What does it take to build a B2B Brand?

In our recent panel discussion, industry leaders delved into the nuances of B2B branding in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. They explored the distinctive challenges and strategies of B2B versus B2C branding, the critical role of company culture and employee engagement in brand authenticity, and the need for a strategic alignment between branding and commercial objectives. Moreover, they highlighted the importance of a robust content strategy for stakeholder engagement and discussed the complexities introduced by technological advancements, particularly artificial intelligence, to maintain brand consistency and integrity.

Guests

Vugar Usi Zade, COO at BitGet

Nick Cooper, Global Executive Director at Landor and Fitch

Sarah Roberts, Group CMO at Boldyn Networks

Kathleen Carter, Director of Marketing Europe at Kin + Carta

Welcome to today's episode. We will discuss what it takes to build a B2B brand. So branding isn't just about a logo or a catchy slogan. It's about how businesses present itself to the world and connects with its customers

We will discuss why, in the B2B world, this can be even more complex and critical, touching on how businesses need to ensure what they do inside matches what they say outside, and also plan carefully with tight budgets and use smart strategies to

to stand out. And we will also discuss the most significant hurdles, like keeping up with the fast paced changes and legal challenges, especially with new technologies like AI. And we'll look at how important it is to measure its success

and why it can can be tough. So let's start with a quick round of introductions. Um, Nick, would you like to, to start? Uh, certainly.

Um, great to be here. Thank you for, for for inviting me. My name is Nick Cooper. I'm the, uh, global head of brand performance

at Landor, based in London. Um, so I've been at London for about eight years. Um, I've been, uh, pursuing the, the holy grail of uniting brand and commercial outcomes for many decades. Um, and what we do at, uh, or what my team does at Landor is we measure

the impact of brand, uh, on business outcomes. Um, and we, we find that, um, in particular, whilst we have a lot of B2C clients, it also has a lot of traction in B2B, uh, not least because B2B clients tend to be more commercially orientated and commercially aware. Um

but it's great to be here and to join in this discussion.

Thank you so much, Nick. Sarah, would you like to give a sentence on yourself?

Um, so I'm Sarah Roberts, I'm global CMO at Bouldin Networks. So we're a neutral host provider. And for many of you, you won't have heard that firm. But if I make it nice and simply

for you, um, we're building the, uh, infrastructure around connectivity on the London Underground. So we're a global business, um, that goes into hard to reach areas and builds out the connectivity. Um, and then obviously we work with, uh, your phone provider, um, so they can connect to that. So benefit being

that there's one network rather than four networks, um, under the ground, uh, we do transit, we do venues, we do mines, we do like cities as well. So Sunderland up north, we're building out their smart city infrastructure. Um, so very much in the B2B

space. Um, and we also think about, I guess, local government, um, as well as enterprise, um, and then telcos being, uh, a large part of our customer base as well.

Amazing. Thank you. Um, Kathleen, welcome.

I'm Kathleen, I'm director of marketing at Kinnaird Carter, uh, for Europe specifically, um, keen and Carter is a high performing consultants business. Um, it is a digital transformation consultancy that has grown from

a number of boutique, um, brands itself. Um, so technologists, engineers, specialists in digital, uh, specifically software. We work with partners such as Google and Microsoft. Um, so yeah, so we are we have basically, um, geared to help businesses

to transform using the very latest technology and more recently, of course, data and AI. Um, I'm responsible for the uh, regional marketing team, which includes demand generation, marketing, um, and some employer brand, uh, across Southeast Europe and in the UK. Brilliant

Thank you, Caitlin and Booger.

Hi, everyone. It's really nice to be here and where I'm heading. Marketing and operations at the financial institution specifically called Typekit, which is the world's fourth largest crypto exchange. And also for a long time I have been engaged in the marketing and

operations consultancy at Bain and Company, looking into the aspect of B2B marketing and beyond for the financial institutions globally.

Thank you, Hugo and Tom.

And my name is Tom Gatton, and I'm the chief executive and founder at Axact, which is a B2B ad platform

Thank you, Tom, and I'm Joaquin Dominguez, I'm head of marketing of Axact and we are hosting this podcast. So let's start with discussion with the importance of brand and and the strategies that you use. Um, perhaps. Nick, I would like to start with you. Um, you mentioned to me that B2B is waking up to the importance of brand. Um, but B2B brands try to mimic B2C strategies, which is not good. Um, could you expand on on the importance and the key difference

and why a distinct approach is necessary for for B2B?

