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Marketing executives are getting on the AI bandwagon more quickly than their entry-level staff, according to a new study from the American Marketing Association and Lightricks, a company that develops AI-powered creative tools.
The authors of “Leading from the Top: How Marketing Execs are Driving AI Adoption” say this represents a big shift from the way that digital tools usually make their presence felt in companies. “Unlike previous technological adoptions that bubbled up from younger workers,” the study notes. “AI’s top-down integration means it’s being embedded directly into strategic planning and decision-making processes.”
Overall, nine out of 10 survey respondents (90 percent) said they have adopted AI at their company, up from the 73 percent who said they had done so in a 2023 study from Statista.
That rise is largely fueled by users in the executive suite. More than six out of 10 execs (61 percent) indicated that they use AI at least once a week, far outpacing the 42 percent of entry-level staffers who said that. In addition, while almost half of execs (48 percent) said AI was important to their role, that number slides to 34 percent for those in entry-level positions.
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More than half of executives (55 percent) said they were very confident about AI’s ability to make a positive difference when it comes to creative marketing output, with just 7 percent expressing no confidence in that ability. The marketers just starting out were less bullish, with only 33 percent saying that were very confident and 19 percent noting that they had no confidence in AI’s ability to boost the quality of their work.
Some of the positivity being expressed by execs might be related to the quality of training in AI that they get. Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of execs said they had received company-provided training, with just 13 percent saying that while they wanted training, they had not received it.
However, only about a third (34 percent) of entry-level marketers said their company had provided AI training, and more than a quarter (27 percent) said they wanted training but were yet to receive it.
Execs and entry-level marketers also had differing opinions about what they wanted AI to do for them. For execs, the top priorities were incorporating AI into design processes (37 perent), leveraging it for team collaboration (35 percent) and audience targeting (32 percent). Entry-level marketers were more concerned about writing (43 percent), brainstorming (37 percent) and content creation (31 percent).
The study authors claim that the lead being taken by execs on AI, and the differences between their viewpoint and those of entry-level marketers, could generate some positive effects. “The future of marketing,” they say, “lies not just in the technology itself, but in how organizations bridge the gaps between different levels of experience and perspective.”
The Lightricks/AMA study surveyed more than 1,000 marketing professionals in September of this year.
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