PJA Advertising + Marketing provides three tips for B-to-B marketers looking to evolve their brands, plus examples from clients who have already had success doing so.

1. 1
3 WAYS YOUR BRAND
CAN CREATE CHANGE
THAT MATTERS
H U G H K E N N E D Y
P A R T N E R
P J A A D V E R T I S I N G + M A R K E T I N G

2. 2
Why Today’s
Brands Must
Create Change
The ultimate value of marketing today is to
create change – in customer behaviors, in the
buying process, even in our culture.
The bad news: brands continue to be stuck in
awareness-building expressions that are more
than a decade old.
The good news: opportunities are everywhere
for brands to build loyalty by inspiring
customers to change their behaviors.

3. 3
3 WAYS TO USE YOUR BRAND
TO CREATE CHANGE

4. 4
1
Position your brand to take
advantage of market gaps and
opportunities
Identify the market gaps your brand can address better than anyone else.
Example: a marketing taboo or a place where buying hasn’t kept up with innovation.
Define the opportunities to close the gap you’re best equipped to address.

5. 5
If DNA technology can cure disease, can it also help consumers choose better sheets?
In a word, yes.
For a client that created DNA tagging technology for Pima Cotton, we uncovered a
gap: sheet brands were making purity claims they couldn’t back up, and sheet buyers
had no idea what to buy.
The opportunity: Position our client to educate buyers about the proven quality and
greater environmental benefits of verified Pima Cotton.
Example

6. 6
Companies have missions.
So should brands.
Today’s most successful companies use their brands to drive the high-impact change.
How?
Identify a brand mission by asking: how could our brand play a deeper role in people’s lives?
Use this mission to guides the experiences your brand creates for its customers.
2

7. 7
A drug company felt its messaging about innovation left it lost in the pack. The insight
we uncovered that predictability could lead to faster, better drugs became a mission
their brand could embrace.
This mission was much more useful than another “me too” message about which
brand’s innovation was more advanced. And guess what? The customer wasn’t looking
for innovation, but a pragmatic vision for improvement.
Example

8. 8
Enlist your crazies
To really drive change, find the people – “the crazies” – with an outsized passion
for your brand or category. Go beyond influencer marketing, which is
essentially paying someone to create marketing messages for you.
Crazies need not be customers. Crazies are people who advocate for a vision of
the market that is consistent with what you do.
3

9. 9
For an enterprise software company, we identified 50 rock star CIOs who volunteered to
write articles and participate in a community to further the goals of our client’s mission.
A year into the program, the CEO bumped into a lead executive at a Fortune 10 company,
who told him, “That program is the best marketing you guys have ever done.”
Why? Because it was changing opinions among change-makers.
Example

10. 10
NOW ASK YOURSELF 3 QUESTIONS
What change can
my brand drive that
also helps achieve
our marketing and
business objectives?
How can my brand
play a deeper role in
people’s lives?
What kinds of
experiences can we
define to inspire
audiences to lean
in, take an action,
and change their
behaviors?

11. 11
“If marketing is not driving the change agenda
then either the agenda is wrong or marketing is
not being effective.­
—Ian Ewart, head of products, services, and marketing at Coutts, quoted in
“The Rebirth of the CMO,” Peter Dahlstrom, Chris Davis, Fabian Hieronimus,
Marc Singer, Harvard Business Review, 8.5.14
“
A Closing Thought

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