Barreira’s comments come as companies experiment with generative AI across marketing functions, prompting many to rethink how work is organised and which tasks can be automated.
“AI has not changed what marketing is accountable for. We are still focused on growth, relationships, and how the brand shows up. What it has changed is how directly marketing drives those outcomes,” Barreira said.
At Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation arm of global marketing services giant Publicis Groupe, that transformation began with a business challenge of growing faster than the market without increasing budgets and headcount at the same pace.
The company adopted what it calls a “people-plus-product” philosophy, combining customisable AI agents with human expertise. The approach is supported by proprietary platforms including Sapient Slingshot, Bodhi and Sustain.
A key part of the transformation involved mapping work across the marketing organisation.
“We approached it differently by mapping the work itself. We identified more than 700 tasks across our marketing and communications function, with over 550 that can be AI-led.”She said the exercise helped redesign workflows by identifying where AI could lead execution and where human judgment remained essential.
Drawing on Publicis Sapient’s own transformation, Barreira said becoming an AI-first organisation requires rethinking operating models rather than simply adopting new technology.
“An AI-first organisation is not one that simply uses AI tools. It is one where workflows, roles and decisions are intentionally built around how AI and humans operate together.”
The redesign has delivered measurable gains, according to the company. Embedding AI into core marketing workflows reduced campaign timelines from around 20 days to three to five days, while processes involving more than 50 handoffs were simplified to about 11.
The changes also resulted in a 50% faster time-to-market, a 40% increase in marketing capacity, seven times more lifecycle programmes, 20 times more creative tests, a 25-35% improvement in MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)-to-SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) conversion and 20% more qualified opportunities.
Referring to the company’s AI-driven redesign, Barreira said the changes have enabled Publicis Sapient’s marketing team to respond faster, test more and stay much closer to market signals.
“Marketing can respond faster, test more, and stay much closer to market signals. Over time, the role of marketing shifts. Marketing moves from supporting growth to actively shaping it. The real shift is not that marketing can do more. It’s that it can make smarter decisions, consistently,” she said.
Describing Publicis Sapient’s internal transformation, Barreira said the company has redefined the role of its marketing team as AI takes over more routine execution.
“As execution moves into systems, the marketer’s role shifts toward orchestration and judgment. Marketers became journey orchestrators. Each member of the marketing and communications team rewrote their own job description, guided by three core competencies: storytelling, data fluency and orchestration.”
She said the company’s talent requirements have evolved accordingly, with marketers expected to combine narrative, data and technology while working alongside AI systems. Evaluating and refining AI-generated outputs, rather than simply building AI assistants, is where the greatest value is created.
For organisations beginning their AI journey, Barreira cautioned against focusing solely on technology.
“The biggest misconception is that AI is just a tool. Organisations often start by asking which tools to adopt. That inherently limits impact.”
Publicis Sapient employs more than 20,000 people globally across strategy, customer experience, engineering, data and AI. India is a major engineering, delivery and innovation centre for the company, supporting platform development, AI innovation and digital transformation programmes for clients worldwide.