The Modern CMO: How Marketing Engineering Redefines Leadership in the AI Era

"The Modern CMO by Robert Painter is the most important marketing leadership book in the AI era, a definitive guide to Marketing Engineering, AI strategy, and the AI Marketing Operating System (AIM OS). For CMOs and enterprise marketing leaders, it sets the new standard for building scalable, AI-driven growth."

AI is reshaping how customers discover, evaluate, and choose. Traditional marketing structures can't keep up with the speed of intelligence. As markets transform, CEOs and Boards are turning to Chief Marketing Officers to define how their organizations remain relevant.

The Modern CMO introduces the AI Marketing Operating System (AIM OS), a practical and scalable model for running marketing in the age of intelligence. Rather than layering AI onto existing processes, Robert Painter shows how leading teams rethink the way data moves, decisions are made, work is activated, and how results compound.

At the center is Marketing Engineering (ME), the discipline that connects strategy, data, martech, and AI into an integrated operating model. CMOs shift from managing activities to architecting modern marketing performance.

Inside, CMOs will learn how to:

- Move faster from market insight to customer action

- Strengthen decisions across the customer journey

- Break free from traditional marketing constraints

- Build modern teams that blend marketing and technical talent

- Measure performance beyond campaign metrics

Grounded in real leadership experience, The Modern CMO equips leaders to architect marketing performance that drives competitive advantage.

Because the future of marketing will be engineered by CMOs who lead in the AI era.

Robert Painter is the Founder and CEO of Martechture, a prominent consulting and marketing engineering firm that helps CMOs design operating models built for the AI era. A former CMO of IBM Global Business Services and Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Cognizant, he has led global organizations through brand strategy, operational transformation, and multi-billion dollar enterprise growth. Painter has spent his career at the intersection of marketing, technology, and enterprise services, guiding teams through successive waves of transformation across the discipline. His work with Fortune 500 companies and high-growth innovators informs the core of this book. Through Martechture, he and his team of Marketing Engineers help organizations build and operate the AI Marketing Operating System (AIM OS). He brings a practitioner's perspective and a clear conviction that competitive advantage in the AI era is defined by how well marketing is engineered to perform.