That change has profound implications for your business.

First, AI needs to find and understand you. Second, the buyer still needs a reason to choose you.

McKinsey’s State of Marketing Europe 2026 identifies an interesting response to the rise of generative AI. As AI increasingly influences consumer decision-making, marketing leaders are placing renewed emphasis on creating brands that are authentic, creative and capable of building deeper connections with their audiences.

The same principle has particular relevance in complex B2B markets.

Technical capability will always matter. Buyers need evidence that your technology performs, your people understand the application, and your business can deliver. But when AI can find that evidence, summarise it and compare it with competing claims in seconds, functional information alone becomes less of a differentiator.

AI is making information easier to access. It’s also making trust, reputation and genuine distinctiveness more valuable than ever.

Would AI recommend you?

For years, companies have invested in search engine optimisation to make sure they appear when somebody types the right words into Google. Now there’s another question to consider:

Does AI understand your business well enough to recommend you?

For technology and engineering-led businesses, the answer may not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Many have accumulated years of highly technical product pages, PDFs, case studies, news stories and application content. There may be enormous expertise within that material, but the picture it presents isn’t always clear or consistent.

Different parts of the business may describe the same capability in different ways. Product features can overshadow customer outcomes. Valuable insights can be buried deep within technical documents. And the problems the business is best qualified to solve may never be articulated in a language customers actually use when looking for answers.

AI draws on information from across these different sources to understand what a business does and where its expertise lies. The clearer and more consistent that information is, the easier it is to form an accurate picture.

That mattered when the audience was human. It matters even more when an AI system is helping decide which businesses that human should consider.

When every supplier looks capable

While AI gives buyers a wider choice of credible suppliers, it also makes the differences between them harder to see.

Technical capability may get you onto the shortlist. It doesn’t necessarily give buyers a reason to choose you.

This is where McKinsey’s finding about authenticity, creativity and deeper brand connections becomes particularly relevant to B2B.

That doesn’t mean trying to manufacture an emotional connection in the way a consumer brand might. But it does mean recognising that even highly technical purchasing decisions involve very human judgements.

Do I trust these people to deliver? Do they really understand our challenge? Can I rely on them when something goes wrong? Am I confident recommending this company to my colleagues? All of these questions become particularly important when the consequences of making the wrong choice are significant.

So while technical evidence helps establish whether a supplier can do the job, brand helps create confidence in the organisation behind that capability.

Reputation, demonstrated expertise and a genuine understanding of your customers’ world all contribute to that confidence.

AI is raising the value of having a distinctive brand.

As more buyers use AI to discover solutions, research suppliers and compare alternatives, businesses need to think about how clearly their expertise can be found, understood and evidenced.

But building visibility is only part of the challenge. As AI makes it easier for buyers to establish which suppliers are technically credible, the things that create preference become more important, not less. Things like a distinctive position, a reputation for expertise, clear supporting evidence, and new ideas. All these build confidence in the people and business behind the technology.

The more AI influences how B2B buyers find and process information, the more valuable the genuinely human qualities of a brand may become.

So perhaps the question for B2B leaders isn’t simply “How should we be using AI in our marketing?”

It’s also: “Is our marketing ready for the way our customers will be using AI?”

At Emberson Marketing, we’re helping technology and engineering-led businesses explore what AI means for the way they build visibility, communicate their value and create preference.

If you’d like to understand how ready your brand is for this changing buying journey, let’s talk.