From traditional (static) to more dynamic marketing planning: Does it make logical sense?

Many companies/brands are moving from traditional to more dynamic marketing planning in trying to balance stability with agility (Theoharakis et al., 2024). The focus is no longer on a static document, but on the planning process or (sub)processes of some of the marketing planning decisions that makes the marketing plan much more dynamic (Hanlon).

AI helps in particular in making marketing planning more dynamic, as it accelerates marketing decisions and allows personalisation at scale & in real time (Blicharz et al..2026; Le Thuaut, 2025). As Oh (2025) mentions for example, a retailer may use different AI driven product descriptions and images for various customer profiles in real time. Moreover, AI may detect that a specific marketing metric has changed and even more important generate the explanation. In this context, it is important to recognize the potential of AI in terms of descriptrive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics in making more optimal marketing decisions that are part of the marketing plan (Cote, 2021).

That being said, realism and logic should always prevail in marketing planning (Logman, 2011). It doesn't make sense to make "all" marketing decisions suddenly dynamic, as this may become perceived as chaotic (e.g., shifts in promotions that not always make sense to the customer). Even worse would be a customer who doesn't know anymore what a brand really stands for. The primary reason customers choose a brand generally does not change daily, so stick to a clear positioning. The same holds for the segments that are targeted. Strategic decisions like targeting and positioning require long-term planning, AI mainly may help in refining the targeting and positioning.

Intuitively, we can state that AI is more suitable or at least plays a possible larger role in the tactical (more short-term) decisions of the marketing plan, in particular the "marketing mix" decisions. In this context, it is not a surprise that advertising optimization, dynamic pricing, product recommendations and distribution channel/supply chain optimization, driven by AI, are all extensively being used by many companies/brands across various industries.

References

Blicharz,K., Pinfold, N. & Raverdy, M. (2026, March), "Five Trends Shaping Marketing in 2026", Delloitte Digital, Retrieved from: https://www.deloittedigital.com/content/dam/digital/nl/pdfs/2026/deloitte-nl-deloitte-digital-marketing-trends-2026.pdf

Cote, C., (2021, Oct. 19), "4 Types of Data Analytics to Improve Decision-Making", Harvard Business School Online, retrieved from: https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/types-of-data-analysis

Hanlon, A, "Do Marketing Plans Still Matter in our Agile World?", retrieved from: https://blog.som.cranfield.ac.uk/knowledge/do-marketing-plans-still-matter-in-our-agile-world

Le Thuaut, B.(2025, Sept. 5), "The New Marketing Reality. Why Run is the New Build", Deloitte Digital, retrieved from: https://www.deloittedigital.com/ch/en/insights/2025/the-new-marketing-reality-why-run-is-the-new-build.html

Logman M (2011), "Realism versus simplicity in strategic marketing planning: the impact of temporality". Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 29 (7), pp. 662–671.  

Oh, S. (2025, Nov. 18), " From Novelty to Autopilot: How Generative AI Is Reshaping Marketing" California Review Management Insight; retrieved from: https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2025/11/from-novelty-to-autopilot-how-generative-ai-is-reshaping-marketing/

Theoharakis, V., Zheng,Y., Zhang,L. (2024), Dynamic strategic marketing planning: The paradox of concurrently reconfiguring and implementing strategic marketing planning", Journal of Business Research, 174, 114525.