Now this should be no surprise, because the majority of B2B purchases are often of a higher value than B2C purchases. Reassurance – whether that’s professional, technical, financial, legal, or personal – is at the core of B2B purchase drivers. But being reassured has an impact on your emotional state, and can reduce anxiety, fear, and worry. Emotions are important, even in B2B purchase decisions.

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The Role Of Distinctive Brand Assets

So, if we agree that emotions play a part when making a purchase decision on B2B brands, we can look at the role distinctive brand assets play in B2B.

Distinctive brand assets have a huge role to play for brands, because they are the identifiers. They are how people recognize and associate the various moments with the brand with each other. But brand assets are distinctive because, not only do you know them but you know other people know them. They are what makes a brand famous and are how a brand is known.

Distinctive brand assets might include:

• Names
• Icons
• Logos
• Taglines
• Mascots
• Products
• Celebrities
• Sonic

There are so many B2C brands that have an identifiable one to all of the above.

• Names – Anyone you can think of
• Icons – Apple, Nike, Shell
• Logos – Snickers, Disney, FedEx
• Taglines – Just Do It, I’m Lovin’ It, Think Different, Snap! Crackle! Pop!
• Mascots – Michelin Man, Mickey Mouse, Tony the Tiger
• Products – Coca Cola bottle, iPhone, VW Beetle
• Celebrities – Nike and Michael Jordan, Nespresso and George Clooney, Ryan Reynolds and Mint Mobile
• Sonic – Apple startup sound, Netflix sound, MGM lion sound

They are the identifiers of the ‘shared meaning’ that makes the brand valuable.

Now, often, the power of a distinctive brand asset can only truly be seen when judged alongside another or in its category. Red may not be enough to identify a brand, but the color red in the soft drinks category or sitting alongside some golden arches should bring a brand immediately to mind.

But how about their role in the B2B world?

How Many B2B Brands Have Distinctive Brand Assets?

Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo were previously at LinkedIn’s B2B Institute. Partnering with Distinctive BAT, they analysed more than 300 brand assets from 59 brands across six of the biggest categories in B2B: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), business intelligence (BI), customer relationship management (CRM), cybersecurity, business banking and business insurance.

In an article on Adweek they found that most B2B companies do not have any distinctive brand assets.

“B2B brands are all drowning in a sea of sameness. Every brand is blue, every brand is saying the same things in the same way.” Peter Weinberg

So Why The Lack Of Distinctive Brand Assets?

I believe the lack of distinctive brand assets for B2B companies is mainly due to the fact that there aren’t many B2B brands that require the reach (size or scale of audience) of a B2C brand. They don’t need to reach a mass market, because they have a specific purchase need or use case. How often do you need to buy an aircraft engine, or a CMS, or a business insurance, or even the design of some brand assets by a branding agency?

The leading voice on distinctive brand assets is Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. She is pushing B2B brands to increase their use and application of distinctive brand assets. And I wholeheartedly support her.

In a WARC article, Jenni identifies some issues B2B brands have with distinctive brand assets:

• Assets are more difficult to create in a B2B context as they tend to be built through the sort of broad-reach marketing more typical in B2C
• There are assumptions that buyers will do research themselves, making such assets largely unnecessary
• They feel they need to be taken seriously as a business, and so don’t pursue certain assets.

In B2B brands, it is very often the name and probably the logo that are seen as the only distinctive brand assets they require. There really aren’t all that many who go outside of these assets, but there are a few examples:

• Character – Salesforce Astro Nomical
• Sonic – Intel chime

Niche Audience. Niche Famous.

B2B firms are much more about creating ‘niche fame’, than reaching for mass market appeal. And this is a very different beast.

Returning to Jenni Romaniuk, her tracking of distinctive brand assets is measured on their uniqueness and fame. Now there is no reason why B2B businesses shouldn’t work to create distinctive brand assets. Assets that are unique and assets that make you famous have value to B2B business. It is just that they need to be unique and famous with a niche group of people. So you don’t need to use mass market channels, but you can start to develop distinctive brand assets within your niche audience.

The Value Of Distinctive B2B Brand Assets

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, distinctive assets improve performance in two ways. They make buyers more likely to notice and recall your marketing efforts. And they make it easier for buyers to find your brand in a buying situation, online and offline. They increase mental availability and physical availability.

