Everyone expected AI to dominate the conversation at London Tech Week and it certainly did. However, what surprised us was how little the discussion focused on the technology itself. Instead, the most interesting conversations were about trust, discoverability, brand consistency and customer relevance.
Across sessions from Trainline , AXA , Virgin Media O2 , Pinterest , Hexagon AB and our own panel led by Toby Strangewood on hyper personalisation, one message kept resurfacing:
As AI changes how people discover, evaluate and engage with brands, the fundamentals of growth matter more, not less.
1. Discovery is Being Rewritten
One of the most thought provoking sessions of the week explored the shift from SEO to GEO.
Sakshi Anand , Chief Growth Officer at Trainline , spoke about a world where customers increasingly rely on AI powered recommendations rather than traditional search journeys. The implication is profound: brands are no longer just competing for rankings, they’re competing to be recommended.
Rob Reason from Virgin Media O2 reinforced this point, arguing that trust and transparency are becoming increasingly important as AI systems draw on aggregated customer experiences to shape recommendations.
The marketing funnel isn’t disappearing – it’s being compressed. And brands that want to remain visible need to think beyond SEO and towards authority, trust and machine readable content.
2. Brand Consistency and Personalisation Aren’t Opposites
One of the highlights of the week was Toby Strangewood ‘s panel, “Balancing Brand Consistency with Hyper-Personalisation in Modern Marketing”, featuring Tom Hawkins , Katriona Heaslip and Cassandra Hall .
A recurring theme was that personalisation shouldn’t be about demonstrating how much data you have, it should be about being useful.
One example discussed was using weather data to tell someone when it’s the perfect time to photograph their car before selling it – relevant, helpful and valuable.
The panel also challenged the assumption that personalisation weakens brand consistency as in reality, the opposite is true. The stronger your purpose, positioning and distinctive assets, the more freedom you have to personalise without losing what makes you recognisably you.
As AI enables more tailored experiences, strong brands become more important, not less.
3. AI Is Exposing the Difference Between Content and Quality
Another theme that surfaced repeatedly was that AI doesn’t remove the need for judgment and if anything, it increases it.
At Sotheby’s , Charity Finnigan spoke about protecting trust and expertise within one of the world’s most established brands whilst cautiously introducing AI into workflows. Funding Circle UK ‘s Tiana Portugal shared that her team initially leaned heavily into AI generated content before pulling back after seeing quality issues and platform penalties.
Meanwhile, Hugo Rayne from ElevenLabs argued that AI delivers the greatest value when streamlining workflows and accelerating ideation, but that human oversight remains essential when taste, creativity and point of view matter.
The takeaway? The competitive advantage won’t come from having access to AI. It will come from having a strong enough brand, strategy and operating model to use it effectively.
4. Clarity is Becoming a Growth Strategy
Perhaps the best example came from Hexagon AB. Madlen Nicolaus shared the company’s transformation journey following more than 200 acquisitions and a fragmented brand architecture spanning 47 logos. Despite high customer satisfaction, only 8% of customers could recognise the brand unprompted.
Their response wasn’t simply to create more content. It was to create more clarity.
By simplifying their narrative, building a centralised brand system and using AI as an amplifier rather than a strategist, Hexagon increased brand perception by 21% and share of voice by 36%.
At a time when content is becoming abundant, clarity is becoming scarce and increasingly, scarce things are becoming valuable.
Our Biggest Takeaway
At Miroma Founders Network , we spend a lot of time thinking about growth.
What London Tech Week reinforced is that while technology continues to evolve rapidly, the businesses that benefit most won’t necessarily be the ones with the most advanced tools. They’ll be the ones that customers trust, that are easiest to discover, that know what they stand for and the ones confident enough to build a distinctive brand whilst everyone else is chasing the next trend.
Because AI may change how growth happens but it doesn’t change why people choose.
