By Helen Moore, Managing Partner
The first in our series of three blog posts diving into Censuswide’s recent report, ‘The Voice of the UK CMO 2025’ – this time focused on key takeaways around the technology on everyone’s minds – artificial intelligence.
Market research consultancy Censuswide has just released its must-read report for marketing, PR and communications professionals, ‘The Voice of the UK CMO 2025’.
The research, which surveyed 500 CMOs and around 2,000 nationally representative adults in the UK, reveals UK Chief Marketing Officers’ priorities across three key areas, AI, brand activism and budgets & measurement, including eye-opening findings into AI adoption.
Strikingly, almost 9 in 10 (89%) of Chief Marketing Officers are now using Generative AI. But what exactly does this term mean and how is it different to ‘traditional’ artificial intelligence?
What is Generative AI, and how does it differ from ‘traditional’ AI?
Generative AI is a category of artificial intelligence systems that can generate outputs such as copy, imagery, music, video and more, resembling content created by real human beings. According to ChatGPT 5, “Generative AI is powered by advanced machine learning, most notably deep learning and large language models (LLMs). Put simply, you have used generative AI if you have ever tried an AI tool from an LLM family such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Anthropic AI’s Claude to create content.
Traditional AI analyses existing data and provides a conclusion rather than creating new data, and can be used to filter spam emails or turn speech into text. It uses regression, decision trees, clustering or classification models as its core techniques. This differs from generative AI’s use of advanced deep learning methods, such as the ‘GPT – generative pre-trained transformer’ in ChatGPT.
How are CMOs benefiting from AI?
Censuswide’s research suggests that as a general rule, UK marketing leaders see AI as a creative enabler. Almost two thirds (64%) of CMOs say it fully or mostly enables creativity, while only 13% say it fully or mostly hinders it.
They are broadly benefiting from AI – nearly 3 in 5 (58%) who have adopted AI say it has exceeded expectations and been a gamechanger.
While CMO reservations on AI included lack of creativity/original content (43%) and over-reliance on AI (42%), 67% agreed a key benefit of adopting AI is higher quality content creation and greater efficiencies for content generation (64%). These stood out to me in particular, because it shows that marketers do understand the importance of humans in devising modern campaigns – the ability to ideate strategy taking into account context, understand human emotions and cultural nuances a machine might not, as well as understanding of how to tell a captivating story. It also indicates they are not turning their back on the benefits of using AI for certain tasks that would otherwise take up time and money unnecessarily, like internal meeting summary drafts or quickly creating an image of a trade show booth to see how a concept might look before committing to a final design.
However, there is a clear disconnect between the extent to which CMOs use Generative AI and how comfortable consumers feel.
What are consumers’ attitudes to AI?
Consumers are less enthusiastic about the use of AI in marketing. Only 38% of consumers feel comfortable with brands using AI. They are almost twice as likely to have mixed feelings about AI (31%) than they are to be excited and optimistic (16%).
This begs the question, if the people we are aiming to target aren’t so keen on AI – does that mean marketers should stop using it?
I would argue no – all modern technology tools – AI included – should be treated as such – as tools. We – the living, breathing individuals – need to stay in control and take accountability for everything we create, but that doesn’t mean we need to turn our back on advancements – instead we should embrace them while keeping a critical eye. What’s most important is putting our audiences first and understanding what makes them tick, using modern tools for the right tasks, and building smart and strategic campaigns that build trust AND move the needle.
Censuswide’s The Voice of the UK CMO 2025 Report is now live – read it here. If you are interested in learning about how Hollr or Censuswide could support you with your marcomms needs, please get in touch at [email protected].
