|
The New Science of B-to-P Advertising By Michael AntmanEmail to a Friend 
B-to-B advertising is dead. Or if it isn’t, it should be. To be clear, it isn’t the advertising itself – well, not all of it, at least – that should just curl up and die. Merely the ubiquitous, reductive and deeply unhelpful “B-to-B” designation and all it stands for. And also, for that matter, the equally reductive and unhelpful, and even more ubiquitous, “B-to-C” (business-to-consumer) designation. To understand why these terms, and the antiquated advertising practices they represent, should be kicked to the gutter forthwith – and replaced with a single new category called B-to-P – a little background may be in order. The Invisible Empire of B-to-B Advertising Anyone with only a casual interest in the world of advertising would be forgiven for thinking that all ads without exception are designed to persuade, entice, convince, hector, seduce, wheedle, bewitch, coax, or bludgeon susceptible consumers into buying a vast variety of products – low-carb lite beer, Toyota Camrys, herbal vi*gra, roll-on deodorant, special-effects-laden movies, whatever – that have been manufactured, distributed and sold by corporations. (And, in most cases, to do so by means of commercials that attempt with modest success to satirize the humorous differences between the sexes.) Other than the vast, grey world of online and print classified advertising, that’s pretty much it, isn’t it? Actually, no. There is, as well, a huge but, to the general public, invisible empire of advertising, primarily in print, designed by businesses to sell products and services to other businesses. It’s called business-to-business,or B-to-B, advertising. B-to-B advertising is to B-to-C advertising what the huge refrigerated trucks idling outside your neighborhood supermarket in the early morning hours are to the beautiful displays of fresh foods you discover when you shop there later in the day – largely unseen, taken for granted, decidedly unglamorous, but absolutely essential. Unglamorous is a Polite Word for Ugly Business to business advertising is unglamorous partly because it isn’t intended to be seen by broad audiences. It’s specialized, deals with complex products and services, and uses language that in large part is comprehensible only to industry insiders – enhanced throughput, multi-exchange legger, algorithmic, POS, POP, POD and always, always, scalable. It’s so specialized, in fact, as to be practically balkanized. After all, it isn’t just the outside world that’s unaware of B-to-B advertising – most businesspeople themselves are almost entirely unaware of any B-to-B ads other than those that relate to their specific industry. Further, B-to-B advertising is not only a hidden and fragmented world, it’s a painfully dated and shabby-looking one as well – not much better, when compared to the whiz-bang CGI-like look of most consumer ads, than a set from the first run of the Star Trek series, circa 1966. In short, B-to-C advertising almost always has beautiful production values. B-to-B almost always does not. (The hotel bills alone for most out-of-town packaged goods commercial shoots would pay for some B-to-B production budgets in their entirety.) These differences aren’t subtle, by the way: Place a print B-to-B ad next to a print consumer ad, and the former will immediately un-distinguish itself by means of its cheap photography, labored layouts, and crummy colors. And that’s even before you get to the jargon-laden copy. Finally, B-to-B advertising is less glamorous than its B-to-C counterpart because it also is far more rational and far less emotional. This, at least – unlike the dated ugliness of B-to-B ads – makes some surface sense. Given the large sums of money involved and the complexity of the products and services, business-to-business buying decisions are generally made on a more rational and less emotional basis that consumer decisions, where a particular brand of cereal is presumably plucked off the shelf on a whim, and a new car is purchased not because it gets great mileage and is rated as most reliable by Consumer Reports but because it just looks so damn good. Needed: A New Paradigm But when examined closely, the assumption that B-to-B advertising needs to be distinctly different from B-to-C is not as persuasive as it first appears. This is, in part, because it is a denial of human nature – not to mention an insult to to the average businessperson -- to assume that he or she is an unfeeling automaton who responds only to poorly designed ads comprising product specs, stock photos and industry argot. Make no mistake: Compared to consumer purchases, business-to-business purchase decisions are indeed made on a more rational basis. But they’re still made by human beings. Furthermore, these human beings, when they’re not in their offices, are exposed to the same beer, car, shampoo and video game ads as everyone else. Looked at another way, a fairly large percentage of “consumers” are also, when they’re not on their couches anymore but back at their desks, the very same individuals who make big-ticket business-to-business purchase decisions. Thus, it’s probably a good idea for business-to-business advertisers to think of their ads as competing directly with B-to-C advertising. The products themselves – SAP software vs. button-fly Gap jeans, for example – aren’t at all competitive. But the ads do compete for the attention and interest of business executives, who have only two eyeballs and so many hours in a day. And when it’s a slick, beautifully produced commercial vs. a dull-as-industrial-dishwashing-system print ad, it’s no contest at all. What does it say about a high-tech company’s state-of-the-art technology when its advertising – a proxy, after all, for the company itself – is utterly artless? In short, B-to-B advertising must learn to compete at a higher and more professional level. That, in turn, means better production values, less jargon, and a greater attempt to put sales messages into an emotional context – without, in the process, diluting the rational argument behnd the messages or aping some of the loopier aspects of B-to-C, such as the creative-development process that begins by asking, “if your company were a tree, what kind of tree would it be?” At the same time, a significant portion of B-to-C advertising could take a cue from B-to-B advertising and offer more rational sales messages – or any sales messages at all, as opposed to the usual inane jokes. What’s needed, clearly, is a new paradigm for all advertising that erases the artificial distinctions and recognizes the commonality of purpose that every form of advertising shares. Hey, We’re All Just People Here Call it B-to-P – business to people – advertising. Regardless of what industry the ad is aimed at, it should be aimed, first of all, at people -- thinking and feeling human beings. That means, in the case of advertising directed at businesses, crafting ads just as interesting and emotionally compelling as – and, at the same time, rather more strategic and rationally based than – the average consumer ad. B-to-P advertising calls for higher production values, and therefore slightly higher production budgets, than the typical B-to-B ad, but by awakening the interest and attention of a bored and jaded target audience who’s seen enough factory-floor shots to last a lifetime, is likely to pay off substantially in the long run. For far too long, an unthinking sort of inertia has enforced an artificial distinction between the two forms of advertising that in turn has reinforced the worst instincts of both. B-to-P advertising, on the other hand, minimizes those distinctions, and allows B-to-B to reach its full potential as a branding and sales-development tool by recognizing the full complexity of the human beings the ads are intended to persuade. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| © Copyright 2003-2004 | McSweeney & Antman | t: 847.920.1252 | e:info@mcsweeneyantman.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
