Adapt or Fade: The Cost of Waiting on AI Adoption | Dr Gillian Hammah - 2025 Nedbank IMC

AI won’t replace marketers — but marketers who use AI will replace those who don’t.

At the 2025 Nedbank IMC Conference, Dr Gillian Hammah, Chief Marketing Officer at Aya Data and one of Ghana’s Top 50 CMOs, explores the defining question in Strategic Marketing today: People or AI?

With sharp insight and practical leadership lessons, she shows how Marketing Technology and Generative AI for Brands can help leaders build high-performing, blended teams where human creativity and machine intelligence power growth.

How do you blend human talent and artificial intelligence without losing creativity, culture or performance?

Key Insights
1. AI isn’t replacing people — but people who use AI will dominate those who don’t.
2. Leaders no longer have to “settle” for inconsistent performance.
3. The real question isn't if companies will use AI — it’s how they blend people and AI.
4. AI fluency is the new foundational skill for every marketer.
5. Talent development, onboarding, culture and performance management must evolve.
6. Waiting comes with a cost.
7. Both employees and leaders must “audit, pilot and scale.”

Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction & why “People vs AI” matters
01:05 – “AI won’t replace you… humans using AI will”
02:40 – How AI levels the playing field in performance
04:05 – The new workforce: humans, assistants & AI agents
05:30 – Aligning AI with business goals & strategy
07:10 – Elevate vs Automate: what humans should do vs machines
08:45 – Building AI fluency, onboarding & training culture
10:20 – ROI & the real cost of waiting
12:00 – Transition plan: quick wins → upskill → new hires
13:40 – Measuring success: business, technical & user KPIs
15:00 – For employees: your new job description in the AI era
16:25 – Become “hard to lose”: skills & prompt engineering
17:40 – 90-day plan: audit → pilot → scale
18:50 – Final call: blend people + AI to thrive

About the Nedbank IMC
The Nedbank IMC is Africa’s premier gathering for marketers, creatives, brand leaders and business thinkers. Designed as a high-impact, one-day conference, the IMC brings together global and local experts to unpack the ideas, innovations and insights shaping the future of marketing. Its guiding belief — Marketing Is Business — places commercial impact, relevance and strategic clarity at the centre of every conversation. The IMC is known for its no-fluff, high-value speaker lineup, rigorous curation, and its ability to turn complex industry shifts into clear, actionable intelligence for marketers and decision-makers.

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