Uniform blog/The Power and Pitfalls of Embedding AI into Marketing Organizations’ Ways of Working

The Power and Pitfalls of Embedding AI into Marketing Organizations’ Ways of Working

Andrew KumarPosted on Jun 12, 2025

8 min read

The Power and Pitfalls of Embedding AI into Marketing Organizations’ Ways of Working

Insights from Lars Petersen, CEO and Co-founder of Uniform, presented at Digital Experience Assembly (DXA) 2025

The integration of AI in marketing has moved beyond experimentation to become a core operational component. According to research from The State of Martech 2025 report by Chiefmartec and MartechTribe, 87.5% of marketing organizations now use standalone AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. Still, the more significant development is how AI technologies are embedded directly within marketing workflows and technology stacks.

The integration of AI into marketing is moving beyond simple content generation toward what industry experts call "agentic AI" - purpose-built AI agents that function as specialized team members working alongside human marketers. These AI agents are transforming how marketing teams create, optimize, and deliver omnichannel customer experiences.

At its core, this shift represents a fundamental principle: composable architecture can only succeed when it makes ways of working more efficient and effective for business users. Technology that adds complexity without simplifying the day-to-day experience for marketers is destined to fail, regardless of its theoretical advantages.

The Rise of Embedded AI in Marketing

According to The State of Martech 2025 report, 42.7% of organizations report that AI tools now integrate well (or with only minor challenges) with their existing martech stacks. Interestingly, B2B companies are leading this charge with 54% reporting easy integration compared to only 15.4% in B2C organizations - an inversion of the traditional stereotype that B2C companies are more technologically advanced.

This integration trend is reshaping how marketing technology is architected and deployed. Lars Petersen, CEO and cofounder of Uniform, a leading composable digital experience platform provider, articulates the central thesis driving this shift: "A composable digital experience platform unifying content, data, and especially AI-driven tools, into a visual, configuration-driven workspace minimizes developer overhead to dramatically accelerate the creation, optimization, and delivery of personalized digital experiences."

Petersen advocates for a critical evolution in building digital experiences—moving from traditional content modeling to experience modeling. With experience modeling, marketers focus on the outcome rather than just its elements. This approach prioritizes the cohesive user journey and ensures content serves the overall experience, reducing fragmentation and allowing marketing teams to work directly with the canvas that users will ultimately see and interact with.

This reflects a fundamental change in how marketing organizations are structured and operate. The goal is to empower marketers with AI tools that accelerate workflows while minimizing dependence on technical teams.

AI-Powered Marketing: Four Key Transformations

1. From Content Creation to Content Optimization

Generative AI has dramatically accelerated content creation across formats. As industry experts note, generative AI systems help marketers create consistent and brand-compliant content while restoring marketing autonomy in experience creation and delivery. Within minutes, marketers can use generative AI to quickly transform content from multiple authors into a draft email, blog post, or press release.

However, a more significant shift is happening beyond basic content generation. Marketing organizations are embedding AI agents with specialized capabilities for optimization. Uniform, for example, has developed AI agents Scout and Sage that function as virtual team members focused on conversion rate optimization (CRO) and search engine optimization (SEO), respectively.

Uniform provides a perfect example of this approach with their specialized AI tools. Their marketing platform includes AI assistants with defined roles, like "Scout," which focuses on conversion optimization by analyzing content performance and suggesting improvements. They've also developed "Sage," an AI assistant designed explicitly for SEO that keeps up with algorithm changes and helps optimize content for search engines.

2. From Manual Analysis to AI-Driven Insights

The ability to extract insights from unstructured customer data represents one of AI's most powerful applications in marketing. Nearly two-thirds (65.6%) of marketing organizations now use AI to capture, analyze, and leverage unstructured customer data from sources like call recordings and transcripts (41.7%), emails (26%), and chatbot conversations (26%).

A fascinating trend emerging primarily in B2B marketing is the analysis of customer websites. According to the Chief Marketing Technologist report, "15.6% of our respondents said they scrape websites of prospects and customers to learn about them and tailor messaging and engagement accordingly. Instead of often outdated third-party data about a company, you can now get it straight from the source."

3. From Siloed Operations to Unified Workspaces

Marketing organizations traditionally struggle with disconnected tools and data sources. Modern approaches to embedded AI address this through visual workspaces that blend content, data, and AI capabilities in a single environment.

Adam Conn highlights why this matters: "Launching your experiences at speed and scale becomes increasingly difficult when more systems are added over time and content is siloed across the organization... building a basic landing page could require toggling between several tools and tabs, as well as copying and pasting changes from one system to the next."