Very great. Yes. Um, so a few things in that. Branding started in FMcG. So that's where so that is a mass market

targeting everyone, where you don't have a direct relationship between the manufacturer and the consumer. And very often you have to go through a retailer. So things like advertising becomes incredibly important. Uh, because that's how you reach out to a mass market. And also, um, uh, and because you don't have direct relationships, advertising also, it becomes very, very important

And also to a degree, um, very often the difference between one product and another is actually not that great. So actually that getting your marketing right is actually key to success. Um, now, from that beginning, and I would add that my very first job was as a brand manager in Unilever. So I was in that kind of university

of sort of traditional marketing. We've seen it kind of, uh, branding go into services and then gradually go into B2B. Um, and, and one of my jobs was also I was brand manager of Club World at British Airways, and I was what I with colleagues. We were the

first brand people ever to work in a service business, we would argue anywhere, certainly in the UK, and we were all recruited, recruited from FMcG, from Lever Brothers, from from Mars, from Cadbury's. And so that was the place you could find marketing people. Now marketing people are all over the place, but that's the tradition. And because that's

the tradition, then sometimes you suggest, yeah, okay, the model of massive budgets and lots of advertising and marketing has been, has been followed. Um, and for some B2B businesses, actually, there is a point to that. Uh, but to most B2B business, you can't behave like that. You can't. There is there is no point

um, that the market doesn't work like that, but I just a sort of headline it. I mean, the, you know, B2B decision making is obviously more complex. More particularly, you often have much more personal direct channels of communication. And then when you throw in the fact that, um, obviously the decision making process and

the sales process is an awful lot longer in B2B, what that means is that not that brand is not important. Uh, brand actually is very, very important. And one of the conversations we constantly have with clients is actually even though you go through a sort of a rational, vendor, uh, procurement driven process, the idea

that there isn't emotion and irrationality in the decision is simply not true. There always is the brand. And those sorts of things always had a role to play. But absolutely, the classic sort of FMcG model of marketing is not appropriate for the great majority of B2B businesses because what they're selling, how they're selling, who they're selling it to

um, are all very, very different. But the role of brand remains. And what we try to dig into is to try and identify the degree to which brand has an impact on that decision, and then you invest in that in the most appropriate way and optimize and maximize the role of, of your brand. So

that's kind of a top line of how we see life. Uh, for brand has has kind of evolved and migrated from, uh, the Lever Brothers and the proctors of this world all the way through to the great majority of businesses now.

So at British Airways, you were that sounds like that was a B2B offering. Just when

you talk about as a service, is is that what it was?

Well, essentially it was a B2B, B2C and a B2C and B2B to B2B because actually, uh, selling business class travel at the time, it still is. Um, there were some obviously there was a minority of leisure travelers. Um, and you go to but actually some of it was also through

a lot of it was at the time through travel agents, those things who were old enough, people remember. Right. Got it. But that and then an awful lot of it was through corporate accounts. Of course, it was a big sales. That was the point that, yes, there was a lot of, uh, but equally, I mean, there was there was some iconic ad campaigns that were created at the time, the Red eye and so on, that, that

uh, that put British Airways on the, on the map. So but you're right. It was it was a bit of both. There was some B2C work, uh, and some of that that came from recruiting people like me from Fiji, but also had a point of putting British Airways on the map as something that was differentiated. At the same time, there was an enormous amount of B2B effort that was put into it

that actually, uh, made sure that, for instance, for the sake of argument, British and American corporations were buying British Airways tickets for their executives whenever they flew.

There's quite a lot of companies that have both B2B and B2C, and sometimes the B2B elements of those have rather uneasy relationships with the brand developed in B2C, like for example

one of our clients is Just Eat for business, and they find it very difficult to break through to people because of this very dominant B2C brand of just eat. And I mean, YouGov. We had on our podcast recently and they said, you know, they have this almost far too successful PR and brand campaign where everyone thinks they're part of the government

to poll people. And they're not. They, they sell like, uh, brand consultancy for businesses, but no one understands that. And he was saying it's actually been really hard to actually say, yeah, we're actually a business, not part of the government. Um, yes, yes, yes.

That's right.

No I just think that was a really interesting point. But I think, um,

one of the things that I thought really brought some of the thinking together and the notes that, um, were provided, was that the brand in a B2B brand starts with the people. So having worked at quite modern businesses and start ups have grown, uh, with no brand, just a group of mavericks, uh, potentially like five, six people. What United us

was our brand, uh, once it had been established. Um, and that was what brought the people together. So I think it's a really interesting concept, like what brand means to be to be in this axis of change we are actually experiencing at the moment. Um, and increasingly, M&A is part of our reality

uh, in, in, in our day to day. So I think what was put really beautifully at one of our demand days, actually last week was, um, a leader, a former founder from one of our Southeast Europe businesses said, do you know what it's all about? The people like that is what he said. And it was just such a powerful statement because as

we lean into change, as we experience like seismic shifts, as AI comes in and, you know, 70% of our job is automated, we're going to have to change. Um, and the one thing that is constant is the people that you work with, irregardless of what the name is above the door. Um, so I think it's a it's a really interesting time to talk about

