The Human Advantage: Reflections from the LIONS CMO Accelerator, London

In December 2025, I had the privilege of speaking at the LIONS CMO Accelerator Series in London, joining a room of senior marketing leaders navigating one of the most consequential shifts our profession has faced.

Building on my two previous LIONS presentations at Cannes Lions in 2022 and 2024 my session focused on AI. Not as a technology update, but as a leadership challenge.

The temptation when discussing AI is to start with tools, platforms, and vendors. I chose a different entry point: judgment. Because AI does not replace the fundamentals of marketing. It exposes whether we have them.

From funnels to learning systems

One of the core ideas I explored was the need to move from marketing funnels to marketing learning systems. AI works best when organisations treat marketing as a continuous feedback loop rather than a sequence of campaigns.

That shift sounds technical. It is not. It is cultural.

Learning systems demand clarity of intent, data discipline, and the courage to say no. Without those, AI simply accelerates noise.

Strategy still means sacrifice

A recurring theme in the room was overload. Too many tools. Too many vendors. Too many experiments without ownership.

The essence of strategy has not changed. It is still about sacrifice.

In a landscape with more than 15,000 marketing technology vendors, the competitive advantage does not come from doing more. It comes from choosing deliberately: which platforms to commit to, which problems to solve, and which capabilities to build internally.

AI rewards focus. Indecision is expensive.

Agents, automation, and the next generation of teams

We also discussed AI agents and automation, not as abstractions, but as practical extensions of teams. We are likely the last generation of leaders who will manage human-only teams.

That reality raises new questions for CMOs: governance, training, data quality, and accountability. AI needs ownership. It needs rules. It needs leaders who understand both its power and its limits.

The human edge does not disappear

The most important part of the session came at the end.

I heard this first, I recall, from Mark Ritson. AI is not going to kill marketing. And it is not going to save it either.

The only thing truly threatened by AI is low-imagination work. When everyone has access to the same models, the only remaining competitive advantage is taste. Taste cannot be automated. It cannot be commoditised. It cannot be downloaded.

Technology accelerates. Feelings scale. But meaning still comes from us.

The next creative revolution will not be AI-driven. It will be human-AI hybrid craft, where imagination, judgment, and emotional intelligence are amplified rather than outsourced.

Speaking at the LIONS CMO Accelerator was a reminder that the future of marketing will not be decided by tools alone. It will be shaped by leaders willing to combine discipline with creativity, and efficiency with meaning.

That is where the real advantage lies.