Stephanie Hall and Marie Little’s work on the capabilities that will define successful marketing teams by 2030 captures this evolution. What leaders are now focused on is how those capabilities show up in everyday marketing activity; AI is becoming a practical enabler.

The data reflects what I see in practice. In best-in-class organisations, sureness in generative AI is now almost universal; usage is becoming habitual rather than occasional. According to Social Media Examiner, 60% of marketers now use AI tools daily, up from 37% in 2024.

This matters because confidence and frequency of use change how teams work. In many organisations, AI now appears in brand planning cycles, campaign development and performance review meetings. I regularly see teams start new projects by using AI to review previous brand plans, synthesise research and surface early hypotheses. That early grounding allows teams to move more quickly into interpretation, prioritisation and alignment.

Modern marketing is neither human nor wholly machine. It is a hybrid craft, built on human judgement and empathy, strengthened by AI’s ability to work at scale and analyse complex information. Research from Harvard Business School highlights the importance of knowing when to rely on AI and when to rely on the human mind, noting the significant gains in speed and effectiveness when generative AI is applied to the right tasks.

In practical terms, this means marketers using AI to explore scenarios, test assumptions and pressure-test thinking while retaining ownership of strategic and creative decisions. For example, when refining a value story, teams may use AI to explore how different narratives resonate with clinicians, payers or internal stakeholders. This preparation improves the quality of cross-functional conversations and sharpens the decisions that follow.

As AI becomes more embedded, three capabilities increasingly define effective marketing practice:

1. Personalisation is moving away from broad, one-size approaches towards more meaningful one-to-one engagement.
2. Prioritisation is improving, with teams focusing effort on the opportunities most likely to deliver value.
3. Prediction is becoming part of everyday planning, with forward-looking inputs informing both strategy and execution.

In practice, the practical implementation of AI shows up as faster content development, more responsive campaign management and continuous market landscape assessment. Performance is monitored in near real time and activity is adjusted accordingly. Measurement approaches are evolving to support ongoing decision-making rather than retrospective reporting.

To make AI stick and evolve as a true competitive advantage and trusted partner for the modern marketer, teams need a simple, practical way to work with it. At Uptake, we use our AI Partnership Framework for marketers.

It starts with Envision: being clear on the goal and what good looks like. Engage follows, focusing on the quality of the questions being asked. Exchange is the dialogue itself, iterating, refining and adapting based on what emerges. Execute closes the loop, consolidating insight and turning it into action.

These teams use AI consistently and purposefully, without overcomplicating the process. What sits inside the AI Partnership Framework is what releases AI as a true competitive advantage.

AI is reshaping how pharmaceutical marketing teams operate. The teams that progress fastest are those that integrate it into daily routines, align innovation with measurement and remain focused on delivering value for patients and customers.

The opportunity now is to make AI a practical and trusted part of marketing work, moving it to being an integral and competitive approach to how modern marketing gets done.