Visual workspaces do more than just bring content and data together in one place. They integrate AI-powered creation and optimization tools directly into the interface marketers use, making these capabilities available across all connected platforms. Marketing teams now work in entirely new ways. They rely less on developers and technical teams and take control of their digital experiences through intuitive visual tools—no coding required.

The true promise of AI in this context is to transform frustration into simplicity, taking complex, technical processes that previously required developer intervention and making them accessible to marketers through intuitive interfaces and automated workflows. This shift from complexity to simplicity represents how AI changes marketing organizations' working methods.

4. From Reactive to Proactive Marketing

Leading-edge AI marketing tools don't just react to customer actions—they predict what customers need before they ask. According to Uniform's CEO, Lars Petersen, we're entering an era of "full autonomous, authentic AI" where intelligent systems evolve beyond simply generating content. Instead, they'll create experiences that automatically adjust and optimize themselves in the moment, responding intelligently to each customer's unique situation and goals.

Think of it as marketing on autopilot, where your digital systems don't just wait for customers to act but actively hunt for ways to improve, recommend fresh tactics, and even make changes on their own (with humans keeping an eye on things, of course).

The Pitfalls of AI-Embedded Marketing

Despite these exciting possibilities, CMOs need to be realistic about several key challenges:

Integration Hurdles

Despite progress, significant barriers to AI integration persist. The Chief Marketing Technologist report indicates that 30.2% of organizations face significant integration hurdles or that AI tools don't integrate well with their martech stack. This is particularly pronounced in B2C companies, where 30.8% report poor integration.

The transition toward AI-embedded marketing requires thoughtful architecture and frequently encounters resistance from legacy systems. Organizations must evaluate whether their existing technology infrastructure can effectively support new AI-powered workflows.

The Human Factor

Embedding AI into marketing ways of working raises questions about skill development, team structure, and cultural adaptation. According to Gartner research, by 2025, organizations that use AI across the marketing function will shift 75% of their staff's operations from production to more strategic activities. While this represents an opportunity, it creates disruption and requires careful change management.

Marketing leaders must consider how to reskill teams, establish appropriate governance, and create cultures that embrace AI as an enhancement rather than a replacement for human creativity and judgment.

Quality and Brand Consistency

AI might churn out content quickly, but keeping it on-brand isn't automatic. Smart companies build safeguards into their processes—from style guides and approval workflows to proper AI training—to ensure everything sounds like them, not just generic robot speak.

Since organizations can train language-based models to write and sound like their brand, generative AI helps ensure content aligns with editorial guidelines and campaign messaging. However, this training and governance process requires deliberate effort and ongoing refinement.

Implementation Strategies: Starting Small, Thinking Big

For marketing organizations beginning their journey toward embedded AI, experts recommend starting with focused applications that deliver quick wins while building toward larger transformation:

Content enhancement rather than creation: Using AI to enhance human-created content rather than generating content from scratch. This maintains creative control while improving efficiency.
Specialized agents for specific workflows: Deploy AI agents focused on well-defined tasks like SEO optimization, personalization, or A/B testing analysis rather than attempting to transform all processes simultaneously.
Visual workspaces for marketers: Prioritize solutions that empower marketers through visual interfaces rather than requiring technical expertise. As Lars Petersen, CEO and cofounder of Uniform, recommends, "Don't do a clean slate, a big weapon, or a replace project. Do increments and modernization. Start with the pieces you already have in place, and then incrementally improve those."
Establish ethical AI guardrails: According to Gartner research, by 2025, 70% of enterprise CMOs will identify accountability for ethical AI in marketing among their top concerns. Organizations should proactively develop governance frameworks that address potential risks while maximizing opportunities.

The Future of AI-Embedded Marketing

The most significant impact of AI on marketing organizations may not be the technology itself but how it transforms team structures, workflows, and skill requirements. Marketing leaders must approach AI not merely as a technology implementation but as a fundamental reimagining of how marketing work happens.

We're watching the traditional boundaries between creative teams, tech specialists, and data analysts fade. Marketing departments won't look the same in a few years. According to Gartner's latest research, by 2028, AI agents will independently handle about 15% of daily marketing decisions—something that simply hasn't happened yet.

Ultimately, successful AI implementation comes down to making complex marketing processes simpler rather than more complicated. The organizations that thrive will be those that use AI to bridge the gap between technical complexity and marketing accessibility, moving both marketers and developers from frustration to simplicity. This balanced approach will define the next generation of marketing excellence by using AI to amplify human capabilities while simultaneously simplifying technical processes.

Watch all of the presentations from DXA 2025.