B2B firms are starting to see the usefulness of distinctive brand assets. They now just need to understand how to use them for themselves.

But B2B assets aren’t created equal. Research has found that logos and characters are generally better performers than other assets in a B2B world. If you have a B2B brand, you must ensure you’re spending marketing money on things that will stick in people’s minds.

B2B branding is not permission to be faceless. Boeing, GE and more have proven that you can be a reassuring presence and still be a valued and identifiable brand. B2B brands must start to realize and define their personality. They must evolve to appeal to emotions rather than rely on being bought on logic.

Maybe All Businesses Are B2P?

Because, whether you are B2C or B2B, maybe all businesses are B2P (Business to People) businesses now.

Paul Bailey is Brand Strategy Director at Halo – a brand-first agency in the UK, who with bold strategy and commercial creativity improve audience experience and business performance through brand.

At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define or redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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Whether my meetings are with CMOs or Heads of Marketing, CEOs or Heads of Brand, I’m constantly amazed by their inability to decide on or define who their audience really is. I find this astounding, because these are the people who really matter to the brand (I know of course your internal audience, your partners, your shareholders, among many others are important). These are the people who are going to pay you to deliver them something. Whether that is a product or a service, it is their financial contribution that is going to keep your business going (hopefully).

Who Is Your Brand For?

Before you start to work on anything you are trying to ‘sell’ to your audience – be that the brand proposition, your organization’s offering, or your business’ actual product or service – you must, must, must define who you are hoping will buy it.

Always define your target audience first. Always.

Don’t Go Too Wide Or Too Narrow.

Now, defining your audience can be quite difficult (but it can actually be quite simple). If you set your net to reach as many people as possible, then there is a degree of ‘wastage’. You will be speaking to a good deal of people who will never convert to a sale, nor will they have any interest in your brand. But, if you go too narrow then if you’re not careful then you may miss out on people who could convert to a sale, or who could be brand evangelists.

Reach too many people and you’re wasting money. Reach too few people and you’re wasting opportunities.

Every business or organization is different, and so every one needs a bespoke analysis of their audience. But there are approaches you might take in order to define your audience.

Maybe, Define Who Your Audience Isn’t.

One approach is to actually define who your audience isn’t rather than who your audience is. I’ve written about this approach previously, but put simply this method defines your outsiders, and anyone else becomes your target audience.

Depending on your industry or offering, these people might be outsiders because they simply can’t afford what you offer, or they have a preference that’s opposite to your offering (eg meat producers and vegetarians), or even that them being associated with your brand would be detrimental to your brand (see Burberry and UK football hooligans). There are many valid reasons people might be ‘outsiders’ for your brand, both practical and emotional.

This is just one approach and will only be right for selected businesses or organizations.

S And T Before The P.

What holds true, whatever approach you take, is the fact that you need to do some targeting of your audience. There is a reason the old marketing structure of STP still holds true today. Because it is still right.

• Segment the populace.
• Target those people who you want in your audience.
• Position the brand (or product or service. Although that would be an S) to appeal to them.

Audience-First. Always.

If you are in charge of a business or an organization. If you are responsible for taking that business or organization to the market. Please do some work on defining your audience first:

• What are their attitudes?
• What are their behaviors in your category?
• Are there specific demographics that are important?
• What media do they consume?
• Might you have one or multiple audiences?
• What are their key characteristics?
• What is their mindset and worldview and situation?
• What information do they typically need to make decisions on purchase or involvement?
• What factors might they compare when considering you and the competition?
• What are they worried about (that your brand/product/service can fix)?
• How might they like to be recognized?
• How can they see that you understand them (that so many others don’t)?

One thing you don’t need to worry about is what they are called. If your audience identification is someone in your marketing department writing a lengthy bit of prose about your ‘audience profiles’ or ‘audience personas’, and then giving them catchy names or titles, please do stop.

Paul Bailey is Brand Strategy Director at Halo – a brand-first agency in the UK, who with bold strategy and commercial creativity improve audience experience and business performance through brand.

At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define or redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

Why I asked this question was that I was inspired by a twitter post, saying that Mr Beast’s new bar is being distributed to every 7/11 in the USA. As well as this, there was also the big noise that has been around the KSI x Logan Paul’s drink PRIME, in the UK and elsewhere.

