Ozgur Kirazci
Senior marketing director, EMEA platforms and devices; UK&I devices and services
Google
There’s no denying that AI is going to have a seismic impact on the marketing industry. While some are intimidated by the sheer scale of change set to take place, others, like Google’s Ozgur Kirazci, relish the opportunities that the new technology will bring.
“Marketing has evolved from a manual execution of broad campaigns into an era of building scalable systems that leverage AI to deliver the right message to the right user, instantly,” he says. “This shift has transformed my daily work from traditional campaign management to architecting tools that can generate personalised, relevant content at speed and scale.”
Kirazci has been at Google for over a decade and before that worked at other tech giants such as Sony, Microsoft and Siemens Mobile. For him, the opportunity of AI is more than just an efficiency gain, it can be used to generate “hyper-relevant content” that consumers “genuinely” want to engage with. Making the “dual goals” of massive scale and deep personalisation a reality at last for marketers.
“Marketing has evolved from a manual execution of broad campaigns into an era of building scalable systems that leverage AI to deliver the right message to the right user.”
But while Kirazci is certain of the role AI will play in the future of marketing, that doesn’t mean he is throwing away the fundamentals. In fact, he is clear that marketers still need to retain their humanity to stand out. “Relying too heavily on AI optimisation strips away the quirks and friction that make a brand feel human and candid,” he says. “The challenge for marketers is to remain ethical curators and tastemakers, rigorously intervening to ensure the technology serves the brand's authentic voice rather than just chasing the most efficient click.”
He sees the industry moving in a radical new direction as agentic AI becomes embedded within marketing teams. Dubbing the future marketer a “creative architect”, he sees the future for marketing as directing “fleets of AI agents” rather than focusing on individual assets by hand.
“Because execution will be instantaneous, the human value will shift entirely to the ‘input’ – defining the emotional architecture and purpose of a campaign – while the AI ensures that the ‘output’ is perfectly tailored to the context of every single consumer,” he adds.
