Videos
AI Builds a Future-Ready Marketing Team at Georgia-Pacific
Insights
- AI is elevating marketing's standing within the business, giving teams a chance to lead on brand consistency and generative engine optimization as queries increasingly replace search.
- Structured learning, including super-user programs and hands-on sprints, builds AI fluency across a team faster than formal training alone.
- Strategy and execution diverge when organizations chase isolated use cases; closing that gap depends on data foundations and the people applying them.
How is AI reshaping marketing roles, workflows, and organizational priorities?
Laura Knebusch, Senior Vice President, CPG Marketing and CX at Georgia-Pacific, discusses how a company approaching its 100th year in 2027 is preparing its marketing organization for what comes next.
Laura highlights three shifts:
- Why marketing teams that lean into AI early are positioned to shape brand consistency and generative engine optimization ahead of competitors
- How a multi-pronged approach to learning, from identifying super users to running live creative sprints, builds team-wide confidence
- Why data quality and talent, rather than the tools themselves, ultimately decide whether AI adoption pays off
Drawing on Georgia-Pacific's experience, Laura describes marketing's shift from testing AI on isolated tasks to rethinking workflows end-to-end, across both creative production and media bidding. Early-wins built momentum, she says, but scaling further exposed how much depends on factors outside the technology: process design, team readiness, and clear guidelines. She argues that organizational structure matters less than the talent behind it, pointing to a need for people willing to adapt quickly in a field with no settled answers. Knebusch also stresses that AI is only as strong as the data and people behind it, and that agentic tools work best as a resource that surfaces recommendations rather than replaces judgment. Her conversation gives marketing leaders a grounded look at scaling AI responsibly while protecting brand equity along the way.
This interview was recorded at Cannes Lions 2026 as part of a partnership between Infosys Aster and the Association of National Advertisers. Click to learn more about the ANA and the Global CMO Growth Council.
Balaji Sampath:
Hi, everyone. We are at Cannes 2026 at Cannes Lions, and as part of the series on marketing in the age of AI, I am really pleased to have Laura Knebusch, Senior Vice President, CPG Marketing and CX of Georgia-Pacific. Georgia-Pacific will be celebrating their 100 years of operations in 2027. So a company that has been in existence for 100 years, there's a lot that we can learn from and how they've evolved. And let's talk to Laura and see what we can learn from her on this topic of marketing in the age of AI. Welcome, Laura.
Laura Knebusch:
Thank you for having me.
Balaji Sampath:
So Laura, AI is kind of fundamentally reshaping the marketing function itself. So how have you seen the role of AI evolve, and specifically the role of marketing evolve over the last 18 months?
Laura Knebusch:
Yes. So we're obviously in a very dynamic time, and it's why I get up and go to work every day is because I know that what we're going to be doing is a new and different challenge. But I think it's created an amazing opportunity for the marketing function, honestly, to be leaders at this space and leaders within the company. Every area of marketing is going to be impacted, whether it's insights to creative, to media, to analytics. And so we have started to lean in early and test, and actually have shown early wins within the company that maybe other bigger, more complex areas have not. So I think it's been a chance for us to show our thought leadership, but also it's going to be absolutely critical of the future of AEO or GEO, as you think about generative engine optimization. The role of marketing is going to be so critical that delivering that consistent brand experience or brand expression, so that you are the answer that comes back when you're queried. But then continuing to connect that to how quickly we can help our consumers kind of find and purchase our products. I think it raises the bar for what marketing's going to need to deliver, but just reiterates the importance of why what we're doing, the consistency, the brand equity is so important.
Balaji Sampath:
That's a very topical part, talking about the consistent brand experience. It actually came about even during the first-day keynote at Cannes. But with this evolving world in AI, how are you seeing your own time being spent? What are you doing differently today that was not the case maybe 12 months back?
Laura Knebusch:
Learning. I would say hopefully I'm getting better. But every day just trying to learn myself how to be more productive and more efficient so that I can spend more time learning about how to apply AI and the marketing capability. So that is a big part of that. But then reinforcing that for my team as well, and making sure that they have the time and they are empowered to go learn how AI can help enable them in their roles. And then spending even more time probably understanding externally what's happening. Using AI to help me source what's new in AI every week, so that we are staying up to date on where we think those big opportunities could be and how we would go test and learn in those areas. So certainly a much different kind of forward-facing focus when you think about how quickly this is going to evolve and how quickly we need to operationalize to get value.
Balaji Sampath:
So on that aspect of learning, because this is a very key topic for marketeers today more than ever, what are some of the initiatives that you are taking within your team so that they all come up to speed and kind of be ready to absorb all the new developments in AI?
Laura Knebusch:
Yes. We're taking a multi-prong approach. I would say we first identified super users on the team, and they have been fantastic as far as being advocates for how to use AI. Again, just in productivity, but also really searching out how it could be applied in the creative development process and the insights generation process. And so having them as a resource has been one step. The second was just setting the expectations. I had to set vision that AI is the future. It's going to make us better. But if we're not leaning in and learning it, then we are going to fall behind, and that's not acceptable. So making sure that vision. But then giving opportunities to play and learn, whether it's more official practical trainings or whether it's, hey, today we're going to do a sprint for two hours with our in-house creative team, and let's see how much content we can generate for a new Brawny campaign. And again, giving people a chance just to get in, try it out, low risk, but start to get a feel for how it can actually change their day-to-day. So this is major change, and it's not just going to be one strategy. It has to be reinforced on multiple levels, but certainly starting with leadership.