Some people’s responses to the post were saying that celebrity endorsement was always the way. And this is true, to a point. Of course, celebrities have long been promoting products, whether it is George Foreman and his grill or Paul Newman and his salad dressing. But I am finding these creators particularly interesting for a number of reasons, the main one being how they are building their brands and what that means for the products they are promoting.

The Businesses

The ‘old’ value chain of a brand was very much a product-oriented one. We bought products because businesses had experience and expertise in creating a product within a specific category, and they built brands around these products.

• Create a product > find your audience > build a brand > sell that product

This meant that the business, and brand, became associated with a specific category. It was very rare that brands could be broken out very far from their category. Is Ben & Jerrys going to launch a new car? Is Colgate going to release a new sofa? Unlikely.

There is one brand which I can think of that breaks its brand extensions out of its category – Ferrari. They are a bit of an outlier, breaking out of the expensive car market by releasing various products, from scooters to theme parks. But even Ferrari get accused of weakening the ‘master’ brand by doing all of these brand extensions.

The Creators

The ‘creators’ model is a very different one, and one which is much more aligned to a market-oriented approach. The fact that the creators built their brands first, and have added products into the mix later, changes everything.

• Build a brand > find your audience > create a product > sell that product.

For creators, the role of their brand has become more about the connection with its audience, and less about the products associated with it. Because they’re not wedded to an original product, the brand extensions they launch can be wild and varied. This enables the creator to align their brand to any product, in any category, with little danger of damaging the ‘master’ brand. As long as the product fits their brand, it is fine. This is a big shift, and one which should be paid attention to.

Mental + Physical Availability

The well-known Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and Professor Byron Sharp have their concept of mental and physical availability. I suggest that the ‘creators’ brands are excellent examples of generators of mental availability, and linking their brands to products creates strong associations.

If you add this mental availability to the physical availability of the product, then you are on to a winner. As I said at the start of this thought piece, what got me thinking about this was the fact that Mr Beast has a bar in every 7/11 in the USA. That is an amazing feat of distribution, but one that I’m sure Mr Beast wasn’t responsible for himself.

In fact, the other example I gave at the start of this article – KSI x Logan Paul’s PRIME drink – is a very different example of physical availability and the potential of its power. Over here in the UK, the drink wasn’t all that well distributed, and was quite hard to get hold of. The thing was, because of the effect of the digital landscape, this was able to be turned into a positive thing for the brand. We were shown footage of people literally fighting over cans of PRIME, because their availability was limited. Whether this was a planned move or not, it was very effective in creating demand through a lack of supply.

In today’s world, I wouldn’t be so quick to remove the digital from the physical. They are inextricably linked, and so we need to maximize the effectiveness of each channel and touchpoint when we are considering a brand.

Are Creators The Future?

So, what does this all mean for ‘traditional’ brand? Is this the end for them and the beginning of the ‘creator’ economy? Probably not. There are certainly questions around the longevity of the product (and even the creators) brands. I think this is a valid question, but one which we can’t answer right now. It is however, going to be interesting watching what happens next in the fascinating world of creators.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Paul Bailey, Strategy Director at Halo

At The Blake Project we are helping clients from around the world, in all stages of development, redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change through strategy workshops and extended engagements. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

Except, it isn’t perfect. And your audience won’t make a rational decision.

Let’s take a step back for a minute. It has become increasingly accepted that your brand is no longer simply your logo, or visual identity, but is more about the experience or environment linked to your business, product or service. Your brand can no longer be considered a vehicle through which to facilitate a desired transaction, from business to consumer. It shouldn’t even be considered the sole property of the business it is associated with.

Your brand is shaped by the relationships formed in that space in-between business and people, and importantly between people themselves. It is in this acknowledgement of brand being about relationships that we must appreciate two key points:

• no relationship remains the same – relationships always evolve

• no-one wants to be in a relationship with someone perfect

In order to have healthy relationships you need to appreciate that people will not seek to understand your brand intellectually. Decisions are very often not made intellectually but intuitively. What is important isn’t what people know about a brand, but what they feel about a brand.

Evolution

Consider a personal relationship that may well be close to your heart – you and your mum. In one way your relationship with your mum will always remain the same, she is your mum and you are her child. That will never change. However, is that really your relationship, or is that simply a label?

