How B2B marketing leaders are reshaping teams and redirecting investment to build influence
AI has made content abundant but influence scarce
I founded Pandher Wishart Studios with a simple belief: that content can, and should, drive business growth. That belief hasn’t changed, but the last few years have made it harder to act on.
Creating content has never been easier. Creating content that actually influences people has never been more difficult.
One finding in this year’s Global Marketing Leaders Content Study captures that tension perfectly. Only 20% of marketing leaders say their content is delivering significantly greater influence than it did two years ago.
Of course, we wanted to know why.
AI has accelerated content creation dramatically. But in doing so, as our study reveals, it has made cutting through the defining challenge for marketing leaders today.
How do you keep your ideas fresh when it feels like everything has already been said? How do you develop a point of view that genuinely stands out? How do you turn expertise into content that people actually remember?
These are the questions at the heart of this year’s study. And the findings point clearly to where the answers lie.
The first is people, and the skills becoming most valuable in an AI-enabled world. The second is expertise, and how organisations unlock the knowledge already inside their business and turn it into a sustained source of authority. The third is investment, and where the leaders pulling ahead are choosing to put their resources.
1 — People
2 — Expertise
3 — Investment
I’ve always believed the future B2B marketing team looks like what I call a corporate newsroom. It’s always-on, delivering a consistent drumbeat of content with the ability to deliver stories that audiences trust and remember.
With AI in the mix, technology accelerates production. But human expertise, editorial judgement and storytelling still determine influence.
This report explores what that future looks like.
A profession in transition
162 senior B2B marketing leaders across complex industries share what is working, what is not, and where content is heading next.
Read next:
Chapter 1: People - Marketing’s new capability mix
Chapter 2: Turning expertise into influence