When a marketing team asks to swap out its AI tools, the question on the table is usually the wrong one. Which tool comes next matters a lot less than what the old one was supposed to change. Without that answer, the replacement will end up in the same place.
I work with owners and leadership teams on where their money and attention go, and this request is about to land on a lot of desks. In Dentsu Creative's CMO Report: Making It Real, 70% of marketing leaders said they have not yet seen major cost efficiencies from AI, and 74% are thinking about replacing some of the tools they pay for. Put those two side by side and you can see the next budget request coming.
A faster team does not cost less on its own
Speed is what most of these tools sell, and by the report's account they delivered it. Most of the same leaders say AI is getting their work to market faster. The cost efficiencies have not shown up yet, and my read is that nobody decided what the saved hours were for, so the team spent them making more.
A tool that made the team faster and left the budget where it was has done its part. Nobody gave it a number to move.
Changing tools resets the clock on what you learned
A swap feels like progress. In practice it often throws away the one useful thing the old tool produced, which is whatever evidence the team gathered about what it did with it. My question for any tool, new or old, is why: what will be different in the business if it works, and how will we know?
When that answer is missing for the old tool, the new one starts from the same blank page, and in twelve months the company will be having the same conversation about a different vendor. The missing piece is an owner for the result. Somebody has to hold the outcome the tool was bought for, check it on a schedule, and say plainly when it is not showing up.
Ask which problem the new tool is aimed at
The report gives an owner a standard to hold the marketing team to, and it comes from their own peers. Eight in ten of the leaders surveyed want innovation applied to their "biggest and most urgent business challenges," rather than run as a side project. So ask your marketing lead which of the company's biggest problems the replacement is aimed at, and how you will see that problem get smaller.
Then ask three more questions. Who owns that result, by name? When will the two of you look at it again? What would you need to see to stop paying for it?
Replace the tool when it had a job and missed it
Sometimes the old tool was pointed at a clear problem, measured honestly, and still fell short. That is a tool that failed, and the team should replace it and move on. The questions above are how you tell that situation apart from a tool nobody ever gave a job.
Write one line for the old tool first
Ask whoever wants the swap to write a single line about the tool they want to replace: what it was bought to change, and what happened. If nobody can write it, write that line for the new tool before you buy it, because the new one will be judged by the same missing sentence.
Scoring AI on growth covers how to pick the measure, and why cheaper work makes more work covers where the saved hours tend to go. The services page describes how I help leadership teams decide where AI fits among the other growth levers. When your team brings you a tool swap, I am happy to read the case before you sign.
Source note: Dentsu Creative's report draws on 1,950 senior marketing decision-makers across 14 markets, surveyed in April 2026.
John Wyatt · John Wyatt's page · All posts · RSS