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There's no easy way to slice it. It's awkward timing to be starting an agency.
The creative content space — both in-house and agency side are in the weirdest spot they've been in maybe in the history of professional creative services.
Layoffs abound in just about every industry where creatives earn a paycheck.
AI threatens to turn the entire creative practice upside down.
The proverbial sky is indeed falling. Yet we're all looking for certainty in an age of constant change. Welp. There's bad news and good news.
The bad news: There was never any certainty in this industry.
The good news: There was never any certainty in this industry.
I've both proudly and reluctantly been a creative marketers for the better part of 20 years. As I sit here in my home office musing about the past few decades slinging copy and design assets for B2B brands, I'm racking my brain for a time when I felt completely at ease with my career, the market, and the world at large.
LIke it or not, there have always been threats to the thing we do best.
Here are a few that have entered my world in the span of a near two-decade career doing creative work:
Dynamics shifted how, where, and when I work, but a complete melt down never happened. I survived. We survived. We all will survive.
Look, I'm not naive. I know that machine learning tech is already having uncomfortable, transformative effects on our industry and livelihoods.
But the goal is not preservation, but futureproofing. We must build and grow brands that can weather and even integrate with the storms of the market, culture, and nature requires some agility.
B2B brand marketing is changing, but so am I. So I am not afraid of what's next.
That said, as B2B brand marketing practitioners, we're in a tough spot.
It may sound dramatic — like, Billy-Eilish-pensively-cry-singing-in-a-rain-storm dramatic, but I started Ristretto because B2B brand marketing is boring. In 2024, boring brand marketing is an emergency.
There's a decent amount of debate about this number, but according to research from LinkedIn and System1, 75% of B2B ad campaigns are boring and unmemorable.
It's not important that you agree with this number, rating system, or conceptual critique of B2B brand assets. What's important are the questions behind the data point:
B2B marketing funnels are complex. Sales cycles are long — up to 24 months in some cases. Your brand marketing content must land with a wide range of decision makers over a long period of time. SaaS brands simply can't afford to go to market with forgettable content.
Your creative must stick to your buyers' ribs. It needs to break through. And for many B2B brands, this just isn't a case. This is reflected in audience engagement, demand generation initiatives, and pipeline growth or lackthereof.
Brand awareness, loyalty, and equity is your key to future-proofing your B2B brand. But no one will care about you or what you’re doing if you’re not showing up with compelling brand narratives that speak directly to the people you want to reach. And brand awareness is only propped up by great brand creative.
75% of B2B ads fail because TPTB at these brands do not take risks. We’ve sat in these conference rooms with the C-suite. To their credit, they’d like to push the envelope, but will such a push result in a demand pullback.
Will sales miss their quarterly targets? Will the pipeline slow due to a risk (calculated or otherwise)?
We are not yucking your strategic yum here but we are also not afraid of these questions. We lean into them. We are in the shit with you. We’ve had these questions asked of us before.
The answer is data and grit — a whole lotta both. AKA: performance creative.
This is what we know to be true about performance creative:
For my money, and I would bet money on it, there are 4 key elements the drive great creative:
It's one thing to have a large, devoted audience. It's another thing to have a brand that inspires that audience to take action. This is the difference between brand recognition and brand value.
HP has brand recognition, but Apple has both and much more.
One has an inspiring brand, the other does not.
This does not mean HP is not a category leader, but they are not revered and worshipped in the same way Apple is. Brand equity is everything.
Brand equity means your audience derives real value from your creative and is taking action.
They share your content, show up at your events, and sign up for your webinars.
They are convincing their bosses that your solution is essential for the success of their business.
When your product, platform, or suite of solutions becomes that very thing for a B2B brand, you build a cult of demand.
SaaS is changing — and at breakneck speed. B2B brands are shifting to a more holistic mindset. More than 60% of today's SaaS executives are viewing creative brand marketing and storytelling as central to their overall corporate strategy.
...and technology is the catalyst.
Old news, but AI is a critical factor. Brands are eager to understand AI’s impact on their business and to build AI/ML-forward products. But their eagerness outpaces their understanding by a lot.
This is creating an over-reliance on AI technology to solve complex business problems. According to LinkedIn, about 75% of B2B marketing leaders are using AI to solve business challenges — while only 20% of these leaders say they have a working understanding of the technology. The result is the blind leading the blind.
There's reason for this aggressive early adoption. The B2B tech sector has seen budgets shrink by more than a quarter, leaving them to do more with less.
Yet, with an eye on the future, brands still believe in the power of creative. In fact, B2B brands plan to spend 30% more on brand awareness/equity-driving initiatives. This is true across all major global markets (NA, APAC, EMEA, LATAM). And 80% of CMOs are investing in bringing the importance of brand work to the forefront — strengthening their skills and convincing the rest of the C-suite, board members, and investors of the financial impact of brand development, awareness, and equity.
Brand marketing and creative has often been viewed as a black box in which the C-suite at SaaS brands could not effectively engage with because measuring creative performance was complicated. It was often tied to organizational performance through the lens of demand generation.
That time is long gone. Brand creatives for B2B SaaS brands must be data-savvy, and strategically minded to have a foothold in today's always-on, constantly morphing marketplace.
Here's the thing that keeps me up at night. Consumer brands are viewed as sexy, household names, while the top 100 B2B brands account for roughly $1 trillion in brand equity. B2B products power the modern world.
So why do we approach brand the same way we always have?
You can spin it however you want, but brand value is built on the back of great creative campaigns.
Where are the great B2B creative campaigns?
I started Ristretto because I love B2B brands.
But I know we can do better. I believe we can tell stories that actually bring technology stories to life in a human way. I've led teams who have executed on this work, and I have watched it drive growth and brand equity.
I believe that with the right strategic creative folks in your corner you can get to market quickly with work that can drive incredible impact.
Much like our namesake, Ristretto is a creative force for B2B brands, drawing inspiration from the same intense and focused approach. Ristretto was born out of a passion for delivering exceptional brand creative that breaks free from conventional marketing norms. As a result, we are carving a distinct path — infusing from-the-gut creativity under the pressure of data-driven insights to deliver brand experiences that are as potent and memorable as a perfectly pulled Ristretto shot.
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