This year has brought the launch of some truly innovative B2B marketing campaigns. We’ve enjoyed seeing the creativity of our fellow marketers, who consistently push the envelope to create engaging new content and wow their audiences.
All marketers can take away key learnings from standout campaigns, and we’ve mined some of our favorite marketing efforts from 2015 for these lessons. If you missed any of these top B2B campaigns, consider this recap our gift to you. Happy Holidays!
Winner of the Gold PRO Award 2015 from Chief Marketer, “The Bosch Xperience” brought engineering company Bosch’s systems to life using the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift. In this campaign, a Bosch-branded truck visited auto shops and gave retailers a virtual trip through an engine and braking system using Bosch’s technology.
This campaign took advantage of an innovative technology to create a new type of content: a virtual reality experience. The virtual tour of a working engine and brake system created an experience that cannot easily be replicated in a mailer, blog post or even video. Bosch chose a content form that fit their offering well and could effectively set them apart from the competition. Moreover, by pairing the virtual reality experience with a national tour, Bosch could build excitement around the campaign itself as well as the technologies it promoted.
Spiceworks is a social network, app inventory and online help desk for IT professionals all in one. They strive to be the go-to place on the web for every IT pro who needs help solving a challenge, and they’ve been building out their content library in support of that goal for a while now. However, in 2015, some pieces in particular stood out.
In their annual State of IT report, a compilation of IT budgets and tech trends, Spiceworks presented valuable research findings gathered from hundreds of IT professionals as well as social data and IT usage stats. This research alone would be enough to position the brand as a thought leader in IT, but Spiceworks went above and beyond to imbue the report with its quirky brand character.
Presenting their findings as “the budgetary beasts” and security threats IT pros must “battle” in the coming year, the report is designed with cartoon monsters personifying the challenges facing IT. The combination of data and whimsy draws readers through the report—and positions Spiceworks as a knowledgeable but approachable brand.
In 2015, SAP, the enterprise software company that helps businesses manage their operations and customer relations, realized something many of its competitors did not. They recognized that while business leaders are excited by the growth of big data and digital technology, they’re also overwhelmed. SAP even found that in some cases, leaders actually feel that the complexities created by data and digital can hinder business growth by impacting productivity and inflating budgets. To combat this mindset, they launched their largest-ever multi-platform campaign entitled ‘Run simple.’ The campaign features online video, TV and outside broadcast, all aligned around the message that SAP helps its customers simplify their operations and improve innovation even in the face of great complexity. We applaud SAP for truly understanding their buyers’ pain points and hesitations, and then approaching them head-on.
These campaigns serve as proof that building a strong B2B brand matters—in fact, we believe that B2B brands matter more than B2C. Download our white paper to learn more. You can also contact us to talk about how you can implement next year’s stand-out marketing campaign for your organization.
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