AI in the Workplace: Why Human Judgment Still Matters

By Bradly Howland 

CEO, Alkemi Collective 

 

A few months ago, one of my team leads submitted a first draft of a client strategy document in under two hours. It was polished, well-structured, and covered all the expected ground. It was also, on closer reading, almost entirely generic. The AI had done its job. The thinking had not. 

 

That moment sits with me, because it captures something the industry is not yet being honest enough about. Artificial intelligence has not simply made us more efficient. It has changed what efficiency means… and in doing so, it has created a new and underappreciated risk: that we begin to mistake fluency for insight. 

 

The productivity gains from AI are real

The productivity numbers are real. Research from MIT and Harvard Business School consistently shows that AI-assisted knowledge workers complete tasks 20% to 35% faster, often with measurable quality improvements. Across the communications and marketing industry, output volumes have surged. Agencies that once needed teams to produce a content campaign can now do it with a fraction of the headcount. Clients are asking for more, faster, and at lower cost. The market is obliging. 

 

However, here is the argument I want to make and I accept it may be unpopular in some boardrooms: the productivity gains from AI are real, but they are also creating a form of output inflation that we are not yet equipped to manage. 

 

The Hidden Cost of AI Productivity

Output inflation works like this. As the cost of producing work drops, so does its perceived value. When content is abundant and cheap to generate, differentiation becomes harder. The premium shifts away from production capability and towards something far more difficult to automate: judgment, interpretation, and the ability to navigate genuine complexity. Yet the commercial pressure is moving in exactly the opposite direction. More deliverables. Faster turnaround. Shorter thinking cycles. 

This is not a technology problem. It is a leadership problem. 

 

Organisations embedding AI into their workflows are making implicit choices about what they value. If the metric is speed and volume, then depth and originality will be quietly deprioritised. Nobody announces this. It simply happens, gradually, as the incentive structure shifts. Over time, it hollows out the very capability that justified the premium in the first place. 

 

AI adoption in South Africa

In South Africa, this dynamic carries an additional layer of complexity. AI adoption is uneven - not just across industries, but within them. Some organisations are accelerating rapidly, deploying tools across research, content, and client service. Others are still building foundational digital infrastructure. The result is a dual pressure: to catch up quickly, often without the governance frameworks or strategic clarity needed to do so responsibly. 

 

The risk of moving fast without that clarity is not only reputational, it is also structural. An organisation that uses AI to replace thinking, rather than to enhance it, is not becoming more competitive. It is becoming more fragile, dependent on tools it does not fully understand, producing work that is difficult to defend when it matters. 

 

What AI means for communications

For the communications industry specifically, this should prompt some uncomfortable self-examination. Our value proposition has never been rooted in volume. It lies in the capacity to read a situation accurately, to shape a narrative under pressure, to exercise judgment when the facts are contested and the stakes are high. These are not capabilities that can be automated. But they can be eroded - through neglect, through underinvestment, and through the slow substitution of speed for thought. 

 

The organisations that will succeed in this next phase are not those that use AI most aggressively. They are those that are most deliberate about where it stops. 

 

That means protecting time for thinking, even when technology makes it possible to move faster. It means being explicit about where human judgment is non-negotiable, and building that distinction into how work is structured, priced, and evaluated. It means resisting the temptation to let a client brief become a prompt, and then mistake the output for a strategy. 

 

AI has made work faster. Whether it makes work better depends entirely on the choices that sit around it - the questions we ask before we run the tool, the standards we apply when we review the output, and the intellectual honesty to know the difference between something that looks good and something that is good. 

 

Speed is not the test. Judgment is. 

 

Howland is the CEO of Alkemi Collective and President of the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA). 

CMO Role: The Future of Marketing Leadership

The decline of the CMO is a strategic misstep for business 

By Bradly Howland 

CEO: Alkemi Collective 

President: Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa 

 

The CMO role is undergoing a significant shift. New research from Forrester confirms a downward trend that many business leaders have failed to take seriously.  Fewer than 60% of Fortune 500 companies now have a marketing leader reporting directly to the CEO, down from 63% in 2024. The number of executives still holding the actual title of “Chief Marketing Officer” has slipped below 50%. While these percentages may appear marginal, they reflect a more consequential erosion of influence. The traditional authority and centrality of the CMO are being dismantled - and quietly, in plain sight. 

