As advocates of B2B technology, we’re always excited to celebrate the success of brands in this space. Fortunately, we’ve never had such a rich field of pickings to choose from. B2B has become supercharged in all sorts of ways over the last few years, from climate drivers to booming industries. And some B2B brands are supercharged in more ways than one – just look at Mailchimp.
By anyone’s metric, the all-in-one marketing platform had a big year in 2021. Early in the year, the company’s iconic branding (ft. Freddie the winking monkey) received an injection of fresh life with some clever creative.
Reflecting Mailchimp’s evolution from a newsletter distribution tool to a global, cross-channel marketing platform, Mailchimp worked with branding studio DIA to develop a kinetic identity with varied creative applications. The result was striking, breathing new energy into the brand while still honouring the iconic Freddie logo.
But the new kinetic identity was by no means the end of Mailchimp’s creative ambition for the year. In September, its in-house team launched a new bold campaign, ‘More than a Small Business’ – a campaign featuring five imaginary SMBs. Inspired by real customers, the films featured absurdist humour and a charmingly recognisable pastel palette.
In a still-relatively-unusual step for B2B brands, the spots were aired on TV to capture maximum attention. In a field that frequently relies on hyper-personalised targeting via LinkedIn (and gets a little bit obsessed with metrics), we’re always delighted to see a big creative bet on a channel with wider reach.
And as the year closed, the biggest news yet. Intuit confirmed rumours it was purchasing Mailchimp for a cool $12 billion, an acquisition which raised a few quizzical eyebrows. Tax and email marketing might not seem like natural bedfellows (Intuit is best known for being the tech platform behind TurboTax, QuickBooks and Mint) – so what was the thinking here?
According to Intuit, the acquisition was aimed at creating more holistic capabilities for business owners. As the press release put it: “The combination of Mailchimp and QuickBooks together will create a robust engine for small and mid-market success”. In other words: there’s big value in becoming a one-stop shop for SMBs. Whatever the thinking, it’s great to see a B2B brand receive so much investment.
It all speaks to one, glorious truth: B2B brands have never had so much opportunity to be creative, garner attention and, critically, attract investors. In just 20 years, Mailchimp has grown from a simple tool for small business users, to a major force in the B2B marketing space.
The brand is now a prime example of what Supercharged B2B looks like, and we’re excited to see what Intuit and Mailchimp build together next.
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