The long-established playbook for business-to-business marketing, once heavily reliant on a direct path to lead generation, is being fundamentally rewritten for the modern era. In a landscape increasingly filtered through artificial intelligence, where algorithms and automated systems often serve as the first point of contact for potential customers, the strategic imperative has shifted dramatically. The new focus is a more nuanced and critical effort centered on building profound brand awareness and establishing unshakeable credibility. This evolution is not merely a trend but a necessary adaptation, recognized at the highest levels of corporate leadership. This newfound respect from the C-suite is translating into tangible support, with nearly seven out of ten B2B marketers anticipating a budget increase. However, this increased investment is accompanied by a parallel rise in accountability. Marketing leaders now face a broader array of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that extend beyond traditional metrics, encompassing brand visibility, content marketing effectiveness, and customer retention, reflecting a more holistic and integrated view of the marketing function’s true responsibilities within the enterprise.
The B2-Human Revolution
At the vanguard of this marketing transformation is Workday, guided by the philosophy of CMO Emma Chalwin, who champions a resonant concept she calls “B2-human.” This perspective compellingly rejects the traditional dichotomies of B2B and B2C, instead grounding its strategy in the foundational principle that regardless of the context, the ultimate buyer is always a human being driven by emotion, logic, and a need for connection. This philosophy is vividly brought to life in the company’s widely acclaimed “Rock Star” campaign. The advertisements ingeniously feature iconic music legends, including Gwen Stefani, Paul Stanley of KISS, and Billy Idol, navigating the often-absurd challenges of a typical corporate office environment. The humor and broad appeal are derived from the clever juxtaposition of their larger-than-life personas with the mundane realities of office work, effectively demonstrating how Workday’s software and integrated AI agents can empower any employee to achieve “rock star” status in their respective role. This approach intentionally shatters the mold of conventional, often staid B2B advertising by injecting a potent mixture of humor, authenticity, and what Chalwin describes as “consumer magic,” creating a campaign so distinctive that a competitor could never simply place their own logo on it and claim it as their own. The success of this human-centric strategy is validated by a suite of impressive metrics that demonstrate a powerful link between top-of-funnel brand building and bottom-of-funnel demand generation. The third installment of the “Rock Star” campaign, which was strategically launched during the Masters golf tournament, resulted in a greater than 50% increase in website traffic and, more critically, a 17% rise in lead-to-sale conversions. To maximize its impact, the campaign’s reach was strategically extended across a multitude of channels, ensuring the message resonated with audiences wherever they were. A clever social media spin-off, titled “BI versus AI,” featured Billy Idol in a playful rivalry against artificial intelligence, creating further engagement and conversation online. In a masterstroke of account-based marketing, Workday had the music legend record personalized video messages for high-value targets, directly addressing the CIO or CFO of a specific prospective client. Further integrating the brand narrative across all facets of the demand generation strategy, the campaign even established an official LinkedIn profile for Billy Idol, where he engages in lighthearted banter about Workday and AI, seamlessly weaving the brand into the professional social landscape.
AI as an Ally Not a Replacement
Emma Chalwin’s approach to the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence is guided by a clear and powerful principle: “empowering humans, not replacing them.” At Workday, the adoption of AI is not siloed within technical departments but is a company-wide initiative called “Everyday AI,” which actively encourages all 20,000 employees to experiment with the technology in their roles. Within the marketing department specifically, a program called “AI Unlocked” provides team members with practical use cases and targeted training to help them seamlessly integrate AI into their daily workflows. The practical applications are both extensive and impactful. The marketing team now leverages AI for the rapid localization of website content and advertising assets for global markets, sophisticated lead nurturing sequences, predictive account scoring to identify the most promising prospects, and detailed account mapping. One notable success directly attributable to this strategy is a 17% increase in lead conversion rates, achieved by leveraging AI in the lead scoring process. Chalwin argues that AI’s greatest immediate value lies in its ability to automate and handle “drudgery work,” thereby liberating marketers to concentrate on the uniquely human-centric tasks that are most critical for success: deep strategic collaboration, unbounded creative thinking, compelling storytelling, and nuanced ethical decision-making.
