Episode 196: Exploring creativity, data and the new rules of engagement, with Omne

(upbeat music) Hello everyone and welcome to the B2B Marketing Podcast. My name is Kavita Singh. I'm head of Growth Solutions Content at B2B Marketing. And today we are going to be chatting with Omni about the evolution of brands toward a brand-driven growth engine. Plus we'll also be touching on how marketers are rethinking their B2B strategies using creativity not just to create impact and engage, but to actually drive growth. We are joined by Michael Jividan, the CEO at Omni, and we are also joined by the Strategy Director at Omni and Amassi. Welcome both, how are we doing today? - Very good, thank you. - Thank you. - Yeah, well really great to have you both back on the podcast for today. We have a really interesting topic around B2B Marketing as a growth engine. And that kinda ties in nicely with something we're honing in on at B2B Marketing about becoming the commercial marketer and in terms of seeing marketing activity and kind of translating it to actual revenue and growth. So in terms of marketing's evolution from sort of being a support function to a real driver of commercial growth, I guess it'd be great to know what's changed. - Well, I think we think a lot's changed actually. And obviously for us, most of our clients are big food and drink FMCGs. And obviously we work with them in the B2B space. But I think because of the FMCG heritage of them, marketing has always been seen as more than just Dex and trade-outs. I mean, it has a good heritage. But now that may or may not be true of other B2B sectors. But I think for us now more and more from our clients and especially the global brands, they're tasking marketing, not just with things that you would obviously recognize like pipeline generation and stuff. But with other key objectives like cross sell strategies, commercial planning, I think really the whole thing's just getting a lot broader. - Yeah, I think that's right. I think we're in meetings now where marketing is setting the growth agenda instead of just reacting to it. So we're being asked to map opportunity spaces, demand spaces, sizing, prize pool, shaping propositions. It's really an upstream influence that we're putting on. - Okay, well now that you've set the foundation of sort of what's changed, what do you think is sort of driving that shift? - Well, I think we think part of its necessity. Certainly we see obviously sales cycles are lengthening and for our market buying groups of grown in influence. And look, there's so much noise and clutter in the market. It really is, we feel only marketing that can orchestrate that full journey from awareness right the way through to conversion and loyalty really. I think do you have a view? - Yeah, and of course there's more scrutiny now, right? - Yeah. - And marketing's always been about results. But now, even when people say we can't, but a number of things, yeah, you absolutely can. It's strategic, it's commercial. And honestly, it's getting more exciting. - Yeah, no, definitely. I think like you said, there's always a metric that you can kind of tie things into, which I think is really interesting. I know that you guys have said in the past that brand is sort of back in B2B. Just given the context of what we're talking about today, can you tell me a little bit about what that means? - Yeah, it's funny, because for years in B2B, in our vertical food and drink, brand was always the bit that actually got trimmed out of the plan. And clients would be just really focused on tactical lead generation. But now with longer journeys and more touch points and more exciting touch points to consider, more formats, new ways, it's really truly, it's the brand that's becoming the glue. So it's quite a shift and it's building relevance and it's what's giving buyers confidence and familiarity with you as a brand. So it's a real shift and it's exciting. - Yeah, I totally agree. I think that the confidence piece is important, but I also think relevance as well. And these are really, I think at the heart of it, in tone, in message, in values. We recently helped a logistics company with a repositioning piece. And I think just having for them strong, consistent narrative around what they do, suddenly unlocked a lot of confidence, both obviously with clients and also internally too. And I think also on the brand piece, I think if you think about an organisation like McCain, which is a big longstanding client of ours in the B2B space, one thing that they are really good at is tracking brand health and they do it independently through opinion, actually. And what's always fascinating and reassuring about that is that as a brand, they're tracking sort of 25 percentage points, sometimes 40 percentage points, ahead of a category average throughout the funnel. So that's from awareness all the way through to repeat purchase, where they're particularly strong. And so they really achieved this kind of primary brand preference status within the B2B space. Now in our context, why I think that's quite important is that operators choosing a product in this space like McCain, they're paying a lot more for it than they need to, they could buy an own label for a lot cheaper, but they're preferring to spend more on the brand. Now we know that the retail bit of that brand only about 10% of that carries a cross into B2B. So it's a lot of their B2B brand building that's doing that heavy lifting. And I think that that's quite an interesting space. - Yeah, I think that's a really key point for me in terms of the need for really building brands in B2B. And I think there's another moment that I can think of is around that LinkedIn stat that we quite often refer to. And it's the one that talks about emotional creative performing seven times better than just rational only campaigns. And I'm not saying that I'm suggesting that every ad should make you weak, but it needs to connect and it needs to feel meaningful on a personal level. - Absolutely. - Yeah, I think I feel like emotion, especially in your space is especially important. And