Jochen Hartmann: MAGE democratizes marketing access: For some artists, especially those deep in the catalog, creating marketing assets is prohibitively costly. Thanks to the efficiency gains of MAGE—around 98 percent—BMG can now create social media marketing assets at a fraction of the cost. That unlocks untapped revenue potential from its massive catalog, much of which has remained underactivated despite substantial streaming potential. It enables personalized, high-quality video marketing at scale by taking existing artwork and producing high-quality, platform-optimized variations for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other channels. This allows for versioning and personalization at scale while working within an artist’s visual identity, preserving artistic integrity rather than replacing creativity. BMG is already seeing strong performance, including high click-through rates on TikTok, showing how gen AI can deliver tangible business impact while keeping human artistry at its core. McKinsey: What were the main technical and organizational challenges in developing and deploying the MAGE pipeline, and how did you overcome them? Thomas Coesfeld: Our work with AI always starts with the artist and our teams. We approach every innovation with the understanding that technology should amplify creativity and storytelling, not replace it. On the technical side, the primary challenge was maintaining consistent, high-quality AI-generated outputs at scale while respecting the creative integrity of each artist and campaign. This meant developing structured input frameworks—essentially standardized creative templates—that could be adapted across genres and content types, while still leaving room for artistic nuance. Another technical hurdle was integrating the AI generation flow into our existing ad operations stack seamlessly and measurably, so that we could A/B test effectively and gather reliable performance data. This phased rollout not only demonstrated measurable impact but also built confidence and trust across teams, making AI part of the workflow instead of a separate or intimidating process. Over time, this approach has created a culture where teams can experiment, iterate, and integrate AI tools into their strategies with confidence. Organizationally, our focus is on building AI fluency by helping internal stakeholders, like our marketing teams, see AI as a creative and operational tool rather than a replacement. We are implementing this through small, results-driven pilots with clear performance tracking, working closely with marketers and creatives to demonstrate AI’s practical value. This phased approach allows us to prove results, build credibility, and minimize risk before scaling the rollout further. Jochen Hartmann: The technical challenges include maintaining visual identity consistency across 700 million possible video variants, integrating multimodal elements (audio, video, image, and text) with AI models coherently, and building a system that is agnostic to the individual AI models. Organizationally, there was initial resistance to the idea that AI could meet human quality standards and preserve artists’ brand integrity. AI needed to be viewed not as a replacement threat but as a creative amplification tool. That journey was enabled by developing controlled design templates that incorporated creative team expertise; ensuring the integration of systematic feedback integration from global offices, creative teams, rep owners, and executive leadership; and by undertaking rigorous piloting and field testing. McKinsey: Many companies hesitate to apply AI in customer-facing contexts. What made you confident to pursue this use case, and what results have you observed so far? Thomas Coesfeld: That’s a very valid concern, and one we took seriously from the outset. At BMG, we are committed to artistic expression and integrity. It is paramount to maintain and keep building this DNA, even when engaging with fans more directly. What gave us confidence to apply AI in a customer-facing 45 Past forward: The modern rethinking of marketing’s core