Hot Fuss

By Jamie Fewery

There have been enough blogs, articles and LinkedIn posts written about levelling up creativity in B2B marketing. So this won’t be one of them.

Instead, I’m going to look at one of the main barriers to great creative in business marketing, and how we can knock it down. For want of a better word, I’m going to call this fussiness.

Get fussed

B2B is almost intrinsically fussy. It’s fussy in how it thinks about its audience, about buyer journeys, about decision-making groups, and about the way it addresses those things in comms.

Often this is informed by good intentions – ‘businesses are complicated things and getting through to them demands a lot of thought’. As well as by experience – ‘we’ve worked in B2B a long time and so really get this stuff’.

The trouble comes when marketers are so keen to be like that bright lad in maths class and show their working, instead of allowing the output of their intentions and experience to exist below the surface as insight.

What happens then is overly messaged, artistically complex work where everything is on show, except the point it’s trying to make.

Fussy is there in overly designed ads that place more importance on gimmickery and conceptual tricks than beauty. It’s there in copy that ties itself in knots to explain how a product or service works, rather than why it matters. And it’s certainly there in brand films that manage to make 90 seconds feel like three hours.

So why does it happen?

Fuss off

There’s an argument to say that fussiness is caused by clever people showing you that they’re clever. But, for me, it’s deeper than that.

The messy complexity in business marketing comes down to a lack of confidence, rather than an abundance of intelligence. Overloading work is a crutch for the creative who can’t quite back their inclination to be singular in purpose and simple in delivery.

When we do too much we probably avoid the client feedback about why their entire value prop isn’t in that one LinkedIn ad. And we certainly avoid the need for our client services friends to sell in work that might feel a little challenging at first glance. Crucially, we also protect our egos against comparison with consumer creatives, making the excuse that they can’t do what we do because it’s just too complicated.

It’s a win for everyone, except the work itself.

With that in mind, there’s an argument to say that complexity and fuss is B2B’s comfort blanket. It’s easier to approve on first review because everything is on the surface. And while it might not sweep the board at Cannes, there’s a good chance it’ll be effective if it’s well made and backed up by the right level of media and performance work.

It’s why fussy work becomes pervasive in B2B, contributing to marketing that defies the old storytelling maxim of show don’t tell. Cutting through it relies on not succumbing to the comfort blanket.

Fuss this

I’ve come to believe that if you’re going into a presentation for a new or existing client and there are no butterflies, you’ve probably not been brave enough. No matter how rock solid the insight, or how much you love the creative, unless there’s that underlying sense that you’re about to do a bungee jump and aren’t totally sure that the cord will hold, you’ve not gone far enough.

For us in B2B that feeling often comes when we’re about to present something simple, clear and to the point. We might know that at first glance it’ll look and sound good. But as the feedback conversation continues, the door is open for ‘what about this / what about that’ comments that require us to either hold firm, back and sell our concept; or dilute it to allow back in the layers that were stripped away.

But there are more good reasons to back simple, confident marketing than to step away from it. Simplicity connects – we know the more messages marketing relays, the less it’s likely to be remembered. Simplicity cuts through, particularly when so many B2B markets are saturated with fussy nonsense. And simplicity is memorable – it’s why so many ads have passed into our collective memory, from drumming gorillas to cars glued to billboards.

What this comes down to is new demands on both sides of the client and agency relationship. Agencies, particularly the creatives, should always put forward an idea that stands for something clear, simple and interesting – even if there’s a chance of it being shot down. And clients should ask to be challenged, and mean it.

If we can do that, then together we stand a good chance of chasing the fuss out of B2B.