B2B branding. And I think, Sarah, you had some points on that in some of the notes that I saw.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, um, it's an interesting one because I've done B2C and I've done B2B. Um, and yes, they are different, but at the end of the day, they're also very similar and brand is incredibly important, but it's probably

more how you market and tackle brand rather than the importance of brand. And in B2B, like so much of what we do is about relationships. So then the brand becomes, as you say, about the people that are out there talking to the customers. You have an army of people in the business that need to live

the brand that is your brand. So when we rebranded our business, we brought six of our businesses to six completely different brands, cultures, everything together as one bold and networks. Uh, last year we started as a program around change and bringing our people on the journey

to be the brand. And yes, we also complemented it with every other piece of marketing that you do externally. But I'm a huge believer that if you don't take your people on the journey of the brand and if they aren't the brand, then you can say anything and do any form of marketing, but it will completely

fall over when that salesperson goes out and has that conversation, or represents your business at an event or anything along those lines. So it's incredibly important that the employee piece is driven, um, as kind of key to cementing brand in a B2B business. So just as you kind of guys have said, um

yeah, incredibly important. And we found it very positively that we did, actually did our employee survey just after we rebranded, and 83% of our people said they were proud of our brand because we'd put the emphasis on our people and the expertise they brought. It's very hard when you say to someone that's worked in a start up culture, I'm really sorry, but we're going to

get rid of your brand. But I think you'd ask most people in our business now and they wouldn't even look. Yes, they'd remember their old brand, but they're very much Boldon because they feel part of what we created. And we as we built the brand, we took them on the journey. They helped at all steps of it, you know, leaders, surveys, asking people how they wanted input, maybe not getting them to decide names

That's where our brand agencies do have a very important role. Um, but yes, definitely part of kind of helping shape it because then they live it as well. So really, really important.

Yeah.

If you think about like the most charismatic B2B brands that have grown very quickly or been very successful in building their brand, at least

not necessarily a positive light, but I think you've Adam Neumann at WeWork, obviously clearly a B2B brand, but achieved B2C like celebrity. I mean, there's been like Netflix documentaries about him and we work and whatever. Companies collapsed a few times as well. But clearly it was his behavior and a whole series

of ridiculous things that he did in that instance. Ridiculous. But, you know, clearly that crystallized the brand around an individual or a set of individuals behaviors in a way that obviously was negative in the end, but certainly crystallized the brand

that's a really interesting example in terms of everything that's happened with WeWork. But I think it's a very good point around. So it's not even just that you get your people to buy into the brand. It needs to trickle through, right through from kind of the brand to, I mean, we cemented our brand with

the purpose that is kind of goes through all the tentacles of the business. You know, my main stakeholder and making sure this was success was our chief people officer. It was about ensuring that we thought about our leadership framework, our values culture, all completely aligning with the brand

um, and our purpose as a business because that the behaviors, the culture, it has to be true and authentic because there's no point kind of creating the brand and trying to get people on board and then the behaviors, how leadership acts, um, every everything. If it doesn't all marry up and completely kind of

cement, then it's going to also come unstuck. Yeah. So there's got to be the real kind of collaboration across the business, not just marketing going right. We're going to create a brand and then take it out to market, and we'll keep our people informed. Um, it's actually got to be from a kind of a whole organizational behavior change piece. Um, so

what's fascinating, I think, and I agree with everything that's been said, what's what we find is interesting is that, yeah, we've been measuring externally and we've been measuring brand with consumers via the brand asset Valuator database for 30 years.

And there's there are method is not the only methodology, of course, for measuring and quantifying brand

equity. It's one of a few. Um, and lastly we launched the launched the um sort of employer brand brand equity measurement. And we find that actually it's interesting because that whilst employer brand is incredibly important, it's actually not measured in the same way. So it's quite an interesting thing to have, I'd say, to say to

the guys, well, we've got 30 years of normative data on how brand behaves with consumers, and we've got about 6 to 9 months of data on how it behaves with with the employer brand. But I think, yes, it is really important. And I think that, uh, you know, we we often have debates, um, amongst ourselves

and with clients about how you measure brand and um, and in fact, one of the recent topics I was interested here, Kathleen, you're in charge of demand generation. And one of the topics of, uh, of the moment is brand building versus demand generation. How do you invest in it or not? And one of the things about brand building is that actually there

are there aren't that many methodologies for measuring brand equity. Um, and but if you're going to do it, you've got to put some money into it. Uh, to, to just as you to be honest, just as you have to put money into measuring demand generator. But I think it's fascinating that, um, the realization of the importance

of brand with employers and, and employers actually, more particularly that the internal and the external brand are really they're linked to the point they're really the same thing. Uh, they're just different expressions of the same thing, which then, uh, leads to, well, how do you measure them? Do you measure them? Are there any

common yardsticks through which or any common prisms through which you measure them? It's very it's very interesting, but I think the, um, and as you say, Kathleen, for, for, for a lot of companies actually, um, unless you get the in, you know, unless you get the employees aligned, it's going to be a pretty tough job to do anything

properly externally.

