Fresh Ideas In Progress
Branding in a B2B Market
We’re working on a brand positioning project for a client company that wants to communicate a consistent, market-driving message to their business-to-business (B2B) base. In fact, this company is dead set on not communicating with the consumer market, declaring (correctly) that the cost is too high and the success rate too low to build any sort of valuable consumer awareness, let alone recall and preference.
It’s an industry with a shrinking customer base, its channels way too full of “Going Out of Business” sales and other manufacturers and distributors going retail with their own branded stores.
In fact, the chairman and CEO of the company began a recent meeting with us by characterizing the marketplace this way: “It’s chaos out there.”
Why bother building brand in a B2B environment when every one of your customers is someone with whom you’re likely already doing business? What do you need to tell them, what do they need to know that your independent representatives aren’t telling them during their sales calls every four-to-six weeks?
In a product-driven market—as this one certainly is—all too often the selling proposition is wrapped-up in the next product. Customers come to you and ask, “What’s new?” And sales people, naturally, gravitate to the new thing instead of harping on what’s been working for them ... and for their customer.
I don’t care what business you’re in, the cost of “what’s new” is astronomical. Research and development, product prototyping and sampling, tooling, not to mention the marketing costs of an introduction or a “launch” - all of these add up to crate higher stakes and risks for the brand, the retail channel and, to some extent, even the consumer. (Take it from me: I bought a LaserVision player, the precursor to the DVD, but full platter size. I was a Sony “Betamax” owner, only later to change out that system for the ultimately ubiquitous VHS video system. And I purchased one of the first PDA’s, Apple’s “Newton.”)
Don’t get me wrong: “What’s next,” in this era of spirited innovation and creativity, is important, even critical to keeping brands fresh. But the brand that relies on its next introduction for its identity is in a perilous competitive position.
So in our B2B branding project, we’re focused on telling a branding story that puts “new” or “next” within the broader context of reliably consistent success. Doing business with our client’s company is a smart decision, and the smartest decisions are simple to understand. So it’s most powerful when you can reduce all the complex systems you employ to help make your customers’ decisions easier, simpler.
That’s what we’re working to do. It’s a powerful idea, and it’s coming to life.
Update:
Slide Show: The actual showroom graphics
we produced to deliver the message.
Video: The showroom presentation for “Simplify.”