You have to personally use the tools and get excited about them because your excitement is contagious. You have to model that for your teams.
AI isn’t knocking on marketing’s door; it’s already inside, reshaping the function from within. The challenge for leaders isn’t reacting to hype, but building real capabilities, confidence, and use cases, starting by modeling curiosity from the top.
"You have to personally use the tools and get excited about them because your excitement is contagious," says Ashmi Chokshi, ex Microsoft Azure GM and SVP of Product Marketing at Chokshi Advisory who previously scaled multi-billion dollar cloud and SaaS businesses at Microsoft, Slack, and Atlassian. "You have to model that for your teams."
Leading the charge: For executives still hesitant, Chokshi emphasizes the importance of ownership. "Coach your teams, remove their fears—let them know their job’s not going away, but that it does require some adapting," she says. “Bring in the training, but also care about organizational barriers. How do you, as a leader, create the energy to get past that?”
The job, she believes, isn’t just evangelizing tools. It’s setting direction. "Create a clear vision and roadmap for AI adoption, even if it’s incremental," Chokshi advises.
Vision over fear: Instead of pushing teams with ultimatums like "use AI or else," Chokshi champions an enabling mindset. "To me, it's about setting a vision that says, 'Hey, we believe this is reimagining marketing. The functions, the jobs to be done will not remain the same. But what they become is up to us to define. How can we help you get there?'" It’s not about removing uncertainty altogether, but instead helping teams navigate it with clarity and purpose.
From microscope to spotlight: While some teams still feel behind, Chokshi encourages a shift in perspective. "A lot of people are either scared of AI in marketing or they're wondering if they're too late to the game. I don't believe anyone is too late at this point." She views AI not as a microscope putting marketing under scrutiny, but as a spotlight. "To me, this is a great opportunity for marketing to emerge as leaders, to be the people who bring a connected GTM together and bring AI into the fold," says Chokshi.
A lot of people are either scared of AI in marketing or they're wondering if they're too late to the game. To me, this is a great opportunity for marketing to emerge as leaders, to be the people who bring a connected GTM together and bring AI into the fold.
Connecting the GTM dots: "It really can only happen when you connect product, marketing, sales, customer success, product—all these functions," Chokshi says. With roots in product marketing, she sees this "connected GTM" approach as the foundation for alignment. "It’s really, 'how do you have those strategic GTM motions that bring everything together to help customers and drive revenue, market share, and adoption?'"
New bar for content: As AI simplifies the content creation process, Chokshi argues the expectations are shifting. "Knowing your ideal target audience is often overlooked, but it’s super critical now," she explains. Product positioning and brand messaging must now converge into a clear, compelling story that sets a company apart.
"ChatGPT or Synthesia will spit out content in microseconds," Chokshi says, "but does that have the context, the numbers, and the stories that you need? That comes from humans and from other data."
Looking up the stack: The future of AI in marketing won’t be defined by who can list the latest model release. "If you don't know what the latest OpenAI drop was, it's okay," Chokshi says. "It’s not going to matter as much for everyday users. What’s going to matter is how the products and tools they’re using adopt those LLMs for the best use cases."
She’s especially interested in how the stack is evolving. "It’s moving further up from compute and foundational LLMs, into data and unstructured content, vertical solutions, and functional SaaS gaining real weight."
