Beyond the Buzzwords What Clients Want From AI in 2025
4 min read
Artificial intelligence has dominated boardrooms and brainstorms, but a more grounded narrative is emerging: clients no longer ask what AI is — they want to know what it can do.
At Charles Elena, we’re seeing a shift from hype to hands-on utility. Brands are no longer investing in novelty but in tangible outcomes: tools that remove friction, scale teams, and deepen customer engagement.
Services
AI, Strategy
Written by
David Neilson
The AI Budget is Real — and Growing
A 2024 McKinsey report found that 65% of companies globally already use generative AI in at least one business function, most commonly in marketing and sales. Meanwhile, 67% of enterprise leaders have allocated new budget lines for AI in FY25, primarily for marketing automation, customer service, and creative operations (KPMG, 2024).
AI-Powered Enablement
Sales teams today compete for both attention and relevance. AI-powered enablement refers to tools that automate, analyse, and personalise the sales cycle — freeing teams to build relationships and close deals. Globally, more than a third of companies have already adopted AI to streamline workflows and enhance customer interactions.
The “why” is clear: efficiency and ROI. Businesses adopting AI to automate routine tasks often report measurable returns within the first year.
Clients we speak with are less interested in AI for AI’s sake. Instead, they’re looking for help in three key areas:
- Sales Enablement & Content Automation: Clients want to scale content production across owned and paid channels without sacrificing quality. That means smart content templates, AI-driven personalisation, and dynamic assets that adapt based on customer data. Adobe’s 2024 “State of Digital Experience” survey found that 82% of marketers expect AI to power content production by the end of the year.
- Customer Interaction Automation: Tools like Microsoft Copilot are redefining what customer service can look like — real-time, contextual, and conversational. Clients are asking for chatbots that don’t feel like bots, voice agents that deflect call centre loads, and embedded AI that makes self-service feel seamless.
- Creative Production Efficiency: Generative AI isn’t replacing creativity — it’s removing the grunt work. Clients are asking for AI-powered storyboarding, automated video resizing, and synthetic voiceovers that allow campaigns to scale across geographies and languages without ballooning production budgets. They want coding agents to review code and make bug fixes to reduce time to market. According to Gartner, generative AI will reduce marketing production time by 60% for most enterprise teams by 2026 Gartner, 2024.
Scaling Creativity with AI
As content demands surge across channels, creative teams face increasing pressure to produce more content, faster. AI helps brands meet this demand by generating high-quality, on-brand assets at scale, without replacing human creativity.
Globally, 83% of creative professionals now use generative AI to augment their work. The result? Less time on repetitive tasks, more time on breakthrough ideas.
This shift isn’t about sacrificing quality for quantity — it’s about leveraging AI to eliminate production bottlenecks, allowing teams to concentrate on strategy and the creative “big idea.” Gartner suggests that by 2026, Gen AI will reduce routine marketing production time by up to 60%.
What Comes Next
In 2025, clients aren’t chasing hype. They want AI that drives sales, automates workflows, and empowers creativity. The brands that win will view AI not as a silver bullet, but as a practical and scalable partner to human talent.
For clients working with us, the opportunity is twofold:
- To operationalise AI in their workflows, not just imagine it in campaigns.
- Ensuring human creativity, strategic oversight, and brand guardianship that AI can’t replicate.
It’s not enough to understand the tools. Agencies need to translate them into outcomes — faster production, better performance, smarter engagement. And that’s what clients are buying.
