change. Many become what Michael calls “dead pilots.” Our conversation explored what separates the two, why companies need to win both the data funnel and the moment funnel, how GEO will change the way organizations produce content and what the agency business may look like by 2030.

We also discussed why Michael considers job creation one of his greatest accomplishments, how CourtAvenue maintains accountability without ignoring burnout and why every Grateful Dads performance includes a little Bon Jovi.

Build for the Next Wave

Michael has worked on the client side, the agency side and as a consultant. When he helped build CourtAvenue, he wasn’t interested in creating another version of an agency he had already seen.

He wanted to build for whatever came next. That idea came from recognizing a pattern. New technologies arrive, companies attempt to understand them and independent agencies emerge without legacy structures slowing them down.

The technologies change, but the progression is remarkably consistent.

Organizations initially ask what the technology is and whether it matters. Then they ask how they can use it to win. Eventually, they begin bringing the capability inside and expanding it across the organization.

Michael described the process as an amoeba finding food: sense it, understand it, incorporate it and diffuse it. The agency’s job is to remain far enough ahead to help clients move through those stages. It guides the client, builds the capability, helps integrate it and then turns its attention toward the next shift.

CourtAvenue was designed around that model. Michael doesn’t describe it as a traditional holding company or even a single agency. He sees it as an operating system—a collection of capabilities that can work together in different combinations depending on what a client needs.

That changes the job of leadership. Instead of directing one monolithic organization, Michael and his partners are conducting an orchestra. The instruments need to sound great individually. The real value, however, comes from how they play together.

Efficiency Is Not Growth

Michael’s view of AI is refreshingly direct: If it isn’t driving growth, it doesn’t matter.

Marketing teams naturally focus on efficiency because it’s relatively easy to measure. They can calculate how quickly something was produced, how many tasks were automated or how many hours were saved.

But faster does not automatically mean better, and producing more does not mean customers will care. Michael believes CMOs should view AI primarily through the lens of growth. Can it help the company reach a new audience? Open a new sales channel? Improve conversion? Increase the share of wallet among existing customers?

Those are growth questions. They connect AI directly to the outcomes marketing leaders are expected to produce. Reducing costs and automating repetitive processes have value, but Michael considers those secondary benefits. If the entire AI strategy is built around removing expenses, marketing risks optimizing the organization without creating a compelling reason for anyone to buy.

That distinction also provides a more useful way to evaluate the endless collection of AI pilots appearing inside companies.

The question shouldn’t be whether a team used AI. It should be whether that use created a measurable improvement in the business. Without that connection, a company may end up producing more of the wrong thing at a significantly higher speed.

Let the People Who Understand It Make Decisions

When I asked what the smartest companies are doing differently, Michael’s answer was simple: They allow the people who understand the technology and the work to make decisions.

That sounds obvious. In practice, many AI strategies are being built from the top down because a board, CEO or senior executive wants proof that the company has a plan.

The organization responds with a roadmap. The roadmap produces a collection of pilots. But once someone digs beneath the presentation, the strategy may lack the technical understanding, operational detail or ownership required to make it work.

Michael believes successful applications happen when two kinds of expertise come together. The first is a deep understanding of AI and what the technology can realistically do. The second is expertise in the specific job that needs to be done.

Neither is enough by itself.

The technologist may understand the tool without understanding the customer, workflow or business problem. The marketing specialist may understand the problem without knowing how the technology can change the process.

When those perspectives work together, AI can move beyond improving individual tasks and begin reshaping the way work actually happens.

Win Today and Tomorrow

Marketing leaders don’t have the luxury of pausing their current responsibilities while they figure out AI. The commercial plan remains. The revenue target remains. Products need to launch, campaigns need to perform and customers expect the company to deliver.

At the same time, ignoring what is coming next isn’t much of a strategy either. Michael borrowed a line from Bill Parcells to describe the challenge: You have to win today and win tomorrow at the same time.

