Most big brands haven't created AI-specific roles, despite many marketers believing AI will change their jobs; Coca-Cola promoted two executives to new AI roles
Patrick Coffee / Wall Street Journal : X: @patrickcoffee X: Patrick Coffee / @patrickcoffee : New from me: Gen AI is already changing everything, so big consumer brands will create new roles or hire specialists to oversee that process, right? Maybe not. https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This early split between broad marketer expectations and limited formal hiring captures how consumer brands initially approached generative AI: Coca-Cola assigned executive ownership while many peers had not yet made AI a standalone function.
Later coverage shows the organizational response broadening from dedicated chief AI officer appointments to internal AI champion groups. Coca-Cola's subsequent AI holiday advertising also made its early governance choice operational rather than merely symbolic.
First-order effects
- Coca-Cola gives two executives explicit AI mandates, concentrating accountability for how the company evaluates and uses generative AI.
- Brands without AI-specific roles leave AI oversight embedded in existing marketing and operating structures, even as their marketers expect job changes.
Second-order effects
- Coca-Cola's move gives other consumer brands a concrete governance model to weigh against specialist hiring; the wider creation of chief AI officer roles suggests AI ownership was becoming a cross-industry management question.
- Formal ownership can accelerate experiments from internal use to customer-facing marketing, as reflected in Coca-Cola's later AI-generated holiday campaign.
Third-order effects
- If adoption continues, AI responsibility is likely to shift from ad hoc marketing experimentation toward repeatable governance structures—either centralized executives or distributed internal champions.
- The more durable divide may be less about whether brands use AI than whether they build the internal authority to deploy it consistently and manage public-facing use.
The trend: Generative AI adoption is driving companies from informal experimentation toward dedicated leadership and internal operating networks.