Published
3rd November 2025
Read time
7 min read

As Birmingham Tech Week put the spotlight on innovation in the region, one thing became clear: technology alone doesn’t drive transformation; people do.

To celebrate Tech Week, we recently joined forces with Gateley Global to host Authentic intelligence: human-centred AI and behavioural science for legal, effective marketing. The session sparked meaningful debate around the legal and ethical nuances of AI – and left us reflecting on one key truth: the smartest marketing is never purely artificial; it’s powered by people, insight, and emotion.

At Leopard Co, we’ve seen this first-hand through our work with innovative tech brands, from leading EV charger manufacturer Indra, to cleantech pioneer TEB Birmingham, and industry accelerators like The Catapult Network. These partnerships have given us deep insight into how technology brands can connect meaningfully with their audiences while driving progress.

In this blog, we’ll be using our expertise in the sector to explore how tech marketers can combine AI, behavioural science (BeSci), and integrated strategy to cut through complexity, build trust, and turn awareness into action.

The tech marketer’s challenge

Whether you’re in healthtech, cleantech, proptech, or any corner of the tech ecosystem, today’s marketing landscape is defined by both opportunity and overload.

Many tech brands face the same pressures:

  • Campaigns that raise awareness but struggle to drive action.

  • A growing range of AI tools, but uncertainty around how to use them effectively, safely or legally.

  • Balancing the risk that in chasing efficiency, campaigns can lose the emotional spark that actually influences decisions.

As the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) notes, ‘AI search and conversational marketing are redefining how people find and interact with brands’, with platforms like Perplexity, Copilot, and Google AI Mode changing the rules of discovery. Organic AI presence is becoming the new SEO - and those who don’t adapt may risk being left behind.

However, while AI visibility has now become a key part of digital strategy, it also comes with challenges and risks. Research shows that 64% of customers lose trust when brands use AI, a pointed reminder that audiences still value authenticity, accuracy, and humanity. Without a clear understanding of your brand, voice, values, and audience, it’s easy to lose direction and let AI lead you, rather than the other way around.

These risks include over-reliance, factual errors, and unconscious bias. In our experience, one of the biggest emerging challenges is “brain drain” - where teams become too reliant on AI outputs and lose the habit of original thinking. When everyone uses the same prompts and models, there’s a real risk of creative homogeny, with AI recycling familiar ideas until every brand starts to sound the same.

That's why the future belongs to marketers who use AI to guide and inspire human thinking, not replace it.

Why emotion still drives tech decision-making

Even in the most rational sectors, emotion drives behaviour. After all, behind every piece of tech or innovation, you’re still communicating with a person. That’s where behavioural science comes in.

Our BxROAR approach, blending behavioural science with strategy and integrated communications, is built on understanding that people don’t make decisions based purely on data, but on how something makes them feel.

Even in complex decision-making, people rely on emotional cues, looking for trust, simplicity, and reassurance when adopting new technologies. They want to understand not just what a product does, but why it matters and how it makes their life easier or better.

By using behavioural science, we can keep messages simple, attractive, and social, cutting through noise and helping brands connect on a human level, even in highly technical markets.

A great example of this in action is our work with Indra Renewable Technologies. Using our BxROAR framework, we applied behavioural science principles such as affect heuristics and social proof to shift perceptions and encourage non-EV drivers to change long-held habits. The result? A communications strategy that raised awareness, built trust, and drove both immediate engagement and long-term loyalty, with the client continuing to work with us after nearly five years.

Striking the right balance

AI can supercharge marketing, helping to analyse data, spot trends, and scale creativity faster than ever. But with that power comes responsibility.

Industry bodies like the IPA and the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), are already setting clear guidance to ensure AI in marketing is used ethically and transparently. Their principles call for fairness, due diligence, and awareness of bias, data rights, and IP.

CAP has outlined two key questions for marketers using AI:

  1. Could the audience be misled if AI use isn’t disclosed?

  2. Would disclosure clarify the message or risk confusing it?

The most effective marketers are those using AI as an accelerator rather than a replacement for human thinking. At Leopard Co, we see AI as a tool to help teams work smarter, not to replace the creativity and emotional understanding that make campaigns meaningful.

For tech marketers, that means keeping purpose and accountability at the centre of every AI decision.

Striking the right balance

Here’s how to put this into practice:

  • Apply oversight and accountability. Follow the 12 IPA principles to ensure your AI use is transparent, secure, and bias-free, enhancing trust rather than undermining it. Accountability should be embedded at every stage, ensuring every tool enhances your strategy rather than replacing your judgement.

  • Use AI for acceleration, not automation. Let it support idea generation, insight analysis, and research, helping you quickly uncover audience behaviours, competitor moves, and emerging trends - but always keep human creativity and judgment in control.

  • Protect your brand voice. Make sure tone, ethics, and purpose stay consistent. If using AI, train it to understand your brand's voice by feeding it examples of your existing content, such as past campaigns, copy, and tone of voice guidelines, so it learns to mirror your unique style and values rather than defaulting to generic outputs.

  • Test and learn. Apply BeSci-informed experimentation to uncover what truly resonates emotionally and behaviourally.

Ultimately, the future of marketing isn’t about choosing between human or artificial intelligence - it’s about bringing the two together responsibly to create ideas that are not only smarter, but more meaningful.

At Leopard Co, we partner with some of the UK’s most forward-thinking tech brands, helping them harness AI and behavioural science to connect more deeply with their audiences.

Get in touch to see how we can help your business do the same.