Marketing AI Implementation Checklist
A 13-area checklist from MMA's Responsible AI Innovation Lab for adopting AI in marketing, from leadership alignment to vendor evaluation. Use it to audit where your organization stands and what to fix first.
An AI rollout in marketing rarely fails on the model. It fails on the item nobody assigned an owner to: the ethics audit that never got scheduled, the vendor contract missing an AI clause, an incident response plan that only covers data breaches. This checklist from MMA’s Responsible AI Innovation Lab (RAIL) walks all 13 areas, from the first business case to the audit cadence three years later, so you catch the gaps in a review, not a headline.
What’s inside
- Leadership and business case: a cross-functional AI steering committee, a named leader with executive sponsorship, and a pilot program structured to validate assumptions before a wider rollout.
- Governance and data: an AI governance document (with a sub-section for drafting your own generative AI policy), plus data collection, validation, and access standards built around consent and minimization.
- Vendor evaluation and workforce readiness: due diligence on AI vendors before you sign, and training with usage expectations tied to actual value realization instead of a one-time seminar.
- Development guidelines and risk management: human-in-the-loop checkpoints, a phased integration roadmap, and a risk assessment step for every initiative.
- Monitoring, incident response, and disclosure: a scheduled ethics audit (external, where feasible), a severity-based incident response plan, and periodic transparency reporting to stakeholders.
- Continuous improvement: a quarterly review cadence and a process for updating governance as the regulations and the tools both change.
Who it’s for
Mid-to-large marketing organizations at any stage of AI adoption, from a first pilot to a program already running at scale. It’s written for generative AI specifically (LLMs, image and video models), though most of the 13 areas apply to AI more broadly. Pair it with the Marketing AI Risk Evaluation Framework to score what the audit turns up, or read the week-by-week rollout plan if you’re building the governance program from scratch.
How to use it
Work it as a literal checklist: each of the 13 areas breaks into specific, checkable actions, not vague goals (name an AI leader, draft a governance document, schedule the first ethics audit). Mark what’s done, what’s missing, and what’s overdue, then prioritize the overdue items that carry the most risk.
Published by the Marketing + Media Alliance's AI Leadership Think Tank and Responsible AI Innovation Lab. Free to download.