AI redefines skills, roles, technology and governance -- according to Org.Works and Cordial -- with 50% of retail leaders planning to increase marketing headcount

Marketing's next competitive frontier is understanding the context behind customer behavior

SAN DIEGO, June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Cordial, the enterprise marketing platform used by Levi's, Tapestry, L.L.Bean and Boot Barn, today released Designing the AI-Native Marketing Organization, a new report on how retail marketing leaders are rethinking skills, roles, technology, and governance to keep pace with generative and agentic AI. Based on a survey of 100 retail marketing executives conducted in partnership with Org.Works LLC, the report finds that most organizations are being asked to do more with AI — placing significant strain and impending change on retailers.

• For more information and to download the full report, visit cordial.com/resources/designing-the-ai-native-marketing-organization.

Half of retail leaders expect their marketing teams to grow, while another 31% anticipate the same headcount but with fundamentally different roles. Despite this, more than 80% report significant AI skills gaps, outranking technology, budget, and executive alignment as the leading barrier to adoption. This divide results in greater capability and capacity demanded of organizations unequipped to deliver.

"Our research shows that AI is reshaping how marketing teams organize and operate. Success will depend not only on technology adoption, but also on developing the skills, ownership, and governance required to support new ways of working," said Janet Sherlock, CEO of Org.Works LLC and former chief digital & technology officer at Ralph Lauren.

"Marketers are automating internal execution and personalizing external experiences by racing to understand the context behind customer behavior," said Rob Garf, chief strategy officer at Cordial. "Those layering AI onto fragmented systems and structures are finding that the gaps compound faster than they can close them."

Key findings from the report include:

• Most organizations are not optimized, and many don't know it: On average, only 24% describe themselves as "optimized" across data unification, personalization, channel automation, and content operations.
• Brand governance is under pressure: 70% of organizations run centrally controlled content functions, yet 39% specifically limit content generated by AI due to brand control concerns. At the same time, 58% plan to add AI content specialists and 49% anticipate new AI creative director roles.
• Skills gaps are the top barrier to AI adoption: 44% of respondents cite skills gaps as a top-three barrier, outpacing legacy technology (36%), budget constraints (35%) and executive alignment (29%).
• Agency demand is rising, but the relationship is changing: Retail marketing leaders expect agency use to increase, but organizations are becoming more intentional, building internal AI capabilities and using agencies for specialized execution.

For retail marketing leaders looking to close the gap, the report outlines six concrete shifts already underway inside leading organizations: simplify ownership, build balanced resource and operating models, modernize selectively, redefine workflows rather than just roles, govern at the speed of AI and understand customer context before scaling execution.

The shift is already showing up on the consumer side. According to Cordial's The AI Ready Brand Guide, 48% of consumers are likely to buy a product recommended by an AI tool, and 45% said AI has already influenced a purchase — a sign that these organizational changes are a response to what's already happening.

This research coincides with the launch of Cordial's AI headless infrastructure. A critical step for enterprise AI adoption, this composable, LLM-agnostic platform exposes every Cordial capability as a standard service any AI agent can use, from any system, in any stack. Enterprise retailers can now build and deploy custom AI agents directly on Cordial. By opening its capabilities through MCP, CLI, API, and developer tooling, Cordial allows internal agents, external agents, and future agentic workflows to access the same audience logic, message generation, brand validation, reporting, and send execution services.

For more information and to download the full report, visit cordial.com/resources/designing-the-ai-native-marketing-organization.

About Cordial
Cordial is an enterprise marketing platform used by Levi's, Tapestry, L.L.Bean, Boot Barn, and other world-class brands to power billions of personalized messages across email, SMS, and mobile. Its proprietary Context Graph captures customer, product, and message understanding in a single system — turning raw signals into relevance and relevance into revenue. At a time when the Battle for Attention has made volume a liability and context a competitive advantage, Cordial pairs its platform with expert guidance and benchmarks so brands don't just have the tools. They know how to use them.

Media Contact
Ryan Hecker
PANBlast for Cordial
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SOURCE Cordial