Everyone Bought AI. Matt Egol Says Culture Ate the ROI.
A global entertainment company of about 3,500 people told its marketing staff that agentic AI would automate more than 50% of their workflow. The staff simply didn't use it, and Journey Spark's Matt Egol says the mandate failed for the same reasons CRM and ERP rollouts did: nobody changed the work.
Read the full investigation on ADOTAT →Key findings
- The entertainment company aimed to automate over half its marketing workflow, work that could eat thousands of human hours per launch or country.
- Staff resisted out of pride in their craft, quality worries and fear of automating themselves out of jobs.
- Egol argues the industry has aimed data at targeting and procurement, not at how creative gets made.
- Egol spent 15 years as a PwC partner and now advises AgenticAdvertising.org.
On the record
“If you don't change the work, if you don't change behavior, nothing changes.”
“Cultures are not to blame here. The issue is the leaders, and how leaders engage and evolve things.”
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