We are about to publish my next B2B Marketing Propolis Premium Report, titled 

Building an Authentic Brand: Defining the Building Blocks for Brand Success. 

It was great fun working with B2B Marketing colleagues Sue Mizera and Darren Coleman and the interviews were with marketing executives from Atos, Deloitte, Ideal, The IET, Kalibrate, Pension Insurance Corporation, and PwC.

This is the opening chapter; “Branding’s journey from logo to message to authenticity”. 

“Even as B2B marketers become more precise and targeted up and down the funnel, brand strategy is still the starting point for many companies’ overall go-to-market approach. Why? Well, B2B companies that do not take an active role in crafting their brand are leaving perception up to chance. Having a defined brand allows companies to guide their narrative and the public’s opinion. 

Branding is much more than building awareness; it establishes and maintains credibility with prospects, customers, employees and partners.

I well remember leading a multi-year project back in 2002–2005 helping the software giant SAP to understand how they won, or lost, their more important deals. For each deal, we would interview the customers about how they came to their buying decision. Every deal involved partners like business consultants and/or system integrators, and it was clearly important to SAP that we record not only what their customers were thinking, but also how those partners were communicating SAP values and their offering. Although the word ‘brand’ wasn’t used (B2B vendors did not talk about brand then; I am not even sure if the client worked in marketing), they were really checking on their brand consistency throughout their sales channel. Simply put, were the partners telling the same story as SAP?

Branding begins with consistency of presentation across all channels of communication, whether that’s digital or human, direct sales force, or business partners. But it’s not just the messaging about the product or service being offered; branding should also reveal a consistent value system that a business wants to present to the world. Not only what a company offers, but also what it believes in.

With that in mind, we held extensive interviews with several senior B2B marketers to help us obtain deep insight into the topic of brand authenticity – what it means to marketers, how they approach it, the value it can deliver, and the challenges they face. These interviews serve as the basis of this report.”

The report will publish to B2B Marketing Propolis clients next week and a shortened version to the non-premium members later in March. Contact me if you would like to get more details.

Always keeping you informed! Peter