I think there's that sort of narrative that in B2B, that emotion isn't in it. But when you think about it in B2B, that space actually is so important in who you're choosing to work with versus if it's B2C and you don't like a product, you can just go to the supermarket and switch to a different product. - It is I've looked. I mean, I think if you just think about one thing that actually we can all relate to getting emotional but you wanna make sure that you're doing a good job. Whether you are a procurement director, whether you are head of operations, the reality of it is if you can connect something that's truly gonna add value to you, that's something I think worth getting emotional about. - Yeah, definitely. Let's talk a little bit about targeting 'cause I think based on the conversation we're having right now, it feels like the days of broad persona marketing are kind of fading. Would you sort of agree with that narrative? - I think I would. Oh, definitely, definitely. I mean, look, thinking about your procurement and the ops people, I mean, we've really gone from trying to market those as job functions to much more being about the individual and the individual in a particular business and that business being in a particular location, I think too. And like, you know, often all of those sort of parameters mean that that individual needs different things. And so I think even if they've got the same job title, it's so fragmented. It's so atomized. - You know, it's going beyond the job title, right? And I think so it is about context, you know, where they are in the whole funnel, what their pain points are, what content, what format of content they prefer. You know, and we're in a position where we're not having to guess anymore, so we're really working with increasingly rich, first party data and systems that allow us to be precise, personal and dynamic and it would be foolish for us not to take advantage of our ability to do that. - Yeah, totally. - Well, let's also dig into sort of the influence in the B2B space. I think it's changed dramatically, right? We're seeing a lot of different channels being used that we haven't seen before. So I guess it'd be great to kind of get your take around that. - Yeah, I'm asked if they think there's obviously a lot of conversation around influence simulation to building trust in B2B, but for us, where it used to be very much around analyst reports from research companies focused within our vertical of a third and drink B2B, and of course, the trade press, but now, you know, influence is coming from the sub-stack. It's coming from community founders, new purchasing forums that we referenced earlier, upstream new tech, and of course, even TikTok, where we have thousands of opinion formers to speak. - Yeah, I think the change that the teams are seeing in the agency is quite radical in many ways and it changes some of the influences change in targeting so much because it's turning into us mapping ecosystems rather than markets in many ways and you know that's shifting fast and all the time and honestly Kavita you know you can't track that without proper data architecture in place and you know you need to know in our market who's moving the needle not not just who's creating the biggest reach in many ways so so I think I think authenticity plays into it as well you know the role of authenticity in terms of people what you know rising up to influences I mean that's a whole new podcast topic in itself but I think which get ready but that's why I think you know looking in new places we have to be quite restless around where we are finding the right voices to support the agenda of the conversation we wanted to deliver yeah truly no I think it's I think what you said about like who's moving the needle versus you know getting the most reach there is actually a distinct difference between that which I think is so interesting all day long and I think you're in in our space which is you're always being very very fragmented in terms of kind of how you get to people and how you have to kind of ladder things up and glue and stitch things together to create an audience it's it's it's so important and that's why the data architecture piece is is fundamental. Seeing how B2B journeys have sort of evolved over time I mean we know that they can take months how does that sort of change the creative strategy? Yeah I think firstly you're right it does take months in in in some of our sort of top-end stuff it takes a year more sometimes it can do but then equally we'd also try to influence very small purchases very you know so we've got a lot of stretch with what we do but but it's back to that ecosystem thing I think you know we're not as an agency but we're not really building single campaigns anymore you know we it's it's creative that has to hold attention over months multiple roles multiple channels and hitting all of that kind of ecosystem stuff that Anna's referring to all of her sub-stack friends yeah and all of that kind of stuff so you know like I think that they're the things that are changing yeah I'm thinking of this as a recent project where we knew there were 12 touch points before say I leave them began and so we built content for early research for internal buy-in for technical validation even on boarding because we had the data that stitched together we could adapt based on engagement be reactive around that I think that that definitely is different in terms of the long game of the sort of biogenic a feature as you said because you know I think that for again speaking for ourselves we need performance tracking built in so so both you know the agency and the teams individually are really learning in real time and so it's not just kind of measuring stuff after the fact or after the project that's sort of in the moments yeah have to be as in real time as possible yeah completely yeah yeah no I totally agree I think sometimes there is that I guess notion that you know well we'll see how this campaign performs and then we'll track everything and that's where the measurement yeah people think that's