Do you feel that the CEO’s role has changed during the pandemic? If so, how?

Diane: Absolutely. It’s often during times of crisis and hardship when true leaders are made or come into their own. Last spring, every CEO and leadership team entered a situation and set of challenges never before experienced. It couldn’t just be business as usual. There was an unprecedented need for quick, effective decision making in the face of a volatile industry landscape, as well as heightened transparency. At Blis, for example, our CEO, Greg Isbister brought the Blis team together like never before, adopting an ‘all in it together’ mentality, which led to weekly company ‘All Hands’ to check in, share news and updates and reassure the team. Through his leadership, agility and ability to react quickly to all the new restrictions and regulations, Blis made no COVID related redundancies and kept our global team together and on track.  

Jez: I think every CEO will say they’ve been given a set of challenges they’ve never had to  face before and that’s been tough, but fundamentally the role has always been  leading from the front, keeping the team happy and making sure the ship stays on course, pandemic or not. 

What has changed is the way they’ve had to go about it. I’d say it’s been a much harder task with people WFH and trying to keep the energy up and culture strong.

Q: Do you think B2B brands need to become more informal when discussing important industry challenges?

Diane: I think it’s less about being informal and more about finding and striking the right tone that is authentic to the brand. For example, the Blis tone of voice (TOV) is authoritative, human, helpful, open and clever. We speak informally, as it’s part of our brand to be human and helpful. But this might not work for a brand that has a more formal TOV. However sometimes good (and brave) branding is about pushing the boundaries of the brand, but it’s important to find the balance. There are times when it might be appropriate and effective to break out of a brand's normal persona, but this needs to be handled with care, so that credibility and trust are not impacted.  

Jez: I think what is important to note is that it gets you nowhere being male, stale and pale. People are bored of the same old same old, and just because you’re a B2B company, it doesn’t mean your audience are dead, they want to be stimulated, as long as there’s true value in what you’re saying, some informality can be good. 

It really goes back to the importance of ‘humanity’ above. Blinding people with corporate jargon is a waste of words but at the same time, brands need to maintain their credibility, so it’s a balance.

Q: What ways can B2B companies do better in humanising their content?

Diane: According to a recent article by the B2B Institute, the 95/5 rule should apply to B2B marketing. The authors of the article said, “Buy-this-now advertising will be ignored and forgotten by the 95% of buyers who are out-of-market – it’s only relevant to the 5%. The 95:5 rule gives you permission to be bold, put on a show and have a little fun. It broadens the creative canvas in B2B, encouraging us to focus on publicity, not persuasion.” Our observation is that people want a reprieve just now, and the traditional corporate talking heads style communication just won’t cut through. 

Jez: I think companies need to show the people behind the business more, the challenges they face, show some vulnerability, the highs the lows and that actually, they’re not perfect, they’re human beings.

Phones have given us the power to film, post and speak directly to the world in a matter of seconds through platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram. This is the perfect way to humanise a B2B brand. It could be a self shot video outlining thought leadership on the top 10 ways to network or showing the pitch process, before and after, or it could be something as informal as Secret Santa at the Xmas party. 

Q: How does the latest Blis campaign film put these ideas into practice?

Diane: With our latest campaigns, including our ‘Nothing Personal’ campaign and our new company video, we wanted to inspire and inform, but to do so in a way that is entertaining and fresh. We needed our messaging to land without seeming unrelatable and arrogant.  We also wanted our audience to feel confident in what we do and say, and that it stands out from the myriad of other messages about privacy-first advertising.

Even though we work in the B2B space, we are still marketing to people, and especially during this exceptional time in history, we want to engage our audiences and leave them with a positive and memorable impression, by speaking to them not as robots, but as atual real humans with needs and wants. We’ve done this  by addressing a key industry issue – that is facing all of us – with a sense of clever playfulness. One way we’ve achieved this is by putting a face on the brand, which is a great way to humanise it. Our new company video features our CEO Greg as the lead ‘character’ on a personal journey to beat the data drought. It’s authentic, believable and fun (and no, we didn’t actually send Greg to Death Valley – it was shot on green screen).

Jez: Brands have been using their figureheads in ads for years, from Dollar Shave Club, to Virgin Media and with good reason, it adds a certain charm and makes them feel human (ie we know these people are real), there’s usually a sense of poking fun at oneself too, which makes you like the brand more.

We put the man, the myth, the legend ‘Greg the CEO’ from Blis front and centre. No acting experience per se, but it shows their audience that Blis have a sense of humour. 

Yes they are serious players in their field but we had to create something that communicated on a human level and showed, in this case the CEO’s vulnerability as he demonstrates how Blis will navigate the future customer data drought. He delivered with aplomb.