Harvard launches AI B2B insights tool

The service will gather anonymised insights from a range of sources, including executives, IT leaders, business leaders and around 20,000 industry analysts and advisers active in forums and specialist interest groups (SiGs) worldwide.

The service will be supported by deep web listening company NarrativeWorx, which has been working with Harvard for the last 18 months.

IaaS is a type of cloud computing service that provides computing, storage and networking resources on demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis, and which is one of the four types of cloud services, along with software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and serverless.

Using IaaS means Harvard can see sources that are not indexed by public search engines and operates across more than 60 languages.

Harvard has already been running discovery projects with several tech brands across multiple markets and languages for the past 12 months, helping them plan and set-up measurement benchmarks.

The agency is also exploring how it works with global B2B tech clients shared with The Outleap Collective, with partner agencies Method in the US and Sling & Stone in Asia-Pacific.

Jessie Bland, strategy director at Harvard, said: “Traditional social listening doesn’t work effectively as a source of insight for B2B – it’s long been a bug bear. Relying on Twitter/X and Reddit data will only get you so far. The C-suite or IT decision-makers are not going to reveal their vendor gripes or business challenges publicly.

“That’s what makes our new service so powerful for our clients. We can understand buyers’ and customers’ real thoughts and feelings before they reach mainstream media, so we can create more audience-centric and compelling messaging and campaigns and – importantly – help our clients stay well ahead of the current news cycle.”

Bill Reed, co-founder at NarrativeWorx, said: “Harvard and NarrativeWorx share a like-minded culture. We both understand the complexity of B2B buying and the importance of building strategy built on audiences’ realities.

“Working with the team there means we work closely with marketing and communications teams at tech brands. We’re excited to see how together we can use insight into the customer-buyer-analyst ecosystem to inform smart, data-driven strategies.”