The NFL championship game is one of the truly last events that brings large numbers of viewers to a single event. But even that is a challenge now as viewers are scrolling on their phones for the latest social media reactions or in their family and friends text groups.
This divided attention requires a more sophisticated marketing approach, moving beyond a single television spot to an orchestrated, multi-platform strategy that can capture audiences in the moment.
The core challenge for many brands, especially in the B2B space, is speed. Cultural moments are fleeting, and the window to engage authentically is incredibly brief. Many marketing organizations struggle with the operational friction needed to capitalize on these opportunities, burdened by slow approval processes and a lack of integrated systems. This speed gap means missing chances to connect with audiences, losing share of voice to more agile competitors, and failing to demonstrate the brand’s relevance.
We sat down with Typeface’s CMO Jason Ing to discuss the findings from their The Typeface Signal Report: Meeting the Moment Big Game Edition to discuss the evolving role of events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, the strategies B2B brands can use to overcome internal bottlenecks, and the pivotal role of AI in scaling personalized, on-brand content in real time.
Demand Gen Report (DGR): Jason, thanks for taking time out of your schedule to answer our questions. Let’s start here: how has the significance of the Super Bowl/Big Game evolved for marketers over the years, and what new opportunities or challenges does it present in today’s multi-channel, real-time marketing landscape?
Jason Ing: Thanks for having me. The Super Bowl has shifted from something you simply watch on TV to a multi-channel cultural phenomenon. Almost everyone is scrolling online at some point during the game, which has created both new opportunities and challenges for marketers. The opportunity being that you can now reach consumers with highly personalized, real-time messages in the moment. The challenge being that many marketing organizations don’t have the right level of orchestration or sophistication to really scale that type of personalized content effectively. Cultural moments fade quickly and B2B marketers must now compete in real-time conversations for attention. Missing the moment means lost visibility.
The Typeface Signal Report found that 63% of marketers are burnt out by the demand and pace of content creation—and those experiencing high levels of burnout were 230% more likely to say their brand misses opportunities due to slow processes.
DGR: How can B2B marketers measure the ROI of real-time marketing efforts during events like the Super Bowl?
Ing: Marketers can measure things like engagement, click-through rates and leads—but what they ultimately want to invest in are processes, workflows and systems that make real-time marketing more effortless. When you have perfectly orchestrated campaigns and seamless workflows, it becomes less of a conversation of “is it worth the effort to turn this around quickly” because you have the resources, guardrails and tools to do it very quickly with little effort.
Capitalizing on Viral Moments
DGR: The report focuses on viral moments. What steps can B2B marketers take to reduce the speed gap in responding to high-visibility moments?
Ing: Content generation is actually happening really fast now. With AI, you can have a creative asset ready to go in minutes. But what our research found is that it’s not necessarily the creative that’s holding up speed to response—it’s the workflow. More than two-thirds of marketers told us that their brand misses opportunities due to slow or outdated approval processes. So, while technology has accelerated the pace of content creation, ultimately, we need to fix those workflows and bring them into modern times.
DGR: What are the risks for B2B brands in missing cultural moments, and how can they mitigate these risks?
Ing: B2B marketing used to be boring, but buyers increasingly expect brands to feel human, creative and plugged into culture. By missing important moments that are important to your audience, you miss opportunities to engage authentically and preserve share of voice against savvier competitors.
If you have a clear brand purpose, you can align on which cultural themes legitimately intersect with your mission. This empowers your marketing team to avoid falling into the trap of “random acts of content,” and only focus on moments that reinforce your strategy. One-off stunts are never going to make your brand—but if you can genuinely add value and integrate cultural moments into larger campaigns and stories, you build cumulative brand equity.
Building an orchestration system that empowers your team to work at speed with the right guardrails can be a huge unlock for this.
Moving Fast
DGR: How can B2B brands overcome internal bottlenecks, such as lengthy approval chains, to act faster during high-visibility moments?
Ing: One thing they can do is use AI that is trained on their brand guidelines, including their brand voice and tone. That means the initial output is going to be closer to an approved draft. You can also use AI to automate the enforcement of brand guidelines, cutting down on more subjective edits and freeing humans to focus more on the bigger picture, such as whether this content supports our strategy and how creative we can make it. Overall, marketing teams need more integrated systems that minimize handoffs to streamline content approvals.
DGR: What are the key differences in how large enterprises and smaller B2B companies approach real-time marketing?
Ing: Large enterprises face more bottlenecks than smaller organizations. Our research found that 71% of companies with more than 1,000 employees need more than a day to approve rapid turnaround content. More than a quarter need at least a week. In social media, a day is often way too late and after a week, you’ve completely missed the moment. Large organizations can be more complex, making it even more critical that campaigns are well-orchestrated with integrated workflows and tools. Relying on manual, subjective processes every step of the way is a surefire way to miss opportunities.
AI Advantages
DGR: How can B2B marketers ensure that AI-generated content aligns with their brand guidelines and messaging?
Ing: First is that you need very clear brand guidelines, including voice, tone, colors, fonts, brand imagery, etc. Once you have this, you can train AI on your brand and create a living brand system of record that automatically enforces those guidelines and learns over time. Custom agents can be trained on brand logic to generate compliant content, while human oversight ensures final outputs are high caliber. What we see today is that many marketers are using chatbots like ChatGPT to produce copy, but it’s actually adding more work that they have to rewrite and refine because it’s not trained on their brand to begin with. Or even if they provide it with some reference materials, it’s not truly connected to their actual workflows, requiring constant manual iteration and updates.
DGR: What role does AI play in helping B2B marketers personalize content for niche audiences in real-time?
Ing: AI can provide marketers with the scale needed to personalize content for multiple niche segments in real time. Our research found that 43% of marketers are still manually creating different content variations, which is going to be really time consuming, and 17% are simply limiting how much they personalize because they don’t have time. With Typeface, we have channel-specific AI agents who understand your brand, can access customer data, and know how to create content that is going to perform well across each channel. These agents can take one piece of content and quickly scale it to hundreds of variations across channels and segments.
DGR: What specific AI tools or features have proven most effective for B2B marketers in automating personalization and localization?
Ing: We found that 55% of marketers are relying on basic chatbots for written content only, and 21% are using point solutions that can generate images and/or video. Only 24% are using AI marketing platforms that can create multimodal content, but among that group, they are 92% more likely to automate personalization and localization than those using point solutions. So, while point solutions can help marketers create individual pieces of content faster, they really don’t lend the scale needed to hyper-personalize and localize on-brand content at the enterprise level.
