Marketing Week just dropped a stat that made me smile: 55.7% of B2B marketers say their focus on creativity has increased.

About time.

For 20+ years, I've watched B2B marketing default to the same playbook: Feature lists. Stock photos of handshakes. Jargon that would make a lawyer blush.

But something's shifting.

Take Workbooks. Tiny CRM company. Crowded market. Their research found customers felt "sold a dream, supplied a nightmare."

Their response? "No BS CRM."

They literally showed a guy getting splattered with, errmm, manure. On billboards.

Result? 140% uplift in pipeline.

Or Addleshaw Goddard - a law firm - running poetry campaigns about Santa's GDPR violations. They won Marketing Week's Marketing Team of the Year. That's like me winning a bodybuilding contest.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗻𝗼𝘄?

Simple. When 30 companies say & offer the same thing, creativity isn't optional. It's survival.

But here's another stat: B2C brands are 2x more likely to measure creative effectiveness than B2B.

We're getting creative but flying blind.

Of course, B2B sales cycles are brutal and long. And attributing that 2025 billboard to a deal in 2032 is “challenging” to say the least.

But Workbooks' Dan Roche nailed it: "The billboard stuff is inherently unmeasurable... but we trusted."

Sometimes you have to trust that being human beats being boring.

Perfect attribution is a myth anyway

𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 "𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲?" Start asking "is it too boring?"

𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻. Brand searches. Pipeline. (My fave) engaged web visits.

𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀. Not from feature lists.

And remember, the best B2B campaign of 2024 featured someone getting covered in manure.