Bravery Beats Buzzwords

We’ve all been there. You open LinkedIn, and it immediately starts to put you to sleep. Attacking your will to live, let alone read on. Posts from people with the same structure. Same buzzwords. Same hot, hot-takes.

And here’s the rub: with AI tools, the sameness is multiplying. Faster, slicker, and
cheaper - for sure. But different? The example my colleague Kinda shared this week of
the farewell letters of two Premier League footballers suggests not.

Which is why the real challenge for B2B marketers today isn’t just to “be present” or
“join the conversation.” It’s to make sure you sound nothing like the conversation next
door. That takes a bit of effort. It doesn’t mean you can’t use AI or should feel shame for
using AI. I’ve used it to help me write this blog. But the story? The story has to be yours
and yours alone. And that can be the problem with a lot of B2B marketing, when everything sounds the same, nothing sticks. Buyers tune out. Campaigns fall flat. Pipelines empty. This increases pressure all round.

This is not happening because your tactics are wrong, or your channel mix is off (You
and your GPT army have worked damn hard on them), it’s because the story you’re
telling isn’t brave enough to earn attention. Think about it. If your story could be dropped into a competitor’s deck and still make sense, is it really yours? What makes you different?
This is without doubt the hardest question to answer in a B2B marketing project and
teams have been known to quake at its very mention. Not to mention quiver. But it’s
worth tackling. Be brave. Be bold. The stories you can find and the decisions you take
can really make a difference.

Here are a few examples where being brave with the story made all the difference:

• Pragmatic Semiconductor
Most scale-ups in this space play it safe: product features, incremental benefits,
and a lot of tech jargon. Pragmatic did the opposite. They told a big, brave story
about the future role of semiconductors in national resilience and innovation.
And then - the brave part - they pulled that story all the way through the funnel.
From a hero film to media partnerships to a webinar targeted at their exact ICP,
the same narrative ran consistently. That kind of conviction is rare.

• Tetra Pak
Hospitality buyers aren’t exactly waiting around for packaging updates. They’re
just not. The brave move here was to confront that reality head-on with content
that felt useful, tailored and industry-specific. Assets, built for the channels
hospitality trusted most, all saying: change is coming - and here’s how to adapt.
That’s a harder line to take than just shouting about product benefits. But it
worked: genuine SQLs from an audience most brands struggle to reach.

• Ricoh
At a time when every IT provider was saying the same thing - “our tech enables
hybrid work” - we took a different path. Their story wasn’t about hardware. It was
about humans, how teams could truly “work together, anywhere.” And then they
went even braver and they rolled out that same simple, human message across
24 European markets, resisting the temptation to water it down. Proof that
sometimes the bravest thing you can do is keep it simple.

• Hitachi ZeroCarbon
Decarbonising vehicle fleets isn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser. It’s complex,
technical, and easy for buyers to avoid. The brave choice? To face that head-on.
Hitachi’s story was a clear roadmap: we’ll guide you step by step. That meant
aligning comms and sales around one message - a scary thing for some
organisations. But it turned complexity into confidence, and silence into
conversation.

AI is our new context. And we’re all going to continue to flood the market with even
more “perfectly fine” content. But “perfectly fine” is invisible. Is there any point in
getting computers to write for other computers to read? (well yes there is obviously,
GEO is probably the future of marketing, but that’s not the point I’m making, that’s a
totally different blog). The winners won’t just be the loudest. They’ll be the bravest. The ones who pick a story only they can tell, and tell it consistently, from top to bottom.

So, ask yourself, if my story sounds like everyone else’s, why would anyone remember
it?

When push comes inevitably to shove, “Better stories. Bigger impact” is not just a line -
it’s the truth. Because in a world of AI-driven noise, the only content worth creating is
the kind that makes people stop scrolling, stop yawning, and start talking.
If it sounds like everyone else, it won’t cut through.

So don’t settle for safe. Say something brave. Give it a go. It’s fun.