Millennials, now in positions of influence across markets, have redefined the design look and feel of B2B branding. What is the millennial aesthetic, and could it help your business connect more powerfully with today’s stakeholders? Let’s dive into understanding this fascinating design trend and what it could mean for your next B2B brand…
Technology brands operate in fiercely competitive markets where it’s essential to find ways to stand out and communicate unique value. That means a tech company’s logo and greater visual identity need to launch their brand storytelling on sight—signaling who they are, what makes them different, what kinds of promises they make and…
Hospitals today are investing billions of dollars: purchasing, acquiring, merging, integrating, upgrading, all with the goal of improving patient care at an affordable cost. But to get the most out of these investments – to connect with patients, healthcare professionals, and the communities they serve – hospitals must invest in, and leverage, one of their most important business assets: their brand.
The B2B marketplace—known for its complex products and services and long, specs-heavy business development cycles—overflows with content. B2B brands often lean into the depth and excellence of what they do to beat their competitors, focusing on getting the granular details right. There’s another way to stand apart, however. And in the…
Brand positioning. It was a concept pioneered by branding legends Jack Trout and Al Ries in the 1960s. Today, it’s the essential foundation on which comprehensive B2B marketing plans are based—from print campaigns to digital engagement, from sales outreach to recruitment efforts, and from content strategy to customer journey mapping.
Brand positioning defines…
Generative artificial intelligence (AI)—defined by McKinsey & Company as “algorithms…that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos”—is a hot topic in B2B branding, and responses range from excitement to concern.
On one hand, generative AI makes common tasks easier and faster to complete, and…
As B2B marketers know, there’s a big difference between a considered decision and an impulsive one when it comes to buying behavior. However, it’s a mistake to compare consumers and B2B purchasers in black and white terms, thinking of consumers as emotional and B2B buyers as logical. Human beings act on their feelings…
The ironic thing about your brand’s image is that you can’t actually see it. Image as it relates to your brand is a metaphor, an idea meant to conjure up the assured sense of truth that comes with witnessing something concrete (and hopefully positive) with your own eyes. Your customers can’t see loyalty, trust, or any other quality, but an effective brand strategy can help them make the connection. First though, you’ll need to learn to see these qualities yourself.
Playwright Tom Stoppard once said, “Words are sacred…if you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” We agree, especially when it’s time to discuss the good you do as acts of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).
We took a look at the annual CSR reports from…
Brand behavior defines how a brand engages stakeholders in day-to-day interactions and moments, bringing the company’s values, personality and promises to life for customers, investors, partners and/or employees. It’s the brand strategy in action at the moment people make important decisions like whether to invest in the business, consider/buy…
When you find yourself in a highly competitive field, with multiple companies offering similar products and services, branding around quality, functionality, and price can be a race to the bottom. In virtually every category, “Better, cheaper, faster” is a sure-fire way to lose the attention of your audience. When everyone says the same thing…
According to Harvard Business Review, the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions ranges from 70–90%. Many factors can contribute to the success or failure of companies being combined. But too often, brand is not championed or leveraged during these critical moments—even though it can provide clarity and inspire invaluable unity across essential stakeholders…
Brand strategy is the tool that shapes a law firm’s identity and role in people’s lives—how it looks, sounds, behaves and interacts with them—to build relationships defined by trust and loyalty. And in a world that bombards people with choices, it can create measurable value whenever a firm needs to stand…
In 2022, there were nearly 50,000 M&A transactions around the world. Across industries from tech to healthcare, consolidation remains an attractive strategy, and companies small and large continue placing their bets on M&A moves to drive growth. It’s safe to assume that most B2B organizations will experience M&…
Technology has been a business game-changer at every level—revolutionizing customer experiences, enabling groundbreaking innovations and accelerating the speed of business. Technology giants are expanding their reach while companies with decidedly non-tech histories (like Maersk and even McDonald’s) have reinvented themselves to excel in the digital era.
As a result, B2B tech…
For decades, law firms went to market with relatively conventional messages that did little to create compelling impressions in the minds of their audiences, let alone lasting ones. To a large extent, their strategies succeeded nonetheless—thanks to the strength of their benches, their personal networks and the knowledge that big companies had big budgets…
If reliability is at the heart of what you do, it’s easy to get trapped into believing the infrastructure and processes that physically make it happen are what matters most to customers. But reliability can be the outcome of more compelling differentiators. In creating its new brand after being sold, Vicinity Energy learned that…
Businesses rely on brand to set them apart, connect with people, and inspire loyalty in everyone from employees to investors. But in a fast-moving world, it’s easy for parts of a brand story to lose their relevance, or for visuals to no longer reflect a company’s evolving value to customers. Sometimes a…