Authored by Nemesh Patel VP, Marketing
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the life sciences—accelerating drug discovery, optimizing clinical trials, and powering real-world data analysis. With 64% of healthcare and life sciences organizations aiming for transformational AI adoption within two years and 93% of firms estimated to have increased AI investments in 2025, the momentum is undeniable.
But momentum isn’t a guarantee of success. Overselling AI can derail adoption, create legal exposure, and damage trust—especially in a highly regulated field where accuracy and ethics matter deeply. That’s why marketing has become a critical gatekeeper. Marketers shape how AI is understood, validated, and ultimately adopted.
Konovo: A Bold Start, Grounded in Responsibility
As Konovo prepared for its 2025 rebrand, the team embraced the energy around AI but wanted to ground the storytelling in responsible marketing, staying close to what the platform’s AI can deliver today or in the next six months.
A few principles guided our effort:
- Name the ambition, but anchor it in truth. Konovo used AI-forward messaging but avoided claims that outpaced reality.
- Choose messaging language that clarifies, not exaggerates. “Intelligent” was a deliberate choice when describing our platform—emphasizing AI-native systems without overstating functionality.
- Create internal alignment first. When teams understand both the current capabilities and future vision, they become credible brand advocates.
Through this process, we gathered our own insights about the different paths a company can choose for its AI communication plans during the work for the Konovo rebrand. And so in support of our recently crystallized brand vision of connecting insights, we’re sharing our four key takeaways about marketing around AI.
Takeaway #1: Meet the Market Where It Is—Then Lead
Clients often say they “want AI everywhere,” but what they really want is partnership and clarity. Most are navigating their own uncertainty around what AI can realistically do—all while facing tight timelines, steep learning curves, and internal pressure to stay technologically ahead. To counter, marketing must lead effectively by shifting from hype amplification to signal translation.
- Anchor conversations in outcomes, not tech. What business problems does your AI help solve?
- Show—not tell—through evidence. Use case studies, demo videos, and performance metrics whenever possible.
- Set ambitious but achievable expectations. Clients remember what you promise and what you don’t deliver on.
- Ensure delivery teams can support what marketing promotes. Konovo’s strategic services team plays a crucial role here, helping clients apply AI meaningfully to their research portfolios.
The goal: Credibility, trust, and clients who feel supported—but not sold to.
Takeaway #2: Be Bold—But Know Your Product Inside and Out
Bold storytelling works only when it rests on technical accuracy. Marketers need a working understanding of the AI technologies their company uses, whether it’s rule-based automation, statistical modeling, machine learning systems, or deep learning or generative AI.
Likewise, as clients do their own learning about AI, they’re asking increasingly tougher questions. Will your systems be trained on their confidential data? What level of interpretability do your AI outputs offer—will they be an inaccessible black box?
To respond well, understand these aren’t just technical questions—they’re also questions about trust and partnership. With that in mind, you can be ready to answer them by:
- Staying tightly aligned with product, engineering, and field teams.
- Avoiding over-simplifying AI to “explain it better”—oversimplification can drift into overstatement.
- Pressure-testing messaging internally in advance, before market launch or using it with clients.
The goal: The ability to translate complexity into customer value—without bending the truth.
Takeaway #3: Lead with Data Security, Legal Clarity, and Regulatory Confidence
In life sciences, compliance isn’t an add-on—it’s the baseline. Marketing must bring these topics forward, not bury them.
Effective AI marketing should:
- Address legal concerns proactively, before clients raise them.
- Highlight your data governance maturity, especially if you already handle sensitive research or clinical data.
- Promote the existence of clear AI legal and data policies, written in accessible language.
- Show how your systems align with regulatory expectations, not sidestep them.
At Konovo, our long-standing rigor in handling complex research data became a natural foundation for the AI narrative in our rebrand. Our marketing team decided they can (and should) position these safeguards as natural differentiators.
The goal: Transforming boring regulatory details into reasons to believe in your product.
Takeaway #4: Reinforce the Human Element
The more clients learn about AI, the more they understand that human expertise remains essential. While AI can accelerate processes and unlock new insights, it’s the people—researchers, strategists, analysts—who bring necessary context, judgment, and nuance to the work.
Effective messaging should:
- Avoid implying AI replaces human thinking.
- Show AI as an enabler, not a substitute.
- Put people and technology on equal footing.
During the rebrand, Konovo framed both our internal expert teams and our intelligent platform as equally core pillars—ensuring AI innovation didn’t overshadow human value. Otherwise, a tech-heavy focus risks alienating the very (human) customers you’re trying to empower with your product.
The goal: Building a winning model of humans and technology working together.
Conclusion
Marketers have a uniquely urgent role to play, not just in driving awareness but in shaping how AI is understood and adopted across the industry. That starts with a deep understanding of the client mindset: people working at the edge of innovation, in high-stakes environments where trust, compliance, and outcomes matter deeply. It also demands fluency in your own company’s technology: how it works, what it enables, and where it’s headed.
In short—take the work as seriously as your clients take theirs. When you market AI with clarity and care, the technology is elevated from a buzzword to a bridge to success.
