The Model Context Protocol: Unify your marketing stack with AI
Discover how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) revolutionizes marketing technology. Learn how MCP connects AI systems and tools, eliminates silos, and streamlines workflows for marketing leaders. Prepare your organization for this game-changing transformation.
The Model Context Protocol: Why marketing leaders should care about AI's new universal language
Your marketing stack is about to change fundamentally. Anthropic's release of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) signals the end of fragmented SaaS tools and disconnected AI assistants. Instead of jumping between dozens of interfaces and manually connecting data sources, imagine having all your marketing tools accessible through a single, intelligent interface of your choice.
The MCP isn't just another incremental advance in AI—it's a fundamental shift in how we will interact with our entire digital toolset.
Today's marketing professionals juggle an ever-growing collection of specialized tools. Your team switches between analytics platforms, CRM systems, content management tools, and AI assistants—each with its own idiosyncratic interface, learning curve, and data silos. Adding AI to this mix has often meant even more fragmentation: custom chatbots, specialized AI features, and point solutions that don't talk to each other. Until now, these systems couldn't talk with each other. There was no easy way for them to share data, context, and capabilities.
The Model Context Protocol changes this landscape entirely. As an open standard for connecting AI systems with data sources, MCP does for AI what the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) did for the web—it creates a universal language for tools to communicate. Your preferred AI assistant can seamlessly interact with all your marketing tools, accessing data and performing actions across platforms, while maintaining consistent context and understanding.
For marketing leaders, this represents both an opportunity and a strategic imperative. Understanding MCP's implications will be crucial for making informed decisions about technology investments, team workflows, and how to prepare for a more integrated future.
Let's explore what this means for your organization and how to prepare for this transformation.
Why protocols change everything: MCP as the new digital lingua franca
Think about how protocols have transformed our world: The standardization of electricity helped power the Industrial Revolution. Mobile phones only became truly revolutionary once GSM and cellular protocols enabled them to work anywhere. And, of course, HTTP turned disconnected computer networks into the World Wide Web we know today.
Our own marketing technology space has seen this transformative power of protocols. In 2019, the Customer Data Platform (CDP) specification revolutionized how we handle customer data. By standardizing how customer data is collected, unified, and accessed across marketing technology stacks, it broke down long-standing data silos and enabled truly personalized, cross-channel marketing. This standardization transformed what was possible with customer data—just as MCP will transform what's possible with AI and our marketing tools.
MCP represents the next significant step forward by building on this transformative protocol history. To understand its potential impact, let's break down what it is—and why it represents such a significant shift in how we will work with AI and our existing tools. The name itself tells us a lot.
- As a “protocol,” MCP sets standardized rules for how different systems communicate. Similar to how HTTP created a universal way for web browsers to request and receive web pages, MCP aims to do the same for AI systems and business tools.
- The “Model” in MCP refers to AI models (like GPT or Claude), which are becoming increasingly sophisticated at understanding and acting on our requests.
- “Context” represents all the information and capabilities these models need to help us effectively. Beyond our current search-based paradigms and LLMs as advanced “question-answerers,” the content in MCP includes the ability to interact with our tools and systems as well as data.
Build once, use everywhere
At its core, MCP is an open standard that enables developers to build secure, two-way connections between their data sources and AI-powered tools. Rather than maintaining separate connectors for each data source and AI tool combination, developers can now build against a single, universal protocol. This means:
- Your tools can expose their capabilities through MCP servers
- AI applications can connect to these servers as MCP clients
- Any MCP client can work with any MCP server, regardless of manufacturer
This standardization eliminates the need for custom integrations between each tool and AI system. Instead of building specific connections for each combination of tools, developers only need to implement MCP once. This dramatically simplifies how AI systems access and work with your business tools.
Until now, each AI system needed its own custom way to access your company's data, tools, and workflows. Some required uploading files directly, others needed API integrations, and many couldn't access your tools at all.
Think about how your team currently uses AI tools. You might have a custom GPT for analyzing marketing data, another AI tool integrated with your CMS, and yet another for customer support—each working in isolation with its particular, limited view of your business. MCP changes this by creating a standard way for any AI assistant to access and work with your tools and data securely.
