Credit: Eve Online
I've been a gamer for over three decades now. I've been in the business and IT universe for nearly two. And I'm always amazed at how similar yet so far apart both worlds are when it comes to marketing.
Last night,I stumbled upon this gem. It's the latest campaign video for Eve Online, and for the uninitiated it's a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game set in space. But it struck me just how emotionless our own marketing efforts have become in the enterprise space. If we take a quick look at the latest slogans and taglines it's a monotonous drone of "better software building stuff," "more efficient data blah," "faster thingumajigs in the Cloud."
What's more, even case studies and user examples are carbon copy fact sheets with the ubiquitous quote of "They helped me achieve $xxx in cost reduction" or "I liked that the 'Generate Report' button was blue and not red."
Content but no emotion
This year there's been a strong push for content marketing in the wake of social media and its outreach. However, whilst story-driven or more compelling content is the current mantra there's a gap which is obvious after I saw this video: emotion.
I rarely see the real human side within business-to-business marketing. Yes, it's audience specific and a CXO wants to see the numbers to crunch for the business case, but ultimately it's the employees who will be using what is bought on a daily basis. Imagine hearing or reading a story where the relief of knowing a business wasn't going under because your product allowed the owner insight into it they never had before. Or how employees could feel real achievement at the end of the day and reading it in their own words that doesn't involve features and product names.
It doesn't need a fancy soundtrack like in the Eve campaign, but a carefully crafted message or story that resonates with an emotional impact is far more powerful and sticky than a case study or blog about features and savings.
World's apart ?
Ultimately, Eve Online is a piece of software, software that allows thousands of people to complete tasks and collaborate with one another to achieve goals, trade goods and services, connecting them in a space that sits on a number of servers held in a cloud environment. It's not that far away from what we sell every day in the B2B world, the same elements are there (albeit a little less serious...)
What's stopping you from creating a real story about your company and solution ?
Watch the video, then challenge yourself in 2015 to create a campaign that will bring goosebumps. B2B doesn't need to be boring.
(Warning: some choice language)