Quite frankly, I just want to add very briefly, um, that we have been certified as a great place to work in eight countries, and that was measured through an external we obviously in surveys,

but in eight of the countries that we operate in, we are certified by a trust centered kind of great places to work measure. And that that's really intrinsic to like talent interaction as well. I just wanted to add a little bit, you know, kind

of a different angle, especially in the financial industry, we are operating under the branded house kind of concept. We have B2C, B2B and also B2B government. And on our B2C side, it's more about, you know, we are partnering with Lionel Messi. It's about football and people being that, you know, relating to the brand and wanting

to use the brand, you know, to kind of align with their identity or with the personality they want to become. But on our B2B side, we see that most of the customers who come to us, especially as we mentioned through the demand generation, they already know a lot about us, our product and our offering. They compare it to the closest competitor

and they kind of come to us with a ready made decision. And I think that's the biggest difference between, uh, branding in B2B, because in B2C, it's more about how you want to associate with or who you want to associate with. While in B2B, it's in my in our experience, it's more about core competencies, and it's more about how

not only just brand is communicated, but also how the product or the solution that the company is selling or offering is packaged very well into that demand generation journey. Because most of the B2B buyers, they do their own research before they're coming to the end user. And that's

I think, the biggest difference comparing to the retail. There's no shopping mall that, you know, you walk through and something attracts you or you remember that you saw an ad you buy, you actually usually have that need and you go and research the company or the product that meets your needs. And therefore, I believe more

for B2B, not just having a nice shiny brand is important. It's also important to understand how to amplify that brand and include that product aspect within that brand packaging, which can be very different. I know that back in my branding time, we wouldn't much, you know, care about the

performance metrics such as, the direct impact to the sales. But I think in a more of a B2B angle, everything comes into that portion of creating demand and understanding how that brand and content come together to facilitate the sales process.

I think it definitely is possible to

overshoot with a brand in B2B, you know, try and sell people on a grand vision where you know that, of course, that's really important for some audiences, for investors, for, um, some of your most dedicated fans and customers who really care about the long terme and the product roadmap and all this stuff.

But then, as you say, there, there is there

are like sales messaging in B2B that often needs to be quite down to earth, precisely what the product does today and the value it adds. And getting those two things mixed up and trying to do an FMcG like buy into being Marlboro Man or whatever in B2B

throughout, for every audience, sometimes, you know, can lead you into trouble.

And Vugar you pointed out in a previous conversation that professional efficiency and clarity on deliverables and are more important than personal relationships in B2B and many

times that thing is confused. And how does that principle guide your branding and marketing strategies?

I'm not sure if it is me or our company, but I sometimes feel that especially in B2B, we work with more of like an introvert

and extrovert, and most of our clients make millions of dollar decision without even wanting to talk to an actual human. And it all happens into like a through the emails or some telegram and WhatsApp chat. And people are much comfortable because they do their own research, or maybe because we have a product that does

not have much, you know, alternative. But I believe that that's a moving trend. And that's why I was mentioning, like, the content becoming very, very crucial for us to build that brand identity because people do their own research before coming to us. And similarly, almost all B2B decisions I did recently were based

on that point. Or I start talking to people once I already wanted to buy, and it was kind of a negotiation stage. But most of the time, especially in tech industry and finance, people want to do their own research. And I think maybe also it was kind of a ruined by the last decade of cold calling that people don't want

to engage with. Yeah. And I'm not sure how successful today is.

Cold calling is and Covid, I think I think to your point, I think that's blown, um, a lot of that kind of customer relationship, the way that people behave and the way that we do business has fundamentally changed. Uh

in many ways. Like it's more of an effort to go and, you know, get out of the house. And I think we we have a certain comfort now with retreating. I think.

Yeah, I think I think the new role of the SDR is how you guide your prospects in that research, instead of selling to them, is presenting content and things

to to inform them. But of course not not selling. Is that how you see, kathleen content, for example, with your demand Gen team?

Yeah. I mean, I think depending on what you believe, like, you know, Uranian like to buy something

5% of the year, 95% of the time you're not in market. So do you market to attract, uh, and kind of like warm those 90, 95%, uh, of people up. But it's really complex in B2B demand generation. There's just so many, uh, people involved in decision making and

different mindsets, um, different behaviors to target. So it is really super important to get that relevant, timely on message kind of content out, uh, to, to people. So I think content is absolutely fundamental to B2B brand building, uh, to win the hearts and minds of, you know

really different types of buyers, um, at different stages of their kind of decision process.

