How winning CMOs move their teams from AI anxiety to advantage

Over 60% of marketers use AI consistently, yet fewer than 10% are seeing measurable value from it. According to a study from Google and McKinsey, the difference comes down to how things work. Handing people AI tools without changing legacy processes won’t move the needle.

Think with Google spoke with study co-author Kelsey Robinson, a senior partner at McKinsey, about how CMOs can address team anxiety, redesign workflows for growth, and prove business impact to the C-suite.

Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Think with Google: Your research shows a big disconnect: 96% of CMOs are excited about AI, yet over 70% of their teams feel anxious about it. What is the first practical step a leader should take?

Kelsey Robinson: Assume that anxiety is present rather than waiting for it to show up on its own. You can surface it through anonymous surveys or closed-door discussions where teams feel safe speaking candidly. Once you analyze adoption patterns to see where teams are getting stuck, establish collaborative forums to weigh the opportunities alongside the risks.

Organizations that make the most progress acknowledge that anxiety directly, while sharing visible examples of how AI is already helping people perform at a higher level.

This change isn’t just about efficiency. Many companies are realizing that the marketing function can be an even larger growth engine with AI. Ensuring teams understand this growth aspiration and their ability to be a leader of the “marketing of the future” can also help.

Think with Google: Rewiring how a marketing team works is hard. What does redesigning a workflow for AI actually look like? And how do you prove the payoff to the CEO and CFO?

Robinson: Using AI to speed up individual tasks is a great start, but the real payoff comes when you redesign the entire workflow from end to end, including how teams hand off work, how fast approvals happen, and which KPIs you track.

In practice, that means building AI into three stages of the work.

• Up-front planning: Use AI to draft and pressure-test creative briefs so teams align faster.
• Creative and localization: Generate more concept variations, adapt assets for local markets, and test early ideas with synthetic audiences before spending media dollars.
• Business measurement: Don’t just report on hours saved. Score every AI initiative for the C-suite against three hard outcomes: incremental revenue, real cost savings, and time freed up for your team to focus on bigger growth bets.

Think with Google: How will the day-to-day role of marketers change as AI takes on more execution?

Robinson: Marketers won’t focus on execution. They will focus on orchestrating strategy, creative taste, and judgment. You will need people who can train and manage AI tools, design end-to-end workflows, and orchestrate campaigns at scale. Ultimately, the marketers who thrive won’t necessarily be the ones who know the most about AI; they’ll be the ones who know how to create the most value with it.

We’re already seeing this shift across both digital-native disruptors and global enterprises, as we talk about in our report.

• Chime moved beyond early pilots and built “go-to-market AI factories,” reducing campaign turnaround times from 10 weeks to four, tripling testing volume, and improving return on ad spend by 18%.
• Unilever activated this shift bottom-up across its global enterprise, empowering marketers to build specialized AI tools for their own workflows and boosting employee fluency, confidence, and content production.

Think with Google: What are three practical ways a busy CMO can build their own AI fluency and lead by example?

Robinson: Bring AI directly into your weekly routine so your team sees you using it.

• Stress-test your strategy. Use AI to challenge your assumptions or quickly map out scenario analyses for team restructuring.
• Pick one daily habit. Identify where a simple AI workflow can save time or sharpen the decisions you make every day.
• Protect time for learning. Stay current on AI innovation, and regularly compare notes with peers who are pushing the frontier.

To move from anxiety to advantage, leaders must model the same AI skills they ask their teams to build. Executives who lead by challenging their own workflows first are the ones who will drive lasting marketing transformation.