Coca-Cola. Nike. Virgin. Think of a brand and names like these instantly spring to mind. Our B2B clients often start by listing consumer brands when they describe what they want to achieve.
Comparing business and consumer brands can be misleading. Of course there are similarities, but there are also big differences. Consumer branding is often about creating a myth to differentiate more or less identical products. One shampoo or soft drink is much like another. Differentiation depends on packaging, spin and plenty of gloss.
Indeed, some B2B companies find this superficiality so off-putting they avoid thinking about their brand at all. In one respect they’re right. Smoke and mirrors don’t work for business brands. B2B branding is about identifying real differences in your business and bringing them to the surface. One engineering business or outsourcing consultancy or accountancy firm is profoundly different from another, as anyone who moves employer will tell you. B2B brands are often built on relationships, which depend on people who respond best to what is tangibly true.
B2B companies sometimes question whether branding is worth the investment at all, because few can name strong brands in the B2B arena. But should they? B2B brands don’t need to be known in every household; just by those who need to know them.
Business branding doesn’t promise the immediate payback of consumer campaigns because it concerns truth. B2B is a slower burn. It’s about gradually shifting and shaping audience perceptions, both internal and external, building reputation and loyalty – less immediate, but also less dependent on last week’s campaign. This doesn’t mean B2B branding isn’t accountable, but it does mean you should use qualitative rather than quantitative measures. A thought to turn the finance director’s heart cold, but imagine a world where you only did things you could emphatically prove in pounds, shillings and pence.
As a B2B business, you have a brand whether you choose to manage it or not. Build your future on your true strengths. Stick at it and you’ll become famous – and successful – in your own universe.
The courage to be yourself
Perhaps the greatest difference between B2B and B2C is confidence. When it comes to brand positioning, there’s a lack of corporate self-belief in B2B companies. Companies often act like unconfident teenagers.
Most of us can tell a strong brand from a weak one because it’s clear what it is that makes it better and different. However, we wouldn’t recognise our own positive difference if it were under our nose. Indeed it may even be our nose. Which is why clients often urge us to keep looking, convinced that if more stones are overturned we’ll find something better than the familiar, special traits and attributes that were there all along. A bit of a problem, particularly when B2B branding is all about real, positive characteristics.
But every company has unique characteristics, not just the industry leaders. Finding what makes you positively different – and having the courage to let it shine through – is at the heart of successful branding.
So be you. It’s the one thing that no one can steal from you and that you can truly deliver on.
Are people any different at work?
However, something strange happens to men and women when they turn up for work. The moment they walk through the door, they stop being people. They become ‘executives’ or ‘managers’. Job titles.
This seems to be the generally held view, at least. Most marketers treat the business audience as a breed apart. Solemn. Rational. Dull.
We might be opinionated about the differences between B2B and B2C, but we don’t accept that the business audience is a different species. We believe it’s made up of normal men and women who buy groceries, cars and mobile phones and who have holidays, birthdays, romances and arguments. Sensible people; irrational people; quirky people. But people nonetheless. And because people respond at work much the same way as they do at home we think of all communications as B2P – business to people.
There are profound differences between B2B and B2C. In the B2B world, you can’t hope that artificial marketing glitz will do the job for you. You have to be yourself. But learn just a little from your confident B2C cousins, and communicate with your business audiences as people in an appealing, engaging and human way. By revealing just a little heart and soul, you might never be a household name, but within the relevant space of your own universe, you’ll be able to rival just a little of the success of the B2C mega-brands.
