“Can’t you just get AI to do that?” the deadly-serious CEO asked an undaunted CMO of a $75mm SaaS company.
While thinking, “not yet,” she paused. This was a leadership moment.
For context, the CMO was lamenting the loss of their Product Marketing lead and had even tried to create a PMM GPT. Unfortunately, the output was generic, and the new product launch required more industry know-how and creativity. Plus, they were hoping the new product would achieve record adoption among current customers and generate an incremental 20% in revenue.
Human insight and leadership were required.
When AI Hype Reaches the CEO
Some background might help here. This CEO, as is often the case, was not AI-savvy. He had barely cracked open ChatGPT and was hampered by amateur prompts. He had certainly not vibe-coded a new website on Lovable over a weekend. He had definitely not built a custom application or personal agent with ChatGPT’s Codex. (Pro tip: download this game-changing tool to your desktop before finishing this rant.)
So what prompted the CEO’s question?
The hype.
So much hype. Ubiquitous hype. Hype to the point that any business challenge in any company could seemingly be solved by GenAI.
And CEOs who don’t know better are believing it.
To be fair, this CEO could have asked the very same question of the heads of product, finance, or sales. Every executive function is now under pressure to prove where AI can replace labor, accelerate output, or reduce costs.
Shift the Conversation to Business Strategy
Back to our savvy CMO.
Rather than focus on what GenAI could or couldn’t do in that moment, she redirected the conversation. “Let’s review the business objectives and overall strategy for this new product,” while noting the board's interest in this new product.
Without saying so directly, she helped the CEO realize that the product marketing role might be too important to rely solely on a GPT. Adding that this product could materially change perceptions of the company, our fearless CMO suggested it might also be time to revisit the company’s overall positioning.
Out of the weeds. Into the big picture.
And before the CEO could ask, “Can’t AI help us find our new positioning?” she explained that she had already done AI-enabled deep research surrounding the new product, outlined the positioning process, and evaluated two positioning firms to guide the work.
In other words, she wasn’t dismissing AI. She was demonstrating mastery of it.
Don’t Debate AI. Lead the Conversation.
So how should CMOs respond when the CEO asks, “Can’t AI just do that?”
- Don’t panic.
- Don’t get defensive.
- Don’t make it a debate about prompts.
Make it a business conversation.
The best CMOs won’t win by dismissing AI. They’ll win by understanding it better than everyone else in the executive committee. That means knowing:
- Where AI can genuinely accelerate execution
- Where human judgment still matters enormously
- Where leadership alignment is the actual bottleneck
That’s leadership.
Written by Drew Neisser