Despite her evident enthusiasm for AI as a transformative tool, Chalwin issues a critical and timely note of caution against its unbridled use. She remains a strong proponent of preserving human creativity for core brand messaging, believing that purely AI-generated content often lacks the essential “soul” and authenticity required to forge a genuine, lasting connection with an audience. She warns fellow leaders against an over-reliance on AI, which can inadvertently lead to generic, undifferentiated, and ultimately inauthentic branding, offering the crucial reminder that “humans buy from humans.” This balanced perspective extends to her broader leadership principles, where she stresses the paramount importance of creating a psychologically safe environment. In such a culture, teams feel empowered to test, learn, and experiment without fear of failure. She advocates that learning from initiatives that do not succeed should be celebrated as much as the wins, as this is the only path to fostering true innovation. Furthermore, she champions vulnerability as a leadership “superpower” and advises her peers to consistently hire people smarter than themselves. Ultimately, she sees technology’s role as that of an enabler, one that should be leveraged to gain efficiency and free up precious time for leaders and teams to cultivate the indispensable human skills of empathy, curiosity, and courage.
Broader Shifts in the Media and Technology Landscape
The dynamic environment in which marketers operate is also being shaped by significant consolidation and competition within the broader media and entertainment industries. A major recent development involved the corporate battle for control of Warner Bros. Discovery. The company’s board formally rejected a hostile takeover bid of $108 billion from Paramount Skydance. The board’s rejection was based on the determination that the offer was “inadequate” and, more critically, that it relied on an “extraordinary amount of debt financing” that would have resulted in the largest leveraged buyout in history. In its decision, the board expressed a clear preference for a pre-existing $83 billion acquisition offer from Netflix. Under this proposal, the streaming giant would purchase the movie studio, while other valuable assets, such as the news network CNN, would be sold off separately. In a related and strategic move, Netflix addressed a key criticism of its potential ownership—that it would harm the traditional movie theater business—by highlighting the successful theatrical run of its Stranger Things finale in a landmark partnership with AMC Entertainment, signaling a future that embraces continued collaboration between streaming services and theatrical exhibitors.
Parallel to these corporate maneuvers, the media landscape is witnessing a clear trend of audience growth for partisan television news channels. In 2025, on the conservative side, NewsNation experienced its best year to date, with its total viewership increasing by an astonishing 218% since its launch in 2021. On the liberal side of the spectrum, MSNBC, which was spun off and rebranded as MS NOW, saw a significant 13% audience increase, maintaining its strong position as the second-most-watched cable news network. However, this growth exists within a potentially unstable ecosystem, as reports indicate that conservative media is experiencing a “veritable civil war” fueled by competing personalities and clashing ideologies, suggesting its current growth trajectory may not be sustainable. Shifting focus from media consumption to content creation, a significant societal challenge has emerged with the proliferation of AI-generated imagery. A study from SQ Magazine indicated that approximately 71% of images on social media are now likely AI-generated. As this technology becomes more sophisticated, distinguishing authentic content from synthetic media has become increasingly difficult. In response to this wave of “AI slop,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri proposed a counterintuitive solution: rather than attempting to flag all AI-generated content, platforms should instead focus on creating a system to overtly identify and watermark human-created content, though practical challenges with existing metadata systems remain a significant hurdle.
Forging a Path in a New Marketing Reality
The strategic success observed at Workday represented more than just a single company’s innovative campaign; it served as a blueprint for navigating a new era of B2B marketing. The core lesson was that in an increasingly automated world, the brands that forged the deepest connections were those that dared to be unapologetically human. The path forward required a delicate and deliberate balance, one that leveraged the immense power of new technologies like artificial intelligence while simultaneously grounding every strategic decision in authentic human insight and creativity. It became clear that the future of the discipline depended not on replacing human intuition with algorithms, but on thoughtfully augmenting it to achieve new levels of efficiency and impact. This approach ultimately proved that the most effective marketing was a conversation, not a monologue, and that building a lasting brand meant valuing empathy and courage as much as data and analytics.