Oh, the humanity
It’s well understood that, in our personal lives, we make brand and purchasing decisions based upon a combination of the tangible and intangible, whether we’re buying clothes, a car, a mobile phone. Some of this is feature related - the biggest screen, the most storage - but it’s also about aesthetics and design, about the experience, and increasingly, borne out by market data, it’s about alignment of values.
This mix of the qualitative and the quantitative, the rational and the emotional, informs consumer branding, design, marketing and advertising. It’s taught in advertising courses and industrial design classes. It drives luxury car brands, “custom shop” guitars and Hermés iPhones, and it influences which coffee shop we visit, our preference for a given airline, the complex brand architecture of major hotel chains.
“We’re the same people at work that we are in our personal lives and the purchasing decisions we make are just as critical—and sometimes more so.”
Yet, based on the majority of B2B tech marketing out there, it would seem we believe as an industry that, when those same buyers arrive at work, all of the intangibles are left at home. We apparently cease to value experience, brand, alignment, and make our purchasing decisions based on a ruthless analysis of speeds and feeds.
This is manifestly nonsense. We’re the same people at work that we are in our personal lives and the purchasing decisions we make are just as critical—and sometimes more so. Buy the wrong phone and you're stuck with it a couple of years until you can upgrade. Buy the wrong network security platform and you could be looking for another job. People take this personally, as the number of Linux penguin tattoos out there demonstrates. Companies that understand this stand out from the noise. They align brand to culture and culture to buyer, presenting themselves authentically and building a customer base whose loyalty transcends mere feature set.
This approach to B2B marketing has another significant advantage—it builds alignment and culture internally. In a fast moving tech company, whether you’re a founder, a sales leader or a developer, youʼre likely excited about what youʼre building, passionate about the value it brings. So why does your marketing too frequently capture none of that excitement at all? Liberate your messaging from buzzword hell and bring that same sense of animation and enthusiasm to your brand.