 

This is not just a change in reporting lines or nomenclature. It is symptomatic of a wider strategic misjudgement that risks undermining long-term brand value, customer trust, and market competitiveness. At a time when brands are navigating unprecedented complexity, economic instability, and social expectation, sidelining marketing is a high-risk move. 

 

Over the past decade, the role of the CMO has been steadily carved up. Newer titles (Chief Growth Officer, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital Officer) have emerged, each assuming a fragment of what was once a unified portfolio. As responsibilities have splintered, so too has the strategic power once concentrated in the CMO’s office. In many organisations, marketing now sits further from the centre of influence, relegated to execution rather than leadership. 

 

The reality is that marketing has evolved far beyond its traditional creative brief. It is no longer just about generating demand or managing campaigns. Marketing today sits at the intersection of trust, technology, purpose, and performance. It connects internal strategy with external perception, translating company values into experiences that resonate with stakeholders - customers, employees, investors, and communities alike. 

 

Excluding marketing leadership from strategic conversations creates a vacuum in this space. Disconnected brand narratives, reactive communications, and inconsistent customer experiences are all downstream consequences of that exclusion. The risks are not theoretical. They manifest in reputational damage, declining relevance, and missed growth opportunities. 

 

The fragmentation of the CMO role has also weakened internal alignment. When customer insight, data interpretation, channel strategy, and brand narrative are managed across separate leadership tracks, businesses lose the coherence needed to drive sustained performance. Clarity of voice, purpose, and positioning becomes harder to maintain. 

 

This trend is particularly concerning given the increasing scrutiny placed on companies’ ESG performance. Purpose is no longer optional, it is a business imperative. Stakeholders now expect consistency between what a company says and what it does. Without a strong marketing leader at the executive table, ESG risks becoming superficial, performative, or misaligned with broader strategy. 

 

A capable marketing leader brings not just storytelling, but substance. They are responsible for aligning internal culture with external expectation, managing reputational risk, and embedding brand trust into every customer and stakeholder touchpoint. These are essential leadership functions, not peripheral tasks. 

 

South African companies are not immune to these shifts. In fact, many are navigating even more fragile trust dynamics - across economic lines, historical legacies, and increasingly vocal stakeholder groups. Local brands must manage global competition, social responsiveness, and technological adaptation simultaneously. Strong marketing leadership is not a luxury in this context. It is foundational. 

 

This shift also coincides with rapid advancement in data analytics, automation, and AI. These tools offer extraordinary insight into customer behaviour, but they require strategic interpretation. The human judgment to turn raw data into commercially intelligent decisions still resides with leadership. Removing marketing from the top table means removing the function best positioned to make meaning of those insights. 

 

The responsibility does not rest solely with the C-suite. Marketers must also show up differently. It is no longer enough to be creatively talented. The profession must consistently demonstrate impact in business terms; market share, revenue growth, customer lifetime value. Influence is earned through credibility, clarity, and commercial fluency. 

 

Within PRISA, the repositioning of communication professionals as strategic advisors has become a core focus. As an institute, we are working to elevate professional standards and reinforce the strategic value of communications, PR, and marketing in the business ecosystem. This is not about chasing relevance. It is about restoring rightful influence - through rigour, capability, and measurable impact. 

 

The CMO role is not disappearing because it is obsolete. It is shrinking because its value is being misunderstood, both externally and internally. The role must evolve, certainly. But it should evolve into something even more powerful, not more peripheral. 

 

Business leaders who fail to recognise this shift risk operating with a strategic blind spot. The brand voice, customer trust, ESG credibility, and cultural alignment that marketing leads are uniquely positioned to manage cannot be delegated down or divided across competing roles. 

 

There is still time to course correct. Boards and executive teams must reevaluate how marketing is represented at leadership level. Marketers must assert their value more boldly and speak in terms that drive business confidence. 

 

The need has never been greater. The companies that succeed in the years ahead will not be those with the flashiest campaigns. They will be the ones with the clearest sense of purpose, the strongest customer alignment, and the courage to put marketing where it belongs… at the heart of business strategy.