This standardization has profound implications. Just as you can access any website with your preferred browser, MCP means you'll be able to use your preferred AI interface to work with all your business tools. Your team won't need to learn multiple AI interfaces or worry about which AI tool works with which system. Instead, they can focus on what they want to accomplish, using whichever AI assistant they prefer.
Early MCP Adoption Success Stories
Early adopters are already showing what's possible. Companies like Block (formerly Square) are using MCP to connect their internal systems, while development platforms like Replit and Sourcegraph are integrating it to enhance their coding tools.
Let's look at a concrete example: In testing MCP with the Upsun.com command-line interface (CLI), our AI assistant was able to read logs from cloud-hosted websites and identify problems that needed attention. More impressively, the AI could then take action to address these issues directly in the cloud hosting environment based on its analysis of the log information. MCP enables AI to move beyond just analyzing data to actually implementing solutions.
The real transformation will come as everyday business tools adopt the protocol. Imagine your CRM, analytics platform, and project management software all becoming accessible through a single, AI-powered interface that understands your business context and can take action across all these systems.
With MCP, your friendly AI agent goes from helping you sift through information to a universal agent that can take actions—DO things for you!—on the systems it has access to and permission to use.
The Model Context Protocol and the power of universal standards
These early examples point to a broader transformation. Just as global trade was revolutionized by the standardization of shipping containers—where identical boxes made it possible to move goods seamlessly between ships, trains, and trucks—MCP creates a universal standard for AI tools to interact with your business systems.
MCP will revolutionize how data and capabilities flow between business tools. This means:
- Your tools and data remain where they are—secure and properly managed—while becoming more accessible and useful
- Your team can choose the AI interface that works best for them while accessing all your business systems
- You can discover and integrate new tools more easily without creating additional silos or requiring new interfaces
- AI assistants can maintain context across different tools, understanding the full scope of your operations
Consider content strategy and SEO optimization. With MCP, your AI assistant could analyze your current web presence, identify content opportunities, and help develop comprehensive content strategies—all while integrating insights from multiple specialized tools. Instead of switching between SEO platforms, content management systems, and deployment tools, you could work through a single interface that understands your brand voice, market position, and business goals.
The key difference is that MCP orchestrates these complex workflows based on your strategic intent, combining best-of-breed tools while maintaining consistent context across the entire process.
Looking ahead: The near future of marketing technology
The future isn't as distant as you might think. Since Anthropic announced MCP in November 2024, the ecosystem has grown explosively. At the time of writing in early January 2025, early adopters using platforms like Claude Desktop can already access over 700 tools through MCP—and this number is growing daily. This rapid adoption signals that we're at the beginning of a fundamental shift in how we interact with our marketing technology.
Organizations that start preparing now will have a significant advantage as this ecosystem matures. The swift growth in available tools and implementations suggests that the technology industry recognizes MCP's transformative potential.
This shift marks the beginning of a new era in how we interact with our MarTech and other business tools—one in which technology adapts to how we work rather than forcing us to adapt to it.
Preparing for the MCP Future
As the MCP ecosystem grows, we're seeing two clear trends emerge.
- SaaS providers are rapidly implementing MCP servers to make their tools accessible to AI assistants.
- Therefore, this shift is changing how organizations should evaluate new technology investments.
Rather than investing in pre-MCP "AI" solutions that add yet another silo or browser tab to your already complex tool landscape, consider solutions that embrace this new paradigm. Look for tools and platforms—like Claude Desktop—that enable integration and coordination at the LLM Client level. This approach positions you to take advantage of the industry's convergence around this new standard.
The transformation is already underway. The question isn't whether to prepare for this change, but how to do it effectively. In our companion article, "Preparing for the MCP Revolution: A Marketing Leader's Action Plan," we'll explore practical steps for evaluating your current technology stack, preparing your team, and developing an implementation strategy that positions your organization for success in this new era.
Ready to start preparing your organization for this transformation? Get in touch to discuss how we can help guide your journey.