Download the
Industrious evolution whitepaper.

We set ourselves the audacious goal of becoming the world's leading B2B agency, and with the acquisition of Aastroem Munier BBN, a fantastic French boutique agency which we have had the fortune of working closely with for many years, we are well on our way to achieving this.

The agency will trade under the name IAS b2b Marketing Paris.

BBC Breakfast News.

Entrepreneurs are springing up everywhere to offer goods and services to the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. There are virtual building developers who are exchanging Linden dollars made in Second Life for $200,000 (of the real variety) per annum. People who've started businesses are employing virtual people to handle the demand. There on the web, where once staff skived, they now go to a virtual workplace!

And yes, B2B companies are springing up too. Virtual consultants, financial advisors and even advertising agencies are starting to make real money in an unreal world. Virtual brands are springing up everywhere and existing brands are getting in on the act too. A billboard in Second Life is a very cost-effective way to reach real people, albeit in a virtual world. But trade and marketing are not the only reason businesses are interested in this, or other, virtual communities. What's being demonstrated is that to get real work done, genuine collaboration and innovation, you don't need to rely on the physical world.

Or to put it another way, you don't have to have overheads beyond a computer, internet connection and a chair. You can meet online as virtual people and get down to business with an array of digital tools only limited by imagination. One big business brand is already putting this into practice. IBM's secret island in Second Life is frequented by 250 R&D people who are exploring new areas of growth. On the island their virtual selves share ideas, hold seminars and receive training.

Reportedly the advantage over phone or video conferencing systems is that participants feel they are much more 'there' making it far easier to identify who is communicating at any one time. It's also very liberating. It's easier to field a risky idea when it's not 'actually' you fielding it - virtual people don't blush. It also adds new scope to move away from a formal meeting to relax, 'play', or hold smaller breakout meetings, all of which can help creativity.

Is it the future for business? Who knows? But we ignore virtual worlds at our peril. They may only be virtual, but the commercial advantages are already proving to be very, very real.

It's tempting for a business to keep doing what it's always done. "If it worked before it can work again, right?" Plus it's easier to keep everyone cosy in their cotton wool comfort zone. Unfortunately, as history insists, it's a sure-fire way for a brand to lose touch with customers.

Successful brands adapt with change, staying relevant and finding a positioning with sustainable competitive advantage. The changes to embrace are both rationale and emotional. There's the new buying process and evolving decision-making units. Then there's shorter attention spans, and an individual's web-given right to bypass sales reps with a mouse.

Bearing in mind that 75% of Brand Strategies fail at implementation, the ability to develop a compelling Brand Strategy (the 'talk') alone is unlikely to help businesses meet the increasing year-on-year demands of shareholders (Yeah that's great, but where's our money?). Success lies in the ability to 'walk the talk'!

If a brand is the sum of its contact then the contact needs managing, including personal relationships. 'Monologue marketing' is becoming less effective than stepped, engaging Dialogue. In other words "accelerated acquisition and development of customers by utilising the most effective communication messages, contact channels and combinations".

Dialogue combinations need to be built around segmented, value-based propositions with Web increasingly as the hub. Just talking product features won't cut it anymore. Dialogue also has to be a 'relevant creative experience', not just isolated tactics with 'the big idea' slapped on (an approach unlikely to capture a short attention span or cut through the 'information clutter'). It means being the brand that understands 'me' as an individual better than anyone else. If businesses are serious about it, they need to prepare for the inevitable 'Permission Based Dialogue Era' today.

One key requirement of 'walking the talk' is integrating sales, marketing and web databases. But be advised, databases need disciplined, accurate and regular maintenance by all customer interfaces. You may or may not be pleased to learn that this can't be achieved by high investment. As with all aspects of implementing your Brand Strategy, it takes a good, old-fashioned pride in your step as you walk together as one

Comment: At IAS you'll never walk alone. We pride ourselves on compelling brand strategy joined with continuous, hands-on support during implementation.

Long after the cringe factor faded, disappointment remained. My problem was that the idea on the table was a cliché. It involved a tape measure and the line 'tailored to you'. Worse, it was an idea 'suggested' by the account manager. I saw it as a wasted opportunity. I vented at everything: the client, the account manager, boring old b2b - all were at fault. But in retrospect, who was to blame?

