As AI tools mature at breakneck speed, creative marketing is undergoing its most profound transformation in decades. From accelerating content production to enabling deep personalization and intelligent automation, AI is not just enhancing how marketers work — it’s reshaping the foundations of brand strategy and execution. 

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The bottleneck is no longer the ability to generate creative assets—it’s knowing how to deploy them intelligently, at speed, without diluting brand integrity. That gap between capability and execution is where practitioners are doing some of the most interesting work.

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Emergent Ventures’ AI CXO Series was created to surface exactly those practitioner insights: conversations where AI-forward executives and AI-first founders trade hard-won lessons from live deployments—what’s breaking, what’s working, and where the next opportunities are emerging.

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In a recent roundtable hosted by Anupam Rastogi and Preethy Padmanabhan as part of this Series, Emergent convened leading corporate executives, senior marketers, and AI founders who are both navigating and influencing the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-powered marketing.

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The discussion featured Varun Parmar (General Manager, Adobe), Reema Batta, (VP, Growth Marketing, Figma), Kaustubh Chandra “KC” (CMO & Head of Digital Sales Group, Airtel Business). Their perspectives offered a practical roadmap for founders, marketers, and investors seeking to understand how AI is transforming creative strategy, execution, and scale in enterprise environments.

The conversation also drew on insights from founders of AI-first startups at the forefront of this shift—including Emergent portfolio companies GetCrux and BambooBox—who shared how their technologies are enabling intelligence, personalization, and creative marketing at scale for global enterprises. A curated set of founders and GTM leaders were in attendance, gaining a first-hand view into the candid exchange.

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1. AI as a Force Multiplier for Speed and Scale

For large enterprises like Adobe and Airtel Business, AI is transforming how marketing content is produced at scale. Varun Parmar highlighted that Adobe’s GenStudio now powers over 60% of its email marketing globally, cutting content creation cycles from three weeks to just three days. Kaustubh Chandra (KC) shared that at Airtel Business, the marketing team revamped an 180+ page website in just 45 days, combining GenAI tools with strategic team upskilling. Founders should note: AI adoption doesn't just reduce cost — it amplifies output and accelerates time-to-market without additional headcount.

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"AI lets us test more, support more markets, and move three times faster without sacrificing quality."

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2. Brand Integrity in the Age of Infinite Content

Maintaining brand consistency is a top priority as AI-generated content proliferates. Reema Batta, VP of Growth at Figma, emphasized the importance of “systems thinking” — embedding tone, brand guidelines, and audience insights directly into prompt design. Adobe developed a “brand score” to measure AI output compliance, revealing gaps in even human-created content. Airtel Business created guardrails by defining desired tone and outcome upfront, then letting AI assist within these boundaries. For marketers, the takeaway is clear: AI can enhance creativity, but brand control frameworks must evolve in parallel.

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Taste and craft matter more than ever in the age of AI. Efficiency gains are powerful, but the differentiator is creative quality.

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3. AI-Driven Teams and the New Creative Culture

AI’s impact is not just technological — it's cultural. Airtel Business leveraged a team of interns with access to GenAI video tools, reducing campaign production costs by 60%. Adobe promoted the idea of “full-stack AI employees,” enabling non-technical team members to prototype and research with tools like Figma and ChatGPT. The AI wave is flattening traditional roles and empowering broader teams. Investors should look for companies fostering experimentation and upskilling as competitive differentiators in marketing operations.

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AI adoption isn’t just about plugging in tools—it’s about the framework. The right stack, the right guardrails, and the right team upskilling make speed possible without risk.

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4. From Personalization to Intelligence at Scale

Beyond automation, AI is now powering real-time personalization and intelligence. 

Figma uses AI to generate SEO content that is outperforming human-written material, while Airtel Business integrates customer and third-party data to enable hyper-personalized outreach and mock pitch training for digital sales teams.

Ankur Saigal, Co-Founder and CEO of Emergent portfolio company BambooBox shared how they are building custom GPTs to retain campaign context across client lifecycles. Founders exploring MarTech should focus not just on content generation, but on intelligence orchestration across customer touchpoints.

‍Atharva Padhye, Co-Founder of GetCrux highlighted the challenge of balancing AI benefits with user trust, noting that AI-generated ads often lead to trust issues. GetCrux is an AI-powered creative strategist designed to help performance marketers optimize their ads on platforms like Google and Meta while ensuring data privacy with SOC-2 compliance. 

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Startups in this space should focus not just on what is generated, but on how intelligently it connects across the customer journey.

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Final Take

AI is no longer an add-on in creative marketing—it’s the infrastructure. The most forward-leaning companies are already reaping its benefits in speed, scale, and insight, while carefully evolving their brand systems, data readiness, and team culture.

The leaders building in this space are blending bold creativity with operational rigor and a deep understanding of AI’s new levers. Those who master that balance will define the next generation of enterprise growth.

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AI CXO: Looking Ahead

The AI CXO Series is emerging as a broader convergence of enterprise leaders, founders, and investors, where the most significant Enterprise AI themes come into focus. Future conversations will explore how enterprise leaders are applying AI across additional business functions and industry verticals — continuing the exchange of practical insights within the Emergent network. 

Select highlights from future AI CXO sessions will be shared periodically, with deeper conversations continuing within the Emergent network. 

We remain open to nominations of CXOs or topics that could bring a distinctive perspective to future conversations.