B2B branding for all our tomorrows

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and B2B companies boasting about their commitment to ‘sustainability.’

Now, as a professional B2B copywriter there isn’t much I can do about the first two items, except say eat vegetables and keep your receipts.

But when it comes to sustainability, 20-plus years in international B2B branding and communications have taught me a few things—insights (and plain common sense) that can help transform your sustainability-related communications into an effective business and branding tool.

First, however, I’d like to put sustainability into some sort of context. Sustainability—both the myriad practices designed to realize it, and the rhetoric around it—has over the past few decades become a mainstay in our culture. Not a day goes by when we don’t see or hear the word, usually when some company is telling us it, and its products and services, are sustainable.

And it is precisely this ubiquity, this overuse of the term, that is problematic for B2B marketers. Because instead of being a powerful concept, one that can really attract and engage audiences, sustainability has become just another item in the communications lexicon. It’s right there with ‘productivity,’ ‘quality,’ and all the other shopworn terms used by every company on the planet.

The challenge—and yes, the opportunity—is to couple sustainability to something of tangible, measurable value; to something of substance that truly interests your customers, and yet is distinctive enough to stand out in a crowded market.

The following paragraphs show how you can overcome this challenge. Then I’ll present an example that showcases how the CBC approach to sustainability-related brand building succeeds in real-world B2B marketing.

First, know what you’re talking about – how to define sustainability

Sometimes a word or phrase becomes so overused it is virtually emptied of meaning. You’ve met them a thousand times before: the “You’ve tried the rest, now try the best,” or “Tomorrow’s [enter product or service] today.” It’s the same with ‘sustainability,’ a term too often used to signify something vaguely positive or virtuous.

To banish such fuzzy thinking, I propose we follow the Merriam-Webster definition of sustainability as: “of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.”

Having this or a similar definition as a guiding star is important for your B2B branding for two reasons: it fosters consistency, and it helps keep your sustainability messaging and claims down to earth, and therefore credible. But more about that later. 

Second, find the customer value in your sustainability-related offerings

Your company no doubt has a raft of sustainability policies in place. And chances are your website boasts about them. You may even have colleagues (perhaps it’s you?) responsible for promoting and explaining these and other policies to internal and external audiences.

Congratulations. But apart from ticking boxes in your to-do list, such statements do precious little to engage customers’ interest. (A friend of mine once likened them to peeing while swimming: it can be a necessary, even enjoyable activity… but nobody notices, and nobody really cares.)

But what does engage them is when your company’s sustainability-related offerings result in them gaining and keeping a competitive edge. Fortunately, in the B2B environment, there are invariably plenty of opportunities where this can be achieved. How so? Because year after year, B2B enterprises face new and ever more rigorous sustainability- and environment-related rules, regulations, laws, guidelines and ordinances.

Now, if you can credibly claim that your offerings can help customers satisfy these multiple regulations—while simultaneously winning a competitive advantage—then you’re much more likely to gain and retain their engagement. Because now, instead of merely broadcasting your green credentials, you’re in the enviable position of helping customers exploit fresh business opportunities. And that, as we shall see, is what makes all the difference.

CBC blog link: Quality B2B content is crucial. Why do so many companies get it wrong?

Third, communicate compellingly – identify your core sustainability messages

But now the heavy lifting starts. We’ve seen that talking about sustainability in isolation has minimal value—both to you and your customers. So how do you communicate your sustainability-related offerings that do add value?

It’s actually fairly simple… but (I know, there’s always a ‘but’) rather difficult at the same time. You need to get your messages together, and get them across, in a concept that meets the following criteria:

• Is it attractively distinctive? Does it compel attention from the right people?
• Does it resonate with your target audiences? Will they recognize themselves?
• Is it technically feasible, and can it be financed and tweaked over time?
• Is it deployed on channels that let you gauge impact and effect?
• On-brand. Does it comply with your branding guidelines? Are you hitting the right tones?
• Have you empirical data to back your claims? What about customer cases?
• Ditch the shotgun approach. Aim to hit the right audience from the get-go.

