Everyone is talking about the potential of AI in marketing — faster content, smarter segmentation and more relevant engagement at a scale we’ve never seen before. But for most organisations, the harder question isn’t “can we do it?”. It is, “how do we make it real across the enterprise to engage customers in more meaningful ways?”

In highly-regulated industries like biopharma, the stakes are even higher. Teams must move quickly while ensuring scientific rigour, accuracy and compliance at every step. That’s why the most meaningful AI transformations aren’t just about adopting new technologies, they’re about changing how work gets done.

At Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), this transformation is already well underway. Through its AI-powered marketing initiative, BMS is making AI a core part of how it engages healthcare professionals to enable better outcomes for patients.

We spoke with Anvita Karara, Vice President, Commercialisation AI Strategy and Analytics at BMS, about what it takes to scale AI in marketing and drive innovation in pharma. And here’s what she had to say.

Q: Where is BMS focusing first to move from AI momentum to measurable impact?

A: We’re applying AI where it can improve outcomes and decision-making end-to-end — not as one-off experiments. We’re driving repeatable ways to accelerate content and campaign execution, strengthen brand strategy and surface deeper insights to better support customer engagement.

Q: What kind of operating model shifts did BMS implement to scale AI across its marketing teams?

A: At BMS, scaling AI across our marketing teams requires intentional shifts across people, processes and technology. We’ve prioritised upskilling and empowering our talent to confidently adopt AI in their day-to-day work, while evolving our processes to be more agile, insight-driven and cross-functionally connected. At the same time, we’re embedding AI-enabled tools directly into existing workflows to ensure adoption is seamless and value-driven. For example, we are working to revamp the marketing brief as one of the first core AI-enhanced workflows that we focus on. Together, this integrated approach is helping us to enhance how our teams operate.

Q: Why focus on the marketing brief as a foundational workflow for scaling AI and what should people listen for in your Adobe Summit session?

A: Because the brief drives everything downstream in marketing. When briefs differ across teams, brands or regions, you get inconsistent inputs, slower cycles and harder-to-scale personalisation. Instead of having marketers spend hours on heavy-lift processes, they’re now empowered with innovations that direct their energy toward creativity and impact.

In our 20 April Adobe Summit theatre session, we’ll delve deeper into this transformation and discuss how Adobe tools are helping us to transform our marketing processes, giving clinicians faster access to life-saving therapies, strengthening cross-brand alignment and, ultimately, improving patient lives.

Alanna Peet is a Managing Director in Accenture’s Commercial Life Sciences practice, with deep expertise in enterprise-scale commercial and marketing reinvention for global pharmaceutical companies. She leads efforts to modernise operating models, drive AI-enabled process adoption and deliver sustained, measurable performance improvement.

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