SERVICE

AI in Marketing and Communications

Clarify the skills, workflows, and tools your marketing team needs to become AI-native

AI is changing how marketing and communications teams reach customers, and how those customers respond in turn. That shift reaches past the tool stack, into org charts, workflows, and who decides what.

New Markets Advisors helps marketing and communications leaders design the organizational model an AI-native team actually needs. We map how work gets done today, identify where AI genuinely changes how marketing creates value, and build a phased plan to move roles, workflows, and decision rights into a structure built for the AI age, not bolted onto the old org chart.

5 books

published on innovation and AI strategy, including

AI and the Octopus Organization

published on innovation and AI strategy, including

AI and the Octopus Organization

30+

Fortune 500 advised on growth and organizational strategy

From Today's Workflows to an AI-Native Marketing Team

Know Where AI Actually Changes the Job

Know Where AI Actually Changes the Job

Map How Work Really Happens Today

Design a Structure Built for AI, Not Bolted Onto It

Move People Without Losing Them

What our clients say about us (placeholder)

"New Markets Advisors' extensive knowledge and experience with Jobs to be Done, combined with customized approaches and creative execution, delivers deep insights, viable solution options and timeless value."

- Peter Primdahl, Vice President, Emerging Business Models & Co-Head of CVC Funds, Co-operators

New Markets’ approach to innovation is both insightful and resourceful. They uncovered insights that led to unique and relevant concepts. Leveraging experience in entrepreneurship and disruption, they crafted business models that could be explored quickly and with relatively low investment, which is a departure from most consultancies.”

- Nate Hill, Emerging Idea Marketing Leader, Nestlé

Trusted by

Why It Matters

Technology and social behavior are changing both how marketers reach their audiences and how those audiences engage with content. That alone puts pressure on MarCom departments to adapt. Nearly half of MarCom departments are now piloting AI use cases, but few have scaled it successfully, and the two groups don't perform alike.

+8.6%

improvement in sales productivity attributed to AI

+8.5%

increase in customer satisfaction attributed to AI

-10.8%

reduction in marketing overhead costs attributed to AI

Those are averages across all AI adopters, so departments still stuck in pilot mode are dragging the number down while the departments that have actually scaled AI see outsized results. What separates them isn't better tools. Scalers form strategic partnerships with AI-enabled vendors, maintain solid data infrastructure, and set clear guardrails for how AI gets used. Scaling AI in marketing is less a technology problem than an organizational one, and that's the gap this service closes.

Our Approach to AI Integration in Marketing and Communication

At New Markets Advisors, we help organizations move from customer understanding to product decisions. Our approach starts with the Jobs to be Done framework and ends with a clear, prioritized roadmap aligned to your competitive position and capabilities. This approach reduces uncertainty, shortens time to market, and aligns teams around shared goals.

Phase 1 — Define Goals and External Factors: Priorities and Expected Impacts of AI

Clarify where your company seeks to gain from AI: understand whether AI is meant to drive efficiency, expand the marketing team's capabilities, or both, and in what ways
Define how AI can alter marketing and communications' role, for example by creating new ways to reach audiences, and clarify what capabilities become more or less important as a result
Interview leadership committee members and, where useful, run a workshop to align on goals

Phase 2 — Map Existing Practices: How Work Is Done Today

Map how work is really being done today: tools, processes, workflows, and key skills across every function on the marketing team, including current decision rights and management responsibilities
Assess how AI will affect these workflows, including technology, skill, and resource gaps
Where possible, integrate external data and lessons from peer institutions and adjacent industries

Phase 3 — Build the Organizational Model: An AI-Ready Vision for Change

Work with you to develop a model that maps talent needs, workflows, and tools in detail
Estimate potential reductions and which portions are more or less straightforward to pursue

Phase 4 — Establish a Transformation Plan: Align on the Path from Here to There

Align on a step-by-step process for transitioning to the new organizational model
Establish a communications strategy to build buy-in across the organization, tailored to different roles
Meet with the leadership committee for a workshop to discuss the timeline, surface concerns, and align on final adjustments

Phase 1 — Define Goals and External Factors: Priorities and Expected Impacts of AI

Clarify where your company seeks to gain from AI: understand whether AI is meant to drive efficiency, expand the marketing team's capabilities, or both, and in what ways

Define how AI can alter marketing and communications' role, for example by creating new ways to reach audiences, and clarify what capabilities become more or less important as a result
Interview leadership committee members and, where useful, run a workshop to align on goals

Phase 2 — Map Existing Practices: How Work Is Done Today

Map how work is really being done today: tools, processes, workflows, and key skills across every function on the marketing team, including current decision rights and management responsibilities