Finally, remember I mentioned the need for consistency and credibility? Focus is king when devising a communications concept, especially in today’s attention-deficit culture, where your messaging has at best a couple of seconds to attract busy eyeballs and brains. So resist the temptation to make your concept a big, baggy vehicle for carrying multiple, disparate messages. Lock on to a few core, compelling messages… and make them impossible to dismiss by loading them with relevant facts and figures. 

CBC blog link: Balancing global B2B messaging consistency and local relevance

Fourth, learn from what has already worked – effective real-life sustainability campaigns

So far so good. I’ve talked a lot of theory and dos and don’ts. But how can they all come together to create a real-life sustainability campaign? The advent of Global Sulphur Cap regulations in 2020 is an ideal case. Spurred by concerns over sulphur emissions in the shipping, energy and industrial sectors, the UN’s International Maritime Organization (the global standard-setting authority for the safety, security and environmental performance of international shipping) imposed a worldwide 0.50% sulphur limit on ships’ fuel, effective from January 1, 2020.

One would think the shipping industry’s reaction would be straightforward—to simply change to fuels (and the requisite retrofitted engine solutions) to bring them into compliance? Not quite. Many ship owners and operators decided to wait and see which fuel choice the industry as a whole would favor. After all, opting for a fuel type was an irrevocable commitment. Get it wrong and they could be at a disadvantage for years to come. The downside was that many were still waiting, even with only one year to go before the deadline.

For MAN Energy Solutions, this major sustainability-related development was a perfect opportunity to position themselves as the marine engine experts who could pilot businesses through the rough seas of compliance. They selected CBC to devise a campaign with one core objective: to generate engine retrofit sales as soon as possible. To achieve this, we developed a campaign that set out to:

• Impress upon a niche market of fleet and technical managers the urgency around the looming deadline
• Prove—and not just claim—that MAN Energy Solutions had the expertise needed to bring businesses into compliance
• Position MAN Energy Solutions as the thought leader on the topic of the sulphur cap and its implications for shipping
• Generate an informed discussion and debate about the topic in the shipping industry
• Provide fleet and technical managers with all the empirical data (technical and commercial) they needed to convince their CEOs and CFOs to engage with MAN Energy Solutions

It was an ambitious list. But by meeting the criteria I mentioned above (credible, creative, relevant, doable, specific, etc.) we developed an information-rich, creative campaign that exceeded our most optimistic forecasts.

Indeed, the e-mail component of the campaign garnered a highly impressive 42% open rate and a 23% click-through rate. That’s double Mailchimp’s average open rate for 2019, and nearly ten times the average click-through rate. Interactions across social media channels were also impressive—making a direct contribution to a year-on-year sales increase of 288% on a key product line.

Your next sustainability-related step?

I of course can’t do the topic of sustainability and B2B marketing justice in this brief post. But I hope I have alerted you to the potential of seeing ‘sustainability’ through the prism of thought leadership and practical, value-adding problem solving. Because when all is said and done, the vast majority of businesses (i.e. the vast majority of your customers) already want to improve their sustainability-related performance.

Many have already committed vast resources to minimising their impact on the environment. What they need help with is turning those positive intentions into actions—and that’s where you (and CBC) can play decisive roles.

If you’d like to discuss any of the topics in this post (or if you’d like to see more sustainability-related cases from the CBC library), you should contact Ralph Krøyer, our Managing Partners at CBC. I know he’d be delighted to share his encyclopedic knowledge of B2B branding with you. Just drop him a line at rk@cbc.dk

The author of this blog, Gary Gunning, is Senior Copywriter at CBC. An Irishman long resident in Scandinavia, his bio reflects some key CBC strengths: multinational, multilingual, steeped in creative B2B marketing.