Experience now tells me that clients are not afraid of new ideas. They just want to make sure that creativity doesn't compromise their brand. Put a compelling idea next to a cliché and they'll plump for the former. The account manager? Well he was young and desperate to make a smooth sale and keep an accurate forecast. So he seeded an idea he knew would fly. As for me, I didn't have the experience to convince people that this wasn't good for the client's brand or our agency. We were between creative directors so there was nowhere to turn. I just had to do the best I could with a tape measure.

So what about boring old B2B? Well I've changed my mind about that too. Back then I confused boring with complex and challenging - the things that now keep me interested. That's not all that's changed. I'm now the creative director and the account team depend on me to tell them what flies. And I've realised who's to blame for predictable creative in b2b: the cliché itself. It's a trap waiting to snare any team without the confidence and determination to work to the core of a brand proposition, decide what makes it special and express it.

Unsure of his own brief, afraid that inexperienced creatives wouldn't deliver, the account manager of my past got seduced by a tape measure. Certain that it wasn't contentious, the client was happy to succumb to the snake like charm of the coiled tape too. And I wasn't strong enough to free myself from its bind. It wouldn't be such a problem in b2b if there were only tape measures waiting to trip people up, but there are hundreds of 'creative' clichés out there. Skateboards and laptops litter the b2b landscape. So what are you going to do about it Mr Creative Director? You may well ask. I'm taking a stand is what, and I'm asking every creative, client and account manager in b2b to stand with me in defiance of the cliché.

IAS has marked this anti-cliché campaign by entombing the most notorious offenders in our book, 101 Clichés. It puts our creative output where my mouth is, because we musn't now be caught using ideas from a book subtitled 'b2b's most notorious creative faux pas'. And hopefully, for the sake of our sector, anyone who reads it will feel similarly obliged. What the book does is highlight a particular cliché and the most common message it conveys, then cajoles the reader into disregarding it with a bit of a rant. To pick a few at random:

The chequered flag: "Be a winner". Winners don't use clichés. That's because leading business brands work hard to protect their point of difference and stay in touch with their markets. The better you understand yourself and your audience the less likely you are to need a generic message like this one.

The snowboarder: "Extreme performance". Aside from the fact that this is a cliché, why would you want this sport associated with your business? Snowboarding is for people who enjoy taking risks. Does that sound like the vast majority of business brand customers? Not the ones profiled on our database, dude.

The hive: "Busy on your behalf'. Certain things are 'a given' when you employ people on your behalf. That they will get busy doing what you pay them to do is one of those things. The hive has still had enough airtime to become a cliché though. Unbelievable.

So if clichés have poisoned b2b, what's the antidote? Clients and strategists should start with the message they are asking creatives to convey. If it sounds like one you've heard before, it's already in cliché territory. Ask yourself, "Where's the magic going to come from?" If all you can come up with is the same old 'experience, wide-range, professional' crap why should you expect anything better from the creatives?

But my fellow creatives, there's no getting away from it, the buck stops with us. First understand the creative process takes both total immersion in the task and total freedom from it. Ideas often come when you're not thinking about the brief. This takes time - demand it! Also understand that clichés are literal expressions of the brief (I say fast, you say cheetah).

Learn to extract an essence and express that. If other people can see the link you might just have an original idea on your hands. If it's not happening you could always dip into our book, 101 Clichés, for a well worn but safe idea, where we've entombed many more of these serial offenders. The aim is to highlight these clichés and cajole readers into disregarding them. If we can raise awareness of the problem, it'll be easier to reach a solution.

Can you blame the creatives? Yes, but only if they're as tuned into the business, brand and dialogue strategy as the rest of the team. All too often, weeks of planning arrive at the creatives' desks on one piece of paper. "Here you go guys, a few choice straws from acres of knowledge. Now spin them into advertising gold!"

Although far from ideal, this can work in B2C, which takes a relatively simple proposition and delves into the everyday life of the consumer to make it relevant. B2C creatives don't struggle because they are everyday consumers. But in B2B you are dealing with the complex, everyday, professional life of your target and a business proposition that may not be immediately clear to an industry outsider.

One answer is to follow the IAS philosophy: Get b2b creatives in the zone by taking them outside their comfort zone. This doesn't just mean a factory tour. It means creatives in brand workshops. Creatives helping shape contact strategy. Creatives talking to industry panels. Creatives developing propositions. Not only will you get far more informed, relevant creative dialogue on implementation, you'll also enjoy a vital injection of creativity in your strategic development.

Comment: As the communications landscape changes, it makes sense to expand your creative horizons.

One of the empowering aspects of the internet and the evolving digital landscape (Web 2.0: the second generation) - which is altering the way we professionally and socially interact - is that information is open to everybody.

