Seven strategies for discussing our artificial future with real intelligence
Every company knows that artificial intelligence is shaping the future of business. But no one seems quite sure how to talk to customers about it.
Consumer-facing brands have it relatively easy. The chatbot purveyors of the world can make bold proclamations and issue open-ended invitations to their users. Here’s a transformative tool, they suggest. Can’t wait to see what you do with it.
These well-funded mavericks enjoy broad cultural license to test and learn, add and remove features at will, and treat a billion willing participants as their beta testers. Movement is fast, breakage expected.
But for business-to-business brands, the degree of difficulty is higher. These organizations deliver the products and services that other companies deploy to run their operations. Because the success of buyer and seller are intimately linked, stakes are higher—and trust is paramount.
On a subject as vast and uncertain as AI, B2B buyers have serious questions for their sellers, as they should.
Is AI a shiny new gimmick to make your job easier, or can you apply it to help my business?
Are the benefits to my organization worth the risks?
And perhaps most vexingly: Why should I trust you to harness a new technology that no one can fully understand or predict?
These are important questions that deserve answers. Yet even the most credible and strategic B2B companies find themselves at a loss to respond. Many are struggling to reckon with AI within their own organizations, let alone set clear expectations for their customers.
But any grace period on the matter is now ending. B2B companies can no longer indulge in a wait-and-see attitude, or resort to vague platitudes about “responsibility and transparency.” They need good answers now, or their customers will turn to competitors who have them.
Over the past year, we at The Indelible have helped a wide range of B2B clients make important decisions about how their brands should talk to their customers about AI. We’ve pushed them to take stances that are thoughtful, defensible, and compelling to their buyers.
Today we’re sharing seven strategies that have allowed our clients to create a sense of certainty around the most unpredictable topic of our time. They are far from exhaustive. But we believe they provide a valuable glimpse at how forward-thinking B2B companies have taken bold steps to ensure their brands address AI in clear and differentiated ways.
- Cast AI as a character in your story
- Treat AI as a channel, not an ingredient
- Make AI a silent partner
- Define an ownable dimension of AI
- Show AI’s dark side along with its light
- Enlist AI as a humanizing force
- Connect AI to a bigger, unifying picture
Each B2B company faces different circumstances, and as with any strategic process, a bespoke approach will always yield the best outcomes. But may these recent examples help guide your efforts to solve this thorniest of problems.
Strategy #1
Cast AI as a character in your story
A data center builder lets its customers’ tools do the talking, creating an alluring vision of home
When your business is building high-density data centers for the companies who are leading the next generation of AI and cloud computing, your list of potential customers is short. And given the astronomical need and opportunity, the competition is fierce.
Most developers in the space make a mistake that B2B brands always have. They rely on specs over story, flooding the zone with statistics and aerial shots of their nondescript warehouses. Not only do these facilities all end up looking the same—so do the companies behind them.
EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure wanted to stand out instead. So we worked together to craft a story in which the main character would be the primary product of their prospective customer. The star of the show isn’t the warehouse or its capacity numbers. It’s AI itself.
Our initial EdgeCore campaign launched with a provocative question: Does AI dream of a dream house? Using generative AI tools, we answered with imagery unlike anything the industry had encountered before: sleek, elegant domiciles fit for powerful creative engines.
These visuals, rendered in dramatic light and painterly textures, conveyed a deeper concept than a humdrum drone photo. For companies with big dreams of innovation, this was the home their creations deserved. And EdgeCore was the visionary architect who could bring it to life.
The brand’s business differentiators lived alongside this imagery, with EdgeCore’s advantages of high-density design, immediate power availability, and choice location made immediately clear to customers. But it took an unconventional view of their own creation to draw them in.
Takeaway: When you convey a distinct vision of your customer’s future, expressed intuitively using their vocabulary, an immediate connection is established—and trust can soon follow.
EDGECORE CASE STUDY
Strategy #2
Treat AI as a channel, not an ingredient
Security devices are elevated from static devices to dynamic vessels of innovation
A good security camera can serve its owner faithfully for years, even decades. Its robust nature is both a blessing and a curse—while that longevity breeds trust, it can also slow the rollout of innovation.
