How CTV is unlocking B2B creative

B2B campaigns rarely used to make their way onto TV screens. Now thanks to CTV that’s changing, unlocking new creative potential along the way.

Most B2B marketing creatives have likely seen an uptick in ambition, scope, and the bravery of their work over the last few years. It feels like we’re now well out of the ‘it’s just B2B’ mindset, no longer held back by a list of things B2B doesn’t do in favor of the ebooks and infographics that for too long were the big guns in the business marketing arsenal (btw I am not having a go at ebooks, but there’s more to life etc).

More than ever, B2B creatives will see their work in OOH, at events, and in sponsorship campaigns. As businesses invest more in building brand power and less in performance, bigger and bolder ideas are rubber-stamped and turned into creatively exciting campaigns.

But still. There are some areas where B2B has remained slightly in the shadows, and if you choose to spend your career marketing to businesses rather than consumers, you’re much less likely to have that ‘look mum, I’m on TV’ moment when your ad appears on the box. Happily, CTV is now changing all that, enabling B2B marketers to meet the glamor of TV advertising with the granular targeting that clients crave.

CTV opportunities

The reasons for B2B’s historic absence from TV are valid. Broadcast TV advertising is very expensive, often too punchy for all but the biggest B2B budgets. It’s also wasteful if you’re targeting a niche audience or trying to convey a niche message. While the ‘businesses are just humans’ adage is true on an emotional level, it’s false on a commercial one – companies do not make buying decisions like you and me. So, while you can build brand through high-impact, low-target tactics such as broadcast, you probably won’t build sales.

Personally, I’ve seen this up close, having created hundreds of campaign films during my career in B2B marketing. A fractional number have been broadcast. Indeed, the one that sticks in the mind was a sports campaign, primarily activating a large sponsorship of a golf tournament for a shipping company. About as brand-led as it gets.

It’s why the advent and popularization of CTV is so transformational for B2B advertisers. It allows us to push creativity, while ensuring our clients that we’re delivering relevant content and avoiding the expensive wastage they saw in broadcast. Right now, I’m seeing CTV’s benefit to our creative in two ways: audience and message.

Targeting potential

In the case of the former, we always have to remember that businesses buy in groups, with decisions tending to take a long time and a nuanced, involved process. As such, effective audience targeting and messaging are vital for every bit of marketing we do. While whatever happens at a brand level might stir up some positive feeling, B2B marketers have to ensure the head is catered for as much as the heart. Which brings me to message.

In short, that means regardless of the ambition and interest of the creative we’re running, at some point we’re going to have to use some specific language that resonates with some specific people. And likely fly right over the heads of everyone outside that small subset.

Take a CFO or senior finance audience. If we’re working with a fintech, they want us to do two things for their brand in front of that group of people: make sure we connect and make sure they sound credible in front of them.

CTV gives us the chance to do both at once, through video that stands out enough to pay attention to, while using the language, reference points, social proof, and customer stories that would wash over a mass audience, but be spot on for the right smaller one.

Last year alone, we saw numerous campaigns do exactly this. We created work that led with humor while sounding smart to a B2B travel audience. We made CX innovation simple and smart for tech buyers. We put our work on what remains the best mass communications medium, and ensured they were as effective as the most targeted B2B marketing of old.

Jamie Fewery
Creative Director