The WARC Podcast AI can be a rocket ship for mid-market brands
12 snips
Nov 6, 2025 Caroline Giegerich, VP of AI & Marketing Innovation at IAB, and Jillian Ryan, Senior Manager at Intuit Mailchimp, unpack the AI landscape for mid-market brands. They discuss the importance of AI as a force multiplier, enabling smaller teams to thrive with enhanced capabilities. Challenges like hiring and skill gaps emerge as key hurdles. Both guests emphasize the need for clean data, leadership support, and a culture of experimentation in AI adoption, encouraging marketers to start small and iterate.
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Optimism Meets A Capability Gap
- Mid-market marketers are highly optimistic: 98% believe AI can boost marketing effectiveness.
- But most lack clear paths to apply AI, creating a major capability gap.
Why MailChimp Studied Mid-Market Teams
- Jillian explains MailChimp saw mid-market firms are too big for startup tactics and too small to match enterprise budgets.
- That squeeze motivated the Marketing Equalizer study to understand their needs.
AI As A Force Multiplier
- Caroline calls AI a force multiplier that can act as analyst, copywriter, and data scientist for small teams.
- This democratization lets a team of ten access capabilities that once required dozens.