The CMO is no longer just the person with the “creative vision.” Fortune’s reporting makes the case that as AI changes how consumers discover, evaluate, and buy products, CMOs are becoming some of the most consequential leaders in the C-suite. And it is not a vibe. A Boston Consulting Group survey published last week found that 90% of CMOs said generative AI is already reshaping how consumers discover and evaluate brands. If your distribution, recommendation, and discovery channels are increasingly AI-powered, then the executive who owns visibility in those systems is suddenly sitting at the center of the growth engine.

That is the real stake for boards and CEOs: the marketing function is migrating from the brand side of the business into the mechanics of the business. Fortune notes that CMOs are increasingly responsible for growth, technology, data, and AI strategy, not just brand building. The implication is straightforward. If consumers are being nudged through AI systems, then marketing’s role becomes more like orchestration of signals and performance, and less like one-way storytelling. It also changes the talent pipeline for the top job. The traditional brand storyteller has rarely been viewed as a natural successor to CEO roles, but as their remit expands, the pool of marketing leaders considered for CEO positions broadens.

Spencer Stuart’s executive search research suggests this transition was underway even before the current AI boom. Fortune reports that while only about 10% of departing Fortune 500 CMOs move directly into CEO roles, roughly 37% of sitting Fortune 500 CEOs have marketing experience somewhere in their careers. Read that carefully. The number does not say CMOs instantly become CEOs all the time. It says marketing experience is already a common ingredient among CEOs, and AI is amplifying the importance of the capabilities CMOs are building.

BCG’s survey adds urgency. Fortune reports that generative AI is reshaping not only advertising, but insights, analytics, media planning, content production, measurement, and governance. That word, governance, matters because it hints at the operational and compliance pressures that come with using AI in consumer-facing systems. Marketing leaders are getting pulled deeper into decision cycles that involve data quality, tracking, measurement validity, and controls around what gets shown to whom, and why. Meanwhile, BCG found that roughly 80% of CMOs told them they are making significant investments in AI upskilling. In other words, marketing leaders are not waiting for the strategy deck to catch up to reality. They are spending to build the internal muscle.

Fortune also highlights the thinking of BCG’s global CMO, Jessica Apotheker, who argues that the most effective CMOs combine three capabilities: art, science, and orchestration. Art is creativity and brand building. Science includes analytics, measurement, customer data, and increasingly, AI. Orchestration is aligning marketing with business priorities. She tells Fortune that brand building is core, but she also says marketing must expand beyond it. The friction point is familiar to anyone who has ever tried to run a modern marketing org. Many marketing organizations, she argues, remain disproportionately focused on the creative side. The companies moving fastest tend to have strong analytics, data, and measurement capabilities already in place.

Apotheker also challenges a comfort blanket in leadership hiring: the assumption that great strategy and creativity alone are enough. In practice, she argues, execution determines performance. And execution in an AI-influenced environment is different. Success depends on how effectively teams use data, target audiences, optimize campaigns, and translate insights into action. Fortune frames it as a shift in identity, from creative function to operating discipline. That is a big deal for executives, because operating disciplines are measured, accountable, and tied to outcomes. Boards tend to trust what they can measure, and AI tends to make measurement more central, not less.

If you want to see how this path can look in real careers, Fortune points to examples where marketing has served as a springboard. Brian Cornell, who led Target for more than a decade, was previously Safeway’s chief marketing officer. Mary Dillon, former CEO of Ulta Beauty and Foot Locker, served as global CMO of McDonald’s. Brian Niccol, now CEO of Starbucks, was the chief marketing and innovation officer at Taco Bell before becoming CEO of both Taco Bell and Chipotle, and later Starbucks. Andrea Jung rose through global marketing at Avon before becoming its CEO. Fortune’s through-line is that customer understanding has become one of the most valuable forms of executive capital in the C-suite.

For peers in marketing leadership and the executives around them, the strategic stakes are simple: if AI is already reshaping discovery and evaluation, then marketing leaders who can combine art, science, and orchestration are becoming central to how companies compete. For boards, that means CEO succession planning has to take more than brand talent into account. For CEOs, it means the marketing function can no longer be treated like a cost center for campaigns. It is increasingly a core operating system for growth, tech-enabled measurement, and consumer decision journeys. The winners will be the orgs that treat marketing as a leadership capability, not a department. And the question that hangs over every succession conversation is whether your current leadership mix matches where consumer attention and purchase intent are actually being manufactured: inside AI-powered systems.