B2B: Get Your Vision For change Out There

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. Thought leadership has an inferiority complex

The best B2B thought leadership exposes a critical market gap. In innovation driven markets, change is constant so there is always a chasm between what buyers want and technology can deliver. In the past few weeks, I've come across the Observability Conundrum and the Digital Thread gap. The short story is buyers say they want these things, but either aren't implementing or their preferred solutions are falling short. Switching categories, I really like what Sanofi is doing with the "Trust Gap", health equity-focused research that captures the voices of over 11,000 people in five countries whose negative experiences have eroded trust in health care. Identifying a gap that is holding back progress, and helping people resolve it is a great way stand out and be a leader.?

It can also help you sell. But according to Edelman's 2024 B2B Thought Leadership report, too many creators of thought leadership underestimate this power. So yes, it turns out thought leadership has its own gap. This is just one nugget from a great report--86% of decision-makers say good thought leadership is a factor in inviting vendors to participate in an RFP process. But only 38% thought leadership creators believe this.

One outcome of this inferiority gap? In tight budget times, companies that see thought leadership as a branding strategy are tempted to cut programs, which directly hurts their ability to sell. So buck up, and get your vision for change out there.

PJA Author: Michael O'Toole

2. B2B: Sometimes It's Personal

Companies don’t buy and use B2B products – people do. This video from Slingshot Biosciences makes the most of slow motion to bring the drama as we watch cell biologists doing everything they can to increase their chances of success with experiments that frequently fail. There’s too much that rings true in the script for it not to be drawing on a deep understanding of scientists and their real-life motivations and struggles. That’s the opportunity: making B2B more human means spending time with the buyer and the user, understanding what they do, why they do it, and what gets in their @%&#* way, thank you very much. There’s no substitute for hearing it from them directly. Make sure your teams and your agency can.

PJA Author: Robert Davis

3. Earth: the IPO

Let’s face it: it’s hot out there. Hurricanes are being born out of tropical storms almost overnight. French workers are dying from heat stroke during a prolonged canicule. In California, the push toward net-zero energy combined with aging infrastructure and 100-degree temperatures has some homeowners’ electricity bills surging past $1800. Yes, that’s per month.

So how do you draw some fresh attention among business leaders that it’s past time for action?

You cook up a new IPO. The offering? The planet Earth.

Brazilian B2B agency AlmapBBDO did just that recently, launching a campaign to target the Brazilian Stock Exchange. Their goal was to enlist Brazil’s top 100 companies in a compact for change. More than 70 percent of these companies did enlist.

Titled the Eart4 campaign (or Terr4 in the original Portuguese), now winner of a Cannes Lion in the Creative B2B Grand Prix for 2023 and an AdAge Creativity Award for Best B2B campaign in 2024, the push included a web site, videos, and a press campaign that landed it on CNN and many other news outlets.

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Although the site doesn’t appear to be functional anymore, Eart4 boasts an admirable mission statement –?“to be the perfect supplier of products and services to foster life for all species” –?that is both accurate and slyly tongue-in-cheek.

Now that I drive a fully electric car it’s nice to feel like part of the solution versus the problem. Though I haven’t seen my first electricity bill yet.

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PJA Author: Hugh Kennedy