How Transmission brought Hollywood to B2B with brand storytelling

Showcased at The Drum’s B2B Worldfest, the doc marked an experiment in bringing cinematic storytelling into the world of B2B marketing.

For Abbott, this was a project born from equal parts frustration and ambition. “We were trying to think about how you break through that noise in an authentic way,” he says. “North Face, Red Bull and Patagonia present these amazing stories. This is what we should be doing in B2B. But the problem is, for North Face, they just had to put their equipment in the background. How do you do that in B2B? It’s really challenging.”

So Transmission decided to showcase an example of what really good looks like.

“Our first few projects were, I’ll be very open, a disaster, because our clients were like, this is great, but we want to be in at least 50% of the story – and the minute we forced them into the story, we lost the audience,” says Abbott. “So instead of asking our clients constantly to make this jump, we spent our own money, we built [this] documentary... to show the world how to build brand storytelling correctly.”

Risk vs patience: the new marketing dilemma

If Abbott represents the creative leap, Charlie Smith, chief marketing officer, UK & Ireland at IBM, brings the discipline and perspective of a seasoned brand strategist. His take: ambition must be matched with structure.

“A good old brand strategy doesn’t do any harm,” says Smith. “You’ve got to have talented people, the right ideas, the relationships, and the patience to create the conditions that give you the permission and the right to do really good quality work.”

Where Abbott talks about risk, Smith counters with patience – and together they sketch the tension every modern marketer feels.

“Brands have got to take risks,” says Abbott. “My cynical British side says no one’s taking the risk to do it. But Charlie’s point about patience is important, because you can take risks, and if you take them too quickly, you do it wrong [and] it’s going to be a disaster.”

“You’ve got to present something to people where they can say, this is worth taking a punt on,” adds Smith. “[But] it gets harder now, because people have to tick more boxes.”

Bringing Hollywood to the brand

Smith has seen what happens when creativity and commerciality meet and sees similar opportunities in long-form storytelling for B2B. “Volvo’s Jean-Claude Van Damme campaign was extraordinary – it dramatized the benefit really well and was entertaining,” he says. “NetScout went even further – they made a documentary with one of the world’s best filmmakers. They took a punt, and it worked.”

For Abbott, that kind of storytelling is a necessary evolution and a perfect opportunity for B2B. He says,“we wanted to tell marketing in a good light – specifically for B2B. Not a lot of those stories are out there.”

Storytelling can humanize even the most complex technology, as Smith highlights in IBM’s own approach. “There’s a misnomer that AI is new – IBM was working with NASA and AI back in the ’60s,” he said. “Now our focus is on educating, engaging and creating debate. We’ve got a responsibility to help people understand what on earth we’re talking about.”

“The best engagement we get worldwide is from our engineers and scientists explaining complex concepts really simply. It doesn’t sound like a big thing, but it’s probably the biggest engagement we get, from students to CEOs. The hard thing in B2B is telling stories about your clients in a way that engages like this.”

As the session closed, Abbott reflects on why storytelling remains the boldest, and simplest, path forward for business brands: “Elevated customer stories are the easiest way to get in, because you already have amazing customers. Telling stories in a more human way, is the easiest model – it’s just the risk to be able to do it in the first place.”

That balance – between risk and patience, story and strategy, emotion and execution – might just be what defines the next era of B2B marketing. All it takes is a brand brave enough to tell a story worth watching.