{"slug": "marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of", "title": "Marketing Vanguard at Cannes: Why Forcing AI Adoption Backfires ft. Rafa Flores of Treasure AI", "summary": "Forcing AI adoption from the top creates anxiety and resistance inside marketing teams, warns Rafa Flores, chief product and growth officer at Treasure AI, in an interview at Cannes Lions 2026. Flores argues that real AI success should be measured through revenue and conversion impact, not productivity, and that CMOs should let teams discover AI through their own pain points to build genuine buy-in.", "body_md": "If you think the story behind AI is a productivity-led one, you’re wrong. Our Marketing Vanguard series from Cannes Lions 2026 continues as host Jenny Rooney sits down with Rafa Flores, chief product and growth officer at Treasure AI.\n\nIn this episode, Rafa cuts through the noise around [AI adoption](https://www.adweek.com/category/artificial-intelligence/) and gets into the real issue CMOs are facing: Teams are not just unsure about AI, they are scared of what it could mean for their roles.\n\nHe reveals how forcing AI adoption from the top can backfire, and why real AI success should be measured through revenue and conversion impact.\n\n**What You’ll Learn:**\n\n- Why fear of AI is real and should not be ignored by marketing leaders\n- How to measure AI success through revenue, conversions and churn mitigation\n- Why forcing AI adoption creates anxiety and resistance inside teams\n- How CMOs can set guardrails that protect the business while empowering teams\n- Why modern tech buyers expect to try products, not just sit through demos\n- How product-led growth changes the customer journey in an AI-first market\n- Why creativity in the AI era means orchestrating systems, agents and human judgment\n\n*This episode is part of a special vidcast series that was recorded live during Cannes Lions 2026 and presented in partnership with Edelman.*\n\n**About our guest: **\n\nRafa Flores is the chief product and growth officer at Treasure AI, where he brings nearly two decades of experience across product development, engineering, growth strategy and partnerships.\n\nWith an engineering background and a deeply practical view of how enterprise teams adopt technology, Rafa works at the intersection of AI, product-led growth and human-centered transformation.\n\nAt Treasure AI, Rafa helps global brands rethink how AI can be adopted without creating fear, confusion or organizational resistance. His perspective is especially valuable for CMOs navigating pressure from boards, teams and vendors at the same time.\n\n**Episode Highlights: **\n\n**[05:37] The AI Story is Not Just a Productivity Story** — Rafa pushes back on one of the biggest misconceptions around AI: that its value should be measured only by productivity output. For marketing leaders, the stronger measure is financial impact. Are you hitting revenue targets? Are conversions moving down the funnel? Are you mitigating churn? If AI does not connect to those outcomes, the business case gets thin fast.\n\n**[12:10] Why Forcing AI Creates Anxiety Worse Than Fear** — Rafa draws a sharp line between fear and anxiety. Fear around AI is already real, but when leaders add pressure with no guidance, it becomes anxiety. That is where adoption starts to break. He shares how forcing AI down a team’s throat can backfire, while letting people discover the solution through their own pain point creates real buy-in. The lesson for CMOs is simple: if people feel threatened, they will resist. If they feel empowered, they will experiment.\n\n**[15:14] How Creativity Changes in the AI Era** — Rafa argues that creativity is no longer only about the final asset, campaign, or landing page. In an AI-driven environment, creativity also means knowing how to orchestrate agents, systems, and workflows. Where should AI be deployed? For what purpose? Where does the human stay in the loop? The creative advantage now belongs to marketers who can design the system, not just judge the output.\n\n**[19:13] Why AI Can Create New Career Paths** — Rafa closes with a more optimistic way to think about AI and talent. Being scared of AI does not automatically mean the technology will take your job. It may also create a path toward a different kind of work. For people with a passion for progress in another area, AI can become an opening rather than an ending. That framing matters because fear narrows the conversation, while possibility expands it.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of", "canonical_source": "https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of-treasure-ai/", "published_at": "2026-07-22 09:30:48+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-23 13:55:24.239996+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Rafa Flores", "Treasure AI", "Cannes Lions 2026", "Jenny Rooney", "Edelman"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/marketing-vanguard-at-cannes-why-forcing-ai-adoption-backfires-ft-rafa-flores-of.jsonld"}}