By Rishad Tobaccowala, author of Rethinking Work, and Jon Woods, founding partner of GFM

When an independent marketing agency committed to forging authentic connections meets an industry visionary who has spent four decades anticipating what’s next, the conversation about AI’s strategic future becomes essential reading for marketers everywhere. At GroundFloor Media (GFM), we’re blending data, human insight, AI and strategic boldness into our core methodology and learning through real-world application what works and what doesn’t. Rishad Tobaccowala, author of Rethinking Work and former Chief Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe, has spent his career helping people, organizations and teams reinvent themselves to remain relevant in changing times, consistently identifying the underlying patterns that separate transformation from mere change.  

Together, we’ve identified a critical direction that will define marketing success in 2026: moving beyond AI as a single tool or process and embracing two distinct capabilities that serve fundamentally different purposes — AI as a thought partner and AI for efficiencies. Understanding this duality isn’t just semantic; it’s the difference between organizations that harness AI strategically and those that simply automate their way to mediocrity. 

The question isn’t whether your organization will use AI in 2026. It’s whether you’ll use it strategically or watch competitors pull ahead while your team remains stuck in analysis paralysis. 

As organizations attempt to identify how to best use the vast network of AI tools, individuals have already embraced them. See if this sounds familiar: Some team members are experimenting with ChatGPT for email drafts, others are using it to summarize meeting notes and a few brave souls are building custom GPTs for specific workflows, but these efforts rarely connect to form organizational systems. Pockets of innovation never scale, and many leaders know they should be doing something with AI but can’t figure out where to start. 

The most successful people and firms will go deep on AI and deep on HI. That HI — human intelligence, human intuition, human insight and human imagination — is where the real differentiation lives. AI alone won’t be the competitive advantage. How you deploy it alongside human creativity is. 

The Two Paths Forward 

It’s time to stop thinking about AI as a single tool or process and start thinking about it as two distinct capabilities that serve fundamentally different purposes: AI as a thought partner and AI for efficiencies. 

AI as Thought Partner 

This is AI as your strategic collaborator. It’s the version that helps you think better, not just work faster. In an age of hybrid and remote workplaces and smaller teams doing more work, AI can help break down silos and create a greater capacity for thought and imagination.  

What This Looks Like: 

• Strategic planning sessions where AI helps you pressure-test assumptions, identify blind spots and generate alternative scenarios you hadn’t considered. 
• Campaign ideation where you use AI to explore and test multiple messages and differentiators, then apply human judgment to select the three that connect emotionally. 
• Audience research where AI synthesizes customer feedback, social comments and survey responses into themes, then your team applies human intuition to determine which insights matter most. 
• Content development where AI creates the first draft based on your expertise, and you use human imagination to layer in the stories, examples and voice that make it unmistakably yours. 

This strategy will reward leaders and teams willing to use AI to challenge their thinking rather than simply confirm to what they already believe. The organizations seeing breakthrough results aren’t using AI to automate their current approach; they’re using it to reimagine what’s possible. 

Consider a service-offering organization using AI to analyze client feedback across dozens of touchpoints, then bringing their product and marketing teams together to interpret what it means for their customer experience. AI handles the pattern recognition. The humans find meaning in those patterns and put the learning into practice.  

AI as Efficiency Engine 

This is AI as the workhorse that handles routine tasks so your team can focus on the work that really moves the needle. 

What This Looks Like: 

• Media monitoring and social listening where AI tracks brand mentions, competitor activity and industry trends 24/7, surfacing only what requires human attention. 
• Asset creation where AI generates multiple social media variations, ad copy alternatives and email subject line tests, cutting production time from eight hours to three. 
• Paid performance analysis where AI identifies opportunities in audiences and creative results and a media team makes adjustments and optimizations.   
• Meeting summaries and documentation where AI captures action items, key decisions and timelines so your team can be present (no multitasking!) during the conversation. 
• Research and synthesis where AI pulls together competitive intelligence, industry benchmarks and trend reports in minutes instead of days. 

The goal isn’t to replace your team. It’s to give them back the time they’re currently spending on tasks that don’t require their expertise. The key is to turbo-charge oneself and one’s firm versus defending the status quo and fretting about change. 

 
Building Your AI Operating System 

When considering your own organization and how it is integrating AI, think through these steps before diving in.  

1. Start With Governance, Not Tools 

Before you deploy AI widely, establish guardrails. What requires human review? What can be fully automated? Where do you need disclosure? What’s off-limits? 

For health care marketers, this means HIPAA-compliant AI systems. For nonprofit organizations, it means disclosure policies ( of foundations will reject grant applications containing undisclosed AI-generated content). Develop guidelines that fit your organization and industry. of foundations will reject grant applications containing undisclosed AI-generated content). Develop guidelines that fit your organization and industry. 

Create three categories: 

• Human-Only: Strategic decisions, brand voice, expert commentary and anything requiring genuine experience or emotion 
• AI-Assisted With Human Review: Content drafts, campaign concepts, research synthesis and creative variations 
• AI-Automated: Reporting, monitoring and routine processes  

2. Run Small Tests for Both Use Cases 

Pick a test case for AI as a thought partner. Pick one for AI as an efficiency engine. Give each a 30- to 60-day trial with clear success metrics. 

Thought partner trial example: Use AI to help pressure-test your 2026 marketing or communications plan. Ask it to identify gaps in your approach, suggest alternative tactics and challenge your assumptions. Did it surface ideas you and your team hadn’t generated alone? 

Efficiency engine trial example: Automate your weekly social media reporting. Have AI pull performance data, identify trends and flag anomalies. How many hours did it save, and what did your team do with that time? 

Real creativity is connecting dots in new ways, looking beyond the obvious. AI can show you dots you didn’t know existed. You connect them in ways that matter to your audience. 

3. Invest in the Six Cs 

To future-proof your team, focus on skills AI can’t replicate: 

• Cognition: Constant learning and adaptation 
• Curiosity: Looking forward versus backward (which is what machines train on) 
• Creativity: Connecting dots in new and unexpected ways 
• Collaboration: Learning to work with both humans and AI 
• Convincing: If everyone has the same AI tools, differentiation comes from understanding customer needs and crafting stories that resonate 
• Compassion: Building trust and loyalty through human emotion 

These are the essential skills that will separate organizations using AI strategically from those using it tactically. 

4. Measure What Matters 

Stop tracking “AI adoption rate” as a success metric and start tracking outcomes. 

• Did AI-assisted campaigns outperform human-only campaigns? 
• Are team members spending more time on strategic work and less on routine tasks? 
• Has content quality improved or declined? 
• Is your team more confident or more anxious about their roles? 

The organizations getting this right aren’t replacing people with AI. They’re reinvesting AI-generated time savings back into the human-led work that builds differentiation. 

The Time for Action is Now 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Sixty percent of marketing teams are now piloting or scaling AI, up from 42% just two years ago. Your competitors are figuring this out. Industry leaders are pulling ahead. The gap between organizations with AI systems and those who still have individuals experimenting in vacuums will continue to widen every quarter. 

And here’s the good news: AI can help level the playing field. Mid- and small-market organizations now have access to the same technology as Fortune 500 companies. The winners won’t be those with the largest budgets — they’ll be those who combine technological capability with authentic human connection. 

AI will unleash human creativity but will not replace human creativity. The question is whether you’ll use AI capabilities to amplify what makes your organization unique, or fade into the background. 

Want to talk through your AI strategy for 2026? 
We’re helping organizations move from paralysis to partnership. Let’s build your roadmap together.