Sausages, Strategy, and Search: Lessons from the Inaugural Babel Brave Collective Breakfast

Just over a month ago, we hosted Babel’s inaugural ‘Brave Collective’ community meetup, a breakfast networking event forty stories up in Salesforce Tower. 

What is the Brave Collective? It’s a community of curious PR and Marketers keen to evolve B2B from, well, boring to brave. 

Why Brave? You might have noticed we’ve kind of made it our ‘thing.’ We’re constantly telling brands that when evolving their messaging, they need an overarching platform that ties everything together. Less of the what (so, B2B tech agency) and more of the how, and the why. For us, that’s backing brave. Yours, ours, everyone’s.     

The first in-person meeting saw the sharing of ideas, experiences, and information, with a side of coffee, toast, and an ungodly amount of sausages (seriously, we may have overdone it in that department.)  The main event (apart from the aforementioned sausages, of course): a discussion with AI transformation expert, Inna Bondarenko, and our very own head of B2B Marketing, Ash Lockett. The topic? You guessed it… 

‘Really? You again?’

There’s no getting away from it, AI remains the talk of the town.

I’d like to say the conversation has evolved in the two years it's been going on. The truth? It depends on who you talk to. And that’s only natural, ‘transformation’ or experimentation, or ‘just getting your head around a new tech’ (which one is required also depends on who you ask), will go at different rates. 

When speaking about AI (or anything, really), it helps to be specific. Yet this is a trap people often fall into. ‘We need to have an AI strategy.’ ‘We need to explore AI more’. It sounds great, but doesn’t really mean anything. Or perhaps more accurately, it could mean a bunch of different things.

For PR and Marketing-minded individuals like you and me, the first distinction we have to make is whether we are talking about how we can use AI, or how AI is using us. 

For the latter, I don’t mean in an existential ‘AI is harvesting our skills and data to eventually take over’ way (maybe that is happening, but one problem at a time). Instead, it's about how AI perceives and recommends your business. In other words, GEO, or AI search. Still a relative unknown, still scary, but more manageable. 

Our first Brave Collective discussion bravely tried to cover both of those topics at once. With Inna covering an expert's perspective on AI business transformation, and Ash covering GEO, and applying learnings from the other track like a true pro.  

Everybody's changing, and I don't feel the same

You can run from it, you can hide from it, but AI transformation is all over the place. 

It’s arguably driving the biggest technology step changes we’ve seen since the rise of the internet. Sure, it's unlikely to have quite the same worldwide impact, but at least the disruption from the online world was relatively gradual. AI, on the other hand, is casting a FOMO shadow everywhere. We’re looking at it, our clients are looking at it, and our clients’ clients are too. 

What remains to be seen is how successful these AI transformation projects will actually be. Sentiment is mixed. And results? So far, not so good. It’s a stat any technology writer worth their salt has no doubt used in the last six months, but according to MIT, 95% of generative AI pilots fail to generate any financial profit.

It’s not that the technology doesn’t have potential, far from it. But tech transformation needs to be done properly and deliberately. There’s normally a bedding-in period where most of the market waits to learn lessons from the brave trailblazers who forge ahead. With AI, everyone can see the potential and is scared of being left behind. The result? Wobbly transformation projects with a lot of trial and error. 
Inna is an expert in AI transformation and has some great insights on what it takes to get it right. My top three takeaways were: 

1. AI is the answer, now what is the question?  - An all-too-common mistake companies make, not just with AI, but with any technology, is starting with the tech. With AI, hype, and FOMO are making this worse than ever. I’d bet my house (if I had one) that many an out-of-touch exec has given their team the mandate of: ‘We need to do AI.’ Why? Because everyone else is doing it. We call them technology solutions for a reason. Pick a business issue (or opportunity) and find the tool to solve it. 
2. Defense vs offense - As already mentioned, clarity in transformation projects is key. Inna described how AI use cases fall into two categories: offensive and defensive. The latter is for projects that focus on optimising what you already have, such as creating efficiency, reducing costs, or automating existing workflows. Offensive use cases, on the other hand, focus on building something new. New products and new revenue streams that didn’t exist before. For now, most enterprise projects are on the defensive side, but as models and skills advance, it's the new use cases that should really move the needle. 
3. New Tech, same challenges - Ultimately, like any new tech adoption, getting AI transformation right comes down to change management. The old trifecta of people, process and technology is still key. An organisation buying licenses without a solid activation plan or training is a one-way ticket to pilot purgatory. Interestingly, understanding rollout has a lot of similarities with understanding the B2B buying process. You need champions (power users) who believe in the mission and will help move things forward. You also need to understand the other personas at play, and adjust your messaging and support for these as appropriate. Senior execs will care about impact and ROI, where junior staff may have fears or concerns that need to be heard and addressed.     

What about this GEO stuff?

Aside from what AI can do for you, we also covered what you can do for AI. GEO, or AI search,  is generating plenty of discussion and debate, as PR and marketers try to feed the LLMs the right information to discover and recommend their brands. 

It’s a big topic, and one I won’t be able to do justice to here. So, instead, why not check out the great content we already have on the topic, across whichever format you prefer. 

But, before you do, if you like the sound of the brave collective and want to be a part of it, sign up here. 

‍

‍