Rather than having the classic marketing team structures where each member is part of some silo around their expertise, you now want to build temporary pods with a clearly defined outcome.
Classic marketing team (the old way):
AI-era marketing team (the new way):
The pods get assembled based on what the desired outcome is and who can contribute to it, does a sprint to get to that outcome, and at the end of that sprint it the outcome is assessed, the team looks at what they learned, and the pod disassembles. A new pod is then formed to achieve a new outcome.
What is a pod?
A pod is a cross-functional group of humans and AI agents assembled specifically to achieve a shared outcome.
Why should marketing teams form temporary pods in the age of AI?
Because agents are unconstrained by the limits of human memory, they act as the “glue” that maintains context across the pod.
And there should be an exploration functions, where ICs run small experiments to find high-upside opportunities. Their job is basically to answer the question: What should we do next? Where’s the next high-upside opportunity around which we should build a future pod? When the “explorer ICs” come up with an opportunity or finding that seems promising, they hand it over to a new pod, which is led by a senior marketer who can scale that opportunity to create a big win.
The entire video is worth watching, but around minute 17 is where Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan really dig into it: