All too often, the B2B space is seen as the poor marketing cousin to its B2C counterparts. And, actually, all too often that’s true. Occasionally B2B brands recognise that in increasingly competitive marketing environments where products and services are ubiquitous, differentiation is difficult. They understand that their brand and reputation are about the only things that set them apart from competitors.

B2B brands are different. At least the ones with vision are. With a mandate for change comes opportunity. Faced with the realisation that there’s almost always a competitor(s) down the road that can offer the same product or service, Business brands have only their brand and reputation to rely on. So they’re keen to make sure that the brand holds value and that the value is communicated effectively.

Protecting brand equity doesn’t allow for creative innovation in B2C brands

This is a very different position from B2C brands. The big B2C brands seem to spend little time innovating or pushing their brand forward. They’ll tell you they do, but really, they’re just recycling the same old same old…‘New!’… ‘New, improved’… ‘Improved!’… ‘New Original!’… etc.

The focus of their marketing efforts is protecting the brand equity already built up over a number of hard fought, stress filled years. Which is fine, but unlikely to provide the feeding ground for creative innovation that is required to impact the entire organisation. In many respects, it could be argued that it is this marketing inertia and failure to integrate the brand that perpetuates the omission (or exclusion) of marketers from the boardroom.

Success of B2B branding requires single focus and support from top down

Effective B2B communications stretch well beyond a good press release. The brand strategy and its implementation through communications can be a formative time for many business brands. Not least because the success of that venture relies on the unequivocal support of the plan at the very highest levels of the organisation… this places a marketer in the boardroom.

From that heady vantage point, the brand and the corporate reputation and the advertising campaigns and the website and the brochures and collateral are no longer disengaged tactical entities. They’re all part of a single focus – creative brand communications on which the company’s reputation is based.

Creativity is an obstacle

The ‘creative’ part is important here. It’s unlikely that the trite and the tired style of communication is going to define the reputation that such an organisation would like to engender. In other words, handshakes and pinstriped suits and people using mobile phones are out.

Creativity is an obstacle, because ‘creativity’ is not the best tool to bridge the chasm between marketing and the executive boardroom. Ask a Financial Director for his/her interpretation of ‘creative’ and they’ll roll their eyes, snort, puff and insist on multiple cheque signatories. Ask a marketer for their description of an accountant and you’ll receive broadly the same reaction. And so there’s the rub – creativity is the essential ingredient required to guide and enhance the reputation of brands the world over, but the protagonists are poles apart.

There is clearly potential for young turks scaling the corporate ladder to make a real difference to how their brands are perceived and how their reputations might be secured – personal and corporate.

Your thoughts?

How do you view creativity as a contributor to brand reputation? How important is it in communicating the brand story? Please feel free to post your comments or talk to us on Twitter Scot McKee.