'In B2B marketing, time is not your friend. You need to be really relevant,' What you missed from the Fourth annual Business Marketing Association’s Regional Conference in New York
New York City’s unique Bloomberg Tower set the pace for the Business Marketing Association’s (BMA) fourth annual Regional Conference series on Thursday 5 November as its theme to ‘Be Big, Do Good, Be Amazing’ could not be more in keeping with the series sponsors’ corporate headquarters. Manhattan’s famous ‘Bloomberg Tower’ is not only the corporate home to the multi-billion dollar communications company Bloomberg LP but also its chief executive is former mayor of New York City and highly regarded philanthropist Michael Bloomberg. The tower is known for its open office space, where Bloomberg himself works elbow to elbow with employees. More importantly, the Bloomberg Tower is famous for its ubiquitous keyboard terminals with instant access to global business data.
“Speed is embedded into the DNA here at Bloomberg. Time isn’t your friend, technology and data are. Be brief or be gone,” said John Petralia, global head of marketing for Industry Vertical Businesses at Bloomberg, L.P during the event. “Do you want to know how B2B marketing is evolving today? In B2B marketing, time is not your friend. You need to be really relevant.”
Petralia insists that “The current ad agency model is in trouble,” and continues to claim that “the shift is towards small, nimble global brand teams with specialty skills. The focus is shifting towards hiring specialists to work with an in-house team. Being ‘nimble’ is key. ”
Petralia and other leaders in the B2B industry stressed the importance of “being fast and nimble” at a time when the B2B advertising and marketing industry is rapidly changing.
The event also featured the 53rd annual BMA-NYC Communicator of the Year Award was presented to Ed Abrams, vice president of B2B Marketing at Samsung, an award sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.
Prior to joining Samsung, Abrams was the vice president of Demand Generation at IBM’s Software Middleware Group and was responsible for global strategies aligned with the key market categories of Cloud, Mobile, Big Data & Analytics and Social.
“A good B2B marketer today will consume information across mobile, tablets and wearable technologies,” Abrams said. “We don’t use a TV or computer in the same way anymore but instead use more mobilized devices. So, today the focus is not so much on the media, but the content.”
He added: “Part of our B2B marketing strategy at Samsung is to focus on real customer benefit and drive it though lead strategic and specialty agencies. What I don’t want to hear from an agency is “social” or “innovation” – two of the most overused words in the industry. To be a good marketer, be a good business person, Business speak trumps marketing speak.”
Matt Preschern, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at HCL Technologies noted that although his India-based company competes with IBM and HP and other global companies, and are outspent 100-to-1 in advertising dollars, they feel the have a strong B2B model. Preschern noted that key factors in B2B are to ‘know your audience, get to the simple truths, tap into emotion, and make it fresh.”
He also warned that; “If you don’t connect emotionally in B2B you are not connecting. We spend a lot of time on ‘relationships’ and our videos can be emotional, or personal but do not mention IT. We do not desire to speak about ourselves that way. Additionally, we look for flexibility in who we work with and seek out small and nimble global brand teams.” Based in Bengaluru India, HCL has just won an IT outsourcing opportunity from Volvo Group worth $2bn over the next five years, Preschern announced.
The immense importance of having a philanthropic component or Being Good is also a B2B strategy according to the series speakers with examples like General Electrics’ role in addressing ‘climate science’ or Bloomberg Philanthropies ongoing work in sub-Sahara Africa teaching women to operate small coffee growing businesses.
“Doing good is not just good for business. Doing in good is just good. Philanthropy is hugely important to Mr. Bloomberg,” said Verna Eggleston who oversees Bloomberg Philanthropies women’s economic development work in Africa.
‘Doing good’ can also address issues like climate change or ‘climate science,” she added.
“We are up front about climate science,” said Libby Wayman, global director of innovation & ecomagination at General Electric Company. “We are taking an active role and driving cleaner technology and business model innovation. It is one of our core strategies to be ahead of the curve. We could fight against it or be the competition.”
Finally, getting more love is a big part of B2B marketing today according to Ben Jones, creative director of the Art, Copy & Code team at Google.
“Traditionally B2B marketers are marketing products that no one loves.,” Jones said. “Yet, we have learned that today a sense of freedom once felt in having a car is now embodied in the phone. There is more access world wide to cell phones than clean toilets. Media is getting longer, richer and deeper but people are hungry to connect to a story so B2B marketers have to focus on that desire for stories today and in getting people to love you more.”
The BMA is a division of the ANA with 16 chapters based through out the USA.
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Images taken by Doug Goodman from BMA NY