Two-thirds of CMOs say current AI tools fail their brand as Boldspace announces new model

Two-thirds (63%) of CMOs believe current AI tools are too generic and do not understand their brand, while 90% agree AI is essential to the future of marketing, according to new research underpinning the launch of Boldstream, an AI platform that helps marketing and communications leaders manage work in a single system.

Boldstream has been created by Boldspace, a 50-strong independent agency, to power an alternative to the declining network agency model. The agency is shifting to a model where its strategic and creative teams work with clients inside a secure Boldstream workspace, co-creating campaigns and content in workflows underpinned by AI, using technology to deepen thinking rather than replace it. Boldstream is openly available to any organisation, not only clients using Boldspace as an agency.

The shift at Boldspace reflects a sharp split in the market between commoditised execution and high-value thinking. Low-margin, repeatable work is being squeezed by AI and in-housing, while demand grows for genuine strategic insight and distinctive creative ideas. Boldstream is built to take on as much of the repeatable work as possible so that human teams can focus on judgment, ideas and orchestration, with AI powering the work and people still firmly in control.

Majority of senior leaders seeking to in-house services, but lack of skills a major challenge

Research among senior marketing leaders by Boldstream shows the urgency of this shift. 90% of CMOs and 79% of communications leaders surveyed see AI as essential to the future of marketing and comms. Yet just 17% of comms leaders believe their teams have the skills required to leverage AI effectively and appropriately.

At the same time, senior leaders remain heavily reliant on agencies while trying to cut costs and in-house more work. 66% are reliant on external agencies but are actively looking to reduce spend, while 65% are seeking to bring more services in-house. No marketing leaders and just 7% of comms leaders said they had a comprehensive AI strategy in place today.

Boldstream, which has been in development since 2024, provides a secure, brand-owned AI environment where guidelines, tone of voice, products, audiences and compliance rules are held in one place, with data always owned by the client and not used to train underlying models. Each task is routed to the most suitable large language model for the job, with more than 150 specialist agents across marketing and communications disciplines able to coach as they create, while unified paid, owned, earned and trend data enables real-time optimisation and decision-making.

Nick Ford-Young, Co-CEO at Boldspace, said: “Marketing and communications teams are under relentless pressure to do more with less. Boldstream is designed to make every marketer more strategic and ensure every output from their team is demonstrably on-brand and accountable, not by replacing human judgement but by co-creating within frameworks and plugging in real-time data, while enabling teams to learn as they go.

“The old holding company model is visibly breaking in front of us. Clients are rightly asking how they can cut costs but still get the sharpest thinking, faster work and a credible AI roadmap. Boldstream lets marketing and communications leaders move from AI experiments to an AI-native way of working, where their intelligence is secure, their data is unified and their teams are freed up to solve harder, more interesting problems. AI is the engine that powers the work, but humans remain the drivers.”

Kerttu Inkeroinen, Chief Marketing Officer at Lucky Saint who oversees comms and is a launch user of Boldstream, said: “We have experimented with a lot of AI tools over the past year, and what impressed me about Boldstream was how quickly it could be grounded in Lucky Saint’s guidelines, tone and commercial priorities. I’m excited about the power of this system and how it will drive more consistent on-brand outputs and ensure less time is spent on manual tasks that add little value. That combination of efficiency and control is what makes Boldstream different for me: it will help our team move faster while actually increasing confidence that what we put into the world is right for the brand.”

Ash Jones, Founder of Great Influence and a member of the founding team at Steven Bartlett’s Social Chain, said: “The first AI tool I’ve seen that’s actually useful.”

Boldstream is now onboarding clients on a waiting list basis, with a managed rollout and onboarding of clients planned over the coming three-months.

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