Balaji Sampath:
Early on, you also talked about your own experience on AI initiatives within Georgia-Pacific. What are the kind of value from AI that you have been able to unlock? If there are specific examples.
Laura Knebusch:
Yes. We started by mapping out our different work processes and identifying where there was pain points, and whether that's too much time was being spent on low-value work, or it was something that was so repetitive that it could be done differently. And so we started to experiment and learn, and to get small wins or quickly learn what wasn't working. And that was great, I think, to build momentum and build interest. But we are at the point now where I think we're really starting to turn this into more scale opportunities. So within the world of creative generation, we were using it as a copywriter. But then we realized there was bottlenecks down the line. So it's really more about end-to-end. How are we changing the process, the workflows, and where is AI now doing work that we used to have people on the team having to touch? So the bigger end-to-end opportunity. Another key area that we've had great success is actually within media. And leveraging it for media, for our digital media, for bidding online, finding the best content or the best quality at the lowest price, allowing us to do more with our dollars. So that's delivered some very tangible benefits very quickly.
Balaji Sampath:
Given that you are at the stage where you're scaling AI, how would you see what AI would be delivering for you in the next 12 to 18 months?
Laura Knebusch:
Yes. Well, ideally, I want AI to truly be an enabler to every person on my team. And so where we are now is we've built some data foundation, we've built some process foundation, but now we're building out the agents that are going to help truly be a resource to every member of my team. Not making the final decisions, but certainly surfacing trends, surfacing opportunities, making recommendations, so that whether it's my search team or my social team or programmatic or creative, they've got an enabler in how they do their job and getting to those opportunities more quickly. And I think that starts to move to the transformation of the organization and how we work differently and how we then focus on bigger bets and bigger opportunities. And I think we're 6 to 12 months out, if even that. We will be working differently. If we talk again next year, we are going to be working entirely differently.
Balaji Sampath:
Absolutely. I think in the world of AI, every quarter there is a significant jump in the company's maturity. Now, actually, Laura, you talked about the data foundation, you talked about the agentic AI layer and so on. That brings me to the question of the AI strategy and the AI execution. Whether it is in your company or in your industry, how have you seen the gaps between strategy and execution in this particular area, and are there any thoughts that you would like to share on what should companies do?
Laura Knebusch:
Sure. I think we all jumped into, oh, we can do something faster. We jumped into a single kind of use case or a single problem we were trying to solve, and again, might have seen early wins, but quickly realized all the other things around it that needed to work to actually get the most value. So I think part of it has been creating the bigger view of how do we work differently, not just at a task, but kind of end to end. And then what is not just the AI, but what are the people, what's the talent? What are the processes? What are the kind of guidelines we need around that to make it all work? Because AI is an enabler. It's not the end-all be-all. It's how your organization works differently is what we're trying to achieve. And I think that's been the big shift of, oh, AI can do this for me better or faster to these are all the things that need to happen for my work to actually happen differently from end to end. And truly, I think see both the efficiency and hopefully the effectiveness of being able to do that.
Balaji Sampath:
No, actually, you bring up a very interesting point that it's just an enabler. You really need to look at other parts of your puzzle, which brings to the whole concept of your organizational structure itself. Do you see the marketing structure or the marketing organization structure undergoing a change in this particular era?
Laura Knebusch:
I think so. But even more important than the structure, I think it's the talent. The type of talent that is going to succeed in a world that changes this fast is probably different than maybe some of the traditional talent that we looked for. And I think if you have that talent, it is going to enable changes in your structure and how you go to market. So I certainly think there's going to be roles there that weren't there a couple of years ago, and maybe some that are deprioritized. So I see changes in roles, but it's more of how we work and what we expect of the people who are doing it that I think is going to change more fundamentally.
Balaji Sampath:
Are there things that the industry should be talking about or marketeers have to be focusing on that is not discussed as much in this entire AI journey itself?
Laura Knebusch:
Going back to talent, we talk a lot about that because again, AI is only going to be as good as, I would probably say, the data and the talent that goes into it. And so those are the two things we should be talking about, because without it, AI, honestly, is only going to give us bad recommendations or bad decisions. So one, do you have the data foundation and what does that look like, and how do you continue to have the right quality of that data foundation to get the benefit out of AI? And then two, are you thinking about your talent differently? Both in how you recruit for them and how you're developing in them, where you lean in and kind of are promoting folks who are showing that they will lean in and embrace change. Because I think that's the future. It's like, who's going to embrace change? Who's going to step up in times where there's no answer that we know of? It is all learning. And I think that those are the two factors that are going to make AI ultimately successful.
Balaji Sampath:
Well, thank you so much, Laura. This is very insightful. So in a nutshell, talking about data foundations, look at talent, look at AI as an enabler. You really need to bring all other pieces of the puzzle. But at the end of the day, even if AI is helping you, it is the humans who make the decisions out of it.
Laura Knebusch:
Yes. Exactly.
Balaji Sampath:
Thank you. It's really a pleasure talking to you.
Laura Knebusch:
Thank you.
Balaji Sampath:
It's really a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.
