On the cover of an advertising magazine I read an article about an art director who said he was really tired of people still talking about ‘business-to-business’ (B2B). I can only assume that with B2B he only means ‘B2B marketing’, most advertising creatives rarely think beyond marketing when talking about companies. In his opinion, B2B should be replace by P2P (people-to-people) because it’s always ‘people doing business with people’ and there’s always a lot of emotion involved when people interact. I won’t argue with that, but then again; I don’t argue with the drunk that sleeps on the street and shouts at me that I should repent becasue the world is coming to an end. I will however, respond to the idea that ‘ B2B is dead, because you just have to target people in organisations’. I will actually give three responses! (indead, no less…)
First of all, I am sorry advertising world, P2P has already been taken. It stands for peer-to-peer, not people to people. Unfortunately it is therefor highly unlikely that it will replace B2B. I know how important a good acronym or brandneame is for anythiogn to become popular with ad-execs.
Second: It is generally assumed that in B2B marketing, emotion can not play a role since ‘businesses make rational decisions’. That is nonsense and has always been nonsense. On the other hand; it’s no reason to discard a fine term as ‘B2B’ either, unless we’re playing semantics here.
Third: businesses behave in ways that are no longer controlled by people. Especially large corporations behave like ant colonies behave; no single ant has much influence on what the colony does as a whole, and the colony is actually the enitity that ‘behaves’. This means; when businesses interact with other businesses, it’s not always a ‘people’ process, even though people (like ants) are always involved. Large organisations are like autonomous entities (organisms) that have their own ‘memories’, ‘knowledge’, ‘needs’, ‘behaviour’ et cetera. Ofcourse, this behaviour and these needs take place through the enitre organisation and not just the marketing department. however; the marketingdepartment will feel the influence of the organisationorganism it is situated in.
I’d say especially marketeers who work with ‘company profiles’, ‘positioningstatements, ‘organisation ambitions’, ‘corporate profiles’ and so on, should be able to understand that an organisation is more than just a collection of people in a shared building. They work hard to get the image across the spotlights that an organisation can be seen as one large -usually friendly- entity. Yet, they seem to fail to see how much of what they are saying is actually true.
Filed under: Erwin Fisser, advertising, business, corporate, marketing | Tagged: advertising, b2b, business, business to business, company statement, corporate profile, marketing, positioning