Devices bearing the Pelco name have been respected for 60 years as paragons of persistence, even in the most rugged conditions. Once the brand was acquired by Motorola Solutions, its commitment to technological advancement went into overdrive. But how could these innovations defy industry norms and reach customers more quickly?
The answer was a new AI-driven analytics platform called Elevate. By synchronizing the device’s computing power with cloud-based intelligence, a stream of new features could roll out to Pelco cameras and sensors over time. So the longer a device operated, the more it could do—and the more valuable it would become to customers.
This breakthrough became emblematic of the new brand strategy we crafted for Pelco. Adding a device would do more than extend a buyer’s vision; it could supercharge any security system. A missing ingredient now promised to give customers extra edge with a simple imperative: just add Pelco.
Competitors were eager to sprinkle in AI where they could, attaching it to a feature or two in their latest line of products. But the Pelco brand went to a depth that no peer would dare. AI wasn’t a mere ingredient—to Pelco, it was a dynamic channel of innovation.
Features like automatic obstacle detection and firmware updates were deployed immediately. Further AI-enabled advancements, including firearm detection, would soon follow. With each innovation, the system became more secure—and customers experienced the advantage they sought, protecting their people and property more effectively.
Pelco has differentiated its brand dramatically from its competitors by introducing AI not as a whiz-bang new feature, but rather an ongoing vehicle for continuous product improvement bearing clear customer benefits. While others tweak away, Pelco supercharges.
Takeaway: When a product becomes more valuable over time, so can the relationship between a company and its customers—as long it’s deeply integrated within the brand story.
PELCO CASE STUDY
Strategy #3
Make AI a silent partner
A forward-thinking whiskey distiller flexes its innovation muscle with potent visuals
When experiencing the products of certain industries, AI can’t be further from one’s mind. Enjoying a glass of Kentucky-made bourbon, for instance.
When Pritzker Private Capital recast its contract distilling business as Lofted Custom Spirits, they wanted the new brand to reflect the unusual combination of strengths they bring to creating whiskey for others—a blend of proud Kentucky tradition and innovative techniques.
The company’s technological advancements are a true differentiator against more conventional industry peers, and they play a major role in achieving the essential role of the brand we crafted together: distilling the vision of customers seeking to create or extend their own whiskey brands.
This made for an intoxicating challenge. How could the new brand evoke what consumers love about Kentucky bourbon—timeless heritage and patient artistry—while also convincing B2B buyers that Lofted had the innovation chops to be inventive with their whiskey?
The answer involved AI, but deployed as a silent partner. Using generative tools, we created carefully honed dynamic imagery for the brand that broke category norms, portraying familiar objects of leisure—a dartboard, turntable, chess set—as filled with amber fluids.
These images, both photorealistic and striking, reside comfortably alongside more conventional photos of bourbon-making, such as copper stills and barrels aging in a rickhouse. Splashes of unexpected color among earth tones reinforce the balance that Lofted has perfected: both groundbreaking and grounded in tradition.
Brand language never mentions AI, focusing instead on the company’s core value to customers: bringing their vision to life through collaboration and creativity. But the visual output of cutting-edge tools helps amplify these ideas in a way that’s subtle yet unforgettable—like a well-crafted bourbon.
Takeaway: Good brands might tell customers about their innovation, but great ones show it through inventive techniques and storytelling.
LOFTED CUSTOM SPIRITS CASE STUDY
Strategy #4
Define an ownable dimension of AI
A tech leader makes AI a priority in more ways than one
A well-known pioneer and leader in safety and security technology had been working with AI for years. Their ecosystem of products had become indispensable in helping public safety agencies, enterprises and communities protect people, property and places.
The company had made great strides in embedding AI into their devices and platforms. On their heels, competitors began flooding the market with broad pronouncements of their own new AI features. These statements often lacked specificity and failed to articulate a clear vision, but they were everywhere.
This tech giant needed a core idea that could link its brand with its products in the context of artificial intelligence. Customers were curious and enthusiastic about how they used AI—the organization just needed a distinct and compelling frame for describing it.
Working in collaboration with technical leaders at the highest levels, we developed a platform that would build this essential bridge. Our ultimate recommendation, priority intelligence, gave the company a simple and memorable way to tell a complex story about a technology in constant motion.
