An analysis of US Fortune 500 companies in 2023 shows that just 5% of new board positions went to directors with CMO experience. This means it is very likely that an even smaller percentage of UK PLC boards, which do not report in this way, have any marketing power in their teams. This weakness at board level defines our attitudes to the role of marketing in our businesses. And in the AI era, this attitude will define the probability of long-term company survival.
Why? Because AI is triggering a ruthless shakeout. The companies that survive and thrive won’t be the ones with the best models, the smartest engineering or the deepest VC rounds. In the same way that great producers create the sound that comes to define the artist, it is marketing that creates the brand which comes to define the business. The true standouts will be the companies that can create an enduring market presence, a brand which commands attention, cuts through the noise and builds a following. Without these foundations, the relentless pace of AI commoditization will swallow-up every other defensible attribute you thought you had created in your business.
However the majority of UK boards, especially public market boards, have not understood how vulnerable their companies are to fading into obscurity. To understand this more, let’s start with a view from “over there”.
4 market strategy lessons from the US
US tech companies better understand the importance of strong brand and clear market presence. They know that while technological innovation sparks the flame, great marketing builds the fire.
To begin, what is your story? Apple didn’t lead with technology; instead, it led with a story about creativity, individuality, summed up as “Think Different”. That narrative gave its brand resilience through downturns and missteps, creating loyalty so strong customers forgave flaws that would sink others.
Second, strategise by thinking long term, and by building on your company’s brand trust. Microsoft’s turnaround under Satya Nadella starts with long-term market strategy, not technology. Once seen as the desktop computing monopolist, the company repositioned itself as a cloud-first leader, with Azure marking not just another product but a clear statement of intent: Microsoft would be the trusted platform for the next wave of enterprise computing. The reliability it built in the 1990s has since evolved into credibility in the AI era, while Nadella, less corporate boss and more deep-thinking strategist, has given the company a sense of purpose alongside profit. That long-term outlook led to the timely investment in OpenAI, a move that firmly re-established Microsoft as both innovator and market leader.
Third, position your brand and offerings for generality and versatility. Nvidia turned a niche chipmaker into a $4 trillion giant by rebranding GPUs as the “engine of the AI revolution”. Jensen Huang’s bold storytelling transformed a gamer’s tool into the cultural symbol of the biggest technological shift since electricity. Nvidia’s market cap has now soared past $4 trillion, has just released a strong second quarter despite restrictions in a large market, and is now one of the most celebrated companies in history. Through clever marketing, Nvidia took a technical product and made it a cultural symbol.
Fourth, thought provoking brands are born to stand out. New players to technology sectors, like OpenAI, need to show great instincts early on. OpenAI could have chosen any number of clinical, technologically based names. Instead, it defined itself with openness, transparency, and mission at its heart. The narrative was never “we build large language models” it was “we are here to ensure artificial intelligence is available to everyone”. That framing matters for both the brand and marketing strategy. This translates into we are not about APIs; this is about destiny.
The UK contrast
Now, let’s refocus on over here, on the land that gave the world Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee and ARM Holdings. The UK has been slow to understand market power through brand as a necessary tool to win on the world stage. A tool that is now a prerequisite for survival.
ARM is one of the most important companies of the past 30 years. Its chip designs power 99% of smartphones, the vast majority of IoT devices and an increasing share of servers. Yet, for decades, ARM was invisible to consumers. In the US, ARM might have become a household name like Intel. In the UK, it remained an engineering story.
Even when SoftBank acquired ARM for £24 billion, the narrative was that Britain had “sold off” a valuable company, rather than focusing on the fact that ARM was a world leader in design. A tentative branding strategy was the missing ingredient.
DeepMind is another case study, but of a different kind. Its breakthroughs in AlphaGo and protein folding were world changing. But DeepMind’s story has been subsumed by its acquirer. It brought together world class scientists and generated enough excitement to draw out Google’s check book, but developing a brand for the ages did not seem to be a priority for the company. No doubt that Habibis made an astute decision to sell, but I feel a US equivalent would have been more visible and more widely known because it would have considered that a marketing strategy was worth the time and effort.
Outside those giants, the picture is worse. How many UK startups can the average consumer on the high street name? Deliveroo was visible but framed as a convenience app rather than a brand with specific meaning in its category.
There is no UK equivalent of Stripe, which took a back-end function like payments and turned it into a developer cult. There is no UK version of Salesforce, which turned CRM into a category-defining movement with “No Software” billboards.
The UK excels in technology and science. But it under-performs when it comes to marketing, positioning and brand leadership. The result is that our great tech companies are often sold early, diluted, or disappear into the background.
Why marketing leadership matters much more in the AI era
In the AI economy, marketing strategy – led from the boardroom – is not just desirable but has become an existential necessity. As exemplified by the ascendancy of American brands that adopt this market-led approach.
AI is doing many things to the world, including the commoditisation of technology. A feature that seems unique today can be cloned tomorrow by anyone with access to GPUs and open-source models. That is anyone, pretty much. Technical advantage is measured in months now, not years. Margins of gain compress. Defensible moats are vanishing.
In this environment, there are two forces that create durability. First is market position. A very clear understanding of the value you create in the market and how you change what has gone before you. And then your market strength, your brand. How do you express this value, how do you communicate why you matter. These vectors in your business should not significantly change direction over time, but they will build momentum. These are the factors that make you appear irreplaceable.
Tesla is less car maker, more cultural phenomenon, symbolising the future.
Its actual production numbers have repeatedly disappointed, its product quality has been brought into question, and its CEO is infamously erratic. Yet the brand’s market pull means Tesla commands a premium valuation other automakers envy.
OpenAI is not just an API. It is the lightning rod for AI’s hopes and fears. The ChatGPT brand is so strong that it is used as shorthand for all conversational AI, even when consumers use competing products.
When products in a category all seem to merge into one, it is the story that creates distinction. When feature differentiation is rapidly equalized, what people believe you represent decides the market’s choice.
The meek will vanish
The AI shakeup will be deterministic. Companies that treat marketing as an afterthought will struggle. The businesses run by boards that represent only financial and operational interests will not understand why competitors seem to be taking the market.
Even brilliant products will fail without brand. The graveyard of British innovation is filled
with examples, technologies that could have dominated but didn’t because there was insufficient leadership focused on creating a distinctive, memorable and powerful presence in very crowded, noisy markets (Sinclair, Psion). With AI here to evaporate any other competitive advantage, this suddenly becomes imperative.
Brand boldly….or disappear
The UK has brilliant engineers, world-class research and active capital markets.
But unless company boards make space for the skills that understand and help create market leadership – CMOs who can define a category where the business can win, who can make consumers care, who can create a centre of gravity – the UK tech industry will continue to sell itself short.
Branding isn’t the polish you add at the end. It’s the foundational strategy to win that you start with and you stay with. It is the substrate for building long-term value, resonance and meaning. Boards that continue to compartmentalize marketing as “sales support” are sentencing their companies to life as the also-rans in the market.
US boards understand this. That’s why its companies dominate not just markets, but our imaginations. UK boardrooms must learn fast, or we are likely to see our best businesses stuck at the margins.
