It’s no secret that marketing departments have long operated in a chaotic, reactive state, and the growing complexity, expanding market channels, and an increasingly fragmented audience base only amplify the problem. When marketers are unable to quickly answer unpredictable questions, this creates what George Huff, co-founder and CEO at Opal, calls an alignment tax—the hidden cost of extra meetings and late-night or off-hours work—which can make them seem disjointed and is very costly to businesses.

“How do we help build confidence in the marketing function?” is the question he explored during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s July marketing virtual conference about brand marketing and strategy.

Huff believes that the volume of marketing and content demands will only continue to increase in 2026 and beyond, which could require organizations to produce as much as twice what they did in 2025. Aside from the increased capacity this involves, it also creates a need for additional organization and structure, which can get more difficult as organizations and programs grow.

Despite mixed industry sentiment on AI use, he predicts that 50% of marketing content will be AI derived by the end of 2026. Some of Opal’s clients avoid AI while others are already running early pilots with agentic platforms. He and his team see the use of AI as a massive opportunity to “rethink some of the entrenched patterns within our organizations.”

Huff acknowledges that as more employees gain access to AI tools, governance becomes more important—but he doesn’t foresee a single person using AI to create operational change on an organizational scale. Instead, he believes the most pragmatic next step for marketing organizations is what he calls a “multiplayer mode for marketing teams.” 

“Multiplayer to us is really about teams of people having agentic workflows and agents working together in the same spaces, and you have this visual home for plans, campaigns, and content.” Huff said, “And it really is integrated into how you work.” He emphasized the importance of evolving to integrate AI, but considering it as a part of your stack so you can maximize team alignment from the start.

His team at Opal has created that shared space where teams can organize work in real-time around strategy, maintain a real view of the customer experience, and quickly inform partners and leaders about marketing initiatives, making alignment a low-friction activity. Users can import presentations into the platform or export content out into fully branded documents, including live data views, quickly answering questions that might have previously required extra meetings or late-night emails to answer, he says.

With the existing space as a foundation, Huff sees future opportunity for organizations to leverage Opal’s structured historical context to make their experience even more comprehensive by adding an instructional layer.

“When your team is working in a shared environment that has all the planning and the historical context, it's got strong instruction, and you’re bringing AI into that environment—that’s really the multiplayer vision, and that’s a massive step change from where we are. And I think it’s the right future for marketing as a function to go towards, because it allows you to do all the things you need to do.”

In response to an audience member question about safely using AI for branded content, Huff outlined Opal’s process that allows teams to place guardrails on both the front and back ends of production. Marketers can encode brand requirements into their space, he said, ensuring that any AI-generated content remains grounded in the brand. For those who don’t use AI to generate content, the platform also allows externally drafted content to be compared to the encoded brand standards.

“While there’s definitely fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the marketplace,” Huff said, “we think that it [AI] represents this opportunity to rethink everything in terms of how we work, and so that’s the future that we’re aiming at.”

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

Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.

(Photo by JLco - Julia Amaral/iStock)