Beyond the Algorithm: The Five New Rules of B2B Marketing Effectiveness

Every B2B marketer is experimenting with AI right now. The tools are everywhere—from content generation to predictive analytics, from creative testing to audience targeting. But if everyone has access to the same technology, where does the competitive advantage actually come from?

This was the question we explored in our recent webinar, part of IPA Effectiveness Week 2025. As the only B2B agency with IPA Effectiveness Accreditation, we've spent years studying what actually drives business growth. And here's what we've learned: AI is revolutionising how we work, but it's not changing what works.

The conversation around AI has been dominated by efficiency—speed, automation, cost reduction. But automation isn't strategy. And being faster doesn't automatically make you smarter.

The real opportunity lies in using AI to enhance human creativity and strategic judgment, not replace them. To help marketers navigate this new landscape, we've identified five new rules that define B2B marketing effectiveness in the AI era.

Rule 1: Fame Still Beats Efficiency

In 90% of B2B purchases, the brand that's front-of-mind wins. This isn't new information—but it's more critical than ever in a world where AI can optimise every aspect of campaign delivery.

AI can help you target more precisely, personalise at scale, and automate workflows. But it can't build mental availability. It can't create the emotional resonance that makes a brand memorable. And it certainly can't manufacture trust.

Research shows that fame campaigns are six times more effective than their alternatives. Fame broadens your influence across the entire decision-making unit and creates pricing power. Being front-of-mind still beats being front-of-algorithm.

The takeaway: Use AI to scale reach and consistency, but never rationalise creativity away. You can't automate emotion.

Rule 2: Turn Strategic Speed into Meaning

One of AI's genuine superpowers is its ability to generate and analyse synthetic data at scale. We can now model buyer behaviour, test strategic hypotheses, and identify emerging needs in hours instead of months.

But here’s the paradox: as AI makes insight faster, it’s also making it universal.
Everyone now has access to the same dashboards, the same trends, the same surface-level truths.

When insight becomes democratised, advantage shifts from data to interpretation. Because if everyone’s reading from the same playbook, the winners will be the ones who rewrite it.

The goal isn’t speed for its own sake — it’s to reach stronger human truths faster.
AI accelerates discovery, but only humans can turn discovery into direction.
The faster we get to data, the more space we create for judgment, imagination, and the creative leap that transforms insight into impact.

This is where synthetic data meets human empathy — where planners can spend less time mining for information and more time turning it into meaning.
This is strategy supercharged: faster, smarter, and infinitely more human.

Rule 3: Creativity Matters More Than Ever

Anyone — with or without training — can now generate content, campaigns, or ideas in seconds. On the surface, that sounds like progress. And in some ways, it is. AI will absolutely lift the floor of marketing competence. Work will get faster, more polished, more consistent.

But when creativity becomes democratised, it also becomes homogenised. The competition for attention intensifies. The noise multiplies. And when everyone’s using the same tools, templates, and prompts, distinctiveness becomes the real differentiator.

Because attention is finite — and in a world where everything looks good, the work that stands out will be the work that feels different.

As one professor put it:

“At least there are no badly written essays now. But it takes a lot more to write a really good one.”

And that’s exactly where creativity is heading.

The numbers are clear: creative quality drives 47% of advertising effectiveness. Highly creative campaigns deliver 11 times the ROI of their less creative counterparts.

AI can help refine ideas, stress-test concepts, and even generate variations. But it cannot originate emotional resonance. It can't make the intuitive leap that creates something truly distinctive. It can't understand what will make someone feelsomething.

The new rule is simple: use AI to enhance creative rigour, not to replace imagination.

We work with a Creative Spectrum—rating creativity along a spectrum from forgettable to iconic—to help marketers understand that creativity isn't a subjective luxury. It's a measurable growth investment. The brands that treat it as such consistently outperform those that don't.

AI will make it easier to make things — but infinitely harder to make things that matter.
That’s why creativity matters more than ever.

Rule 4: The Dual-Brain Funnel—Uniting Human and Machine Intelligence

B2B buyers aren’t rational or emotional – they’re both – at all stages of the buying journey.  So, we’ve rewritten the traditional buying funnel and built a new model that creates the perfect architecture for campaigns that win hearts and minds.

The dual brain funnel allows us to effectively map all stages of the buying journey. And it’s the perfect model for the AI era.  Human creativity handles the emotional, fame-building work: to entertain, inspire, and persuade.  To create the brand stories that align with broad stakeholder beliefs across the decision-making unit. This is where B2B decisions are truly won, as emotional strategies are up to 600% more effective at building memory structures than rational ones.​ 

AI is a powerful tool to augment the more rational work: to enlighten, educate, and convert. It provides the technical validation and financial proof that satisfy different stakeholders' needs.

Together, these approaches create campaigns that work at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. Emotional brand stories drive attention and create preference. AI-driven content delivers the precision s conversion.

The result? Faster consensus, greater trust, and higher conversion rates across complex B2B buying groups.

Rule 5: Invest in Quality, Not Quantity

Here's the AI trap that too many marketers are falling into: because AI makes content production cheap and easy, they're flooding channels with low-value material. More thought leadership, more whitepapers, more wallpaper content. Don’t do it to yourself, or your audience!

Rather than investing in volume, use the time and budget saved by AI efficiency to reinvest in high-value strategic assets. If great creativity drives effectiveness, then this is the chance to invest for success. If you can’t outspend your competitors, you can invest your budget wisely to stand out.

AI should fund creative ambition, not replace it.

What This Means for Your Business

The principles of marketing effectiveness haven't changed. Fame, creativity, consistency, and smart investment remain the proven drivers of long-term growth.

The question every marketer needs to ask is: are we using AI to do more of the same, or are we using it to do something genuinely better?

Because in a world where everyone has access to the same tools, your competitive advantage will come from distinctive creativity, understanding your audience more deeply, and building a brand that people remember and trust.

You can't build that with automation alone. You need to go beyond the algorithm.

The webinar that inspired this post was hosted by True as part of IPA Effectiveness Week 2025.

As the only B2B agency with IPA Effectiveness Accreditation, we're committed to applying evidence-based marketing principles to the new world of AI.  If you'd like to explore how these rules apply to your brand, we'd love to continue the conversation. Get in touch Richard@trueagency.com.