19/05/2026
It’s 2026 and, sadly, we’re still talking to B2B marketers about needing to use emotion in their work.
I’ve spent a lot of the last month at trade shows, conferences and expos and would guess about 98% of what I’ve seen has just been:
😴 LOOOOOOONG lists of features
👯♂️Zero differentiation
❌Pull up banners with meaningless statements on them (‘Structured Water’ was my favourite)
It would be lovely to think this was an issue for just the small B2B firms finding their way with limited marketing support. But some of these disasters were committed by companies in the top 10 performers on the US stock market.
Which is why it was great to speak to Colleen Babcock on the latest edition of the Strategy Sessions about how Rightmove approached their rebrand.
If you’re in the UK, you’ve probably used Rightmove, but that doesn’t mean they’re a consumer brand. Follow the money and the bulk of the revenue comes from B2B.
In Colleen’s words...
“I think the temptation with B2B marketing is to go really rational... Even if someone is purchasing a product or service for their business, there’s still a human being behind it. There’s still emotion behind it. they’re putting their personal professional reputation on the line by recommending you.”
There’s loads more in this episode about rebrands, stakeholder engagement, seances and using interactive WTFs to avoid the b word, but I’ll talk about that over the coming days.
For now, if you want to learn a lot about marketing, public speaking and dealing with huge dogs, you should click this link and listen to the pod via the link in bio