It's definitely true.

But, you know, Nick, at the beginning was talking about the FMcG brands developed brand because they couldn't target very well. And B2B, obviously that's not the case. So you have the ability to provide

high value content that is long, long terme not expected to close someone immediately, but be really, really targeted with it as well. You know, there was a period when, you know, HubSpot pushed the concept of inbound marketing with very little targeting. The idea was that you would just put the right content out there

and the right people would come. And I think that's an odd concept these days as well, because if you do know the accounts that you want to target, and it's perfectly possible to know the individuals within those, those accounts as well, why wouldn't you tailor and promote and

prompt and start conversations with those people with the right content? Um, so, yeah, so absolutely, you know, content is critical, but not in the way that it was for the FMcG brands back in the 60s who really genuinely couldn't target. They just put something on the front of a newspaper.

Yeah

That's right angle of the terms. I'm really sorry. And also like I recently I noticed that more from like a tech companies have instead of like a CMOs and sales heads. They have like a chief revenue officer or chief commercial officers. I think that's kind of where we move towards when marketing, branding and sales kind of merges together. But it is

I believe it's like during that growth journey, because after a certain point we saw that like a large companies like Monday.com, they were doing Super Bowl ads because I think they already reached to a level that they want to become a household name, even they are the pure B2B or all the sales forces and other big guys did it at

some point. Because when you do that, the big kind of a commercial breakthrough, it automatically will create that curiosity that people will go and Google you, look into you on the web and eventually end up consuming your content. And that is the what we also saw with our

output. Uh, in a fintech industry, most of the people who saw our like out-of-home ads and a subway or the street, they would go and it will increase our search results around like a 30%, like the click through rate through the search. Because now people saw they were curious and they wanted to kind of come and learn more about

us. But it is no more the time, as you mentioned, that people would saw like a B2B brand and they would be like, oh, I really want to work with them because they're cool. And if they really think like that, okay, I want to work with this brand because they're cool. It will go into like a partnership, kind of an angle where companies

will partner with each other and to build cool things the same way we see OpenAI working with the Microsoft and all the other partnerships that happened there, because there are synergies, but it is beyond that customer and the buyer and seller relationship.

But what's what's the causality then?

Because I was reading recently about the concept

of, um, cover page curse, as in companies that have been on the front page of Forbes or, uh, Businessweek or whatever tend to dramatically underperform, underperform the market in the subsequent 12 months compared to, uh, you know, and overperform in the 2 or 3 years before and significantly underperform

um, afterwards. And it's the same with things like Super Bowl ads, as in, the concept is people do a Super Bowl ads when they feel very, very confident. It's like peacocking, and yet they tend to regress to the mean afterwards. Um, and, you know, is that as is is their success as a result of the Super Bowl ad

or is Monday.com doing a Super Bowl purely because they feel confident? Because they happen to have had quite a lot of success?

I think like from back in my like VC times, I know that there's always this promise to the investors and investors at some point become a client of their CEO

and keeping them happy is important. And when the companies reached a certain plateau, they decide to reinvent the wheel. And that's why they do either right before a race or right after a race. They go and splurge money on something really crazy. And back in time, when I was working with one of the startups, uh

and in Dubai specifically, they raised a series A and first thing they did, they wanted to go to the Sheikh Zayed Street. It's kind of a Times Square of the Dubai, and wanted to put that a really huge ad, almost like a 10% of the entire race for the month, which had zero impact to their business. But they wanted to make it to give an other investors

aha moment that they will feel the coma and come in anyway, with Monday.com case, as far as I remember, at that point, they wanted to go public, and I think that was one last shot before going to public they wanted because especially when you go to public, then you have a new audience of the people who will trade your stocks and

you want to be known because most of the time, even if you are not a B2B customer, if you are a trading that stock, you will become a eventually another layer of that audience that needs to know about the brand. And I think that was one of the cases.

Maybe it was their last chance to do that kind of spending. Maybe they wouldn't be allowed to do that.

Probably

Yes. Also probably. Yeah. And there is also yes, you can never sort of remove entirely the the impact of hubris. Uh, part of this I mean, there is also a bit like winning the World Cup in rugby or football. Teams that win it often don't do terrifically well

in the immediate time afterwards. And there are there are lots of examples of companies moving to, um, sort of heroic new headquarters, and then their results just fall off a cliff for the next few years. And it takes ages to, to, to turn it around. So, but but I but I do think, yes, I mean

it's, it's kind of we were talking about the kind of the execution of the brand and the message and the offer, and we were saying that, say for B2B, you have longer sales cycles. You do. You're selling to people who are much more informed than the average consumer

Um, although having said that, there are of course, there are some some markets and categories in consumer which are big investments where people do huge amounts of like buying a car is the classic example where people do, uh, attempt to accumulate knowledge and that is, you know, easily six, six, 12, 18,

