Recently the principal at a private equity firm asked me.

“Do you work with a B2B (Business to Business) Brands or just B2C (Business to Consumer)?”

A question we get from clients all the time.

The answer is simple. They are one-and-the same. In our mind, there’s no such thing as B2B.

Or for that matter B2C

There’s only H2H. Human-to-human.

Great branding and marketing depend on understanding and empathizing with your audience.

Not to get all Mitt Romney here.  But companies are people too. 

Filled with human beings (like us) who have a problem in need of a solution.

A way to make their day go easier, smoother, better.  Less stressful.  More successful

It doesn’t matter if that something is a soft drink or a supply chain workaround.

Not long ago, Insurgents was tasked with creating a positioning for a real estate tech company.

Our audience: building facility managers.

During our stakeholder interviews, we learned that all day long, these managers (aka: people) are bombarded with a rapid-fire flow of data from heating systems, energy meters, work orders, alarms, hotspots and deliveries. 

We imagined it sounded something like this.

“Pershgol nif ert lineal bockti lig lig padi wadi goti bliper?

Blah. Blah. Blah.”

Gibberish - impossible to decipher – let alone make sense of and act upon in real time. 

So, we positioned the platform as a “UN interpreter”. Someone who could recognize, understand and crack the code of any issue in a split second and translate the myriad of intel into logical and actionable language.

Injecting humanity into a situation that might have been rife with unemotive, dry, technical jargon.

We said - why can’t B2B be fun and imaginative?

Mark Choueke, author of Boring to Brave, makes the case for more bravery in B2B marketing. Marketing – by its very definition and purpose – should not be forgettable. It shouldn’t leave people feeling indifferent. We should aim to make the target recipient of our marketing efforts feel something (or at least remember seeing it.”

I agree with Mark: B2B – or H2H – marketing should create bigger, better, braver stories forged from creativity and craft. Ideas that unshackle marketers from the humdrum, joyless task that is currently B2B.

Forget that simple truth and your efforts with be dull, stale, safe - boooring. Wah wah wah.

How do you create more human communications?

• Avoid the corporate gobbledygook. Talk like a person.

• Don’t be afraid of using humor. Or metaphors. Have fun with function.

• Envision your audience’s circumstances, their fears, struggles and pain points.

• What’s stopping them from succeeding?

And solve that problem for them.

Once you embrace this philosophy, you’ll shake up your message and create ideas that are less corporate - and far more compelling. The result will positively impact the perception of your brand.

And absolutely differentiate yourself from your competition.

If you agree with this concept, get in touch. And let’s make something human.