By Ben Kleckley and Steve Hamlin
Ben Kleckley is PlatinumBlack’s Director of Strategy. He leads the firm’s strategy capability, working with clients to define business objectives and translate them into executable growth plans. He brings over 15 years of experience in market and competitive assessments, M&A, growth strategy, and business transformation with a strong focus on creating value from growth opportunities. Ben has previously served as a consultant for multi-national professional services organizations including Capgemini, Accenture, and KPMG supporting clients across industries and functions.
Steve Hamlin is a content strategist at PlatinumBlack, where he helps B2B companies turn strategy into smart, scalable content. He’s led digital and content strategies across industries, building brand platforms, launching products, and driving measurable performance across web, social, and campaigns. Before joining PlatinumBlack, Steve worked with sports leagues and teams across the U.S. and internationally, helping them build engaged audiences through content that delivers.
This article will explore the advantage of creativity in business and evolving role of creative in driving real growth for highly technical B2B companies. Erin Eby, PlatinumBlack’s Executive Creative Director, shares how brand, messaging, and design—often undervalued in technical sectors—can become strategic levers for differentiation, trust, and business impact. From orchestrating content ecosystems to navigating AI’s influence on storytelling, the conversation will highlight where creative moves the needle most and how technical companies can market with both precision and resonance.
Q: What is the role of AI in modern go-to-market strategy?
Ben: AI plays a dual role in go-to-market (GTM) strategy. First, on the strategy side, it accelerates the upfront research. You can quickly get up to speed on markets, understand regulation, customer trends, growth drivers, and pain points. It’s great for surfacing insights and helps us be exhaustive when doing secondary research.
Second, it helps in execution, especially with creative brainstorming, copywriting, and even image generation. It speeds up the entire go-to-market process, so we can focus more of our time on high-impact work.
Steve: I’d underscore the "exhaustive" part. Just in the past two years, the speed at which we can gather expertise and synthesize sources has changed dramatically. Especially in areas like voice of customer. What used to be a slog of manual research is now a much more efficient, structured, and insightful process. It helps us keep pace with dynamic markets and client needs.
Q: What are some real use cases for AI across strategy, marketing, and creative?
Ben: For strategy, we use AI to do things like market research, voice-of-customer analysis, trend scanning, and even early SWOT work—it helps us get smart, fast. For content strategy, it’s great for figuring out where audiences spend time, what channels make sense, and what events or sponsorships are worth exploring.
On the creative side, it helps us brainstorm ideas, build storyboards, draft early copy, and even generate quick visuals to pressure-test a concept. And for integrated marketing, we use it to build dashboards, visualize performance, and track what’s working.
Steve: Especially on the creative side, it helps kill bad ideas fast. In the past, you might spend hours exploring a concept before realizing it didn’t hit the mark. AI lets you validate or pivot way earlier. It’s a huge time-saver.
It’s also great for document analysis and centralizing project intelligence so research, interviews, and insights stay organized, searchable, and easy to analyze. When we’re 20 PDFs deep into a project, it’s hard to remember where you saw a specific insight. With AI-powered hubs, we can query everything like a database and find what we need instantly.
Ben: And when you apply that across departments—strategy, marketing, and creative—it adds up fast. Even in integrated marketing, we’re starting to see use cases like building analytics dashboards without needing custom code. That’s real-time value.
Q: Once the strategy is in place, how does AI help with execution?
Ben: It's really about speed to value and operational efficiency. These tools eliminate the need to scan through pages and pages of information. They help us get summary-level views, but we can also dive deeper with follow-up questions. That balance of breadth and depth saves tons of time.
Steve: From a tactical perspective, one helpful use case is identifying where a company should physically show up—for example at events, sponsorships, or trade groups. Especially when we're working outside of our home markets, AI can help us find those hyper-relevant opportunities without missing anything.
Ben: And for content strategy, it’s useful in surfacing where a client's audience is spending time—what conferences they go to, what online spaces they’re in. That helps us make smarter decisions about where to activate content.
Steve: And it’s not just about where our clients should be—it’s also where their competitors are showing up. That context helps us decide whether to go head-to-head or take a differentiated route.
Q: How does AI support brand strategy and messaging work?
Steve: It’s especially helpful during whitespace analysis. One example use case. We used AI to scan a category’s language patterns, which helped us identify overused phrases and find gaps that still felt authentic and ownable. It’s like having another brain in the room validating or challenging your thinking.
Ben: It’s great for gut checks too. We’ll often draft a few brand positioning ideas, then bounce them off AI to see what comes back. It’s not about letting it decide—but it’s a way to refine or rethink an idea before you take it to a client.
Q: So it’s not just faster—it’s also making the work better?
Ben: Exactly. Automating the rote tasks means we get to spend more time doing what matters—precise analysis and GTM planning. We’re not just compressing the process. We’re improving the quality.
Steve: Yeah, it raises the floor. We can use more of our time to add value—whether that’s through sharper insights or better positioning.
Q: What should clients be doing right now to prepare for AI?
Ben: If you haven’t adopted AI yet, start testing it. Learn how to use it. There’s a bit of art to writing good prompts and getting what you want—but once you figure that out, it scales fast.
Steve: And before you dive in, look at your workflows. What parts of your process actually make sense to automate? A lot of failed pilots happen because companies throw AI at problems they don’t fully understand. Be thoughtful. Use AI where it fits, not just where it’s trendy.
Q: What should companies keep in mind as they navigate the AI era?
Ben: Every company still needs to be known for something. AI won’t replace the need for unique positioning. Yes, it can tell you what competitors are doing, but it’s on you to figure out what makes you meaningfully different and valuable.
Steve: Agreed. AI raises the bar, but only if you use it with intention. The value doesn’t come from the tools themselves. It comes from how you apply them to think smarter, act faster, and build a brand that’s truly distinct.
