AI is complicating a familiar organizational question for marketing leaders: What should be centralized, and what should stay closer to the business?
Shared data, infrastructure, governance, and specialized expertise are often easier to manage centrally, particularly as organizations expand their use of AI. AI also enables individual teams to execute work independently, experiment quickly, and adapt marketing to local customers and conditions.
Marketing organizations lean toward centralization. Gartner found that 73% of marketing leaders reported their marketing function was fully or mostly centralized, up from 67% the previous year. But the level of centralization varies by business model, so the right structure depends heavily on how an organization operates.
As AI changes how marketing teams execute work, leaders can reconsider where individual capabilities belong. That means reviewing the benefits and drawbacks of centralization rather than assuming more centralization is always better.
AI changes the centralization equation
AI pulls marketing in two directions: toward centralization and greater local autonomy.
Centralization offers:
- Improved consistency and governance.
- Reduction of duplicated work.
- Lower costs.
- Better access to expertise teams may not be able to support independently.
Those benefits become more important as AI enters more marketing workflows.
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AI depends on shared foundations. Common data, technology infrastructure, and governance standards are difficult to manage when every region, brand, or business unit takes its own approach. Specialized AI expertise is often scarce and expensive, making it practical to develop that expertise centrally and then share it across the marketing organization.
AI also gives local teams greater independence. They can use that autonomy to produce and adapt content, analyze information, and handle work that might previously have required help from a central team or outside agency. This can help organizations across different markets respond more quickly to customers, competitors, and changing market conditions.
Both extremes carry consequences. Too much centralization can slow decisions, make marketing less responsive to local needs, and weaken business-unit ownership. Too little centralization can lead to duplicated capabilities, fragmented data, inconsistent practices, and higher costs.
The question is: Which capabilities most benefit from scale and consistency, and which need to remain close to the business? The answer depends on the organization’s capabilities, needs, and structure.
Decide capability by capability
Data, technology, creative, media, marketing operations, and market execution don’t necessarily need to follow the same model. Gartner research finds that greater centralization can make sense when consistency, governance, specialized expertise, or shared infrastructure are especially important. More local ownership may be appropriate when customer needs, regulations, channels, or competitive conditions vary significantly across markets.
For many organizations, the result is a hybrid model. Shared data, technology, and specialist expertise might sit at the enterprise level, while business units or markets retain greater control over execution.
Hybrid models require careful management. Unclear decision rights can lead to confusion over ownership, duplicated work, and additional coordination. Marketing leaders must be specific about who owns a capability, who makes which decisions, and how much freedom local teams have.
Start by considering what greater centralization would accomplish. Could it eliminate duplicate technology, improve access to expertise, strengthen governance or brand consistency, or reduce costs? Marketing leaders should also consider what the organization might sacrifice in the process, such as speed, local knowledge, and business-unit ownership of commercial outcomes.
The right balance differs across organizations and capabilities within the same marketing organization. Business model, geographic footprint, market differences, regulation, and the maturity of a capability can all affect where the work belongs.
Expect the balance to change over time
Organizational design shouldn’t become permanent simply because leaders have drawn reporting lines. AI capabilities are evolving quickly, and marketing teams gain experience with them.
Work that today requires a centralized team may eventually be handled more effectively by smaller teams closer to the business. Expanding AI use can also expose gaps in governance, data, or technology that call for greater central oversight.
That makes regular reviews of the capability mix worthwhile. Gartner recommends assessing this balance at least twice a year and revisiting it when there are material changes in business strategy, market conditions, regulation, technology, or AI maturity. Marketing leaders can review performance, cost, responsiveness, and risk, then determine whether each capability still sits in the right place.
Keeping the existing structure is also a legitimate decision. An inherited structure may continue to work well, but marketing leaders should know why it still works and what would cause them to reconsider it.
The goal is to put each capability where it can work best. Some will benefit from greater enterprise coordination, while others will be more effective closer to the customers, markets, and business teams they support. The balance needs to evolve along with the work itself.
