Should CMOs Fear Being Replaced by AI?

A SMARTIES Special presented by PingAura.ai and powered by MMA (Marketing+Media Alliance), with Moneka Khurana, Managing Director and board member of MMA India.

Nishant opens with a compass-and-clock analogy: direction matters more than speed when AI is changing marketing so quickly.

After 26 years across digital marketing waves, Moneka says AI fluency must serve business impact rather than become another content gimmick.

AI is widely accessible, but its value weakens when organisations adopt it in silos instead of building it into teams and workflows.

CMOs with strong marketing fundamentals and judgment have an advantage; the risk is failing to develop AI skills across the team.

Moneka says many consumers now begin brand discovery with AI engines. Brands need structured, verifiable content to remain visible in AI answers.

Organic AEO and GEO work comes first; paid placements inside conversational interfaces are beginning to follow the pattern of SEO and SEM.

SMARTIES recognises creative work that also demonstrates effectiveness, technology and business impact. Unplugged brings marketers together to examine how winning work was built.

Moneka describes three agents she is building for MMA: member intelligence, a chief of staff, and research discovery. Nishant describes PingAura’s larger agent team.

Human-led, AI-assisted is her test for creativity. An AI-generated campaign can win, but she does not believe an agent CMO can replace human judgment and consumer insight.

She urges marketers to give Gen Z a seat at the table and to learn from both incumbent brands and agile challengers.

Her closing advice is to ask better questions, share what the industry learns and treat this moment as a collective return to school.