24 month process is just like it is in, in B2B, but but ultimately. So how do you address that market? And and Kathleen, as you say, depending on who you believe. But in theory, most most buyers are not in the market to buy at any one time. But, but but clearly you can still influence them. And, and it's um, and hopefully building toward the next purchase and

and the issue is not whether or not and not whether or not brand is there, but the issue is how much is brand and influence and how can you optimize that? Because I say even though you're talking to very knowledgeable most of the time, very knowledgeable, well informed

targets. Um, the idea that there is no role for emotive connectedness is is simply not correct. There always is. The question is, is it a little or and we all say, if you're buying a luxury handbag, of course, the emotional connected connectedness is massive. If you are buying a lump

of coal, the emotional connectedness is probably rather small. But even in worlds where you think, um, everything is terrifically rational. For instance, the world of logistics, actually there is an enormous, uh, Sarah's, I think. Agreed. But but there's an enormous emotive impact. Are you going to be a reliable partner

to take my goods, particularly if it was real, just in time. And the perishable goods and Fedex is a maersk there, you dig, and you find this huge emotional, uh, potential. Sorry, Tom. Yeah.

No, I was just giving the example of Fedex, mostly B2B brand, but, you know, clearly, uh, very successful brand.

And I think there's a large part as well. And I always say that, you know, I've done the B2B and I've done the B2C, but really, at the end of the day, it's all the BGH because I think in everything you do, there's there's a person and I think even in there is the things you think about when you're talking to like a B2B

audience. Um, but they're the things that I'm the CIO and I want the CEO's gig. So actually making this deal and getting it right and choosing the right partner will help my career or I want to go. So so there is the emotive aspect as well of the individual, but it's just different

So I think I hugely think brand has a large role to play. Um, and a lot of the time it's around credibility and trust and things like that because people are having to put their careers on the line, especially in our industry. You know, you're talking big deals. So it's really important that you're making the

right decision. And yes, there's the financial side that your business needs to think about. But the individuals are signing on dotted lines on deals. So it's really important that they're making the right decisions and working with the long terme businesses because again, big deals mean long terme deals generally as well. So

I think there's a lot of kind of emotive that plays into it and thinking about. And that doesn't mean you don't need the con. I agree completely with everything else that's been said around content. Um, and I think it's for especially in our space, it's how you balance the kind of the short terme wins with the the long terme need for brand

growth. Because again, you're signing up partners for for a long time. So they need to know that you're there and trusted. So building that brand and that kind of long terme view is incredibly important. But kind of the content and the marketing pieces is just as important. They go hand in hand. And I think that's why. And I know in, in the B2B

space I've always worked brand has been cemented in the B2B marketing team. Um, so I know in in the land of consumer, quite often you'll have the brand team and then you'll have the consumer marketing team B2B, they normally quite often go hand in hand, um, because it's really important that you kind of doing the emotive with

the rational and, and thinking about that whole content journey and everything we've talked about, you know, warming people up before they even even come see you and building those long terme relationships and building the content funnels so that, you know, you get you get them, even if they're only, as Kathleen was saying, you know, thinking about the deal 5% of the year

and I think it's also about harnessing the community around the brand, going back to the people. So when we were a startup, we just had our pink color. And a really good young entrepreneur at the helm. We harnessed the mobile app ecosystem around the business to create the excitement around around the brand. So customer advocacy supplier

advocacy like that plays such a huge role. Um, and you know, we're, you know, to go back to your point, Thomas, um, just like, uh, you know, we've had 100% open rates on really highly targeted, um, PR that we have, uh, achieved a certain result for, um, our clients and that that is a way to win the hearts

and minds of, um, subsequently, more interested clients who who want a piece of that success so that emotion is, like baked into everything. We have all of these tools, the brand building tools at our disposal that should be baked into B2B marketing 100%, such as give, uh, tell me a bit more about that.

Kathleen. What are you thinking

of when you're thinking about these useful brand building tools?

Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking, you know, I think more traditional routes like PR and, you know, um, brand, uh, brand design, um, are really emotional tools. And I think really good creative should sit at the heart of B2B. Uh, at the same time, I've

worked in lots of different types of environments. Um, but I think brand really does sit at the heart of B2B marketing in many ways. Um, so I think it's important to understand that.

