Generative AI has moved beyond the “write me a funny LinkedIn post” stage. In 2026, companies are increasingly connecting AI directly to marketing and sales workflows: creating ads, personalizing emails, analyzing prospects and even deciding what action should come next. McKinsey’s latest research shows the shift clearly. Around 90% of CMOs are experimenting with AI, although fewer than 10% have scaled it across marketing workflows. In other words, everybody has entered the kitchen. Few have mastered the recipe.
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Content Production Without the Production Marathon
Content creation remains the obvious starting point. Generative AI can produce first drafts of newsletters, product descriptions, social posts, landing pages, images and advertising variations in seconds. The interesting part, though, is not simply producing *more*.
It is producing versions for different audiences. A retailer may begin with a single campaign and then create different messages for returning customers, new visitors or those who have an interest in a certain product category. For instance, a European telecom enterprise went from four customer segments to 150 more specific ones, says McKinsey, by tailoring its messages based on a range of factors, such as region and dialect.
The productivity improvements are also taking effect. In June 2026, McKinsey reported that some organizations that are leveraging AI for scaled creativity were experiencing a two-to-five times jump in creative productivity, and 10%-30% reductions in creative costs.
If the advertisement is based on a compelling message, it becomes more lively.
Advertising is on the same trajectory. Teams can produce scores of variations of an ad and test them out and learn from performance data, rather than spending 40 minutes debating which headline is better.
A good example is the Coca-Cola Company. The company has tried generative AI in the open with its “Create Real Magic” programs and reports that it applies generative AI to content creation, content distribution and consumer engagement. The great concept is to develop a base tool, then customize and share it to many contexts without reinventing each campaign.
What National Casino Illustrates about Digital Communication
This also applies to customer experiences within entertainment and online gaming; where the experience is mostly digital, this makes a lot of sense. For instance, National Casino offers thousands of games, promotions, account options, mobile gaming, and multilingual customer support. In business scenarios such as this, generative AI may be able to assist with organizing a huge volume of customer communications, such as creating FAQ answers in various languages, editing promotional content, categorizing support messages, or generating various versions of the same message for various customer groups. So, the key word is help. Automation still requires a high level of human oversight in regulated industries, especially when it comes to compliance, customer data, and responsible marketing.
Salespeople Get an Assistant that Never Needs Coffee
The sales aspect of things could be where the fun begins. AI can summarize CRM histories, conduct research on prospects, create tailored outreach, compile meeting notes, and recommend the next steps.
In 2025, McKinsey found that 19% of B2B decision-makers had already deployed applications of generative-AI for their buying and selling processes and another 23% were working toward doing so. By 2026, the attention was turning to ‘agentic AI’ – systems that were able to link a series of tasks together rather than being prompted by a person each time.
Suppose someone reads a white paper. An AI system finds the lead, reviews CRM data, creates a suitable follow-up, suggests content and notifies a sales representative when human intervention is warranted. The salesperson isn’t going away. The boring clicking is.
Automation Works Best When Humans Stay Involved
There is one catch. Generative AI can confidently invent information. Customer data can be sensitive. Brand tone can become painfully generic. Copyright, privacy and bias also remain serious issues. McKinsey therefore recommends governance and human review, especially for material going directly to customers.
That probably explains where marketing is heading. Not toward departments operated entirely by robots, but toward smaller repetitive workloads and faster experimentation. Humans decide what is worth saying. AI helps create, personalize, test and distribute it.
And yes, somebody still has to tell the machine that “Revolutionize your journey today!” is not a good headline.
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