I’ve been feeling very good about B2B Marketing recently. Not the magazine, or the website (though they are both fantastic) but the genre. Until today that is. Rushing down the stairs to the tube at Waterloo station I was struck by a monstrosity of a poster ad for Brother printers. It felt like a throw back to the 1990s. Shame on you Brother, and your agency.
I know it’s just an poster campaign and I should be recognising what is a great bit of media buying, but I’m willing to bet that I and perhaps a few other of you sensitive marketers are the only people that remember it and for that reason it’s depressing. Not only is it a brand (or possibly a product range) ad focusing on a feature that is so generic (speed), but the execution is frankly insulting. A man hurdling a desk. A man hurdling a desk, of all things.
I thought we’d progressed beyond that. I thought we all recognised that we may select a product on it’s features but we select a brand on much more subtle things. Things we don’t necessarily consciously recognise but that are more powerful and more influencial than any product feature. Especially in such a mature market like office printers!
We have to do better, in fact most of are. The sophistication of planning observable across all B2B sectors is way above this, but just a few of you (and you know who you are) are letting the side down.