CMOs berate AI tools as 'too generic' for their business

Chief marketing officers might be jumping on the AI bandwagon as its accelerates through the industry but two-thirds (63%) believe current tools are too generic and do not understand their brand, despite the fact that 90% agree AI is essential to the future of marketing.

That is according to new research underpinning the launch of Boldstream, an AI platform designed to help marketing and communications leaders manage work in a single system.

Boldstream has been created by Boldspace, a 50-strong independent agency, to power an alternative to the declining network agency model.

The agency is shifting to a model where its strategic and creative teams work with clients inside a secure Boldstream workspace, co-creating campaigns and content in workflows underpinned by AI, using technology to deepen thinking rather than replace it. Boldstream is openly available to any organisation, not only clients using Boldspace as an agency.

The shift at Boldspace reflects a sharp split in the market between commoditised execution and high-value thinking. Low-margin, repeatable work is being squeezed by AI and in-housing, while demand grows for genuine strategic insight and distinctive creative ideas.

Boldstream is built to take on as much of the repeatable work as possible so that human teams can focus on judgment, ideas and orchestration, with AI powering the work and people still firmly in control.

Research among senior marketing leaders by Boldstream shows the urgency of this shift, yet just 17% of comms leaders believe their teams have the skills required to leverage AI effectively and appropriately.

At the same time, senior leaders remain heavily reliant on agencies while trying to cut costs and in-house more work. 66% are reliant on external agencies but are actively looking to reduce spend, while 65% are seeking to bring more services in-house. No marketing leaders and just 7% of comms leaders said they had a comprehensive AI strategy in place today.

It is claimed that Boldstream, which has been in development since 2024, provides a secure, brand-owned AI environment where guidelines, tone of voice, products, audiences and compliance rules are held in one place, with data always owned by the client and not used to train underlying models.

Each task is routed to the most suitable large language model for the job, with more than 150 specialist agents across marketing and communications disciplines able to coach as they create, while unified paid, owned, earned and trend data enables real-time optimisation and decision-making.

Boldspace co-chief executive Nick Ford-Young said: “Marketing and communications teams are under relentless pressure to do more with less. Boldstream is designed to make every marketer more strategic and ensure every output from their team is demonstrably on-brand and accountable, not by replacing human judgement but by co-creating within frameworks and plugging in real-time data, while enabling teams to learn as they go.

“The old holding company model is visibly breaking in front of us. Clients are rightly asking how they can cut costs but still get the sharpest thinking, faster work and a credible AI roadmap.

“Boldstream lets marketing and communications leaders move from AI experiments to an AI-native way of working, where their intelligence is secure, their data is unified and their teams are freed up to solve harder, more interesting problems. AI is the engine that powers the work, but humans remain the drivers.”

Ash Jones, founder of Great Influence and a member of the founding team at Steven Bartlett’s Social Chain, added: “The first AI tool I’ve seen that’s actually useful.”