CMOs face soaring expectations but shrinking power, Capgemini CMO Playbook shows

New Delhi: The share of Chief Marketing Officers involved in critical decision-making has dropped sharply from 70% in 2023 to 55% this year, even as expectations from the role continue to rise.

In many organisations, CMOs are being asked to drive growth, own customer experience and lead AI adoption, but are losing their seat at the top table where strategy, investments and technology priorities are set.

The result, the study warns, is a widening gap between what CEOs want from marketing and the influence CMOs actually wield on core business decisions.

This is a key finding of the Capgemini Research Institute’s new CMO Playbook, “From complexity to clarity: How CMOs can reclaim marketing to build competitive edge,” which says the role is “at a crossroads” and in need of fundamental reimagining.

While marketing’s remit has expanded, budgets have tightened to an average of around 5% of company revenue, and ownership of key levers like martech and AI is often fragmented or outside marketing.

The report, based on a July 2025 survey of 1,500 senior marketing executives across 15 countries and interviews with around 30 CMOs, finds that only 15% of marketing leaders strongly agree their current setup allows them to focus on high-value work. Most teams are still locked into manual, low-value tasks, leaving limited time for brand-building, innovation and deeper customer connection.

Nearly seven in ten large organisations now use generative AI in marketing, and its share of martech investment has risen from 64% in 2023 to 79% in 2025. Yet impact remains limited: just 7% of marketers strongly agree that AI has boosted marketing effectiveness, and many say AI pilots struggle to scale beyond experiments.

Agentic AI – autonomous or multi-agent systems that can plan and act across tasks – is seen as the next wave. Close to 70% of marketing leaders agree that agentic AI could be applied across multiple use cases, from campaign optimisation to end-to-end journey orchestration. But most organisations are still only testing or not using it at all, constrained by skills gaps, data privacy and security concerns, ethical questions and low trust in fully autonomous decisions.

Even in core areas like personalisation, performance is underwhelming. Only 18% of marketing leaders strongly believe they are successfully using AI or GenAI to personalise customer interactions in ways that improve engagement and outcomes. Current martech and data strategies, the report notes, still struggle to harness real-time data to deliver seamless customer experiences.

A major structural issue is ownership of technology and budgets. More than half (55%) of AI and martech initiatives relevant to marketing are currently funded by IT rather than marketing, and fewer than 40% of CMOs directly control martech budgets. This limits their ability to align tools and platforms with brand strategy and customer needs, and makes tighter CMO–CIO collaboration critical if AI is to deliver measurable business value.

“CMOs today are expected to drive growth and meet sales targets, whilst also being experts in data and AI – they must now market to both humans and agents. But many lack the resources, control or clarity to manage these growing demands. AI tools offer great potential but often fail to deliver results as budgets, strategy and technology aren’t fully aligned,” said Gagandeep Gadri, Managing Director, frog, part of Capgemini. “This is a pivotal moment for marketers to rethink their function’s core purpose and reposition it not just as a support department but as a driver of customer experience and enterprise growth to create real business value.”

The report also highlights fragmented operating models. Integrating sales and go-to-market strategies is a top priority for 61% of marketers, yet less than a quarter report having shared KPIs with sales and other functions. Siloed teams, overlapping tools and duplicated effort across business units and geographies are common, leading to inconsistent customer journeys and wasted spend.

To “reclaim” marketing in an AI-led future, Capgemini urges CMOs to redesign their operating models around three themes: making marketing more human-centric, more optimised and more future-ready.

That includes integrating AI across the entire marketing value chain – from insight and planning to content, media, measurement and optimisation – instead of treating GenAI and agentic AI as scattered pilots.

The playbook calls for rationalising bloated martech stacks, re-architecting data so that both humans and AI systems can use it effectively, and putting in place strong governance on ethics, privacy and responsible AI. It also stresses the need to invest in “human–AI chemistry,” where marketers move from being tool operators to acting as strategic conductors of AI-powered systems and experiences.

Capability gaps are flagged as another urgent challenge. Around 68% of marketing leaders believe their teams must significantly upskill in AI, ethics and business strategy to stay competitive. Future-ready marketing talent, the report suggests, will need a blend of creative, analytical and commercial skills, with a shift from producing individual assets to designing and orchestrating always-on, AI-enabled customer journeys.

Ultimately, the study concludes, AI is widely seen as a growth driver, but its promise is outpacing reality. For CMOs to regain strategic influence and reverse the slide from 70% to 55% participation in critical decisions, they will need clearer ownership of data and technology, stronger partnerships with CIOs and other C-suite leaders, and a reset of marketing’s role from campaign execution to architecting how brands engage both people and intelligent agents across the business.