The “rational buyer” that so much B2B creative is designed for doesn’t really exist. Daniel Kahneman spent a career proving it. His System 1 and System 2 framework shows that even when we believe we’re being logical, emotion has usually already done the heavy lifting. We decide with our gut, then justify with our head. B2B buyers are not Spock. They’re humans wearing lanyards at a conference in Amsterdam.
It’s no good playing the long ball if they are sitting deep
Gartner’s research puts useful numbers on this. Personal value like career risk, professional reputation, the fear of being the person who backed the wrong vendor drives purchasing decisions significantly. Often more than the business case itself. That’s all understandable human anxiety and design that ignores it in favour of emotionless feature lists isn’t really trying to connect.
The IPA’s effectiveness research, led by Les Binet and Peter Field, is clear on what this costs. Emotional campaigns consistently outperform rational ones in long-term commercial results, and that holds in B2B as much as anywhere. The brands that build genuine emotional resonance win better business, with more loyal customers. Yet B2B continues to pour budget into activation, rational and response-focused work, while the emotional layer goes almost entirely unbuilt. To use the football analogy, it’s like relying on long throw-ins and set pieces and never developing any creative open play.
The LinkedIn B2B Institute calls this the “5% problem.” At any moment, about 5% of your market is actively looking to buy. The other 95% aren’t in decision mode, which means all that feature-heavy messaging does nothing for them. What works for the 95% is the same thing that’s worked since someone first stood up in a village and told a story: make people feel something and they’ll remember you.
Honestly, they’re just like us
Designers tend to be an emotional bunch, so this all feels natural to us. We know that people don’t experience a brand through a logical framework. They experience it the way they experience a good book, or a movie. They feel it first and it’s that which will stay with them.
Ireland and Europe have the cultural raw material for this. Our storytelling traditions provide the means to make people lean in and take note. The research is merely confirming what a good storyteller already understands.
Find the story that’s worth telling and they’ll remember you
One of the projects I’m most proud of is our work with Shackleton’s Food Ingredients, a company with roots going back to 1859 and a family connection to the famous polar explorer. When they came to us for a rebrand, the temptation was obvious and enormous. Ernest Shackleton practically writes himself.
But it was the wrong story. The people running the company today have no connection to the remaining Shackleton family. Leading with the explorer would have been borrowed mythology, compelling on the surface but hollow underneath. And audiences can feel that hollowness. They might not be able to name it, but something doesn’t quite land.
The real story was quieter but genuinely theirs. Over 160 years of milling expertise, deep relationships with local Irish farmers, a modern facility built around sustainability and gluten-free innovation. When we helped them find and articulate that story, something shifted in how the brand communicated. It stopped performing and started meaning something.
That’s what good B2B creative actually does. The courage isn’t always about being bold or disruptive. Sometimes it’s about resisting the obvious in favour of the honest, finding the story that the people inside the business recognise as their own. When you get that right, it connects. Not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s real.
