What is Real?

By Peggy Tierney Galvin, co-founder, chief strategy officer 

Like any other trend, there are concepts in tech that always stay relevant. Two of my favorites are point solution versus platform, and on-premises versus in the cloud. Their staying power lies in an almost philosophical difference between these two poles, an existential dialectic rooted in competing weltanschauungs. Control or freedom? Rousseau or Locke? Paul or John?  

On the flip side, there are the flashes in the pan, like agentic AI versus AI agents. (A great reminder that there’s always a Monty Python reference for everything.) But AI agents (or whatever term wins), LLMs and AI tools are moving beyond “the latest trend” and are infiltrating all aspects of the market. As a result, the attributability of marketing metrics – always somewhat tenuous – are being eroded even further. 

Consider some typical metrics or assets for a marketing campaign.  

Engagement or clicks: Are they from real people, or from bots?  

Registrants for a webinar: Real, or ChatGPT agents?  

That podcast host and his guest: real influencers, or a Midjourney sim? 

That article: did a real person write it, whose opinion your customer would be interested to hear? Or did someone fling a blog post at a handful of Gemini prompts and call it a day? 

Make no mistake, these tools are here to stay. But their blazing-fast adoption means that real relationships, with real people you can look in the eye and talk to, about real human experiences, have more value than ever before. That means real word-of-mouth references and referrals, real customer stories, real conversations and real relationships.    

So as much as trends might seem like something new at first, the ones with staying power are the ones with a foundation of lasting truth: for big purchases like B2B tech, people like to buy from other people they know and trust. And that’s as real as it gets.  

Wondering how to get your solution into word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations? Drop us a line and we’ll share our recommendations, just for you.