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AI can’t make it all on its own. It needs a little help to succeed in the marketplace—and strong communications can be key to that success. According to a new study from Gregory, companies that can communicate their AI strategies effectively have a significant edge when it comes to financial performance.
The agency’s AI Communications Advantage Study measured the quality of primary AI strategy announcements from 449 S&P 500 companies, and then compared each company’s score (from 0 to 20 across five dimensions) with stock performance against its sector benchmark. Those five dimensions include CEO ownership, tier-1 media coverage and 90-day follow-through.
The two major takeaways: strong communications make a big difference, but very few companies are delivering AI communications that can take them to the top level.
The companies at the very top (scores from 18 to 20) beat their sector benchmarks by an average of 10.8 percent over the 90 days following the announcement, while the lowest-performing tier (scores between 12 and 14) fell short of their sector benchnarks by 2.2 percent.
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The positive effect goes beyond the initial 90 days. Companies with a score above 16 remained benchmark beaters for a full year after announcements with an average excess return of 9.9 percent. Those scoring between 12 and 15 missed their benchmark by an average of 1.9 percent.
Even when tech titans such as Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia are removed from the mix, the power of good communications to move markets remains. Even after excluding those companies, strong communicators held an 11.3 percent edge over weaker ones after a year.
However, those strong communicators are a rather small group. Out of the 449 companies scored, only 13 (fewer than three percent) had a score of 18 or higher.
So how does a company turn itself into a top AI communicator? The study provides a checklist of eight narrative principles that are followed by the companies that are most successful in getting their AI messages across.
Those include anchoring AI to a comparison the audience already understands; making the audience—not the technology—the center of the story; using specific numbers to convey scale; bringing a familiar partner into the announcement; and building a narrative arc across past, present and future.
In addition, the study provides questions that it says communications should be able to answer before deciding to announce. It also lists the survey’s top 100 companies.
“The biggest difference we saw across AI announcements was the level of commitment and follow-through,” said Gregory CEO Greg Matusky. “Every top scorer had a CEO who owned the story personally, named specific use cases with real business stakes, and shipped something within 90 days of the announcement.”
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