Wherever PCs and phones log on, every person has the power to be a journalist and opinion former. Every item of data - true or false - can be endlessly repeated, used, changed or incorporated into something else. With a click of a mouse, you can obtain information from a number of sources, good or poor; no-one waits to be spoon fed.

Social media PR

To illustrate the impact social media sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are having on B2B brands, here are two incidents our clients recently experienced firsthand:

Alerted to a popular social networking site, one of our client contacts was shown a video of a man committing 'an unnatural and depraved act' on one of its clearly branded products. The news spread virally like an old-fashioned chain letter - only much more rapidly - and even employees of the company itself, who were not part of the online networking group, heard about it on email within days of the incident.

Another client was rung by an irate company secretary of a third party, because a published press report had contained false company information, not sent out in the approved media statement. The original press coverage had been read by a trawling freelance journalist (not on the distribution list) who rewrote it with added (and erroneous) details, before selling it into other publications.

The moral is that you can't hide and, unless you monitor it, you may well have no idea about what is being said about your company on a screen near you.

Defence after the act is always too little, too late and a heavy handed overreaction risks making the problem much worse. Listening to audiences and then engaging with them is the key - these are the hallmarks of a company which cares about its customers and its reputation (online and offline).

How PR 2.0 can help boost your B2B reputation

So, how do you start to control reputation in the PR 2.0 age?

One way is by making available large quantities of positive (and accurate) information to act as a counterweight. You should endeavour to make this more visible than the inaccurate information, which can be achieved through intelligent optimisation of your presence online.

Your website should be the first source of information about you, but can also include links to third party 'advocates' such as suppliers, industry bodies or clients to boost credibility with your audiences.

Furthermore, the content has to be very easy to access and consume, in the short attention span available before they inevitably click elsewhere (i.e. around 10 seconds). So you have to grab their attention instantly, to get the relevant facts over before asking them to download lengthy corporate documents.

The information also has to be refreshed regularly. The internet search engine rankings are heavily biased towards updates and new postings. Fresh, bad news may well get a higher pick up than your old, good news - unless you act fast. Google and co. discriminate on the basis of the popularity of your site, the relevance of your content and how new it is. Use this to your advantage rather than allowing your competitors to ride rough shod over a reputation you've failed to manage online.

Plug in to your PR 2.0 network

The conclusion is that, today and tomorrow, PR 2.0 is a matter of taking positive action and ensuring that the right information is available to the audiences who matter. The methods for making this information available - blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts etc - are evolving rapidly. Currently there are over 70 million blogs and that figure has doubled in the last year alone - that's a market you can't afford to ignore.

Ensure you provide the information you want them to have and in the way that they find it easiest to digest and share with their peers. In doing so, they will shape your reputation with you, rather than in spite of you.

In the dark old days of the sales and marketing disconnect, a favourite question of mine for sales directors was,

"How long does it take to move a prospect along the timeline, from being unaware of your company to being a customer?"

The answer was always somewhere between one and two years. Hardly surprising when you consider the complex nature of the B2B marketplace - the various stakeholders who can affect a purchasing decision and the unique purchasing processes. Which leads to the next question,

"So why do you try to sell to someone you've never had contact with before? And why are you disappointed when they don't become a customer?"

Of course, sales directors under budget pressures just forgot about or ignored the Relationship Timeline. Years ago the customer relationship was primarily with the sales force, but now it's with the brand first and foremost, and has many considerations. Significantly, you have a relationship with a prospect before they reveal themselves. As B2B specialists we provide a contact strategy to optimise the movement of your prospects and customers along the timeline. It's this movement, which is key to increasing the productivity of your marketing budget.

The evolution of the b2b brand

Over the last few decades I've been lucky enough to witness a growing appreciation of the B2B company as a brand, with businesses now seeing the importance of positioning. However, the word 'brand' means different things to different people. A communications manager may see it as corporate design consistency, a CEO as corporate culture. Our interpretation of your brand has always been,

"The perception of the values and benefits of your company in the minds of your prospects and customers."

Our other major belief is that,

"Your brand is the sum of your contact"

Or to put it another way, the beauty of a brand is in the eye of the beholder - wherever they come into contact with it. This compels us to think about every action of your brand at every touch point, and how it will affect market perceptions. You have to plan and control all the contact, from the functionality of your website to the way people answer the phone. And it has to be integrated strategically, emotionally, functionally and chronologically.

We call the process to deliver this Contact Strategy Planning.