How AI is Transforming B2B Branding: Strategy, Search, and Storytelling
As the barriers to launching a tech startup continue to shrink, a surge of new products, services, and ideas is flooding the market. In this landscape, having a distinctive, trustworthy brand identity is no longer optional — it’s essential.
Sköna, a creative agency based in San Francisco with clients like Snowflake and Kleer, specializes in building bold brand strategies for forward-thinking B2B tech companies. At the center of this evolution is Martyna Studniarska, a Creative Strategist who’s worked across both the U.S. and European markets. Her focus: helping companies define who they are, what they stand for, and how to express their brand consistently across every touchpoint.
We spoke with Martyna about the role AI is playing in reshaping the future of B2B branding — and where real opportunities exist amid the noise.
1. AI as a Creative Catalyst
For Martyna, AI is a tool to amplify creativity rather than replace it. During the ideation phase of campaigns, she uses AI in non-traditional ways — like surfacing paradoxes within an industry — to spark new angles and challenge assumptions.
One of her go-to techniques is the “paradox process,” a brainstorming method that identifies conflicting truths within a market. These tensions serve as the foundation for bold creative direction. AI helps surface these contradictions quickly, which can ignite fresh ideas for teams to build upon.
Still, she’s quick to clarify that AI is not a silver bullet. It rarely provides a campaign-ready idea in one prompt. Real brand strategy requires deep thinking, collaboration, and creative iteration.
2. Branding for an AI-First Customer Journey
B2B buyers are no longer discovering brands through traditional SEO-driven channels alone. According to Martyna, over 60% of potential customers research a company before ever speaking to a sales rep. Increasingly, that research is happening via AI-powered tools — not Google.
With large language models replacing standard search, consumers now receive synthesized answers instead of a list of links. Bain & Company reports that 80% of users rely on AI summaries for at least 40% of their searches.
That shift has major implications. Visibility alone no longer guarantees discovery. What matters now is credibility — the strength and consistency of your brand’s messaging across all public-facing content.
Martyna trains clients to adopt this mindset by helping them craft clear brand strategies and equipping them with AI prompt libraries that maintain their voice, tone, and personality in future communications. As she puts it, “They’re going to use AI anyway — we just help them use it the right way.”
3. Smarter Targeting Through AI Personas
With B2B markets more saturated than ever, the ability to pinpoint and speak to a specific niche is a major advantage. AI allows teams to synthesize large volumes of competitor and customer data to define their audience with greater clarity.
Martyna’s process starts with deep-dive interviews to extract authentic qualitative insights. This data is then fed into AI systems to generate fictional buyer personas — intelligent, data-backed avatars that her team can interact with, test messaging against, and refine strategies around.
This kind of structured experimentation allows brands to move beyond guesswork and build campaigns that resonate deeply with real decision-makers.
The Bottom Line: Use AI, But Don’t Lose the Human Spark
Despite the hype, Martyna maintains that the foundation of successful B2B branding still comes from people — their values, perspectives, and creative instincts. AI may accelerate the work, but it cannot define a brand’s essence, mission, or cultural impact.
The brands that will thrive in the years ahead are those that strike a balance: embracing AI to increase reach and relevance, while doubling down on the human touch that makes a brand truly memorable.