Before we go any further, it is important to agree on one key fact:
marketing and selling products or services in the business-to-business environment is decidedly different than doing the same in the world of consumer goods and services. If you don’t agree with that, say Chris Wirthwein and Joe Bannon, authors of “The People Powered Brand” (Paramount Marketing Publishing, 2014), then you can skip reading this article and continue to use consumer branding methods to promote your company. But Bannon and Wirthwein have one question: How’s that working out for you?
Wirthwein and Bannon are, respectively, CEO and a senior vice president at 5MetaCom, an advertising agency and brand advisory firm that focuses solely on brands in the technical and scientific products category. They say that many B2B companies apply the features-focused consumer goods branding model and mindset to their products and services because they don’t understand the subtle and unique differences between consumer goods and what they call “considered purchase” B2B brands.
“It’s not that consumer goods branding methods are bad. They work great for consumer goods,” Bannon states in the book. But unlike consumer goods, which are driven primarily by advertising, promotion, PR and paid media, B2B considered purchases almost always require interaction with company personnel or their agents, distributors, dealers or independent reps in the selection, purchase and use of the product.
“If there’s one key lesson I gained from managing strategy and corporate branding for a large global B2B company, it’s that success has as much or more to do with what happens inside the company — with its people — as it does with anyone in the marketplace outside,” says Bannon. “Failure to engage the hearts, minds and behaviors of the people inside the company is the number one reason B2B corporate brands and branding efforts struggle to succeed in the marketplace.”
Flipping the product-to-people ratio
If you agree with Wirthwein’s and Bannon’s premise that considered purchases rely on the people who market and sell them, then “look and feel” becomes a smaller part of the marketing equation. When it comes to consumer goods, 80 percent of the brand is driven by look and feel and 20 percent by people’s behaviors. If you’re a B2B considered purchase marketer, the ratio is completely flipped: your brand is 80 percent determined by employee behaviors and just 20 percent by look and feel, the authors state.
As a result, the starting place for any branding effort in a B2B environment must be internal.
The authors call it “enrollment.” In essence, it is ensuring that there is a uniform and cohesive understanding and embracing of the brand in the hearts and minds of all employees. “The purpose
of brand enrollment is to move the brand from head to heart. You can call it engagement, culture, alignment — or whatever you like. But whatever you call it, know this: companies that get the alignment right with the greatest number of their people end up with a significant advantage over their competition — and advantage no competitor’s ad campaign can blunt,” they state.
Only when internal alignment has been achieved should the brand message be extended into the marketplace. That is where the consumer products branding method almost always fails for B2B considered purchase company brands. The consumer branding method places the majority of emphasis on promotional activities in the external marketplace and not on people behaviors.
The B2B buyer adoption model
But does the people-powered branding concept hold up in a world where studies show that B2B buyers are 50 percent or more through the buying process before they even reach out to suppliers? Wirthwein argues that it does. If you consider a standard five-step adoption model of awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption, the first few phases can be handled through promotion, but as buyers get closer to the purchase, they throw away the non-people resources and begin to deal with people.
If someone is going to buy a turbine engine to fire a power plant, Wirthwein says, they may do a fair amount of research. “But when it comes to getting that gas turbine engine into my power plant and getting it working right, and helping my people understand how
to operate it and get the most efficiency out of it, there are a lot of people involved on both sides of the equation. That’s why it is so vitally important for B2B organizations that brand doesn’t just belong to the marketing department. If there is a lack of alignment of our people if we’re selling to that brand, that can have negative effects on the buyer.”
By considering your branding “media” in the broadest sense, you almost force yourself to enlist all of your people to properly represent your brand. The vehicles available to mobilize your brand go far beyond the traditional forms of media, such as your website, trade shows, magazine advertising and emails. “All of the people who matter to your brand should be thought of
as media,” Wirthwein and Bannon state. “This includes your people, your messages, and all of the properties under your control.” (See sidebar on page 32.)
Because perceptions contribute to customer creation, corporate brands are central to the basic purpose of every business. That makes brands worthy of attention at the highest levels over every organization. As Wirthwein points out, “copying products has never been easier, and it’s bound to get even easier. But can someone copy a company’s brand, culture and essence? It’s nearly impossible.”
The real buying takes place over a long period of time through interactions with many people — the technical people, the R&D people, the customer service people, the logistics people, shipping, etc. When they all know what the company’s brand is about and it shows up in the way they interact, that creates comfort, Wirthwein says. That makes the value of the brand increase, and it makes the feature wars a little less important.
“Joe and I have seen the lack of a simple, clear and compelling message sink more brands than even the worst of strategies. What’s even more damaging is when your people say one thing and your marketing says something entirely different,” Wirthwein says. “Risk and suspicion go up and that’s when selling goes down.”
Successful people-powered brands don’t appear and behave in ways that are self-contradictory. The don’t exaggerate or make claims and promises they cannot deliver. And they don’t pretend to be things they are not. Ultimately, fulfilling the promise of a people-powered brand means embracing new behaviors to connect your people with the brand.