Assess how AI will affect these workflows, including technology, skill, and resource gaps
Where possible, integrate external data and lessons from peer institutions and adjacent industries

Phase 3 — Build the Organizational Model: An AI-Ready Vision for Change

Work with you to develop a model that maps talent needs, workflows, and tools in detail

Estimate potential reductions and which portions are more or less straightforward to pursue

Phase 4 — Establish a Transformation Plan: Align on the Path from Here to There

Align on a step-by-step process for transitioning to the new organizational model

Establish a communications strategy to build buy-in across the organization, tailored to different roles
Meet with the leadership committee for a workshop to discuss the timeline, surface concerns, and align on final adjustments

FEATURED WORKING PAPER

AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Superintelligent Firm

Steve Wunker's latest book (2025, co-authored with Jonathan Brill) argues that AI-age organizations need to work like an octopus, pushing everyday decisions to the edges while staying coordinated through shared data rather than hierarchy.

FEATURED Book

AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Superintelligent Firm

FEATURED WORKING PAPER

Using Jobs to be Done To Become a Customer-Centered Organization

Jobs to be Done is a theory about how customers make decisions. It helps us understand why customers buy what they buy, allowing us to proactively design solutions that are more likely to succeed in the market. This working paper explains our step-by-step framework for using Jobs to be Done, and it illustrates our process with four case studies across different industries.

Our Approach: From Jobs to be Done to a Prioritized Product Roadmap

Phase 1 — Define Goals and External Factors: Priorities and Expected Impacts of AI

Clarify where your company seeks to gain from AI: understand whether AI is meant to drive efficiency, expand the marketing team's capabilities, or both, and in what ways
Define how AI can alter marketing and communications' role, for example by creating new ways to reach audiences, and clarify what capabilities become more or less important as a result
Interview leadership committee members and, where useful, run a workshop to align on goals

Phase 2 — Map Existing Practices: How Work Is Done Today

Map how work is really being done today: tools, processes, workflows, and key skills across every function on the marketing team, including current decision rights and management responsibilities
Assess how AI will affect these workflows, including technology, skill, and resource gaps
Where possible, integrate external data and lessons from peer institutions and adjacent industries

Phase 3 — Build the Organizational Model: An AI-Ready Vision for Change

Work with you to develop a model that maps talent needs, workflows, and tools in detail
Estimate potential reductions and which portions are more or less straightforward to pursue

Phase 4 — Establish a Transformation Plan: Align on the Path from Here to There

Align on a step-by-step process for transitioning to the new organizational model
Establish a communications strategy to build buy-in across the organization, tailored to different roles
Meet with the leadership committee for a workshop to discuss the timeline, surface concerns, and align on final adjustments

What Moves to the Edges vs. What Stays at the Center

Every AI-native marketing team runs into the same tension: push too many decisions to the center, and AI's speed advantage disappears in a queue of approvals. Push too much to the edges with no guardrails, and brand consistency and accountability erode. The answer is deliberate placement: which decisions belong at the edges, and which belong at the center.

What Moves to the Edges	What Stays at the Center
Day-to-day content and channel decisions: campaign copy variants, channel mix, real-time optimization.	Brand standards and risk guardrails: voice, compliance, legal review triggers.
Frontline response to customer signals: personalization, timing, local market nuance.	Data infrastructure and AI tool governance: what's connected, what's licensed, what's monitored.
Experimentation and testing: new formats, new audiences, new creative approaches.	Accountability for outcomes: who owns results when AI-assisted decisions go wrong.

As AI takes on more of the analysis and execution, marketing leadership's real job shifts: less about routing approvals, more about setting the guardrails that let decisions move fast at the edges without losing the thread back to strategy. That's the same customer-centered discipline behind Jobs to Be Done: understand what the customer actually needs, then design the organization to deliver it at the speed AI now makes possible.

What You'll Get from Our AI in Marketing and Communications Consulting

Across a typical engagement, you'll get:

Goals & Priorities Assessment: a clear set of goals to inform your updated marketing organizational model
Customer & Value Impact Assessment: an evidence-based view of how AI will change the way marketing reaches customers and adds value for your company
Current-State Role & Workflow Map: a detailed map of how critical teams and roles work today, and how they're likely to change through the AI transition
Roadblock Diagnostic: identification of the key technological and talent roadblocks standing in the way
Future Organizational Model: a model that clarifies roles, responsibilities, and skills; charts workflow and approval changes; and specifies the AI/tech capabilities you'll need
Phased Rollout & Communications Plan: a timeline by workstream and role, a communications approach tailored to each role, and scenario planning for developments (like a decreased budget) that could shift the timeline

Together, these give you a marketing organization that's ready to operate, not just experiment, in the AI age.

