Out and about in B2B

Hello fellow B2B marketers - welcome to the first edition of my newsletter, where I'm going to share interesting insights, observations, developments and commentary from the world of #b2bmarketing. Having founded B2B Marketing 20 years ago this month, and edited its content and produced its events for most of that time, my role has evolved to being more ambassadorial, so I have more time to be out and about in the market, meeting and interviewing people, and generally getting a sense of where things are at. This newsletter is my effort to condense those conversations and findings into something digestable and hopefully useful! I'd welcome thoughts, comments or suggestions about content to share, and formats to include or improve.

On the pod

So, it's been a time month in terms of podcasts - I've interviewed a number of marketing leaders in the past few weeks about their marketing exploits, and have a number of further ones lined up in the very near future. In particular, I'd recomment you listen to Helen Whetton discussing the launch of @BT's new B2B-specific brand platform, and the ensuing transformation that behind that; Andrea Herbert on why Gamma 's new brand platform is a giant purple dog, and how she sold that idea to the board (I'd love to have been in the room for that one!); Simon Rusling and Chris Wright of Barnett Waddingham and 英国标准协会 respectively on what they learned about how to be a commercial marketer by joining the executive leadership team; and Marcio A. of Stenn on his new marketing role, and what was behind the creation of THAT billboard in his last role at Intercom. All fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable conversations with highly talented marketers.

Out and about at events

I've also attended some fantastic events this month - in particular Clevertouch Consulting 's launch of their latest 'State of Martech' report, which also featured a Q&A about BT's transformation, although this time with Kelly Atkins , and focusing on the martech side of the equation. The complexity of integrating the various different BT businesses into a single cohesive brand is a fascinating one, not to say the myriad marketing systems and associated personnel. I'm hoping Kelly can speak at B2B Marketing Ignite in July, where she can retell this fascinating story. And I'm due to record a podcast with Adam Sharp shortly for a much deeper dive on how martech trends are evolving - so watch this space.

I also really enjoyed FT Longitude 's event on thought leadership for AI, and the insight that the agency had done into how to present this capability in a resonant and impactful way, avoiding the hype and repetition that we're seeing around around this topic. It was slightly disappointing that the campaigns which came out top on Longitude's analysis were McKinsey and Microsoft, as you'd expect both these brands to excell with thought leadership, but if you're interested in this topic, it's worth checking back in with Longitude to get the inside track on their analysis.

This was timely in that it aligned with a research project that we're working on with Helen Kensett and CogniClick Sales Enablement on thought leadership trends, and for which I've been interviewing various marketing leaders from global brands. I've gleaned some fascinating insights, which will contribute to a report due out shortly. Watch this space.

Entering the murky world of Lead Gen

Finally, we published our second Martech Vendor Spotlight Report, focusing on lead gen platform vendors. If you're not familiar with this series, it's in response to the growing complexity in the martech landscape, and in certain key categories in particular. As stated, this report focuses on Lead Generation, an area about which I must confess I didn't know huge amounts... but let's say it's been a sharp learning curve. The report identifies the top five self service lead gen vendors, as assessed by our lead analyst Peter O'Neill , and scores all of them. You can download the report here, or you can listen to the webinar where I discussed the findings with Peter, Steve Kemish and Jordan Adams ... if you're really brave, you might also want to look at the LinkedIn discussion that I started where I asked people what they thought was the difference between lead gen and demand gen... suffice to say, I was accused of click bait, but it certainly got people talking!

Dates for your diary

A couple of key dates to keep in mind:

Deadline to submit entries for the B2B Marketing Awards is June 28th.

B2B Marketing Ignite (which hopefully you already know is the biggest B2B conference outside the USA) takes place on July 3rd in London - tickets are on sale now.

That's all for this newsletter - I'd welcome your feedback or comments.

Many thanks, Joel Harrison, Editor-in-Chief, B2B Marketing