How to Keep the Soul of Your Brand Alive with Adam Kaiser

How 6sense's Adam Kaiser Is Beating AI Homogenization

While most B2B companies are racing to automate everything with AI, 6sense's Adam Kaiser is taking a radically different approach: preserving the soul of the brand in an increasingly soulless world.

As companies scramble to add AI agents to their org charts and automate content creation, Kaiser warns of a dangerous trend emerging across B2B marketing: complete homogenization. "When it becomes transactional, you lose the soul of it," he explains. "And when humanity gets sucked out of everything, AI is helping us, but we're not selling to AI yet."

His contrarian thesis? The companies that will dominate in the AI era aren't those that automate the most—they're the ones that know exactly what not to automate.

The Fatal Flaw in AI-first apporach

The conventional wisdom says B2B should operate like B2C: find influencers, scale content, optimize for virality. But Kaiser's team at 6sense has discovered something counterintuitive through their research: 70% of B2B buyers actively seek out subject matter experts within the companies they're evaluating, not external influencers.

"B2B buyers want to buy from credible insiders," Kaiser observes. "They don't want to buy from influencers because an influencer sometimes is under-experienced and overexposed."

This insight led to what Kaiser calls the "Brand Soul Framework"—a systematic approach to preserving human authenticity while leveraging AI's efficiency gains.

The Brand Soul Framework: Transactional vs. Spark Content

Kaiser's methodology centers on a critical distinction that most marketing teams miss entirely: separating transactional content from spark content.

Transactional Content: Where AI Excels

• Event landing pages
• Email invitations
• Performance ad variations
• Templated communications
• Persona development research

"There's a lot of transactional stuff that follows a pretty particular formula," Kaiser explains. "We've built apps for our team where they can input event information, and it produces assets based on our template and brand guidelines. The review time on that type of content is significantly lower."

Spark Content: Where Humans Must Lead

• Editorial pieces with strong points of view
• Personal experience stories
• Strategic thought leadership
• Creative conceptual work
• Authentic peer-to-peer communication

"AI does not have a point of view yet," Kaiser emphasizes. "That spark stuff—the things that require editorial perspective or strong opinion—that comes from the person."

The Credible Insider Strategy

Rather than hiring external influencers, 6sense has built what Kaiser calls a "credible insider" program. The methodology is deceptively simple but strategically profound:

Step 1: Identify Internal Experts Every company has subject matter experts who buyers want to hear from. Kaiser's team systematically identifies these individuals across departments—not just marketing.

Step 2: Establish Clear Parameters "Once you've identified who those credible insiders are, you want to have clear parameters of what it means for us to invest in you to be a voice of our brand," Kaiser explains. This includes explicit expectations and guidelines for public representation.

Step 3: Focus on Audience Quality, Not Quantity "In the niche world of B2B, you don't have to have hundreds of thousands of followers to be incredibly impactful. You just need the right people paying attention."

The results speak for themselves: 6sense's Empowered CXO event sold out in four days, with a waitlist longer than actual registrations.

Tactical Implementation: AI-first Collaboration Model

Kaiser's team has developed specific workflows that maximize AI efficiency while preserving brand authenticity:

Content Creation Workflow:

1. Use AI for ideation and outline structure
2. Human creates the core message and point of view
3. AI generates variations for testing and optimization
4. Human reviews all output before publication

Creative Development Process:

1. Establish base creative concepts (human-led)
2. Use AI to generate 87 variations for performance testing
3. Analyze performance data to identify winning elements
4. Scale successful elements while maintaining creative oversight

Brand Voice Training: Kaiser's team has become "much more specific" about documenting brand tone of voice—not just for humans, but to train AI tools. "This is making us document that more and be much more definitive about brand tone of voice because it's something we can use to train these different tools.

The Competitive Moat: What AI Can't Replicate

While competitors automate themselves into mediocrity, Kaiser is building competitive advantages around irreplaceable human elements:

Experiential Brand Expression "Events are probably close to number one expression of the brand because the people part, the in-person part, has gotten so critical. That is not something AI's ever going to be able to recreate."

Authentic Relationship Building 6sense's community programs (CMO Coffee Talk, Empowered CXO) create genuine peer connections that drive business outcomes. "Success is built on tiny decisions made consistently over time," Kaiser notes.

Cultural Brand Stewardship Every employee becomes a brand ambassador through clear training and cultural alignment. "I'm a steward of the 6sense brand right now sitting on this podcast," Kaiser explains. "You're representing something wherever you are."

"The soul of the brand is very much the people as much as it is everything else. If you don't have the people involved, then it's a faceless brand and it doesn't have a soul." — Adam Kaiser, 6sense

Strategic Implications: The Post-AI Brand Playbook

Kaiser's approach reveals three strategic shifts every B2B company must make:

1. Redefine Efficiency True efficiency isn't automating everything—it's automating the right things while amplifying human strengths. Companies that get this balance right will dramatically outperform those that don't.

2. Invest in Internal Influence The era of external influencer marketing in B2B is ending. Smart companies are identifying and empowering their internal experts to become industry voices.

3. Systematize Authenticity Authenticity at scale requires systems, training, and clear guidelines. It's not enough to "be authentic"—you need frameworks that enable authentic expression across your entire organization.

The Future of Brand in an AI World

Kaiser predicts a bifurcation in the market: companies that master the AI-human collaboration model will create insurmountable competitive advantages, while those that automate indiscriminately will become indistinguishable commodities.

"Be bold," Kaiser advises. "Don't be stupid though."

The companies that heed this advice—that understand when to deploy AI and when to lead with humanity—will own their markets. The rest will disappear into the growing mass of AI-generated mediocrity.

The choice is yours: preserve your brand's soul, or watch it get optimized away.

“The most successful B2B brands of the next decade will be those that use AI to amplify human creativity, not replace it. Kaiser's Brand Soul Framework provides the roadmap—but execution will separate the winners from the also-rans." — Amos Bar-Joseph, Founder of Swan

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