How We Compare

Most large consulting firms will sell you an AI marketing "readiness assessment." Few will help you actually redesign the org chart, workflows, and decision rights underneath it. That's where the real value, and the real difficulty, sits.

Customer-centered, not tool-centered: we start from Jobs to Be Done: what your customers actually need from marketing, not which AI vendor to buy
Tailored, not templated: your workflow map and organizational model are built from how your teams actually work, not a generic AI-maturity framework
Senior-led throughout: the people who interview your leadership team and design your model are the people who stay on the engagement
Built for speed and focus: a four-phase, boutique engagement model instead of a sprawling multi-workstream program
Cross-industry pattern recognition: insights drawn from clients across consumer, healthcare, financial services, and technology, not one sector's playbook

JTBD-First, Customer-Backed Approach: We start with customer motivations and outcomes, not with features, technologies, or internal brainstorming.
Tailored Frameworks, Not Templates: Every engagement begins with a diagnostic of your market, culture, and constraints. We design solutions around your business, not a rigid methodology.
Speed and Focus: We deliver decision-ready product roadmaps in weeks, not quarters. Our teams move fast without the heavy overhead of larger firms.
Senior-Led Engagements: You work directly with experienced consultants and partners, not layers of junior staff. That means sharper insights and higher accountability.
Cross-Industry Creativity: We use analogies from other sectors to inspire breakthroughs, a strength rarely seen in process-heavy environments.

Where New Markets Advisors Stands Out

JTBD-First, Customer-Backed Approach: We start with customer motivations and outcomes, not with features, technologies, or internal brainstorming.
Tailored Frameworks, Not Templates: Every engagement begins with a diagnostic of your market, culture, and constraints. We design solutions around your business, not a rigid methodology.
Speed and Focus: We deliver decision-ready product roadmaps in weeks, not quarters. Our teams move fast without the heavy overhead of larger firms.
Senior-Led Engagements: You work directly with experienced consultants and partners, not layers of junior staff. That means sharper insights and higher accountability.
Cross-Industry Creativity: We use analogies from other sectors to inspire breakthroughs, a strength rarely seen in process-heavy environments.

Where New Markets Advisors Stands Out

Dimension	Large Consulting Firms	New Markets Advisors
Starting point	Technology/tool assessment	Customer-centered Jobs to Be Done analysis
Org redesign	Often out of scope or a separate engagement	Core deliverable: roles, workflows, and tools together
Team continuity	Analysts rotate in; partners rotate out	Same senior team from interviews to rollout
Deliverable format	Dense slide decks	Actionable model and rollout plan built for buy-in
Engagement style	Intense, costlier sprints	Longer-term relationship, less costly overall

Bottom line: if you need a broad, resource-heavy AI transformation program across every function, a large firm's scale may serve you better. If you need a focused, customer-grounded redesign of how your marketing and communications team works, one your people will actually adopt, that's where we fit.

our clients

Companies Achieving Successful Results with Us

Ongoing Capabilities

How a pharma leader enabled digital health solutions

Ongoing Capabilities

How a pharma leader enabled digital health solutions

Define New Products

Helping a mattress upstart plan its product future

Define New Products

Helping a mattress upstart plan its product future

Define New Products

How a financial service provider developed new products to serve emerging working classes

Define New Products

How a financial service provider developed new products to serve emerging working classes

FEATURED WORKING PAPER

Rethinking Management in the Age of AI

Our practical guide, Rethinking Your Management in the Age of AI, distills the framework into an actionable playbook, including the "Eight Arms" model for pushing authority to frontline teams and the "Neural Necklace" model for staying coordinated without central bottlenecks.

FEATURED WORKING PAPER

Rethinking Your Management in the Age of AI

FEATURED WORKING PAPER

Rethinking Your Management in the Age of AI

How is this different from generic AI training for our marketing team?

Training teaches people to use tools. This engagement redesigns the roles, workflows, and decision rights around those tools — the part that actually determines whether AI adoption sticks.

Will this tell us which AI tools or vendors to buy?

How long does a typical engagement take?

What if our marketing budget gets cut partway through the transition?

Do we need a data or AI infrastructure in place before starting?

How do you handle resistance from staff worried AI will replace their roles?

Will middle management roles disappear?

How does this connect to Jobs to be Done?

How is this different from generic AI training for our marketing team?

Training teaches people to use tools. This engagement redesigns the roles, workflows, and decision rights around those tools — the part that actually determines whether AI adoption sticks.