E42 | Teresa Barreira (Publicis Sapient) on why the future of work requires humans to raise the ceiling

In this episode, Teresa Barreira, Chief Marketing and Communication Officer at Publicis Sapient, sits down with hosts Professor Koen Pauwels and international marketeer Wilbert Kragten to discuss how she spearheaded a massive internal transformation right after the launch of ChatGPT. Moving past the superficial hype of "random acts of AI," Teresa explains why true enterprise transformation relies entirely on people and process rather than the technology itself. She shares the exact blueprint her team used to catalog over 1,000 individual tasks, allowing them to shift from merely automating broken workflows to completely redesigning the work itself. By deploying over 150 custom AI agents built by internal experts, her team entirely eliminated tasks like writing first drafts or brand governance. This strategic shift successfully freed up massive amounts of time, allowing roles to be completely rewritten around the 20% where humans add the highest cognitive value. Teresa also dives into the evolving role of the CMO, illustrating how modern marketing leaders must transition from the "business of marketing" to the "business of the company". Finally, she, Koen, and Wilbert address how brands can escape a homogenized "sea of sameness" in an era of unlimited content creation by leaning heavily into human bravery, intuition, and asking the right questions.