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B2B companies have always felt like a second cousin to popular consumer brands like Pepsi, Apple, Nike, and Beyoncé. B2B markets are more niche markets, their budgets are typically smaller, and B2B products and services are not always influenced by popular media. This has resulted in B2B brands taking on a second class status that is not always correct.

In truth, the wall between consumers and B2B has been dissolving for years. Blendtec tossed ridiculous items into their industrial blenders and hacked weird things to pieces on YouTube. Salesforce – as B2B as it gets – Neil Young played at corporate events for years. Obviously, since the introduction of the laptop, work has crept into private life – and WFH has pushed it forward.

The age of human-centered B2B brands

Today, “All you need is an idea and a good taste,” quipped Mark Andeer, global director of sales and marketing at data analytics company Rawcubes.

Andeer has just produced what may be the first television commercial to bring data analytics to life through a thoughtful and compassionate human story. The 30-second spot was created for YouTube and tells a visual story of a woman growing from adolescence to an old woman – and the ability of Rawcube’s data analysis to predict Alzheimer’s disease, among other things.

What makes the spot particularly brilliant is how Andeer (with the help of a great film editor) captured stock photography and stock footage to bring his idea to life. The same spot might have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to shoot with a conventional director and film production company, but Andeer put the stills and footage together for far less.

Andeer is at the forefront of an innovative new class of CMO that understands technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and design – and how to interrupt all three

The quality has not suffered. Comments from on-site industry CMOs with the simple title “Alice” range from “Wow” and “Super Compelling” to “This spot is beautiful, engaging and definitely fulfills your goals of making a cold topic more human.”

Andeer is at the forefront of an innovative new class of CMOs emerging from the flood of new social, digital and traditional media options that sometimes overwhelm traditional CMOs. They understand technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and design – and how to communicate across all four. Andeer’s background in developing award-winning work on both the agency side and the corporate side is impressive.

“Cutting out agency creative and production teams streamlines costs,” says Andeer, “and makes a tech-savvy topic like data analysis perfect for in-house teams.

Creativity tools have been around since Photoshop was developed as a side project by a Pixar employee. More recently, sites like Unsplash, Dissolve, Artgrid.io, Getty Images, and more (what do you use?) Are helping professionals create social and digital content. Squarespace helps create websites, Shopify creates online retail stores, Beautiful.ai creates presentations, and BrandPad.io creates branding guidelines. New artificial intelligence tools are even writing marketing copies. Mark Andeer used Envato Elements for his imagery and used some editorial wizardry to DX two scenes of a woman standing on a precipice overlooking a mountain skyline.

B2B + B2C = B2P (Business To People)

While B2B marketers hate to hear it, B2B faces the same challenges as consumer goods, influencers, and political candidates: people have to see you in at least five different places before they can imagine you exist, and it takes about 100 hours until you make a friend. Everything else builds on these base points. The heavy lifting is how to get people to care for you and believe in you.

The ability of B2B to be creative and stimulate fantasies has always been there. The time to leap forward has come.

Contribution to the Branding Strategy Insider by: Patrick Hanlon, author of Primal Branding

The Blake Project helps B2B brands create their stories in the Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in brand research, brand strategy, brand licensing and branding

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