In May, Harvard Business Review published Redesigning Your Marketing Organization for the Agentic Age, which I co-wrote with Michelle Taite, former Global CMO of Mailchimp, and John Winsor. It sets out the thinking Defyner is built on.
The problem
AI is speeding up product development and widening what marketing is responsible for. Yet most marketing organisations still run on an operating model that is sequential, siloed and heavy on coordination. Adding AI tools to that model makes the old work faster. It does not change what the team can do.
The argument
The article proposes a structure built for people and agents working together. At its centre is a brand code: a machine-readable knowledge base that encodes brand strategy, customer insight and business rules, so that both people and AI agents can act on it. Layered systems of specialised agents then handle content creation, experimentation, distribution and reporting at scale, while marketers move from execution to strategic direction and judgement.
The harder change is human. It means hiring and developing people who think in systems and can shape how the platform evolves, not only people who run campaigns.
What this looks like in practice
This is the work we do with clients. We codify the brand into a Brand Code, rebuild the workflows that matter most around agents, and deploy the system on the client's own infrastructure, so the brand owns it rather than renting it. Most engagements start small: one domain, one governed workflow, and a roadmap for the rest.
