Orange’s Women’s Soccer Ad: B2B Marketing Lessons on Content That Makes You Think Twice with Chief Executive Officer at Standard AI, Angie Westbrock

It’s not easy to make people rethink their assumptions. If you want to shift perception, you need to challenge expectations, gently, cleverly, and sometimes with a perfectly executed deepfake.

That’s the brilliance of Orange’s Women’s Soccer Ad, a mind-bending celebration of women’s soccer disguised as a highlight reel of men’s soccer. And in this episode, we’re decoding its genius with the help of Angie Westbrock, CEO of Standard AI.

Together, we explore what B2B marketers can learn from surprising your audience, staying true to both your brand and your customer, and not allowing biases to affect your content.

About our guest, Angie Westbrock

Angie Westbock’s mission is to build high-performance, diverse teams that transform challenges into opportunities. With a solid background as COO and now CEO, she thrives on aligning our company's strengths to create impactful solutions, all while cultivating a culture that celebrates diversity and encourages groundbreaking ideas.

Angie is currently serving as the CEO at Standard AI, a startup using AI and computer vision technology to help retailers and brands optimize operations and bottom lines through real-time insights into shoppers’ in-store experiences. With a non-traditional background beginning in CPG and then moving into tech, her experience spans from stealth start-ups to IPO to Fortune 500 companies. Leveraging this expertise in commercialization strategy and growth, Angie is able to guide organizations through every phase of development.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Orange’s Women’s Soccer Ad:

• Surprise your audience. Great marketing can earn attention through clever misdirection, then deliver a powerful payoff. The Orange ad didn’t just say women’s sports deserve respect,  it showed it by tricking viewers into watching with existing bias, then rewiring their perception. Angie explains, “Had they not executed the deepfake as well as they did, you would’ve noticed it from the beginning, and it would’ve just validated any of the biases that were already there.” The same applies to B2B: stop announcing your message, design it to unfold in a way that surprises and engages.
• Technology isn’t the story; the outcome is. Orange used advanced deepfake technology, but they never made that the headline. The ad wasn’t about AI, it was about bias, identity, and respect. The technology was the tool, not the message. “We always try to  tie it to the customer's use cases and ROI versus just about the tech,” says Angie. This is a trap many B2B companies fall into. You’re proud of your tech stack, your infrastructure, your proprietary model, and rightly so. But your buyer doesn’t care. They care about what your product helps them become. Sell the before and after, not the engine.
• Don’t let your biases affect your content. Too many B2B marketers create content for the people who already agree with them, existing customers, internal stakeholders, or the "safe" ICP. But powerful messaging challenges assumptions. Orange didn’t make an ad to celebrate women’s soccer for people who already love it, they made an ad to get skeptics to pause and rethink. Angie says, “It wasn’t just to the women to honor them and to empower them. It was actually to the men also, to say, you need to revisit your thinking here.” In B2B, you’re often selling change: a new workflow, a new tool, a new way of doing things. That means your messaging needs to meet people where they are, not where you wish they were.

Quote

“ We get so caught up in what we want to say that we don't take into consideration the very specific viewpoints of the customer that you're selling to and making sure that it's going to land with them in a way that aligns with how they're thinking.

Time Stamps

[00:55] Meet Angie Westbrock, Chief Executive Officer at Standard AI

[01:00] Why Orange’s Women’s Soccer Ad 

[01:50] What Standard AI Actually Does

[05:33] Why Physical Retail Is Still Underrated

[11:38] Designed for Rewatching and Social

[13:51] Real Tech, Real Players, Real Impact

[14:55] Messaging That Reaches the People Who Need to Hear It

[21:59] B2B Marketing Takeaways from Why Orange’s Women’s Soccer Ad 

[34:38] Not a Cheap Trick — A Trusted Brand Moment

[38:13] It All Starts With a Single Shift in Mindset

[40:00] What Marketers Want From In-Store Strategy

[47:41] Standard AI’s Brand Strategy and Differentiation

[52:40] Final Thoughts: Break Through the Noise

Links

Connect with Angie on LinkedIn

Learn more about Standard AI

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Head of Production). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.