New research across the UK and Ireland finds 77% of CMOs expect AI agents to require a fundamental redesign of their teams, and a new leadership framework is here to help.
Today, Salesforce is publishing the A-shaped CMO, a new leadership framework designed to help chief marketing officers lead in a world where people and AI agents increasingly work side by side. The framework is grounded in new research surveying 100 B2B and B2C CMOs across mid-market and enterprise organisations in the UK and Ireland, conducted by Salesforce and The Drum.
Why it matters
New Salesforce UKI research reveals the scale of the challenge, and the opportunity, facing marketing leaders right now:
- 77% of CMOs expect AI agents to require a fundamental redesign of the marketing department
- 81% believe agentic AI will shift teams towards higher-value strategic and creative work
- 85% expect it to give marketing leaders more time to focus on brand innovation and market expansion
- Just 13% say agentic AI has been fully implemented across their organisation
The ‘Intentionality Paradox’
The research uncovers a striking contradiction at the heart of marketing leadership today. While 81% of CMOs say they feel fully equipped to lead a hybrid workforce of humans and AI agents, one in four (25%) have never actually used agentic AI themselves. and only 13% report it has been successfully implemented across their wider organisation.
This gap between confidence and execution is driving real anxiety:
- The Complexity Block: More than half of CMOs (53%) say the sheer complexity of implementing agentic AI currently outweighs the commercial and operational benefits.
- The Risk Factor: Because marketing is a highly visible, customer-facing function, 69% of leaders agree that managing the risk of AI hallucinations makes deployment more complex than in back-office functions.
- The Role Redundancy Fear: Half of CMOs (51%) fear agentic AI will make core aspects of their teams’ roles redundant.
Marketing departments are navigating this transformation under intense pressure from the wider C-suite. 51% of CMOs say their CEO has unrealistically high expectations for AI in marketing. CEOs overestimate how quickly the technology can be integrated (40%) and are pushing for AI-led results before teams have had time to build the right skills (40%).
This pressure is exacerbated by a stark perception gap. Gartner data highlighted in the study reveals a credibility crisis: only 15% of CEOs view their CMO as AI-savvy, compared to over 40% for CIOs and CDOs. Over the next 24 months, 74% of CMOs plan to pull a significant portion of traditional agency and internal headcount budgets to fund AI infrastructure and licensing.
Enter the ‘A-Shaped’ CMO
To bridge the gap between strategic intent and operational reality, Salesforce is introducing the A-shaped CMO – a new leadership framework for a world where people and AI agents work side by side.
The framework moves beyond the traditional brand-versus-demand divide, unifying three distinct capabilities:
- The Left Pillar: The “science” of growth – technical funnel mastery, data-driven strategy, and analytics.
- The Right Pillar: The “heart” of the brand – emotional storytelling, creativity, and building trust.
- The Crossbar: The operational excellence and agentic AI orchestration required to connect both sides and lead a hybrid workforce of humans and AI agents.
The AI era needs an A-shaped CMO: a leader who can unite creative instinct and data-led growth with the operational intelligence to direct people, platforms, and AI agents as one team.
Jo Pettifer, Vice President, Field Marketing UKI at Salesforce
Today, just 30% of CMOs describe themselves as actively operating at this intersection. The remaining 70% are stuck in operational silos, either chasing pure storytelling (25%), pure measurement (25%), or isolated technical experimentation (20%).
Marketing priorities are already shifting: 79% of CMOs expect AI and digital skills to grow in importance by 2027, ahead of leadership skills (75%) and core marketing capabilities (59%).
What They’re Saying
“The perception that CMOs are a barrier to AI success is not only wrong, it is deeply unfair. Marketing leaders are not resisting transformation; they are the ones confronting the reality of what it takes to make AI work in a customer-facing function, where bad data, weak governance, or inaccurate outputs can damage trust in an instant. That is why the old brand-versus-demand model no longer works. The AI era needs an A-shaped CMO: a leader who can unite creative instinct and data-led growth with the operational intelligence to direct people, platforms, and AI agents as one team. Without that third capability, AI will remain a collection of tools rather than a driver of real business growth.” – Jo Pettifer, Vice President, Field Marketing UKI at Salesforce
“The A-shaped CMO is a useful way to frame the modern marketing leader because it brings together data and performance, creative brand storytelling and the operational ‘crossbar’ needed to run hybrid, AI-enabled teams. For me, that balance matters: we win trust and grow by combining rigorous insight with human stories that make our products and purpose feel real.” – Becky Moffat, CMO at HSBC
Learn More:
- Learn how to Implement Agentic Marketing in 5 Steps.
- For a complete breakdown of the data, core pillars, and actionable insight, read The A-Shaped CMO report
Methodology:
This survey of 100 chief marketing officers in mid-market and enterprise companies in the UK and Ireland was conducted in April and May 2026. Respondents were split between B2B and B2C CMOs. The research was conducted using an online survey by Coleman Parkes on behalf of Salesforce.
