B2B brands just aren’t like consumer-facing brands, are they?

This was the rather stunning reaction from a colleague when I declared I’d be working in the b2b environment, and one on which I dwelt awhile. Was she right? Would my skills and experience be as relevant to the b2b world as to the world of everyday household brands?

All great brands add meaning and importantly value, beyond the rational, to the products and services with which they are associated. Put simply, a b2b brand should be no different from a consumer facing brand in terms of the rigour with which it is constructed and the passion and dedication required to nurture it to success and profit.

And why wouldn’t they? They’re similar in so many ways;

• Each needs a foundation in clear insight into the customer’s needs and must meet (or come close enough to) their expectations around what they’ll pay for it.

• Each must demonstrate consistency where and whenever they are encountered, not only to ensure efficiency in the marketing investment, but also to avoid diluting the message or worse still, confusing the customer.

• Last but not least, each must grow with the changing dynamics of the customer and markets. This last challenge is perhaps the greatest and one which famously IBM and the Sony Walkman brands failed to respond to through the 80s and 90s. Equally, today’s markets can no longer be measured in decades or even years – quarters or months more like!

Markets are changing more rapidly than ever, fuelled by increasing competition, the changed purchasing behaviours of Recession, the fusion of consumer and industry technologies, and the 'always on' internet .

Such are the pressures of coping with this pace of change, many business people lose sight of what they’re really in business to achieve (the strategy) and focus is diverted on just keeping all the plates spinning (the tactical and daily grind!). Without regular and objective reference to strategy and what you want to mean to your customers (or put another way, brand positioning) it’s easy to lose your way. At Think Smart Marketing we aim to help you do both, ensuring we balance the smart thinking around brand definition with the need to continue to 'spin the plates'.

So, is there really any difference between a b2b and a b2c brand? There are very few rules of branding which don’t apply to both. The communication channels through which the messages are passed may differ based on the volume of targets each is aiming to influence; potentially fewer numerically in the b2b case but the desired response from communications is identical – to move mindsets towards the purchase of that product or service.

Increasingly, as consumer goods marketers understand that it’s more about ‘engaging the few’ rather than ‘telling the many’, the once separate worlds of b2b and b2c marketing are fusing. It’s no longer the 18m+ audiences on a Coronation Street ad break that consumer brands covet, it’s the quality and stickiness of the threads across the big social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. A radical example of social media use in the b2c world is Skittles. If you go to www.skittles.com you first wonder if they actually have a site at all. In fact, it seems like they control very little of their site. It’s just a small control panel with six options. Clicking on most of these takes you to pages on social media sites that provide the content:

Homepage: in fact a Twitter page with a list of twitters about Skittles

Videos: the YouTube channel

Photos: the Flickr group page

Friends: the Skittles Facebook group.

They’ve in effect handed over their website (and their brand) to the consumers whose comments and input drive the content. It's pretty brave if you think about it, but also very engaging. It says the message colourfully and clearly to anyone who's a fan of the primary-hued chews: get involved, you are very much part of the brand, we want to hear from you.

You can’t do this without real clarity and confidence in how the brand should act, and react, in chat forums and in any number of multi-media dimensions. In how many b2b organisations would such depth of understanding about the brand exist?

So, whilst there’s little difference in the techniques used to develop and define brands in the b2b and b2c environments, a clear and widely understood definition of Brand with real understanding and traction across the organisation is paramount if you want to be successful in this new world of ‘open engagement’. Done well, the potential for truly engaging new and existing customers through transparent dialogue centred on a well-crafted brand is limitless.

How well defined is your brand? If you’d like to find out more, please contact Peter Kirby at Think Smart Marketing.

(Footnote: Peter is Strategic Director, Consumer at Think Smart Marketing having spent over 15 years (re)defining and building great brands including Schweppes, Holsten Pils and Tango. He is passionate about going back to the basic foundations of branding, building real insight around customer needs and bringing brand propositions to life for those selling it.)

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