On its surface, the idea connected their use of AI with mission-critical situations where it was making a significant impact. But our messaging unfolded into multiple layers of the company’s view on what AI is best suited to achieve within that setting.
That meant prioritizing human focus with AI, surfacing relevant contextual information so people can keep their attention on what’s important. It described prioritizing human effort, automating mundane tasks so people focus on mission-critical details. And it spoke to prioritizing human efficacy, balancing what people and AI agents do best to enable better results.
We built a comprehensive message map that articulated additional levels—how priority intelligence is delivered in a unique way, how it impacts key products, and most importantly, what customer benefits result. Now the company is equipped with language that ties the enterprise and AI applications together in a clearer, more ownable way than any competitor can—delivered in a simple and actionable format.
Real advancement with AI is a powerful thing, particularly when the stakes are high. But when coupled with a compelling way to describe AI use that’s valuable to customers, it gains even more strength.
Takeaway: When a company can convey a simple philosophy about applying new technology to solving distinct customer problems, that clarity creates value beyond specs and features alone.
Strategy #5
Show AI’s dark side along with its light
A cybersecurity expert recasts its brand to protect against an evolving enemy
Given the massive impact of AI, it’s tempting for many companies to emphasize its positive aspects and keep mum about any negative possibilities. This tendency may be especially true of B2B companies whose customers tend to be risk-aware around unproven technologies, even skeptical.
For the cybersecurity company once known as Abnormal Security, however, a rose-colored view wasn’t an option. Having built their platform to protect customers from email fraud—think phishing, social engineering, and account takeovers—they found that the most destructive such tactics were increasingly generated by AI.
With bad actors unleashing AI-powered email attacks on humans, they could now weaponize this technology at machine speed, fast enough to overwhelm manual security operations. And these criminals could now scale such attacks at unprecedented levels. Abnormal’s seasoned experts soon arrived at a critical insight: It takes good AI to stop bad AI.
Embracing this new reality in their industry, they rebranded as Abnormal AI. The organization had been AI-native from the start, after all, and this focus would represent the core of their platform and company for the duration.
In collaboration with trusted advisors including The Indelible, Abnormal AI crafted a new brand strategy grounded in a mission to protect humans from cybercrime. They began telling a high-stakes story reflecting the world as they saw it, with AI attacks threatening the backbone of civilization—and their behavioral AI software helping stop crime that humans miss.
This reframing connected everything fundamental to the enterprise, from its values to its products to its vision for the future—one in which autonomous AI agents augment human efforts to strengthen the fight against cybercriminals even further.
It takes significant courage to reveal both the light and dark aspects of a pivotal technology. But through its evolved brand and message to the world, Abnormal AI has cast itself as an essential force on the side of good—underlining the company’s importance to the customers they protect.
Takeaway: When an industry is changing in fundamental ways, agile brands reframe the story they tell about it—with their mission at the center.
Strategy #6
Enlist AI as a humanizing force
A real estate platform motivates customers through an emotional appeal
Multifamily real estate properties provide an important layer to society, offering homes to millions of renters around the country. The management of these properties is a complex endeavor, balancing leases, marketing, maintenance and financial operations with ongoing resident engagement.
For nearly three decades, RealPage has built software that helps property managers unify these myriad tasks within a single platform. With the emergence of AI, the company began to embed new functionality throughout its applications.
The initial focus of such advancements spoke to a traditional priority of the RealPage customer: operational efficiency. By automating mundane tasks—from lease renewal notifications and call routing to lead generation and rent collection reminders—AI could remove humdrum work from their to do lists.
Automation was a compelling proposition, to be sure. But as a core brand message, it lacked emotional punch, risking the reduction of customer priorities to a series of discrete tasks. And that contrasted with the deeply held notion that real estate is, above all else, a people business—grounded in relationships and making lives better.
In creating a new brand strategy for RealPage, we brought new emphasis to these emotional truths, portraying a company committed to improving the business of living. In this new context, the role of AI evolved from a mechanical automator to a supportive force that opens up time for working directly with people to improve their residential experience.
Rather than merely dwelling on the time AI could save customers, the brand emphasized what that new bandwidth could be used for: engaging renters and deepening relationships. While artificial by name, AI became cast as a humanizing force for both property managers and the tenants they serve. It opened up new possibilities for the part of the job they liked the most—and that had the greatest impact.