And what about artificial intelligence in this context? How do you think artificial intelligence fits in, in creating a brand

and what kind of challenges you see in that incorporation? Yeah, it's a good question because yeah, obviously AI keeps coming up. I don't know. I don't understand why, but it does keep coming up, I mean. But to my

my start point because because we measure stuff. Actually one of the first things we look at AI through is the is the the lens of measurement. So does it allow you to do things faster or better or more accurately or in a more granular fashion? So one of the one of the applications that we're looking

at is, is touchpoints. So the the way in which you might measure touchpoints through, let's call it proven traditional research methods for the sake of argument, um, is, is they work with very lengthy and very expensive. And so I promises if you can get the right, um

sort of training around it, it promises to be able to get some really interesting, uh, to meld lots and lots of sources of data to do this quickly and to get a really deep dive on, on touchpoints around a lot of, um, uh, B2C and retail and potentially B2B experiences as, as well. Um, so that's exciting.

So the first point of view and that, that there and in many ways it therefore enables you to measure things you couldn't measure before because either because it was very difficult to do so or no client was particularly interested in throwing that amount of money and time at something at for an uncertain, uh, return. So this this gives you an opportunity to do something

uh, different, better and faster and more and more agile and actually produce something which might be a real value at the end of the day. So that's personally, I mean, in terms of content, I mean, it's kind of, um, the content that I've seen, it's really fascinating. And people love to press a button and go, I gave you I gave this brief to I a lot of the a

lot of the output always, always looks a bit like a sort of 1930s Stakhanovite Stalin heroic poster. It's always kind of that kind of tinge. Really weird. But anyway.

But in terms of I agree, I just started using this, this app called artisan, which is supposedly like

an AI based SDR. And, um, it's clearly after five seconds you've realized that it's based on ChatGPT for as a Y Combinator company, it's just the latest AI.

But in terms of, um, ideation and it's rapid iteration and so on, obviously there are there are lots of applications around that

Um, but if you can stop it looking like a Moscow poster from 1937.

Uh, the only point about artisan was that it's producing stuff that looks just

like it was made from ChatGPT for. Because it is made from ChatGPT for and. Yeah, as you say, Nick, it all just looks exactly the same. So it's supposed to be writing these tailored emails, but if I got that email, I'd know immediately that it was made from ChatGPT and eventually everyone will. So, you know, there will be more AIS that have their own personalities

Um, hopefully. Uh, well, it definitely will be. Um, but, you know, if it's if, if everyone's using the same API, the ChatGPT for API, um, then, yeah, the messaging looks quite similar. We've come across these concept that the AI themselves have brand perceptions, so they know what they think about

your brand and your brand and everyone's brand. And when people are searching on it, they'll get an opinion from the AI about your brand. And so we might this time next year be doing kind of SEO, just purely focused on influencing the AI's opinion of your brand somehow, and how

yeah. The way we use AI at our current job, at current company is that we don't use AI to generate ideas, but we use to create, like a lot of alternatives based on the main pillar ideas

because we usually work like mainly to generate demand through the key opinion leaders and influencers within that, uh, finance industry. And every viral post, especially like a video content that goes, the creator needs to test around 3200 different thumbnails and headlines to find

the really right one. And I comes a lot into the health. And recently we did a beautiful a B test, uh, targeting to private equity clients at Bain, uh, for our content. And we came across that most boring and complicated post and charts were getting the most engagement because

is the niche that we were targeting. These people were more of like a I know my own thing. I want to zoom in, give me the full picture. I want to make my own conclusion instead of telling me what it is. The main takeaway and the post that didn't have that main takeaway instead had an open question with a complicated chart

telling go figure it out. It was not well. Therefore, I think sometimes we as a marketeers, we want to simplify everything and make sure that the client gets the end result. But more and more because of an AI, because of the search and appetite, because of people, sometimes

they're tired of, uh, hearing what they need to be doing. Uh, like giving that kind of a big picture and hoping that they have the right to take away from it could be another way to look into that branding in B2B marketing, and it will make that branding aspect

very important, because sometimes when you see a beautiful data coming from big four or, I don't know, McKinsey or Bain or some takeaway from really, really large institution, you are already prone to believe into that and therefore building that reliability is also important. And then giving people

independence that they can do their own takeaway instead of all the time guiding them. What is the message here can be an alternative that we can help building using the AI.

I mean, some something that interesting comes from that is just a reminder that brand is relative. Even more so in

B2B than in B2C, because in theory, we could all buy Nike trainers or Coca-Cola or whatever. But obviously in B2B, if your brand looks dreadful to 99% of the population and the messaging is completely incomprehensible, it doesn't really matter as long as the people you actually need to buy your system are reacting

really positively to it. And so you can't really judge B2B brands on the same scale necessarily as B2C brands.

