When Michael McGoldrick, Global VP of Marketing at PharosIQ, declared that he lived by the ethos of “If you put your crap in, you’re going to get crap back out again,” he sliced straight through the noise surrounding AI in B2B marketing. If the inputs are biased, messy or shallow, AI will only accelerate problems. So, before chasing sophisticated outputs, marketers need to shore up their foundations, he warned.
Speaking on a panel alongside futurist Bernard Marr, AXA XL’s global brand director Allison Beattie, WPP Open Pro’s president Matt McNeany, and SmartAssets’ chief product officer Vitaly Boitelet, McGoldrick helped anchor a conversation that set out to answer a deceptively simple question: is AI the savior of modern marketing, or just another overhyped tool?
McNeany argued that marketers are looking at the tech the wrong way around. AI isn’t a shortcut to avoid thinking; it’s a way to remove the long-standing constraints that have throttled creative ambition. He urged marketers to understand that “the importance of brand goes up in an AI world, not down,” and that they should be using it to unlock “net-new assets” and experiences that were previously out of reach.
The idea that brand and creativity matter more in an AI-powered world was echoed by Beattie, who warned against the creeping homogenization that happens when marketers let machines run riot. For her, the real danger is the risk of sanding away the human truth and emotional intelligence that gives work more resonance. “AI doesn’t have lived experiences,” she reminded the room.
Advertisement
Boitelet took a more forensic line: precision matters more than speed. Misread a signal, automate it, and the error multiplies, resulting in “theatre attribution” – the kind of reporting that looks impressive but doesn’t reflect reality or drive better decisions.
Meanwhile, Marr reminded the audience that AI isn’t just a tool – it’s fast becoming a gatekeeper, revealing that he now consumes his daily news via an AI-generated personalized podcast, which filters and interprets information before he ever sees it. In that world, “AI is now a customer… consuming content on our behalf,” he said, advising that marketers now need to think as much about influencing algorithms as they do about influencing buyers.
The panel’s conclusion wasn’t cynical, but it was sobering: AI won’t elevate bad marketing. But it will spotlight it. The brands that win will be the ones that pair disciplined data, ethical automation and bold human creativity.
Watch the full video on The Drum TV now.
pharosIQ
pharosIQ, a global leader in "intent-to-purchase" lead generation, provides insights and demand for B2B sales and marketing success. Leveraging over 40 years of...