Why B2B boldness is a strategic – not a superficial – necessity

The ‘just fine’ straitjacket

Fine isn't fine. It never was. But in B2B especially, there's a creeping tendency towards conservatism and safety. Grey, beige, and pale blue. Where corporate committees strangle creativity and innovation, and where the idea of the business buyer being a crusty old guy in a woolen suit still haunts the industry.

‘Just fine’ results in gravitating towards 'good enough' over 'what if?'. ‘Good enough’ is the world’s most alluringly comfortable straitjacket. It’s tethering disguised as a hug. And all too often, it’s where difference and distinction goes to die.

Standing still means falling behind

And that’s why standing out has to be a strategic priority these days, not just a superficial one. When brands prefer to dither over differ, they stand still. And businesses that stand still face existential risks.

The first comes from competitors who may not be as cautious – particularly challenger brands, with healthy appetites and less to lose, and a laser focus on everything you currently have. These competitors will overtake you by stealing your audiences’ attention, building mental availability with them, and creating new relationships – all by doing things differently to you. And you will lose customers.

The second risk is the great tide of progress (picture the famous ‘Great Wave off Kanagawa’ woodblock picture, if you will) that’s perpetually about to overwhelm you. It’s the relentless force of industrial, technological, and cultural changes that absorb and consume slow prey with neither malice nor mercy. Even if you don’t change, the world changes around you – leading to irrelevance and, eventually, obsolescence.

What good strategy does – and doesn’t – look like

Strategy, as a term, is too often misunderstood. Many conflate it with planning or research, reducing it to eight PPT slides and a bunch of sh*tty cliparts of chess and puzzle pieces (note: if you ever put images of puzzles in your presentations, you are fired from marketing).

Strategy is about making decisions; research goes into it, and planning flows from it. But the value of strategy is in deciding ‘what to focus on’ and ‘what direction to take’. More critically, it’s about deciding what not to do, who we’re not targeting, where we’re not playing, and what we’re willing to sacrifice. Good strategy costs something.

The cost and value of standing out

So, the need for differentiation and distinctiveness is absolutely a strategic one – because standing out will always come with a cost. That might be having a provocative point of view, actually standing for something, challenging authoritative views, or prioritizing innovation and experimentation over inertia and stagnation.

The cost is that they may not be right for everyone. But for most B2B brands, that’s exactly the point. The most successful brands understand the strategic value of being right for the target few, through standing out with what truly matters to their audiences. Make your audiences feel something.

So, f*cking forget about being bold. Instead, think about the cost of camouflage – the dangers of being entirely ignorable.

Flip the script with stakeholders

Consider your internal audiences as much as your external ones; the best ideas don’t get killed by customers; they get killed internally, long before that.

So change the conversation with your stakeholders and reorient to what they, not you, care about. When we talk about boldness to them, it sounds like risk. We're positioning it against safety and caution (and stakeholders bloody love safety and caution). Talk about the risks of being ignored and becoming irrelevant, and the competition eating our lunch (stakeholders bloody love their lunch). Position it against the competition succeeding over us. Create FOMO, urgency, and a fighting spirit.

Being visible to audiences, making an impact, pulling away from the competition – it all comes from conscious decision-making and tough choices. It’s the difficult stuff that makes B2B so frustrating and so rewarding. When the cost of strategy is making a stand, it pays to stand out.