WRITER Launches AI CMO Council for Agentic Marketing

WRITER’s new AI CMO Council looks like more than another executive roundtable. It feels like a clear sign of where enterprise marketing is headed next. As of May 5, 2026, WRITER has formally introduced a confidential peer network for senior marketing leaders navigating what it calls the “agentic era” — a stage where AI moves beyond prompt-and-response tools into autonomous, connected, always-on systems that can execute work across the enterprise.

That matters because marketing is quickly becoming the front line for enterprise AI adoption. It sits at the intersection of customer experience, brand, data, content, and revenue. When AI succeeds in marketing, it becomes easier to justify broader transformation. When it falls short, the damage shows up quickly in customer trust, inconsistent messaging, and weak ROI.

Why this council matters now

The timing says a lot. Just days before announcing the AI CMO Council, WRITER introduced event-based triggers for enterprise AI agents, allowing workflows to start automatically without human initiation. That move reinforced the company’s broader view: AI should not simply assist marketers on request, but actively support the business through governed, connected action.

The new council brings that vision into the executive arena. Rather than focusing only on product features, WRITER is creating a forum where CMOs and other growth leaders can compare notes on how agentic AI is actually being implemented. That is often where the most useful lessons emerge — not in polished demos, but in candid conversations between leaders facing the same pressure to move faster, prove returns, and protect the brand.

Who is involved

The council is being co-chaired by three leaders with strong enterprise and network-building credentials:

• Diego Lomanto, CMO of WRITER
• Elizabeth van den Berg, Head of WRITER’s Global CXO Network
• Colin Kelton, retired Global CMO of Vanguard

That mix is well chosen. Lomanto brings the operator’s perspective from inside a fast-scaling enterprise AI company. Van den Berg adds expertise in community building and executive engagement. Kelton brings the kind of credibility that comes from leading marketing transformation inside one of the world’s most established financial brands.

Founding members reportedly include senior marketing executives such as:

• Nina Bibby, Group CMO at Barclays
• Eric Schwartz, CMO at The Clorox Company
• Lauren Boyman, CMO at KPMG Americas

That lineup gives the council immediate weight. These are not early-stage startups looking for attention. They are leaders from highly visible, complex enterprises where AI adoption must be judged against governance, compliance, scale, and business impact.

The real problem WRITER is trying to solve

What stands out is that WRITER is not positioning the council around AI hype. It is positioning it around execution.

That distinction matters. Across the enterprise market, there is no shortage of ambition around AI. What is missing is a reliable set of frameworks for turning that ambition into outcomes. WRITER has pointed to a familiar gap: many organizations say they want AI to drive growth, but far fewer can show meaningful returns. At the same time, most companies still have not redesigned jobs or workflows to fully accommodate AI.

That is exactly why a council like this could become influential. The challenge is no longer simply figuring out whether AI can write content, summarize meetings, or personalize campaigns. The harder question is how marketing organizations should be rebuilt around AI agents that can reason, retrieve knowledge, trigger actions, and collaborate with human teams under proper oversight.

Put simply, the question is shifting from “What can AI do?” to “How should we operate because AI can do it?”

From productivity to differentiation

One of the more interesting themes in WRITER’s messaging is its push to move the AI conversation beyond productivity and cost savings. That is the right direction.

For the past several years, AI in marketing has often been sold as a way to produce more assets faster and cheaper. That has value, but it does not create lasting advantage on its own. If every team uses AI the same way, the outcome is a flood of generic content and a race toward sameness.

The bigger opportunity is to use AI to sharpen creativity, improve campaign performance, increase speed without sacrificing quality, and preserve brand distinction at scale. That is a more ambitious goal — and a more difficult one to operationalize. It requires governance, workflow orchestration, trusted data, and clear decisions about where humans stay in control.

That is where agentic marketing comes in. Instead of relying on isolated prompts, agentic systems can take action across tools, retain context, and support complex processes over time. For large marketing organizations, that could mean better orchestration of content operations, lead flows, audience segmentation, campaign optimization, and cross-functional collaboration.

Why marketing is the proving ground for agentic AI

WRITER is right to place marketing at the center of this shift. Marketing is one of the few functions where AI’s benefits and risks are both immediately visible.

