Marketing Teams Must Own AI Adoption to Prevent Workslop

AI is now the main driver of increased martech budgets, yet only 49% of martech tools are actively used and just 15% of organizations qualify as high performers who meet strategic goals and demonstrate positive ROI, according to MarTech.

Unstructured AI Mandates Create Workslop

Research on martech performance shows that leadership often fails to define how to use AI and what success looks like. This absence of structure leads to workslop, defined as low-quality generic output when teams face pressure to deliver more volume without time for quality control or critical thinking.

Marketing departments receive executive mandates without authority over implementation details. Security and access decisions fall to IT departments, productivity and tool choices to operations teams, and marketing remains a consumer of platforms rather than a designer.

Requirements for Owning AI Adoption

Marketing teams can guide AI use by running an AI usage audit that inventories current applications, users, workflows, data sources and budgets. They can also draft a one-page marketing AI charter to serve as a blueprint for department-specific implementation.

Clear boundaries must be established to specify which decisions belong to marketing versus IT, legal and procurement. A cross-functional AI working group can prevent siloed efforts by assigning roles across departments.

Build, Buy, Wait Strategy

Marketing can adopt a build-buy-wait approach focused on brand equity, AI-mediated discovery optimization and capability investment. This framework evolves with AI advances and requires marketing ownership to avoid inheriting unsuitable plans.

Marketers who participate from the start of adoption processes can shape decisions on tool selection and workflow integration, according to MarTech. Ownership of AI adoption enables creation of strategies with measurable outcomes regardless of whether the C-suite leads the effort.