How AI is Making Marketing More Siloed, and the Only Way to Break Out

AI tools are helping marketers work faster and more independently, but a single-player approach to AI can come at the expense of collaboration. When team members work in silos, it can lead to fragmented workflows and misalignment. A multiplayer approach to AI, by contrast, helps teams work together, share insights, and stay aligned, says David Gorman, SVP of product and co-founder of Opal.

Gorman spoke about the topic during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Chicago marketing conference. Working with a multitude of brands for many years, Gorman and his team have seen the transformations these companies have gone through over time. “Even pre-dating Opal, marketing was always kind of a hair-on-fire situation,” said Gorman. “That’s what we always heard when we started, as we were running an agency and working with brands and kind of feeling it on the receiving end.” 

“We thought that surely, with technology, there has to be a better way,” he said.

AI as a Common Marketing Tool

“There’s this stat, which is 95% of marketers are using AI in 2026,” said Gorman. 

Marketing traditionally followed a step-by-step process: executives set the strategy, the marketing team wrote the copy, the art team developed the creative, and channel teams handled distribution across websites and social media.

“Today, that looks a little bit different,” said Gorman. “That looks like everyone running a million miles an hour because you can now. Speed is certainly part of the promise here. But everyone is kind of back to doing that in a silo, and everyone is trying to kind of work as their own team with their AI.”

But AI can introduce problems, including hallucinations and what Gorman described as a “siloing effect.” Customers have raised concerns about whether their content stays on brand, how siloed teams can quickly become misaligned, and how the broader strategy can get lost when work moves so fast. In the process, collaboration can become an afterthought.

This can put you into a type of single-player mode and this is where issues can arise. For example, if three team members are using various AI tools for their work, even if they ask the same question, they’re going to get three different results. Some may be relevant to what you want to put in the market while other responses may be way off. This isn’t an effective way to work. “As someone that comes from the feeling that technology should bring people together to work as a team, I definitely don’t love how this feels,” said Gorman.

So, how do we resolve these issues? Gorman stated we have two options: follow the 5% and stop using AI, or stop playing alone. 

How to Use AI as a Team

“With Opal, we’re introducing a concept that we call the memory layer, and it is all about, ‘How do we enable teams to actually work together with AI in an effective way?’” said Gorman.

Gorman said two ingredients required to do this include the context of the work and the instruction side of the equation. Opal uses something in the middle called Gem, an intelligence layer. 

Gem is an AI co-pilot built into Opal’s marketing platform that answers questions using information stored in its database, he says. For example, it can pull details on fall launches from the past five years. Users can also incorporate their workflows, guidelines, and preferences, then easily share the compiled information with teammates or in presentations.

“I think about this as a way for the team to work together to produce work, improve the rules, and ultimately get to a better outcome next time,” Gorman said. “Whether that’s someone on your team, or you doing that work, or your agents doing that work, and you have more confidence that they’re working to the best of their ability in a framework that sets them or your team up for success.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Opal, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight. 

Kristen Kwiatkowski is a professional freelance writer covering a wide array of industries, with a focus on food and beverage and business. Her work has been featured in the Bucks County Herald, Eater Philly, Edible Lehigh Valley, Cider Culture, and The Town Dish.

(Photo by Josh Larson for From Day One)