That’s Entertainment!

By Jamie Fewery

If Advertising is Entertainment, How is B2B Going to Show Up on Stage?

The big beasts of our industry have never quite agreed on whether or not advertising is entertainment. David Ogilvy emphatically said it isn’t, regarding it as a medium of information instead. Bill Bernbach differed, calling advertising an art. And more recent think pieces from the likes of Forbes and Adweek have explored how using entertainment to build brands is part of a wider shift away from performance marketing.

It’s complicated. No doubt, this is in part due to the reluctance of advertisers to equate themselves with entertainers. Despite being an industry of writers, storytellers, artists, and makers, commercial impetus sets us at one step removed from those create through inspiration and passion rather than pounds. Our work wouldn’t exist without someone paying us to do it, so we feel uncomfortable calling it art or entertainment – no matter how intelligent, interesting, or provocative it is.

But look at the facts. The age of influence means it’s common to employ the talents of the best entertainers to create work for brands as well as advocating for them. More importantly, those brands are increasingly cognisant that whatever they put out into the market enters an attention economy where being easy to ignore means wasted time and money.

Advertising is entertainment, or the best of it is, anyway. And for good reason. Cutting through is no longer a worthy mission for marketing when we exist in an attention economy that makes it near impossible to create a connection with our audience for more than half a second. Being entertaining doesn’t only improve your chances of making that connection; it justifies its existence as people engage with creative products on their terms rather than with your brand on yours.

Ain’t No Show If There Ain’t No Business

As is often the case, this is all more complex for business marketing than it is for consumer. B2C is traditionally more comfortable aiming for the heartstrings or funny bones of its audience and has been for many years. Most, if not all, of the marketing any of us can recall as legitimately entertaining has been consumer-focused – whether it’s a drumming gorilla that made you laugh or John Lewis’ skateboarding foster dad that made me cry.

There are reasons for this. B2B can reasonably be accused of taking itself too seriously. I’m not alone in having encountered feedback along the lines of “these are executives we’re talking to here” when taking a more glib, humorous, or relaxed tone in my work. But also, it’s harder to be entertaining when you’re selling to a group of eight people over five months, one of whom works in procurement.

Despite the challenges and the slightly intrinsic parsimony of many B2B companies, there are plenty of good reasons to overtly lean into being entertaining in our marketing. We talk a lot in these pages about the power of brand in B2B and the need to influence hidden buyers. Going above the noise is crucial to both objectives, and given that entertaining or artful ads gain greater attention everywhere from the Super Bowl to the social feed, there are commercial incentives as well as creative ones to pushing things in that direction. Even if it feels a little uncomfortable.

Put on Your Dancing Shoes

If we agree that advertising is entertainment (shut up, Ogilvy), then the question becomes what it looks, sounds, and feels like. For me, the best way to think about it is work that’s worthy of engaging with in and of itself. By which I mean it exists as a good thing to consume regardless of its status as marketing or an ad.

That, of course, is a tall order. Yet it’s not insurmountable. The history of advertising is rich with work millions have enjoyed earnestly, regardless of their association with the brand that made it. Off the cuff, I can recall genuinely beautiful car campaigns, a series of truly funny John Smith’s ads, and a Wes Anderson film for American Express that stands alone as a piece of brand building that can also be deemed a great piece of art.

B2B needn’t be excluded from this pretty decent party. Just as much as we can be a bit serious, our industry is full of insightful and interesting thinkers. And in my experience, interesting and insightful people are good at being funny, at understanding how to connect on an emotional level, and at how to grab and hold attention. All of which are the core ingredients of any entertainment product.

Some brands already get this. Workday’s rock stars campaign is probably the standout example from recent years. And yes, this is the exception rather than the rule. But it’s only a small mindset shift to go from humdrum and easily ignored to entertaining.

Often, this can be as simple as a format change. The pages you’re reading now are little more than thought leadership. We’ve just taken the shackles of overt professionalism off a bit and dressed it up in vintage clothes as a newspaper to create a more diverting product than another blog or eBook.

Why? Because in an era where everyone has more to read, listen to, and watch than they can get through in a lifetime, a branded eBook PDF is a pretty long way down the “to be read” pile. Equally, it can be a shift in mindset that turns marketing into entertainment. By which I mean realising that while the C-suite might be informed by spreadsheets and serious matters, a great way to connect with them before all that is to make them laugh or cry. Check out the Siemens Healthineers Magnetic Stories campaign as a great example of that.

It all comes down to the same thing advertisers have been working on for decades: how do we get people to listen to us rather than everyone else? As that challenge gets harder and harder, it’ll pay to think of ourselves as entertainers as well as marketers.

Showtime, everyone.