Inspiration is no longer the preserve of B2C, as evidenced by a study by Wunderman Thompson and the award-winning “Speaking in Color” campaign for paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams.
Rational, serious, professional… The associated qualifications B2B marketing they seem very far from emotion. And if B2B was still successful, even better than its B2C twin, the synthesis between reason and feeling ? “Hyper-targeting, lead generation… we tend to see B2B marketing as very rational, short term and emotionless in the way it operates.analyzes Vincent Druguet, CEO France and Spain of the Wunderman Thompson agency. But, being human, B2B is becoming more and more permeable to the personal and more particularly to inspiration, humor and storytelling. While continuing to be robust in its fundamentals, such as white papers.”
Thus, marketing expenses are multiplied at the top of the funnel, to attract prospects, until now the prerogative of B2C players. Trial : Squarespace, ClickUp, Intuit or Salesforce… These four B2B companies have achieved sensation during the 2022 Super Bowl by buying ad space that sold millions of dollars. “These brands understand the importance of investing well in advance of the purchaseconfirms Adrien Mancel, creative director of Wunderman Thompson, to reach a wider audience.
But, all B2B brands are still far from having taken the plunge into the “inspirational” campaign.. To convince the refractory, Wunderman Thompson published, in 2021, the “Global Inspire B2B” study, the results of which show that inspiring brands – which advertise at the top of the funnel with B2C codes – are five times more likely to be the first choice of a B2B buyer… and that 72% of consumers expect us to inspire them. Memorization, trust, consideration, recommendation… By adding emotion, brands can increase their performance on all these indicators… “and their long-term growth”, slips Vincent Druguet. According to Wunderman Thompson’s study*, inspiring companies are 2.2 times more likely to be recalled, 16 times more likely to be recommended. And they are considered 20% more reliable than the others.
Rationalize the emotion
So how do you put emotion back into your marketing? In 2022, Wunderman Thompson won the first Creative B2B Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions with his “Speaking in Color” campaign for paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams, a customer of 6 years. The agency and brand with 50,000 colours, whose audience is mainly composed of architects, started from “Professionals’ obsession with finding the right paint color and the right supplier“, says Vincent Druguet.
“There is nothing more rational and more emotional than color: it is both precise and vague, because there are a thousand shades, continues Adrien Mancel. So we had the idea, during the Covid-19, of a technological tool. It is an artificial intelligence, based on Google algorithms and on a code developed by the agency, which uses the recognition of language, written or spoken, to search for images on Google. These images are then broken down to identify a color or color palette unique to each architect.” Tested with a selection of architects in the USA, the functionality, in the form of an app, has already generated 16 million possibilities during an experiential tour and is expected to be exported by end 2022 / beginning 2023 An inspiring B2B idea… for B2C?
* Source: Wunderman Thompson Global Inspire Study, B2B Brands, 2021
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