RealPage now strikes a thoughtful balance between the practical and the emotional. AI remains an ever-growing source of operational advantage for their customers, extracting valuable insights from data and fueling an agentic workforce that will soon take automation to unprecedented levels. The platform continues to strengthen their bottom line in new and powerful ways.
But its brand story also reinforces that AI can enable a more human approach to their work—a reminder of why they joined the industry in the first place.
Takeaway: When automation can save customers time, it’s worth recommending how that time might best be spent.
Strategy #7
Connect AI to a bigger, unifying picture
A new energy venture ties its audacious goals to success for all
Next-generation technology requires increasing quantities of power to build, train and operate. At the same time, the country’s electricity infrastructure is lagging behind, often stretched to deliver energy reliably to consumers—let alone the massive data centers required in the age of AI.
This constraint is of particular concern to tech leaders known as hyperscalers, a short list of trillion-dollar companies with the most to invest (and gain) in the coming decades. But it’s also important to anyone with a stake in the economic future of the United States—a far longer list.
Private equity investor Engine No. 1 and energy giant Chevron envisioned a new approach. Armed with power generation expertise, willing capital and a committed supply of hard-to-get natural gas turbines, they conceived of a new kind of company that could deliver electricity directly to the industries who need it—all while minimizing burden on the grid.
But with a host of stakeholders affected by such a strategy—essentially everyone in the country—how could such an operation get everyone on its side? The answer is all about connecting the future of technology to a bigger idea: securing America’s standing as an industrial superpower.
The new company, which we named and branded as Joulent, is launching with this goal front and center. Yes, their immediate contribution to the effort is providing a staggering 4 GW of power directly to their customers. But their story connects that accomplishment to the needs of a wider array of stakeholders beyond hyperscalers alone.
Communities stand to benefit in short order. Joulent power foundries will help create well-paying jobs in locations around the country, spanning from initial construction to ongoing operations. That effect will be compounded by the additional jobs and economic growth brought by the tech leaders expanding into those same communities.
Joulent’s ultimate aim is to play a pivotal role in the U.S. achieving AI dominance over the decades ahead, which can strengthen a wide range of industries, drive productivity gains across the economy, and create a more prosperous and secure country for all Americans.
By expanding their brand’s story beyond the needs of customers alone, Joulent seeks to unify a broad set of constituents, reinforcing the high stakes—and vast potential rewards—of their success. When they win, so will all of us.
Takeaway: When a company views a crisis for its customers as an opportunity for all, many will champion their ambitions.
JOULENT CASE STUDY
Conclusion
While these efforts have just taken flight in the last year—some as recently as this month—initial responses have been positive. Our clients now have thoughtful answers to many of the tough questions posed by even the most risk-aware and skeptical customers.
Across a range of industries, they have depicted AI as worth the effort and the uncertainty, demonstrating how it can benefit the businesses they serve. But no matter how carefully crafted the strategy—and wherever AI evolves from here—one question will always be on the lips of buyers to B2B companies like yours who seek their business: Why should we trust you?
This takes us to our final word of advice. Don’t be modest. Declare, in explicit terms, why your organization is best suited to support the work of AI within their operations. Give them undeniable reasons to believe.
When your AI-enabled devices work in more places than those of your competitors, like Pelco’s do, point that out.
When your people have built AI since its earliest days, as Abnormal’s have, declare yourself an AI-native company.
When your AI models are trained on the biggest data set in your field, as RealPage’s are, make that known.
When you can deliver AI creators what they need faster than your peers, like EdgeCore and Joulent can, don’t be shy in mentioning that.
And when all you want to do is help your customers make great bourbon, like Lofted, maybe stick with that and let the product do the talking. (Not every brand needs to lead with AI, after all.)
AI is here to stay, and no one knows where it’s headed. But as long as the technology keeps evolving, B2B companies like yours will need to find new ways of talking about it with your customers. And if need be, The Indelible will be here to help you do it.
Does this mean we’ll still have a job five or ten years down the road? If so, in the age of AI, that alone is worthy of raising a glass. We’ll take that bourbon now.
INDELIBLY YOURS,
The Indelible
While we at The Indelible support the responsible use of AI tools, every word of this document was handcrafted without them.