On the upside, AI can accelerate content production, support personalization, surface insights faster, and automate repetitive coordination work. On the downside, it can damage consistency, introduce compliance risk, dilute positioning, or produce tone-deaf outputs if it is not governed properly.

That makes marketing the ideal testing ground for enterprise-grade AI systems. If companies can build AI-native marketing organizations that balance autonomy with oversight, they create a model the rest of the business can follow.

The AI CMO Council appears designed to help leaders manage exactly that balance. Monthly virtual roundtables and quarterly in-person sessions in cities including New York, San Francisco, and London suggest this will be an ongoing working forum rather than a one-off publicity exercise. If the discussions stay practical, the council could become a source of real playbooks for how enterprise marketing teams adopt agentic AI responsibly and effectively.

WRITER’s broader strategy

There is also a strategic upside for WRITER itself. Launching a council like this strengthens the company’s position as more than a software vendor. It presents WRITER as a convener of executive insight and a partner in organizational transformation.

That matters in a market where many AI companies are still competing largely on model performance. Enterprise buyers increasingly want more than raw capability. They want governance, trust, integration, and a clearer path from pilot to production. By building a network of influential marketing leaders, WRITER is deepening its role in that conversation.

There is a feedback loop here as well. The insights generated by CMOs working through real transformation challenges can help shape WRITER’s own platform roadmap, especially around orchestration, content governance, and measurable AI outcomes. In that sense, the council is both a thought-leadership initiative and a strategic listening engine.

Early signals and possible friction

Because the launch is so recent, most of the coverage so far has come from WRITER’s own announcement and related syndication. Social engagement still appears to be in the early stages, with LinkedIn doing more of the work than X. That is not surprising for a senior executive initiative aimed at enterprise leaders rather than mass-market attention.

There has, however, already been at least one point of tension: an established organization called CMO Council reportedly raised concerns on LinkedIn about possible trademark overlap with the “AI CMO Council” name. It is too early to tell whether that develops into anything more than a passing objection, but it is a reminder that even strong launches can attract unexpected scrutiny.

Still, the bigger story remains the same. WRITER is trying to define the next chapter of AI in marketing before the rest of the market settles on its own language and standards.

What happens next

If the AI CMO Council succeeds, its influence could extend beyond WRITER and beyond marketing. The real value will not come from the existence of the group alone, but from whether it can produce credible frameworks for building AI-native organizations.

That could include guidance on:

• how to govern autonomous marketing workflows
• how to measure ROI beyond simple time savings
• how to protect brand integrity while scaling personalization
• how to redesign teams and roles around AI collaboration
• how to move from experimentation to durable operating models

Those are the questions that will shape competitive advantage in the next phase of enterprise AI. Tools will matter, but execution will matter more.

FAQ

What is WRITER’s AI CMO Council?

It is a confidential peer network for senior marketing leaders focused on how agentic AI is being adopted and governed inside large enterprises.

Why is this launch significant?

It signals a shift from AI experimentation toward operational leadership, where the focus is less on isolated tools and more on how organizations actually work with autonomous AI systems.

Who is the council for?

The council is aimed at CMOs and other growth leaders at large enterprises that need to balance AI innovation with governance, compliance, brand protection, and measurable business outcomes.

What does “agentic marketing” mean?

Agentic marketing refers to AI systems that do more than respond to prompts. These systems can retain context, connect across tools, trigger actions, and support ongoing workflows with human oversight.

Why is marketing such an important area for enterprise AI?

Marketing brings together content, data, customer experience, and revenue. That makes it one of the clearest places to see both AI’s upside and its risks, from faster execution to brand and compliance issues.

Conclusion

WRITER’s AI CMO Council is a strong signal that the market is moving past AI experimentation and toward operational leadership. The companies that win in agentic marketing will not simply be the ones with access to powerful models. They will be the ones that know how to combine automation, governance, creativity, and measurable business outcomes. For teams trying to turn that vision into real performance, it makes sense to pair strategic thinking with platforms built for ROI-focused execution. ROAS Suite is a smart place to start for marketers who want stronger returns from the next wave of AI-driven growth.