Well, I think that one of the big differences is, is the specificity of the target audience. So again, you start you go back to to to day one, you know, Sunsilk and Colgate or

doing ads on British TV. So it was targeting as many people as possible. So it was just it was everyone. And then when you when as, as, as life becomes more sophisticated, then you of course you get some B2C, uh, offers that are increasingly targeted. But in B2B you are by definition targeting, uh, before you even sort

of wake up in the morning. So the question is, how targeted will you be? And, you know, there are businesses and I'm sure we've all come across them where actually there are very large multi-billion dollar businesses which basically have fewer than ten customers. Now, that's a completely different world from

FMcG. So yeah. So but but yeah, B2B is just hugely targeted. And if you don't if you can't. And that obviously again doesn't stop brands being an important part. But it obviously has massive implications for how you manage and communicate and integrate that and test the brand, because you have to test it with the people

that exactly who you measure it with and what actually matters to those buyers, uh, and what actually really motivates them and creates some kind of differentiation between one offer and another. Yeah. Um.

Sarah, I wonder if this, this conversation about AI

and how it impacts your brand, um, solves your challenges. I remember we had a conversation and you were thinking about this and how AI is impacting your brand, how you communicate this to your CFO, to your CEO. Everyone is worried about this within a company. Um, I don't know if this conversation is going in the direction of helping you with that. Or would you like to ask something to, the panelists?

Uh, well, just to talk on AI as well. I think it's it's a real interesting one. I was at Mobile World Congress last week and everything was about AI. But then

you start unpicking it. There's not much under there. Everyone just likes talking about AI. And and I think a large part of like from how we market and how we think about developing our marketing teams, it's working out what is the actual role it plays and the value it can deliver. And then thinking about, I

guess, how you then communicate the use of AI because it's how you use it as a marketing team and the value it can have, but then also as a brand and as a business, thinking about, you know, what's that brand reputational standpoint and how do you communicate how you use AI, the ethical aspects of it. Um, and what's your stance on that? So

I think there's two levers to kind of think about it. Um, I think that everyone likes to talk about it, but it's actually a lot harder when you start digging into it. So, for example, I'll give you an example. When we launched our brand, a lot of our imagery was generated by AI. And this was a year ago, right. So we were first in category, really exciting. The imagery was generated

by AI. To be really clear here, no people were in it. We made a real deliberate decision that people are real. And and we were talking about structures and trains and things like that. And it was really graphically, um, exciting. It also excited our people where a business of engineers, they went, wow, we've used technology to create our brand. So that links you back to the first bit I was talking about around

branding and kind of bringing your people on the journey. A year on, we've, we we looked at AI as a, a way to mean that we could change and adapt a lot faster has actually become a lot harder. It's a lot harder now, um, to make sure that as a business, we're ethically

doing it right copyright wise. There are so many other aspects that mean that something we thought was a simple solution a year ago is a lot more complex, and it actually means that generating AI imagery is actually harder now than going out and buying a photo. I still stand behind it. It's beautiful

I think it ties in wonderfully with, you know, we're a tech business that uses technology to create our brand. Um, but it's a lot harder than than you think. So I think that's one thing to think about that I kind of want to all say to everyone, it's not the magic solution that seems to be being talked about a lot. And I think the other side of it is working out as a, as a business, how you want to use it

and what is your ethical standpoint? Um, and then how does that align with, with your kind of, your different parts of your business? It's not just technology thinking about AI, it's the brand reputational aspect, obviously. Yes, the financial side, the people side. So it's kind of more broader brush than going, right, what tools can I use? So I guess I

don't quite know if that's what you were where you were going. I know you were trying to link a few things, but I guess from a standpoint on, on AI and, and how we're kind of using it and what we're thinking about.

Well, thank you so much. And thank you, everyone. We are coming to an end now. And I would love to give you, if you if you want

to say a few words, final thoughts about today's conversation, the microphone is is open to you.

Well, just to try.

Thanks again for for having me. It's been a great conversation both in preparation and today, and it's wonderful to hear the different points of view. Always a joy to see Sarah

So it's lovely to be on the platform with you again. And great to meet Vugar and Catherine. I think the points of view are just coming from different angles, and you put them into the mixer and you come out with things you didn't realize before you started. So thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'd second that as well. And I just want to say because we're talking B2B, but

even in this lens, you can see a whole group of very different people, different industries, different spaces. There's a whole like it's not as easy as going, this is the solution for B2B. It's even in B2B there are so many different aspects and things to think about and and pluses and minuses. And yeah, it's been great to to meet some new faces and hear some new points

of view.

Yeah, I second that. I think it's, um, been fascinating and really interesting. And we should stay connected. We should have more conversations like these, uh, to inspire our thinking because, uh, I do think these, these forums are really, really important for B2B marketing in general. So thank you everyone.

Thank thank you everyone. We

have uh, a series of, uh, these conversations coming up, including some private conversations where we can discuss, uh, more kind of sensitive topics under the Chatham House rule. There's one on, um, how B2B, how businesses buy differently all around the world, which I think is something that's very underreported under discussed. Not very much written on it. Um, with

with I mean, all of you are also doing marketing, uh, all around the world. So, um, we'd love to invite you to that, but we'll be in touch about all of this. Thank you all so much.