In football, that may mean giving younger players enough time on the field to develop while continuing to put the best team in position to win the game. For marketers, it means building experimentation into the work that already needs to happen.

AI cannot remain an extra assignment handed to a high performer who already has a full-time job. Organizations need to examine their processes, identify where experimentation belongs and create the time, resources and accountability needed to learn.

That requires judgment. Invest too little and the company falls behind. Invest too much without a clear objective and the organization becomes very good at running experiments that lead nowhere.

The goal is not to choose between today and tomorrow. It’s to build an operating model capable of handling both.

The Data Funnel and the Moment Funnel

One of Michael’s most interesting observations was that marketing is separating into two different funnels.

The first is the data funnel. Consumers are increasingly using AI platforms and digital agents to research products, compare options and help make purchase decisions. Brands need content that those systems can find, interpret and recommend.

That is why Michael considers GEO—generative engine optimization—an important signal rather than another passing acronym.

Showing up correctly inside large language models requires more than making a few adjustments to an existing SEO plan. It can turn an organization into what Michael described as a content factory, requiring substantially more content produced more frequently and systematically across the business.

The second is the moment funnel. As more of life becomes mediated by technology, people are placing greater value on experiences that feel physical, social and human. Concerts, parks, stores, events and live brand activations create moments an algorithm cannot replicate.

For marketers, this isn’t an either-or choice. Winning the data funnel without the moment funnel may make the brand easy for an AI agent to find, but it doesn’t necessarily give a person any reason to feel something about it.

Winning the moment funnel without the data funnel may create memorable experiences while allowing the brand to disappear from the systems influencing discovery and consideration.

Modern marketers have to build for machines and human beings without confusing the two.

Technology may help people discover the brand. Moments give them a reason to remember it.

The Agency of 2030

Michael sees the agency industry moving toward opposite ends of a barbell.

At one end, the largest holding companies will become even larger, serving multinational clients through integrated operating systems built around first-party data, technology, AI and connected services.

At the other end, independent agencies will continue gaining ground with clients that want experienced talent, greater attention and fewer organizational layers.

Some clients do not want to become another logo on a presentation or discover that the agency’s A-team has been replaced by its B-team once the contract is signed.

That creates a meaningful opening for independent firms.But independence alone isn’t a strategy. Smaller agencies also need the infrastructure, capabilities and talent required to solve increasingly complicated business problems.

Michael believes the next model will combine the advantages of both sides: entrepreneurial companies supported by a shared operational backbone that allows them to work together without becoming another collection of disconnected acquisitions.

That is what CourtAvenue is attempting to build. The company has grown to approximately 300 people in six years, but Michael’s proudest measurement may be what that growth has made possible for those employees.

People have paid down student loans, purchased homes, started families and advanced their careers because somebody created a good job. Technology may be transforming how work gets done, but Michael hasn’t lost sight of what work makes possible for the people doing it.

Accountability Without Ignoring Burnout

CourtAvenue’s employee NPS reached 61 this year, according to Michael, compared with the industry average of 20 he cited during our conversation.

Michael doesn’t attribute that to eliminating difficult work. CourtAvenue likes difficult work. Its people want clients to bring them complicated problems, and building a fast-growing business creates its own set of demands.

The company pairs those expectations with operational visibility.

Its leadership reviews capacity, utilization and workloads each week. They identify people who have been running too hot, determine where resources can be moved and increase hiring or recruiting support when a team faces a surge.

Accountability and care are not opposing ideas. People want to be challenged, do meaningful work and feel proud of what they helped build. They also need leaders who pay attention when the pace becomes unsustainable.

The answer is not pretending the work will never become hard. It’s making sure no one has to quietly drown before somebody notices.

Question for You

Is your marketing organization building for both the data funnel and the moment funnel?

It’s easy to become so focused on algorithms, automation and AI agents that every investment begins moving toward what can be measured, optimized and scaled.

But brands are experienced by people. They are remembered through moments, relationships and feelings that rarely fit neatly inside a dashboard.

I would love to hear how you’re balancing the two.