A Brand is a Brand: The Rise of B2H.

I can imagine the meeting where it all began. A prototypical advertising big wig in a pressed gray suit confidently struts around the conference room and delivers the line with gusto,

“Of course, people don’t think the same way when they’re buying sales software as they do when they’re ordering delivery pizza. Or donating to a non-profit. Or attracting potential employees.”?

At first blush, that assessment might seem quite clever. In B2B settings, there's often quite a bit at stake; jobs are on the line, and your choices could cost your company money or opportunities for growth. However, this bias to categorize ignores one critical thing: people are people. Try as we might, we don't magically shed our personal preferences and biases when we put on our professional clothes and head to work. This is even more true in the post-COVID era of working from home, where professional clothes are now often just waist up . When we go to work (physically or virtually), we still choose brands that we perceive as cool, that align with our values, and that have appealed to us for any variety of reasons.?

In 2020, in collaboration with GWI, LinkedIn's B2B institute released a landmark study titled "Introducing the BETAs ," which studied the tendencies of the new generation of B2B buyers, primarily millennials, in the workplace. They surveyed 34,000 professionals aged 21-40 around the globe, and among many remarkable findings, their note on "blurred boundaries" stuck with me. The study states, "There's no longer such a sharp distinction between someone's personal and corporate personas; BETAs can and do use the same tools and services in both contexts, and their heavy personal usage of smartphones and social media is replicated in their day-to-day business behaviors." Throughout the study, the blurring of the personal and professional was abundantly clear – whether it be how the BETAs identify, spend their time, or make purchasing decisions.?

But this is about more than just B2B vs. B2C brands. Humans act like humans in other settings as well. Why wouldn't we leverage the same insights we have learned over decades of selling consumer products to excite the next generation of donors to charities? Couldn't the same challenger brand tactics that propelled the likes of Audi and Dollar Shave Club to upend their industries' work when trying to capture philanthropists??

Internal brands are another area of opportunity. The companies people most want to work for also speak to their employees or potential employees in a way that captivates them and motivates them to help build what could be. Take Apple , whose Career page features a video that seems to be the internal manifestation of "Here's to the crazy ones." Or Airbnb, whose values so clearly reflect the spirit of the company that they even reference the infamous "cereal" story that allowed the founders to keep their dream alive by the skin of their teeth.?

So what are we to make of all this? How should marketers' thinking change if brands, regardless of their audience, increasingly rely on the same human truths? The answer is more obvious than it may seem: why shouldn't a B2B software company's marketing give you chills? Why can't a charity be a challenger brand? Why can't an employee brand inspire??

Rest easy, my client friends. For us, this is a simplification - not a complication.?

This means that a brand is a brand. In our view, there should be no B2B brands, employee brands, philanthropic brands, or B2C brands; there should be just brands. Call them B2H if you like—Brand to Human. Of course, there will be strong brands and weaker brands. This universal power of brand opens the aperture of marketing in an exciting way.?

At Register , we've put this theory to the test. We've used challenger brand tactics to convince philanthropic givers to recognize the importance of protecting the environment for The Nature Conservancy, tapped into human truths to bring humanity to Autodesk's brand, and led workshops that brought the brand to life for Lyft's employees. Not only do these approaches work, but in our experience, they are critical for unifying and succeeding in the fragmented world of modern marketing.

As a marketer and strategist, I find this new paradigm to be as exciting as it is simple. Humans are humans, decisions are decisions, and a brand is a brand.