dentsu

thought leadership

Written by Dominic Milan, Strategy Partner

The uncomfortable truth

AI has made B2B marketing faster, cheaper, and about as distinctive as a brown cardigan at a beige convention. When every brand can publish a trend point of view in the time it takes to microwave soup, sameness becomes the default. The only thing that cuts through is evidence. Real proof. The kind buyers can rely on when the decision is high stakes and career defining.  

At dentsu B2B, our evidence engine is The Superpowers Index, currently it’s in its 5th year of undercovering what drives b2b buying decisions at scale. It is built from more than 16,000 interviews and represents more than 35,000 brand experiences across 21 markets. [dentsu.com]  

Evidence matters because buyers are already acting like fact checkers. The Superpowers Index shows that 77% of B2B buying processes now use AI, and many start by leaning on AI early in the journey, before they ever see your brand. [dentsu.com]  

That single shift changes the job of marketing. Being discoverable and memorable is no longer enough. You now need to be verifiable, with proof tied to outcomes, locally relevant, and easy to share internally.  

Evidence is not something you attach to a campaign like a decorative bow. It is the campaign. It turns marketing from persuasion into decision support.  

Evidence earns permission. It builds trust. It makes your brand the one your audience references when they need to justify a direction.  

Action for B2B marketing leaders

Stop measuring content output, and start measuring evidence consumption. Track what happens after the AI summary. Look at clicks into case studies, benchmarks, methodology pages, and independent validation. Think of it as watching who actually eats the meal, not who glanced at the menu.  

A Workday example of this in the wild

Co contributor perspective from Dena Weatherhead, Director of Brand Media, Workday  

In January 2026, we published new global research at Workday to put some hard numbers behind a reality many leaders are already feeling. AI is creating real time savings, but too often those gains are being eaten up by rework. In our study, 85% of employees said AI saves them one to seven hours per week, yet nearly 40% of that time is lost to correcting errors, rewriting content, and double checking low quality output. We also found that only 14% of employees consistently see clear, positive net outcomes from AI. For us, the message is straightforward: in an AI saturated market, credibility comes from evidence that leaders can use to make safer, more defensible decisions. 

 Click here for the full story [newsroom.workday.com]  

Provocation 1: The new funnel in B2B starts with a summary

AI now delivers the first impression, with buyers then moving quickly into verification. When the stakes rise, they still want a human to help them interpret trade offs and build confidence. It is the same reason people still ask a friend before buying a house even after reading 20 online reviews.  

Gartner predicts that by 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritise human interaction over AI. The human layer is not disappearing. It is becoming premium. [gartner.com]  

Action

Build your funnel as four linked layers, not one.  

Phase 1: The Summary Layer
The simplest, most quotable expression of your point of view. This is what AI will summarise. Think of it as the trailer of your thinking.  

Phase 2: The Source Layer
This layer is what you want AI to cite. Original research, methodology, or a clear explanation of how you know what you know. Here, buyers will click through to validate the source. The Superpowers Index reinforces this need for confidence and reassurance as a core decision driver in B2B buying. [dentsu.com]  

Phase 3: The Proof Layer
This layer must incorporate assets that reduce fear. Benchmarks, ROI tools, audited case studies, peer references. This is where you help buyers sleep at night, instead of staring at the ceiling wondering if they have made a terrible mistake.  

Phase 4: The Human Layer
This is where buyers want to look vendors in the eye to gain reassurance that they are investing with the right partner. Gartner’s view that buyers increasingly prefer human led sales experiences as decisions become higher stakes supports this shift. [gartner.com]  

Without clear progression between layers, differentiation becomes accidental. It is like making a major purchase without reviews, comparisons, or reassurance. People hesitate, not because they are uninterested, but because the risk feels too high.  

Co-contributor perspective from Hannah Swanson, VP of Marketing, Intentsify

The buying journey is no longer something marketers can orchestrate. Intent is being formed, validated, and reshaped across a fragmented mix of signals long before a brand enters the conversation. 

