Doing great creative work for a bank or college brand is hard enough. Doing great creative work for an obscure medical equipment company that makes a protective product for high-risk infectious organisms you can’t see and can hardly explain feels more like medical science versus marketing arts. It’s hard, but as communications experts, we solve tough problems all the time—it’s what we do. So, why shouldn’t B2B be more fun and exciting, like B2C is?
The problem isn’t the products or the clients; it’s how marketers feel about B2B. In general, we marketers don’t get as fired up over B2B products that we can’t relate to as easily as, say, sports equipment or the latest caffeinated beverage. Unfortunately, that means missing opportunities to do really awesome work.
Time to raise the bar
B2B doesn’t need to be more conservative or buttoned up than B2C. That’s just a marketing excuse for not taking risks with an audience we don’t understand. B2B doesn’t have to be so technical you need a Ph.D. to make sense of the copy. We’re crafting ads, not instruction manuals. B2B never has to be boring. The idea is to turn something technical into something that is simple, relatable and breakthrough.
Ultimately, marketing is about forging a connection between a brand or product and people, no matter their professional function or expertise.
Great B2B work comes from understanding the people inside the companies who make decisions about the products. It comes from marketing to their needs and desires. It comes from getting passionate about the products and telling a human-focused story about them.
Take our client Crosstex, for example. They asked us to help them market a high-tech dental mask that did a better job at protecting against germy splatter—the microscopic kind. That sounds like a really cool benefit for the people who need to be protected. But what’s a cool way to show it?
Treat mundane medical equipment advertising like high fashion
Enter the holi powder demo: Toss tons of colorful microparticle dust at this mask on a pretty model in a stylistic setting. That might grab some attention.
Solution: Peel away the mask to reveal peachy-clean, smooth skin below and a seductive smile.
Think that might sell some masks? It did: A 92% uptick in sales year over year.
There’s a lot of opportunity to do great B2B work, and great clients who will appreciate it. And, it’s way more fun to make B2B sexy than to think of it in just the same ol’ way.
