The tool that makes everyone sound the same
27 July 2026
Elena Liquete considers the central paradox of AI in business school communications: the technology that saves time may be the one that costs schools their distinctiveness.
Two years ago, AI was something business school marcoms teams were watching from a cautious distance. In our latest Knowing Me, Knowing You research, run with Roe Communications and EFMD, it has moved firmly into the centre of daily working life. Sixty-nine per cent of the marcoms professionals who took part in the study now use AI tools daily. A further 14% use them every few days. Not a single respondent said they do not use AI at all. That is a remarkable shift. And mostly, it is a welcome one.
The resource pressure on marcoms teams in business education has never been more acute. Fifty-nine per cent of respondents cited insufficient budget as their primary challenge – up from 44% in 2024. Staffing shortages are worsening, cited by 46% this year compared to 38% two years ago. Against that backdrop, AI offers genuine relief: faster content, quicker research, more responsive social feeds. Eighty-five per cent of respondents said AI is already having a meaningful impact on their work. But look more closely and a problem emerges, and it’s one we are not yet talking about.
Business schools already struggle to differentiate themselves. Nearly seven in ten of our respondents (69%) agreed that differentiation is getting harder. Fewer than half (47%) felt their school is clearly differentiated from competitors. The sector has long relied on the same credentialing signals – rankings, accreditation, career outcomes – that every other school leads with. The result is a landscape of websites, brochures, social media posts and campaign emails that look and sound remarkably alike. AI does not fix this. It accelerates it.
When the technology that writes your copy is the same technology every other school is using, trained on the same large datasets and responding to the same prompts, the natural output is convergence. Generic becomes even easier to produce at scale. The schools that were already struggling to tell a distinctive story will find it harder, not easier, to sound like themselves.
The irony is sharp: the tools now reshaping the daily work of marcoms professionals make it faster than ever to produce polished, compelling content. The risk is not that business schools will sound less interesting. It is that they will sound even more like each other.
This is not an argument against using AI. There is no credible case for that. But it is an argument for being intentional about how it is used, and that requires something that many schools still lack. Fewer than two thirds of respondents have a clear institutional AI policy. Nearly a third are using these tools without formal governance frameworks in place. That is a reputational and operational risk, but it is also a strategic one.
The schools that will use AI well are those that start from a clear, genuinely distinctive position and then use the technology to tell that story more efficiently and at greater scale. The schools that will be hurt by it are those that reach for the tool before they have sorted out what they are trying to say.
Our data shows that prospective students still want to hear about career outcomes, alumni success and the quality of the student experience. These are the things that matter to them. The question is not what to say – most schools already know that. The question is how to say it in a way that only your school could.
AI can help with that. But it will not do it automatically. Differentiation still requires a decision: what is genuinely distinctive about this place, and how do we make that felt rather than merely stated?
That is a human question. The technology is only as useful as the strategic clarity behind it.
Download a free copy of the report ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You 2026: An Uncertain Future’ here.
Photo by Altaf Shah
Photo by Altaf Shah: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-white-cityscape-with-modern-buildings-under-a-cloudy-sky-26238334/
Photo by Altaf Shah: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-white-cityscape-with-modern-buildings-under-a-cloudy-sky-26238334/