What you need to know this week in AI + Marketing in 15 seconds:
Salesforce acquires Qualified - intensifying its AI push by embedding agentic tools deeper into CRM workflows (Yahoo Finance)
62% of B2B CMOs aren't ready for AI-native competitors - gaps in talent, data, and internal alignment are holding teams back (MarTech)
Anti-AI backlash is growing louder - from creative fields to customer service, frustration with AI overuse is gaining traction (CNN)
AI search is shaping your brand's reputation - what AI surfaces often becomes your brand story, and you're losing control (Fast Company)
Google tests CC - AI assistant that lives in email - summarizes threads, drafts replies, manages tasks. Email is becoming an AI command center (Google)
Cutting brand investment costs $1.92 in future spend - BCG research shows brand behaves like capital that compounds when sustained, decays when cut (Kevin Goodwin)
Clay now works inside ChatGPT - collapse prospecting, enrichment, and reasoning into one workspace (Clay)
The AI Visibility Index launched - Semrush now tracks how visible brands are in AI-powered search engines (Semrush)
More top news 🗞️, tools 🧰, jobs 💼, and LI posts 👩💻 below!
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🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES
Salesforce’s AI buy, brand experiments, and the backlash brewing
9 brands that doubled down on AI in 2025
Adweek | ~5 minutes
A look at brands that went all-in on AI across media, creative, operations, and personalization this year. The examples range from cautious pilots to deeply embedded AI workflows that touch the full funnel.
62% of B2B CMOs aren’t ready to compete against AI-enabled companies
MarTech | ~4 minutes
New research shows most B2B marketing leaders feel underprepared for AI-native competitors, citing gaps in talent, data, and internal alignment.
How a French spirits company created employee buy-in for AI
Harvard Business Review | ~6 minutes
This case study breaks down how Pernod Ricard focused on trust, training, and real use cases to get employees comfortable using AI, rather than forcing adoption from the top down.
AI search is shaping your brand’s reputation
Fast Company | ~4 minutes
As people rely more on AI-powered search and summaries, brands are losing control over how they’re described. What AI surfaces often becomes the brand story.
Inside Rocket’s new NFL campaign as its in-house creative team embraces AI
Marketing Dive | ~4 minutes
Rocket’s in-house team used AI to speed up creative production while keeping strategy and final decisions human. The campaign shows how AI can support scale without replacing creative direction.
The anti-AI backlash is growing louder
CNN | ~4 minutes
From creative fields to customer service, frustration with AI overuse is starting to show. The piece explores where resentment is coming from and why it’s gaining traction.
The state of consumer AI 2025: hits, misses, and what’s next
a16z | ~8 minutes
A deep dive into which consumer AI products actually stuck in 2025, which ones faded, and why habits matter more than hype.
My take: Daily utility beats novelty every time.
CMOs’ most overlooked marketing strategies in 2025
Marketing Brew | ~4 minutes
This piece highlights underused tactics CMOs say deserve more attention, from better internal alignment to smarter lifecycle marketing.
Growth lessons behind Lovable’s $66B outcome
Elena Verna | ~6 minutes
A sharp breakdown of Lovable’s growth engine, focusing on distribution, product-led loops, and disciplined prioritization..from it’s head of Growth, Elena! .
The AI Visibility Index
Semrush | ~5 minutes
A new index tracking how visible brands are inside AI-powered search and answer engines, offering a glimpse into what “SEO” looks like in an AI-first world.
Salesforce buys AI marketing firm intensifying its AI push
Yahoo Finance | ~3 minutes
Salesforce announced it is acquiring an AI marketing startup Qualified to strengthen its portfolio of agentic and AI-driven enterprise tools. The move reflects Salesforce’s strategy of embedding AI deeper into its core CRM and workflow products rather than treating it as an add-on feature.
🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS
Being recommended > being found
Margaux Viola – “Boost AI Feedback with Personalization Settings”
Margaux explains how turning on ChatGPT Personalization transformed AI from agreeable to genuinely useful by asking it to challenge assumptions and surface blind spots. Her takeaway: better prompts = sharper thinking and faster decisions.
