‘Revolution, not evolution’: The agentic AI wake-up call for CMOs

Australia has long positioned itself as a hub for digital innovation, and the demand for skilled digital marketers is growing every day. Despite this, Australian CMOs remain attached to legacy channels and traditional media, said Salesforce’s senior VP & CMO ANZ, Leandro Perez.

“In Australia, I still see a lot of marketers focused on the next TV ad – patting themselves on the back while viewership declines,” Perez told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE on the sidelines of Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco.

“We need to be careful in Australia and New Zealand – and across Asia in general – that we’re not complacent. This is probably the biggest technology shift we’ll see in our lifetime. CMOs need to step up – and do so quickly.”

At this year’s Dreamforce – a 50,000-person, week-long event showcasing the next wave of marketing automation – Salesforce laid out its vision of the agentic enterprise: a new model of productivity where AI agents augment every part of the business and drive innovation faster than any technology in the company’s history.

SEE MORE: Salesforce opens the age of ‘Agentic Enterprise’

Perez described the road ahead as exciting, but fired a warning shot: if CMOs don’t claim this space now, marketing risks being overtaken by others in the C-suite.

“If CMOs don’t claim this space, it’ll be claimed by CEOs, CIOs or even a new title altogether – chief AI officer,” Perez said. “There’s a risk that CMOs stay in their lane. That’s not a good place to be.”

Unlocking growth

In his keynote address, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the agentic enterprise isn’t about replacing humans – it’s about freeing them to focus on strategy, creativity and growth.

Benioff said the goal is to build a new model of productivity, grounded in trusted data, strong governance and measurable impact. “AI isn’t here to replace people,” he said. “It’s here to elevate them - to make every employee a multiplier.”

Perez echoed that sentiment, saying marketers who lean in now have the chance to own the customer journey end to end. “From marketing to sales to service – and even shaping the product - this is how a CMO becomes a CEO,” he said.

But it requires embracing AI personally, leading from the front and letting go of legacy mindsets.

“You don’t need to be a technical marketer to use this stuff. You can build a segment with natural language now. You can create campaign briefs, you can optimise in real time – all of that is possible.”

SEE MORE: PepsiCo says it will be ‘agentic AI-first’ by 2026

Perez sees a generational shift coming – not just in technology, but in leadership.

“New people are coming who aren’t blinded by the way things were done before. We need to experiment. We need to embrace failure. This is a true revolution, not incremental change.”

VentureCrowd’s transformation

One of the brands embracing that change is VentureCrowd.

Diego Mogollon, chief marketing and technology officer at VentureCrowd, is one of those marketers leaning in. The private capital investment platform has built its own internal AI agent ecosystem, automating everything from investor targeting to marketing copy, email deployment, compliance and performance optimisation – with zero manual clicks.

“Agentic AI is letting us eliminate toil and focus on what matters,” Mogollon explained. “Marketers didn’t go to university to run 1,000 subject line tests. This lets us spend time on insight, creativity and customer connection.”

Before adopting Salesforce’s Agentforce, Mogollon’s team had already developed proprietary agent frameworks to help founders launch campaigns faster. Now, with AI woven into Salesforce’s ecosystem, VentureCrowd has scaled that into a full conversational investment experience – using agents to surface top investors, clone its data scientist for every team, and generate campaigns based on live deal signals.

“I used to have a ceiling on how many founders we could onboard,” Mogollon said. “Now, 50 could go live on the platform tomorrow and I wouldn’t even blink.”

And it’s not just about speed. It’s about scale, modularity and global repeatability.

“The more we automate, the more creative we become,” he said. “And that’s what excites the team. We’ve named the agents after the people they help - it’s a digital twin mindset, not a replacement.”

For VentureCrowd’s Mogollon, the title chief marketing officer now means chief understanding officer.

“The fundamentals haven’t changed - our job is still to make users happy with our product,” he said. “But now, there’s no excuse not to understand your data, not to scale with AI, not to deliver more.”

He added that ultimately, what differentiates a brand isn’t the AI itself, but what’s done with it. “Everyone will have access to the same tools. The real value is in how you apply them.”