Let’s consider the actual relationship you have with your mum over a lifetime. If we think about the relationship rather than the label we can see how our roles and expectations are constantly evolving. At birth we are totally dependent on our mum, without her we would die. As we grow into childhood we are nurtured by mum, but we are becoming less dependent. As older children / young adults we challenge mum, pushing for independence. Entering adulthood we become friends and equals with mum, still getting support and guidance but being able to share some of our own guidance. As mum ages we find that the dependency role switches, with mum becoming reliant on us and relying on our support. Throughout our life we remain mum and child, but the relationship is constantly evolving.

When considering your brand be aware that your relationship with people will evolve. Be open to changing roles and expectations.

Perfection

So what about perfection? Well, how would you like to be in a relationship with someone who is perfect? Someone who never does anything wrong, is always right, always the best, infallible. Sounds pretty awful right? Of course it does because we know that no-one is perfect, we all make mistakes and bad decisions. That’s not a bad thing though, it is what makes us likeable. It’s what builds relationships as everyone is fallible, we are all prone to mistakes. ‘To err is human’.

So if you are hoping to build a relationship with people through brand then forget about trying to seem perfect. We are all fallible and prone to mistakes, but what that gives is the opportunity to show growth, improvement, self-awareness. Perfection leaves no room for improvement – it is a dead state. Forget perfection.

The Space In-Between

When considering your brand, consider it the ‘space in-between’. Your brand is the space in-between numerous contributing factors, such as your business, staff, product, visual identity, customers, detractors, the current environment.

This ‘space in-between’ must be a space of vitality, of evolution, of imperfection, if you want people to relate to the brand and the brand to remain relevant. This ‘space in-between’ is not static or stagnant, it is always in-process. It should be considered temporally rather than spacially. It will most often be appreciated and experienced intuitively not intellectually. When considering your brand – the ‘space in-between’ – it’s not rational, it’s emotional.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Paul Bailey, Strategy Director at Halo

The Blake Project Helps Brands In All Stages Of Development Define And Articulate What Makes Them Competitive And Valuable In The Brand Positioning Workshop

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The first time I became aware of this type of movement was in the 1990s, by a group called Adbusters. As a graphic design student, and taking great interest in designers such as Jonathan Barnbrook who were very social and counter-cultural in the work they did (and it turns out he was a part of Adbusters too), I was very interested in this movement. Although I didn’t join in with their activities, I followed them with some interest.

Adbusters have spent the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and the 2020s railing against capitalism and in particular advertising’s role in capitalism. Their magazine’s international circulation peaked at 120,000 in the late 2000s, but it has been their campaigns which have had more impact. Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street have all left their mark, but they are probably best known for their “subvertisements” – adverts which subvert the original message of the advert.

Blaming advertising for playing a central role in creating and maintaining consumer culture, they have used the creative skills and talents against advertising itself. They claim to be combating the negative effects of advertising and empowering its readers to regain control of culture. The big question they ask with all of their work is “Are we consumers and citizens?”

This is something I believe is an important discussion that those of us who work with brands need to have – are we creating enough space for people to be citizens as well as consumers? This is a big question, and one that brings other factors into play such as ‘brand purpose’ – is a corporate brand the best vehicle to promote a social or environmental purpose – but that is for another article.

Adbusters might have blazed the trail, but now groups such as Brandalism are picking up the ball and sprinting with it. Emerging in the UK during the 2012 Olympics, Brandalism has been using ‘culture jamming’ to rail against corporations with anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and environmental concerns. Brandalism has also done a lot to expand the people who are able to take part in these activities, by among other things publishing ‘how to’ guides for things like opening poster sites.

Now, there are some who are against all of these ‘subvertising’ activities, but that isn’t my view. For me, they are an important addition to the cultural landscape, and can be a valid challenge to corporate power. On top of that, I think that some of the Adbusters and Brandalism work is some of the most creative work out there. Not only are advertising companies getting their work busted, it’s being improved upon at the same time.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this subculture, take a look at the books and websites below.

‘Advertising Shits in Your Head‘ by Vyvian Raoul & Matt Bonner

‘Culture Jam’ by Kalle Lasn

Adbusters

Brandalism

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Paul Bailey, Strategy Director at Halo

The Blake Project Helps Brands In All Stages Of Development Focus On Those Who Matter Most In The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers