From Copilots to Agents: What McKinsey’s 2025 AI Report Reveals About Brand Adoption
By Adam Chandler, COO and Co-Founder, Eulerity
Three years after generative AI broke through, nearly 9 out of 10 companies now report using AI in at least one business function. Yet, according to McKinsey’s latest State of AI 2025 report, two-thirds of organizations are still stuck in pilot or experimentation mode.
Agents Are Emerging — But Scaling is Happening Beyond Pilots
62% of organizations are experimenting with AI agents, and 23% are already scaling at least one agentic system across their enterprise .
But scaling is still limited to first movers. Typically in just one or two functions like IT, marketing, or knowledge management.
High performers use AI to drive growth, innovation, and cost: Eighty percent of respondents say their companies set efficiency as an objective of their AI initiatives, but the companies seeing the most value from AI often set growth or innovation as additional objectives. That gap between experimentation and transformation defines where we are right now: the difference between AI tools and AI agents. Between automation and autonomy.
Innovation, Not Just Efficiency
McKinsey’s data shows 64% of companies report innovation gains from AI; 39% report measurable EBIT impact at the enterprise level .
The high performers — the top 6% who see more than 5% EBIT impact — go beyond cost savings. They use AI to drive growth and innovation, not just to trim expenses. They redesign workflows, reimagine customer experiences, and set bold, transformative goals. They are nearly 3× more likely to rebuild processes around AI .
Leadership + Structure = Scale
High-performing companies also share structural DNA:
- 3× more likely to have senior leaders who actively champion AI initiatives.
- Nearly half spend 20% or more of their digital budgets on AI technologies.
- Most embed human-in-the-loop systems, integrating AI decisions with real human oversight .
High curiosity in AI agents: Sixty-two percent of survey respondents say their organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents. It’s not just technology. It's organizational rewiring.
What This Means for Multi-Location Brands
If you run marketing for a distributed brand network, this report is both validation and warning. AI isn’t just for content generation. It's becoming the core operating system of how marketing gets executed across hundreds or thousands of local businesses.
AI agents that plan, execute, and optimize media autonomously across Search, Social, Display, and CTV, while also managing utility marketing like listings, reviews, and organic content. Eulerity's Agents don’t just automate tasks; they make marketing decisions within brand guardrails. That’s agentic AI. Autonomous, data-driven, and locally adaptive. And that’s exactly the maturity curve McKinsey describes: the move from tools that assist to agents that act.
The Foundation for the Next Era
As McKinsey notes, the companies achieving outsized returns are those that:
- Redesign workflows for AI integration
- Treat AI as a growth engine, not a cost center
- Invest in leadership alignment, agile processes, and scalable data infrastructure
In other words — they build skyscrapers, not pilot projects.
Getting Ahead As We Enter 2026
We’re entering the era of agentic AI, where marketing systems can learn, adapt, and execute autonomously. The winners won’t be those who adopt AI fastest, but those who scale it with intent beyond pilots.
The next 12 months will determine which brands stay stuck in pilot purgatory… and which rewire themselves for AI-driven growth.