Daniel Henderson, business director at Athlon, offers five ways marketers can ensure their campaigns get creative cut-through
Matisse once said: ‘creativity takes courage.’ As the next generation takes on, and often creates, more senior agency and client-side roles, the passive acceptance of why B2B communication is done in a certain way is questioned, turning instead into an exploration of trying something different. Business people are consumers too, so why not take the marketing lessons from the consumer world and apply them to the B2B world in order to cut-through the myriad marketing mix?
How to generate creative cut-through:
1. Recognise that a business is not an inanimate faceless object
Behind the business you are dealing with is a human (or humans). You will have no doubt seen the latest marketing acronyms B2P and H2H (business-to-people and human-to-human respectively) as marketers begin to acknowledge that communication occurs between humans, not businesses. Recognising B2B buyers as people, rather than businesses, acknowledges that our persona is not black and white but a blurred mix of consumer and corporate. We like to explore, be entertained and to share our feelings. If you can keep this in mind while creating a B2B marketing campaign, it’ll be more creative.
As an example, back in 2009 business telecommunications company Sprint launched ‘Sprint now’: a website that in real time told you what was going on in the world. Not only was this a creative way to promote the benefits of high-speed telecommunications, it was instantly shareable with other businesses – and humans, of course. (The website is no more but the video promoting it can be found here.)
2. Don’t just say, prove it
Information doesn’t have to be flat, so find a way to create an experience or piece of content demonstrating what you would like the recipient to understand.
Take a look at Kern & Sohn’s Gnome Experiment. Ogilvy showed us how to makes Kern’s industry precision scales fun by asking the world to weigh a blue gnome and submit their reading. This blue gnome travelled to 152 countries around the world to demonstrate how good the scales were and to demonstrate that gravity alters our weight in different countries. Kern The Gnome even had his own blog and was lucky enough to meet Richard Hammond. If your business needs a precision scale these spring to mind (and I literally can’t name another industry level scale).
3. Keep friends close, but mavericks closer
If you always do what you have done, the reward actually diminishes. Why? Because your competitors are embracing change; raising the bar. So ensure your internal or agency team includes individuals who are pushing to do things differently by embracing new channels and formats.
4. Don’t let budget be your barrier
Okay, it makes life tougher, but there is often a simpler, budget-friendly way to be creative. You could crowd-source ideas or execution to reduce agency costs.
Although creativity can be seen as an expensive option, it is actually not just the quickest, but also the only way to reach many humans who have a multitude of options. It gives marketing a chance to stand out, and if delivered well using digital channels it creates opportunities for wider reach and lead generation opportunities.
5. Keep it simple
Don’t send just the plain facts. Ensure creativity complements the desired message and action as opposed to adding unnecessary complications. The key is still to create a simple user journey, but creativity will make them start that journey in the first place or help to make the message or content memorable.
Creativity doesn’t need to be complex to be effective so if you fear that a creative route will confuse the recipients then take it as a likely sign that it will. Remember you too are a professional who receives B2B communication. How would you respond to your own marketing?
