Cast your mind back to 1999. It was the year that gave us Napster, the Euro, and SpongeBob SquarePants. (It truly was the best and worst of times…)
It was also the height of the dot-com bubble, where companies across the Western hemisphere went doolaly for digital (with some even adding .com to their name – a trick that saw listed companies bolster their stockprice by 74% within the first 10 days) .
In the advertising world, it was the beginning of a wave of ‘digital agencies’ emerging from the old model – initially offering websites, then ‘web 2.0’, and finally ‘digital transformation’.
In many ways, it feels like 1999 again. The hype, the frenzy, the desperation not to be left behind.
AI might be a fundamentally different technology, but it’s provoking a very similar response – particularly amongst consulting, training, and research businesses eager to grab a pickaxe and head for the hills.
What began as an internal drive for efficiency (”How can we optimise?”) has become something more existential (”How can we transform?”). Across industry conferences, gatherings and networking events, the question is no longer if but how expert firms will embrace AI.
And that how question is coming down to a choice between routes:
- The strategy route
- The positioning route
(For more on this distinction, check out this conversation between Blair Enns and David C. Baker)
Strategy or positioning?
Strategy refers to the business model, the service offering, how you make money.
A shift in strategy – prompted by the new possibilities of the technology – is by definition a more intrinsic change. It’s a fundamental reimagining of the business, like when a human expert-based sustainability consultancy reinvents itself as an AI platform with specialist consultants bolted on.
We’ve seen this with the likes of AtlasAI (legal advice), Ammonite (report writing) and TheAX (management consulting).
Positioning (on the other hand) refers to the space you own, the story you tell, how you are perceived.
A shift in strategy here – assuming no fundamental shift in strategy – is by definition a more extrinsic exercise, a reaction to changes in the market. Think of it as a reorientation of the brand, like when a research agency develops a new AI data tool and places it front and centre of their proposition.
We’ve seen this with the likes of Accenture (with their ‘AI reinvention’ focus), Unity Advisory (tax/auditing) and Cognizant (IT consulting).
All that glitters is not gold
The early strategy shifters have made their move and are reaping the rewards. For the rest, there are reasons to pause and take stock of the options – even as others are noisily shaking their pans in search of AI gold.
The reality is that gold is valuable because it’s finite. Not everyone will find it by digging in the same spot. Some will succeed by moving on to the next hill. Others will be better off putting their pickaxes down.
If changes are taking place within your business because of AI, and you’re wondering how to reposition your brand as a result, here are three questions to ask yourself:
‘What’s our true advantage?’
For the past 20+ years, technology has been an undoubted brand advantage. If you could bring some proprietary piece of tech to market, you instantly separated yourself from those who couldn’t. It was the golden ticket, the reason so many service businesses yearned to become SaaS ones.
Today, what was once out of reach for all but the 10% is readily available to the 90%. After all, the underlying technology behind generative AI can be accessed by the one-man-band as much as the multi-national. And the cost of adding your own layer of development on top is reducing by the hour.
Unless you’re sitting on a large proprietary dataset, or a particularly complex and integrated piece tech stack, the risk of betting big on AI is this: what you have can probably be copied over a weekend.
So, whatever AI play you are looking to make, ask yourself: “Is this really where our true advantage lies?”
‘Where’s the unclaimed space’?
There are five potential positioning territories that any B2B brand can occupy – the space where it can play, and win, vis-à-vis the competition. The most successful brands work out where the unclaimed space is, and move there.
It will always be space that is:
AUTHENTIC to their business (a true advantage)
RELEVANT to their customers (a real need)
DIFFERENT to their competition (a tangible distinction)
The problem with the AI gold rush is that everyone is trying to claim the same turf. They’re using the same claims, the same language, the same reasons to believe. The approach-led territory is where numerous service brands are setting up camp – hoping to win over clients on the basis of a superior technology/methodology.
A recent study by Wynter put this trend into stark perspective. It highlighted how 400+ B2B businesses across 61 categories shared a remarkable 57% overlap in messaging (with 99% of SaaS websites claiming AI capability).
It’s impossible to know whether we’ve reached peak AI or whether we’re still on the upward curve. But before you put your AI creation front and centre of your brand, ask yourself: “Is this a space we can really own?”
‘What moment are we in’?
Hearing some of the conversations leaders are having behind closed doors (as they rethink their strategy or positioning in light of AI), it’s clear this is about more than just tech adoption.
Perhaps the moment we are in isn’t really about the tech at all. Perhaps it’s a moment to view our business through a new lens, a chance to ask ourselves the bigger questions – like “who are we really?”, “what are we here for?” and “what makes us different?”
The risk for some businesses is that they miss the moment, because they already have the destination in mind. They’ve set their sights on being an AI leader in the market, or building a brand around their AI capability. The question is less “where are we going?” and more “are we there yet?”
Maybe that’s the right move. Maybe the moment really is about a tech transformation. But maybe – just maybe – there’s something else going on: a chance to rediscover the ‘gold’ that’s already inside the business.
Let’s all meet up in the year 2000
There are some pretty obvious lessons to learn from the dot-com bubble. First of all, not all trailblazers made a success of their pivot. Some pretty high-profile names ended up walking back their rebrands.
The biggest lesson of all? Digital eventually became normal. Over time, what was a unique capability, a distinct advantage, simply became part of the fabric of doing business.
There will come a time – perhaps pretty soon – when AI will reach its norming stage. A time when having AI capabilities will be the equivalent of having a website in 2000, or a social media presence in 2010, or a SaaS stack in 2020.
If you lead an expert organisation, the challenge is knowing what moment you are in – and what change you need to bring to your brand, so that your business and its people can thrive in this brave new world.
