January 7, 2025
January 7, 2025
AI is a human story, not a technology story.
But after perusing the websites of several AI companies – startups and behemoths alike – it’s clear many of their marketers and communicators are getting this wrong. The popular AI narrative centers on productivity gains, with LLMs and agents outshining humans as central characters.
Here’s the thing: AI’s true potential lies in the work humans can’t already do. It’s about human potential, not human productivity — but you wouldn’t know that by looking at how most AI companies communicate.
This disconnect sparked a question for us at Mission North: How do the stories AI companies tell about their products influence trust with B2B audiences? To find the answer and test our assumptions, we fielded an omnibus survey of 100 IT decision-makers.
The findings support our thesis about human-centered AI storytelling. People want to see other people at the center of AI communications. We care much more about why people built the product and how it will make our lives better than the technology at its core.
Here’s what the data says:
While IT decision-makers and their organizations care a lot about measurable ROI and productivity returns, it’s the people behind the AI products – engineers, executives and customers – who drive their connection with them.
The takeaway for marketers and communicators is clear: Focusing on human storytelling is crucial to build trust in AI innovations and rise above the noise. Here are the four AI storytelling principles we use at Mission North to advise our clients.
Always Be Humanizing.
The personal brands of your CEO and technology leaders are intrinsically linked with your corporate brand and reputation. As a result, you need to develop authentic, trustworthy and accessible characters and put them at the heart of your communications. Building peer affinity with your commercial audience segments is also an important part of humanizing your AI story. For example, if you sell an AI solution to marketing, security and HR teams, you need to make your CMO, CISO and CHRO central characters of your vertical AI stories.
In the “AI-powered” marketing era, your human characters also need to use human language to stand out and build trust. The AI landscape is saturated with jargon words like AI-enabled, agentic and co-pilot that have become meaningless. To really connect with humans, you’ve got to communicate accordingly.
Here’s what this looks like: Mission North’s client Canva embodies this principle, from their diverse cast of characters to the way the company communicates about its AI capabilities. It’s rare for brands at this stage to have such a deep and trusted bench of characters telling their AI story. Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams, Zach Kitchtke and Jennie Rogerson communicate from the heart and from the front. In addition, Canva named its AI design suite Magic Studio — notice the lack of AI or jargon in the name. This was an intentional strategy to get early users comfortable with its AI capabilities when others were leading with undifferentiated and confusing language.
<split-lines>"Building peer affinity with your commercial audience segments is also an important part of humanizing your AI story."<split-lines>
Always Be Educating.
AI is overwhelming, with nearly 50% of Americans believing that it will create a more dangerous future, according to Mission North’s 2024 Brand Expectations Index. Given this reality, you should assume your vision for AI is far beyond what most of your audiences are ready for today. Bringing them along at the right pace requires educational content like survey insights, customer tutorials and practical guides that illustrate how your AI capabilities solve the problems your customers care most about.
Here’s what this looks like: Surveying your different audience segments is a great way to meet them where they are – uncovering their sentiment around the issues shaping your product roadmap and understanding where they are in their AI journeys. Canva’s “Marketing and AI Report” is a great example of this. The report shares insights from 4,000 global marketing and creative leaders who are navigating AI’s evolving role, including challenges and opportunities.
Real estate technology company AppFolio, another Mission North client, is also doing a great job of educating its audiences through surveys. Last year, they released both the “State of AI in Property Management Report” and sponsored the National Apartment Association’s “2024 Property Management Industry Pulse: Artificial Intelligence,” to shed light on AI adoption in the industry. These reports arm audiences with insights into how others in the space are deploying AI to help them choose the right use cases and understand the ROI.
<split-lines>"You should assume your vision for AI is far beyond what most of your audiences are ready for today. Bringing them along at the right pace requires educational content..."<split-lines>
Always Be Showing.
AI is abstract. And amid all the promises brands are making about this technology, audiences can easily become confused, skeptical or both. To make your AI capabilities as concrete and believable as possible, you have to show — don’t just tell — how they solve real problems and how they can make users’ jobs easier and more impactful. Your narrative should lead with real-world examples that bring your value proposition to life.
Video explainers and demos are an effective way to show your product in action. But it’s important to weave human storytelling into these explainers to ensure the focus remains on end-user impact, rather than explaining the technology for technology’s sake.
Here’s what this looks like: This recent explainer video from Anthropic does a great job of showing how the company’s new AI “computer use” capability works and why it was created. Notice how the video focuses on a central human “character,” researcher Sam Ringer, who uses approachable language that is not overly technical — almost as if he is explaining the technology to a friend. The video also centers on a specific, straightforward task and uses a clear example to illustrate how the technology automates that task.
Always Be Proving.
AI is hyped. As the business world shifts from pilot to production, AI product creators need to root their communications in actions and evidence to validate their narrative. Because trust is earned, it doesn’t matter who your investors are or how much money you have. Without tangible proof that your technology is solving real problems, you will erode trust and ultimately fail. The best way to accrue trust is by putting your customers at the center of your storytelling.
To do this, brands should develop customer stories and distribute them everywhere your audiences are. This includes earned media stories, case studies on your website, sponsored content, joint speaking sessions, podcasts and social media – all of it.
<split-lines>"As the business world shifts from pilot to production, AI product creators need to root their communications in actions and evidence to validate their narrative."<split-lines>
Here’s what this looks like: AppFolio effectively weaves customer proof points into owned content, including customer case studies and blog content. The company’s data around customer efficiency gains and time saved with AI tools speaks for itself. Earned media is of course another way to get your proof points out to external audiences. In this WSJ feature story, Mission North client Snowflake proved its investment in AI R&D to help customers test their LLMs.
By incorporating these four principles alongside human-centered storytelling, AI companies can build more trust with their audiences and forge an emotional connection that goes beyond productivity benefits. Remember: your brand’s human characters are the real heroes, with AI as the secret ingredient that allows them to do amazing things.
