B2B brands: Lead with culture

There are as many approaches to branding as there are branding books. Which is a ton. Some methods appeal to emotion, to our evolutionary biology, and to our need for data. There are manuals for how to use stories, archetypes, and consumer research.

But there isn’t much about you. When working with service providers or other business-to-business companies, we use a culture-based branding approach to remedy that.?

Here are three reasons we came to this conclusion.?

Your culture is your biggest asset

The companies we work with are successful. They want us to help evolve their brand for the next phase of growth. Because of their success, they have inherent value in their people and processes, which is the cultural core. Our job is to understand you and help you put your best foot forward. Not to make you into something else. We are more like barbers than plastic surgeons.

Branding enables cultural transparency

If your external brand does not align with your culture, clients will perceive it as a lack of transparency and assume the worst. A friend related a story about seeing a Burger King rebrand and a new advertising campaign. He was excited by the edgy ads and assumed that the restaurant was being overhauled, too. But, it was an underwhelming experience when he entered the restaurant. He said, “It was the same crappy food served by people who didn’t want to be there.” While a B2C example, this is instructive for B2B or service companies, too. His experience did not align with external brand assets (a commercial in this case). He said he would never go back because he felt manipulated.

People want to do business with people

Historically, there were one or two ways to broadcast messages. The best advice in this environment is to be mechanically repetitive. There are now dozens of channels to talk with (not just to) potential clients. You can show your humanity and resonate with them on a personal level.

No one loves chatbots. However, we recently got custom sweatshirts made. We were a first-time customer and couldn’t tell if we submitted the art correctly. We hesitantly clicked the chat and were delighted. The chatbot was an actual person and was so helpful and engaging that we offered to send them a sweatshirt, even though it took several minutes to figure out what we had done incorrectly.

Your culture is unique. You might be interesting or boring or smart or fun. Whatever it is, show it off. The ideal client is out there looking for you.