EY Marketing Chief: AI Is Rewriting the Marketing Playbook, Not Just Automating It

Lou Cohen, the Chief Marketing Officer for EY Americas, has a stark message for his peers: the marketing function as we know it is on the clock. According to Cohen, the widespread integration of artificial intelligence into marketing operations isn't a distant future—it's the pressing present. In a recent interview, he suggested that marketing departments have, at most, the next year and a half to adapt before falling into a potentially unrecoverable competitive hole.

Cohen's perspective is grounded in EY's own shift. He reports the firm has moved beyond testing AI; it's now actively using these tools for content, segmentation, and analytics. This operational shift is critical. Many large companies remain trapped in endless pilot programs, but Cohen says EY is already scaling up, betting that AI will be a key differentiator in winning business.

His forecast points to 2026 as a definitive turning point. By then, he expects AI to have fundamentally altered team structures. The focus for human marketers will pivot from production tasks to strategy, creative direction, and managing the AI systems themselves. This aligns with broader industry projections that see generative AI delivering massive economic value in marketing and sales.

However, Cohen doesn't envision a wholesale replacement of people. Instead, AI will handle high-volume, repetitive work, freeing humans for higher-order thinking. The real challenge, he acknowledges, is talent. A significant gap exists between awareness of AI and the competence to use it daily, demanding substantial investment in reskilling current staff.

This transformation also walks a tightrope with privacy. The promise of AI-driven hyper-personalization is immense, but it must navigate a growing thicket of global regulations, from the EU's AI Act to various state laws in the U.S. Success will belong to those who build compliance into their systems from the start.

For EY and its Big Four rivals, the race is already on. Marketing has become a frontline competitive weapon, and Cohen's public discussion of EY's strategy is itself a move to signal credibility and leadership. The evidence of this shift will soon appear in hiring trends, budget allocations, and, ultimately, in which firms consistently win more client business. According to Cohen, the time for debate is over; the era of adaptation has begun.