In a digital world shaped by shrinking attention spans and rising expectations, B2B marketing agencies are realizing something consumer brands have long understood: emotion sells. The traditional B2B playbook—filled with whitepapers, spec sheets and gated eBooks—it’s just not landing. It doesn’t meet the moment. As the kids say: miss me with that.
Today’s buyers, even in enterprise settings, are humans. Therefore, they crave storytelling, personality and content that feels human.
Fortunately, a new wave of B2B brands is rising to the occasion. Savvy B2B marketing agencies are applying B2C-style marketing tactics—humor, storytelling, visual identity and strategic content collaborations—to drive deeper engagement, stronger brand recall and real conversion.
Here are a few B2B brands that are marketing like B2C powerhouses, and what you can learn from their approach.
Mailchimp, everyone’s favorite email marketing platform, utilized a strong emphasis on creativity and brand storytelling to address a common, but daunting problem: everyone kept misspelling their name. Instead of taking themselves too seriously, they took a cue from the hilarious spoof commercials on legendary SNL and broke the mold with the campaign “Did You Mean Mailchimp?”—a surreal, multi-channel branding initiative filled with quirky product spoofs of how people spelled their name (MailShrimp, WhaleSynth, KaleLimp, and more!)
The campaign even featured nine fake products with similar names, such as SnailPrimp, FailChips and NailChamp. Each was promoted to a specific target audience, and created huge buzz, creating memorable brand association.
Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade! The use of humor and visual storytelling grabbed attention, making their brand feel playful and memorable—something most B2B email platforms wouldn’t dare to try.
Don’t be afraid to let your brand have a personality! B2B doesn’t have to be boring, especially when you’re building long-term brand equity. We all want to smile, and if your brand can deliver on the promise of exceptional service and a great product, poking fun at yourself in a creative way can instill fun and camaraderie with your audience.
And in case you need to “sell” the idea of humor to key leadership (or even be convinced yourself), check out this data from Fast Company:
Dropbox is known for its ability to help people and organizations organize, store and share large files. During Covid, when the lines between personal and professional became more blurred than ever before, they launched the campaign “For All Things Worth Saving.” This campaign didn’t focus on syncing files or data security (all terrific features of Dropbox), but instead on preserving memories and family legacies. Ads featured real customers using Dropbox to capture meaningful moments in their work and personal lives.
The campaign positioned Dropbox as a trusted part of personal and professional storytelling. It reframed a utility product as a memory vault—giving it emotional resonance far beyond its category. And using emotion to sell isn’t just an intuitive marketing ploy, it’s backed my data: a Nielsen study found that campaigns with high emotional resonance generate 23% more sales than those relying solely on rational messaging. And a HBR study found that 70% of B2B buyers rate emotional considerations as equal to or more important than rational factors.
Sell the story, not the software. Emotional appeal drives memorability and increases sales.
Slack, the messaging platform that helps teams communicate, share files, and collaborate in real time, didn’t just use one B2C tactic: they leaned into all of them! With a blend of humor, storytelling, showcasing real people and utilizing video, they launched their “So, Yeah, We Tried Slack” series, showcasing relatable team communication struggles and how Slack solved them. The videos struck a perfect balance between entertainment and product insights.
Slack didn’t just show off its interface. It told a story that mirrored its audience’s frustrations and then offered relief. By combining humor, empathy, great storytelling and subtle product positioning, it made Slack feel essential without overselling.
Don’t just inform—entertain. Period.
These brands all lean into a few powerful B2C-inspired marketing principles:
Whether it’s humor, inspiration or identity, these B2B brands prove that tapping into emotion and culture isn’t just possible—it’s profitable.
In a world of sameness, relatability wins. The B2B brands that humanize their message, embrace storytelling, and act less like a vendor and more like a brand will win the hearts (and contracts) of the modern buyer.
Here’s the thing: unlike when I tell my kids to eat their veggies while I’m eating a granola bar for lunch, we like to practice what we preach here at Crux!
And for us, that means remembering that B2B doesn’t have to be without personality. Take CyTek, a regional MSP provider in Kansas City. They posed some serious questions about standing out in a crowded, corporate landscape. Enter Cy: a cute but serious-about-it IT character designed to help them stand out from the norm on social media channels that were otherwise filled with stock images, graphs, and other scroll-on-past-it-content. This cutie personalizes a B2B business and helps him—and them—stand out from the crowd. Crux marketers designed to use Cy 50-80% of the time on social, and 20% or less on the website to signal that when you see Cy, you know you’ve landed in the right place. Not only is Cy cute, but he’s a helpful brand ambassador and differentiator! (Just consider the merch!)
When you consider humor, storytelling, emotions and FUN in your B2B brand, you instantly make it more recognizable, relevant and relatable!
Want to turn your B2B messaging into something your audience actually remembers? Crux is the B2B marketing agency ready to help you combine emotion, storytelling and smart strategy to drive real results. Let’s talk about what bold, brand-led marketing can do for your business.
Drop us a line—we promise not to send a whitepaper.
