Most marketing teams have gotten comfortable using AI. They've integrated it into content workflows, sharpened their prompts, and found individual productivity gains. But the next phase is already here, and it relies heavily on the ability and dedication of humans, says Zapier’s Dan Slagen.
"The next shift in AI is all about people, the way they work, and proving that by changing the way they work, the company and the people within the company will be better off quantitatively,’’ said Slagen, Chief Marketing & AI Transformation Officer at Zapier.
He warns that no tool, platform, software, or LLM is coming to “save you."
Slagen, who leads a marketing organization that is actively navigating the shift from using AI tools to building with them, will take the main stage at MAICON 2026. He’ll share what his team’s transition has looked like from the inside and what marketing leaders need to understand about what comes next.
When Slagen arrived at Zapier, the marketing team had already built strong instincts during the early waves of AI adoption. But as AI capabilities evolved toward coding agents, agentic systems, and more advanced workflows, the demands on the team changed dramatically.
"The bar to quickly become great with AI got much higher at the end of 2025 as we first started seeing more non-technical folks start using coding agents," Slagen said.
The team needed to get comfortable with tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex, but the biggest challenge wasn't the technology itself. It was getting people over that first hump.
What Slagen did next is a case study in change management for the AI era, and it moved fast.
First, he brought in an external AI power user to demonstrate what was possible. The goal was to make the moment feel real. The reaction from the team was visceral: people were stunned, confused, even upset.
“I'm not a fan of leading by fear, but every once in a while you need to make people understand how big this moment is, and this was one of those times,” Slagen said.
Then came the support. He gave every team member three weeks to learn a coding agent of their choice and designated five internal power users as marketing coaches, available around the clock to help with onboarding.
“I told the team that I'll never know how many times they met with the marketing coaches, what questions they asked, how bad their first build was,” he said. “My only ask was in three weeks you need to be ready to go."
From there, Slagen launched a two-week build-a-thon. Every marketer on the team built something. Results ranged from internal dashboards to fully functional products. Each person submitted a short video walkthrough of their build. Slagen watched all of them — roughly 70 — and wrote detailed, personalized responses to every single one.
“Our team sort of self-placed themselves in three tiers of skill level, but this allowed me to then work with each tier and give them new things to think about/solve where everyone felt like they could win (at least within their own tier) and advance forward,” Slagen said.
In his main stage session, "From AI Users to AI Builders: Leading Marketing Teams Into the Next Phase," Slagen will explain what this transition looked like inside Zapier's marketing team and offer a practical view of where AI adoption is heading for marketing organizations more broadly.
He'll address:
This session is built for marketing leaders who are already past the early adoption phase and are now asking the harder questions: How do I bring my team along? How do I build a culture that doesn't just use AI but creates with it? And how do I do it when the ground is still shifting?
Attendees will walk away with a practical, inside look at how one of the world's leading automation companies moved its marketing team from AI users to AI builders. You'll see what the transition actually looked like, including the fear, confusion, breakthroughs, and structure that made it work. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of what it takes to lead your own team through the next wave of AI adoption with agents.
Slagen will present at MAICON 2026 as part of a lineup focused on real-world AI strategy, implementation, and leadership.
Selected by Forbes as a Top 50 Entrepreneurial CMO and recognized by TIME among its 100 most influential companies list, Slagen has been featured in The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, NPR, CNBC, BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg, and TEDx, among others.
He is the author of “Understanding Start-Up CEOs” and serves as an instructor on AI transformation at Scott Galloway's Section School.
Follow Slagen before MAICON 2026:
If you're leading a team through the next wave of AI adoption and looking for a practical, proven approach, this session is for you.
Join us at MAICON 2026 to hear Slagen and 50+ other AI and business leaders. Register today.