Why Revmatics CEO Ricky Ray Butler Believes CMOs Will Be the Leaders of AI at Major Brands

As AI continues to dramatically transform the workplace, one question that bubbles up within every organization is: Who will lead out on AI initiatives? For many companies, AI represents a true paradigm shift, but others have seen first-hand incidents where using AI without proper guidance or nuance actually creates new problems.

In the midst of this changing system, Ricky Ray Butler, founder and CEO of Revmatics.ai, believes that CMOs will ultimately emerge as AI leaders of major brands. As he explained in a recent interview, the nature of marketing work — and how AI can influence that work — make CMOs uniquely positioned to take the lead on their companies’ AI adoption.

Marketing’s AI Experience  

A big part of Butler’s reasoning stems from the fact that CMOs — and marketers in general — have already been at the forefront of AI adoption for several years. “Marketing is one of the areas where AI’s potential impact is the easiest to see and understand, so it makes sense that so many marketers would be quick to adopt it,” Butler says.

“To be effective, marketing has to understand and use the latest tech, because that’s how any brand is going to reach their audience. It’s a pattern that’s repeated itself time and time again every time a new innovation comes around, be it TV, the internet or now, AI.”

In fact, SurveyMonkey reports that 88% of marketers use AI in their daily roles, with the top use cases being content optimization and creation, brainstorming content, automating tasks and analyzing data insights. It’s worth noting that this outpaces the overall rate of AI adoption cited by McKinsey, where 78% of leaders said their business used AI for at least one function.

Of course, while generative AI tools have largely stolen the spotlight, Butler notes that part of why CMOs are equipped to lead out is because many major brands have already been using AI in other marketing areas for some time.

“Features like Amazon’s also-bought recommendations or Netflix’s recommendations of other films to watch aren’t what most people currently think of when they think of AI, but these are powerful AI marketing tools in their own right — and tools that people have been using for years,” he says.

“The marketing leaders who understand how data can unlock the power of these kinds of marketing techniques are often driving AI progress in ways that others might overlook completely.”

Combining Data and AI Guidance to Scale Growth  

For his part, Butler and his company Revmatics have dialed in with a laser-like focus on helping CMOs and their marketing teams use AI to better harness their data in customer growth initiatives. While CMOs have made great strides leading out in this area, Butler still sees room for improvement.

“Roughly 80% of most brands’ data doesn’t actually get used,” he explains.

“Unstructured data, in particular, can be difficult to analyze. But at the same time, it can be some of the most valuable for generating meaningful insights that drive conversions and revenue. When CMOs use AI to transform their data into actionable insights, they can optimize their marketing spend, better understand their target audience and even unlock new communities with strong alignment potential for their brand.”

That mission is at the heart of Revmatics’ platform, which offers four core tools built specifically for growth marketers: Audience Intelligence (to uncover and analyze high-value audiences), cross-platform media planning, Creator Lists (curated directories of proven creators to power partnerships) and CRO Studio (workflows to improve conversion rates across the funnel). Each was designed to help CMOs turn untapped data into growth opportunities.

From generating audience personas based on brand data to automatically optimizing campaigns based on the platforms that deliver the best results, AI has countless marketing use cases when it is leveraged properly. Butler believes that CMOs who adopt AI in a targeted, strategic manner can demonstrate its effectiveness in a way that helps others within their organization also branch out into applicable AI tools.

“Marketing is the area where it is often the easiest to demonstrate the impact of using AI,” he explains. “Marketing KPIs like return on ad spend make it easy to see when and where AI-guided strategies are having a positive result. And with predictive analytics, you can also bring AI into the decision-making process to align budgets and campaign strategies. With this as a baseline, CMOs can demonstrate the value of AI for others in the company whose work might not have as easily measurable benefits.”

With this foundation, CMOs can become a much-needed voice within the C-suite for demonstrating the actionable applications for AI, guiding leadership to worthwhile solutions rather than getting sidetracked by ideas that are all hype, but no substance.

A Valuable Growth Indicator  

AI’s impact clearly won’t be limited to marketing. Nor will every AI-related operation a business might undertake fall under the guidance of the CMO. But as Butler’s comments illustrate, marketing is the area perhaps best positioned for rapid AI adoption and implementation, in large part because so many marketers are already forging ahead with a variety of AI tools. To be effective, CMOs must lead out on leveraging the AI resources that will allow them to better use their data and reach their target audience.

As CMOs and their marketing teams grow their own AI expertise through direct experience, they can then become a valuable asset outside of the marketing department as they help other departments navigate the all-encompassing changes being brought about by AI.

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