What the four-layer funnel above describes in structure, we see in behaviour. Buyers do not move neatly from summary to source to proof. They jump, revisit, and validate out of sequence. The implication is this: identifying when a buyer shifts into active evaluation and surrounding them with evidence across multiple touchpoints at that moment, is what moves accounts forward. 

The moment an account shifts from passive curiosity to active pressure-testing is detectable in behavioural intent data, and that is precisely when evidence has the greatest impact. But timing alone is not enough. In one client example, we tracked how accounts moved through the buyer journey depending on how they were reached. Accounts exposed to intent-driven display advertising alone saw 72% advance from early to late stage. When content syndication was added alongside display, that figure rose to 82%. Among accounts that received no media exposure at all, only 16% made the same progression. The evidence needs to surround the buyer, not just find them once. We are now testing this at scale across customer intent models, and our benchmark report in late 2026 will put harder numbers behind what we are already seeing.  

Read the case study: https://intentsify.io/resources/cloud-solutions-provider-emea/ 

Provocation 2: Fast B2B marketing creates slow decisions

AI will always win on speed.  

Buyers choose major B2B platforms not because research was fast, but because they felt understood, protected from risk, and confident enough to defend the decision internally. When uncertainty drops, decisions accelerate.  

But there is tension. Forrester reports that 19% of buyers using generative AI feel less confident because the information can be inaccurate or unreliable. In a world of instant answers, confidence becomes scarce. Scarcity creates advantage for brands that show their workings. [forrester.com]  

Action

Turn being understood into a productised marketing experience.  

Offer a diagnostic audit instead of a demo, and show buyers where their workflow is breaking.  
Publish a decision defence kit for champions to use with finance and procurement.  
Create an assumption check tool that challenges common beliefs and shows what breaks when they are wrong.  

These tools make buyers feel understood because the output is about their reality, not your product. It helps them build a case for change before they ever talk to sales.  

Provocation 3: If you want trust, publish your constraints

Saying you use AI is now as exciting as saying you own a toaster. Everyone does.  

Explaining where AI works, where it fails, and where humans stay in the loop is how you earn credibility. Unreliable AI is a known buyer anxiety, and transparency is now a trust signal. [forrester.com]  

Action

Make a simple document explaining what your AI can and cannot do.  
Spell out which tasks the AI handles automatically.  
Spell out which tasks it will not handle.  
Explain what humans check before approval.  
Explain what happens when something unusual occurs.  

Treat this as decision support, not product marketing. Trust is earned by being useful, honest, and clear.  

Intercom’s Fin is a strong example. Intercom publicly documents how Fin escalates to human teammates, including the situations where Fin offers escalation or escalates immediately. That transparency signals honesty to the buyer and builds trust. It draws a clear line between what AI is responsible for and where human judgement takes over. This is the opposite of automating beyond common sense. Click here for the full story [intercom.com]  

Summary

Every B2B decision carries the same quiet pressure. Do not get this wrong. Do not back the wrong platform, partner, or future.  

That is why evidence matters more than ever.  

When buyers start with AI and click through to sources, they are not being sceptical. They are being responsible. The Superpowers Index finding that AI is now present in the majority of buying processes supports this shift. [dentsu.com]  

The goal is no longer to out publish competitors, but to out validate them.  

Evidence compounds. It gives AI something credible to cite and it gives buyers something defensible to share internally. It makes your brand feel safer in a market where fear of getting it wrong is the real driver.  

The brands that win will not be the fastest or the flashiest. They will be the ones that help buyers feel confident enough to commit, informed enough to defend the decision, and supported enough to move forward without fear.  

In a world full of AI generated content, trust does not come from volume or polish. It comes from clarity, constraint, and evidence.  

Because when the cost of getting it wrong feels higher than ever, the most powerful thing a brand can do is make it easier to get it right.  

Right now, we are working with B2B brands to help them get noticed in an LLM driven world. We focus on two clear use cases. First, our proprietary tools and expert teams diagnose and strengthen how your brand shows up in LLM responses, so you are present when buyers type that first prompt. Second, we understand where LLMs source their information, which often mirrors the places buyers already trust. That allows us to direct media investment into those environments, keeping your brand front of mind where decisions are being shaped. If this has piqued your interest, drop me a DM.  

Sources