Aiming for Surprise and Happiness

Our clients bring amazing things into the world. What fuels us as marketers—on top of our client's ingenuity—are the thinkers, practitioners and creators who are showing us a new way. In this space, every few weeks we share what is capturing our attention—big or small.

1. Touching the amazing

I’m reminded of what’s amazing about working in B2B marketing when I read something like this and have had – even in the smallest of ways – something to do with it.

“One new study showed that all patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) receiving a proprietary CAR-T therapy were free of disease biomarkers, as well as clinical symptoms, after 6 months or more, as described by Greg Deener of iCell Gene Therapeutics in Stony Brook, New York.” 1

This is just an example. Neither I nor the agency I work at, @PJA, are involved in this story in any way. We are lucky enough to contribute to bringing other dramatic healthcare advances to market, though, so why mention this story? Simple. It’s the freshest science-driven news in my inbox. It’s the kind of “happening right now” advance in medical science that reminds me that even in the face of wrong turns and dead ends, the people practicing science are making progress – sometimes slowly, sometimes in dazzling leaps, but continually.

Luckily for us, they need help telling their stories. At PJA we’ve had the good fortune to play a part in a number of amazing advances, from the initial commercial sequencing of the human genome to innovative cell and gene therapies that provide one-treatment cures for previously fatal diseases. Digital innovations that make sure more patients in a clinical trial get the new medicine, not the placebo. DNA tags that provide a breakthrough fix for fraud that cheats small growers and consumers in the global cotton market. Technology to deliver the environmental benefits of the “electrification of everything” far faster than existing roadmaps. This small sample of the innovations we’ve been lucky enough to touch is but an infinitesimal drop in the bucket of the accumulated advances in science and technology since my first day at PJA.

And yes, things aren’t perfect. Medications are still far too expensive. We all want innovation to go faster and do better, but it has done so very, very much – and as B2B marketers, we get to help. And that is something that – day after day – I find utterly amazing.

PJA Author: Robert Davis

2. Consider Yourself Influenced

When you think of influencer marketing, you typically think of lifestyle influencers trying to push the next best makeup product or fancy pair of shoes. In fact, 49% of all consumers make daily, weekly, or monthly purchases because of influencer posts, per?Sprout Social. ?In my opinion, that’s because of the trust between influencers and their audiences.

What you may not have realized is that this type of marketing has a place in the B2B space as well. According to?AdWeek , as long as the bond between the influencer and the audience is authentic, B2B influencers can leverage some of the same strategies as B2C to find success.

Why is this important? Well, I think it shows that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel to find success in B2B marketing, you might just need to steer it in a different direction.

A great example of this is LinkedIn influencer Neil Patel . He is the co-founder at Neil Patel Digital and is a thought leader in the digital marketing space. He has an established audience who trusts him to provide good marketing strategies and insights. Partnering with someone like Neil to sell products to small marketing agencies would be a perfect pairing. We can use this same technique within healthcare, technology, and other B2B markets.

PJA Author: Brianna Egan

3. Brand New B2B

WARC is always a reliable source for B2B brand insight, so I was pleased to see them take on one of my favorite provocateurs, Scott Galloway of NYU. At the 2023 Cannes Festival, Galloway pronounced that “the era of brand is dead.” This year, WARC set out to try to prove him wrong. In their new report, “The 21st Century Case for Brand,” they do a pretty decent job, despite all the brand offenders out there.

Like our agency, WARC’s point of view on brand is that it is still defined in two ways. The first sees brand as little more than logos and graphic standards.

The second, more holistic view, sees brand as a living embodiment of the company’s behaviors and personality, a persuasive force that has “effectiveness at its heart.” It’s brand all grown up, taking a seat behind the wheel, creating what a client just today said about some of our work: “I feel a fire in my belly about this.”

WARC shares a few principles that frustrate or elevate the role of brand in driving demand – what we at PJA cleverly call Brand Demand:

1.??? Brands succumb to bland. That’s why 2/3 of brands have weak to little associations.

2.??? Media choices matter. 85% of ads don’t meet the attention memory threshold of 2.5 seconds. Granted, this is an eternity these days, but come on.?

3.??? Market orientation is key. It’s all about doing the work to understand when your brand could come to mind with buyers, then doing the work to put it in those contexts: live, online, or out of home.

4.??? Don’t get stuck marketing to aspiration. Not when actual behavior suggests your high-and-mighty brand message may provoke eyerolls.

5.??? Synthetic data may have a place. New research platforms like Evidenza use AI to create digital twin audiences at a fraction the cost of research. Early results look promising, and hey, synthetic data works in drug research.

Finally, one of my favorite B2B ad stats ever. B2B ads only slightly outperform video of a cow chewing grass. If that’s not a wake-up call…

PJA Author: Hugh Kennedy