Kevin Goodwin – “Cutting Brand Investment Costs Companies $1.92 in Future Spend”
Kevin shares BCG research showing that cutting brand spend today costs nearly 2× more to recover later, because brand behaves like capital that compounds when sustained and decays when neglected.
David Manela – “Optimize for AI and Google for Growth”
David argues customers aren’t Googling anymore - they’re asking AI, which learns from Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and reviews. Winning brands will optimize for being recommended by AI, not just ranked by Google.
Alaura Weaver – “AI-Generated Content and the Role of the Storyteller”
Alaura writes why AI hasn’t replaced storytellers: companies can generate content easily, but still need humans to shape meaning, narrative, and taste. She notes a surge in storyteller roles - and confusion about what they actually do.
Rashad Assir – “What Founders Miss About Hiring Storytellers”
Rashad says AI has created content abundance and meaning scarcity. The best storytellers don’t just write—they turn everyday company moments into narratives that cut through the noise.
A good storyteller should be able to take seemingly ordinary things about the company and package them in a way that appeals to tribal curiosity.
🟡 LATEST AI MARKETING TOOLS
AI Ad updates + more in agentic commerce.
TOOL | WHAT IT DOES | WHY IT MATTERS | BEST FOR |
|---|---|---|---|
Adobe Firefly - Prompt-Based Video Editing | Adobe Firefly now supports prompt-based video editing, letting creators add, remove, extend, and modify video clips using natural language. | This pushes generative video from creation into real editing workflows, making AI usable mid-production, not just at the start. | Creative Directors • Video Teams • Brand Studios |
Meta SAM Audio | Meta released SAM Audio, extending its Segment Anything Model to audio. It can isolate, separate, and analyze sounds within complex audio environments. | Audio editing, moderation, and analysis gain the same granular control image and video already have with segmentation models. | Audio Creators • Media Platforms • AI Research Teams |
Clay in ChatGPT | Clay is now directly accessible inside ChatGPT, allowing users to enrich leads, pull data, and run GTM workflows without leaving the chat interface. | This collapses prospecting, enrichment, and reasoning into one workspace, reducing tool switching for growth teams. | Growth Marketers • RevOps • Sales Teams |
Gemini 3 Flash | Gemini 3 Flash is Google’s faster, lighter-weight Gemini model optimized for low latency, real-time use cases, and high-throughput tasks. | It enables AI-powered features where speed and cost matter more than deep reasoning, like search, assistants, and live experiences. | Product Teams • Search & Platform Teams • Developers |
Apps Can Now Be Submitted to ChatGPT | OpenAI now lets developers submit apps directly into ChatGPT, making them discoverable and usable inside the ChatGPT interface. | ChatGPT is becoming a distribution platform, not just a model, shifting how AI products reach users. | AI Founders • Product Builders • Developer Teams |
Google Tests Email-Based Productivity Assistant - CC | Google is testing the AI assistant CC that lives inside email, helping users summarize threads, draft replies, and manage tasks directly from their inbox. | Email is turning into an AI command center, not just a communication tool. | Knowledge Workers • Ops Teams • Busy Executives |
Opal - Google’s Vibe Coding Tool in Gemini | Opal is Google’s new “vibe coding” tool that helps users build apps by describing what they want, now integrated into Gemini. | Coding is shifting from syntax-driven to intent-driven, accelerating prototyping for non-technical builders. | Indie Builders • Product Designers • Early-Stage Founders |
New ChatGPT Images | ChatGPT rolled out a major image upgrade with higher-quality generation, better prompt adherence, and stronger editing capabilities. | This closes the gap between standalone image tools and conversational creation workflows. | Designers • Social Teams • Creative Marketers |
Claude for Chrome | Anthropic launched a Claude Chrome extension that brings Claude directly into the browser for reading, summarizing, writing, and researching across tabs. | AI assistants are moving closer to where work actually happens: the browser. | Writers • Researchers • Knowledge Workers |
⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS
From Datadog to Intuit: who's hiring this week
Adobe - Director, Enterprise AI Strategy
Intuit - Head of Marketing Futures
Evertune AI - Data Journalist, AI & Search
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