where the measurements are but in actuality like you said everything has to be sort of done in real time so like wait like ten steps served now yes you know we're all in touch it yeah yeah yeah too much of a lag yeah yeah yeah I think that's honestly why you know we've sort of kind of owned that narrative of like you know stop thinking about your marketing goals start thinking about like the revenue goals and how it instantly connects to the business I feel like everything we're talking about seems very relevant to now exactly very life for you and and making sure you have the systems in place to be able to measure that return and that that funnel of revenue as well it's back to the fact that you can put a number on it yeah everything's very full circle yeah well actually speaking of that I know in our last episode which I'll leave a link for listeners who haven't heard in the description you know we talked about FMCGs and how they're becoming growth engines I guess it'd be great to know what can be to be learned from FMCGs and vice versa are there any you know additional lessons to be learned there well I think that in terms of sort of food and drink FMCG I mean what brands have always known is essentially how to grab attention quickly you know I think you know they're brilliant at consistency and visual consistency they're greater emotional shorthands and actually occasion-based marketing from the B2C perspective as well all of that stuff kind of comes into a B2B piece and I think is really informative and for us we try to bring a lot of that stuff in to what we do by creating I guess assets that lands hard and fast essentially so even if you're just kind of you know doing a quick scroll around LinkedIn you know we have to kind of get some of that immediacy and actually the FMCG heritage of what we do informs quite a lot of that I think and I think that that does bring interesting stuff to B2B I don't know I will die on the hill of creating excitement for B2B and I also believe that it's FMCG brands that are learning from B2B so especially when we think around really properly using CRM integration content ecosystems that you were referring to using data to build those relationships not to just drive awareness so it is a it is a two-way exchange and we believe that bending FMCG's emotional velocity with B2B's smart strategies again bias and we're on something I think quite wonderful I guess with that being said what's what's sort of next for you guys and what does the future of this space kind of look like for Omni specifically well I mean I think we've alluded to quite a bit of it around sort of data architecture and all those kind of stuff that that's sort of going on within the agency but I think one thing for sure Bernan mine the theme of some of the stuff we've talking about today is that it's not about automating creativity you know it is about I would say creative intelligence and it's about amplifying what we do through ever smarter tools on better foundations I think that's broadly it I think moving forwards we do believe that Omni is a B2B agency and and one of the things that I think is going to be happening is that we take on more of the role of owning the audience and that's from targeting that's from owning the reach and essentially also closing the loop on the sale as well and taking responsibility down that end also so I think there's a lot of change happening and a lot of change that is is forced from everything from you know AI to everything else I'm sure you've had 5,000 podcasts talking about but you know like you know you know there is some force behaviors that need to happen as well well obviously you touched a little bit on AI which I can't believe we've gone this long without it I saved it for the end but I feel like that ties in quite nicely with you know this balance between the human touch and AI do you have any thoughts sort of around that yeah I mean well firstly we've got creative AI consultants crawling all over the agency right now and I think generally it's one of those good things in many ways throughout source to help us embed what we need in the right departments that you know they're working with us on proprietary stuff but you know of course with that adaptability that we need to change and flex you know things are changing monthly, quarterly you know we are changing a lot within that space but it really is having a huge impact on us yeah totally it is huge impact it's helping us to create brand experiences that feel tailored timing and the genuinely useful it's not just high impact creative for its own sake yeah it's a really that don't get me started on AI because I do find it incredibly exciting and I think you ramped up since all the AI consultants that we're working with yeah just yeah belt up yeah buckle up yeah yeah yeah we're buckle up well I mean so much has changed just in the last year even I think the mindset around AI it's it's much more you know there I think there's more of a curiosity around it and now it's more of how can we use it strategically and I think now people have kind of switched to that sort of shit there's been like that shit I feel like the conversation is changing around it and it's just embracing it into your ways and I think the key bit and this is a bit of sticks with me is it it's around think AI think you can't just go straight to AI you cannot cognitively offload you need to and that's from a strategy perspective funnily enough the think bit and then think bit at the end. - You do a lot of cognitive offloading. - Yeah, you do a lot of thinking and now I try and reject cognitively offloading. - Okay, cool. Well, I think that is about all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. As mentioned earlier, if you enjoyed this podcast, we will leave previous episodes we've done with Omni in the description, so do check them out. In addition, you can reach out to Omni, Michael or Anna on LinkedIn. I'm sure they went mind-alinked in message. Thanks so much again, everyone, and I will see everyone again soon for another episode. Thanks, guys. (upbeat music)