Category Creation

7Create a Lifestyle Brand for Your Category

I have to confess something. While I’ve spent my entire career working in B2B, I am completely and hopelessly fascinated by B2C marketing. It’s hard not to be as a marketer when you experience campaigns such as Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” or basically anything that the teams at Disney, Nike, or Virgin America (a brand gone too soon) have produced.

B2C marketers are responsible for building and maintaining brands that speak to our very humanity as consumers, on a level that’s so much deeper than just products and features. They are emotive—developing relationship with their audiences and influencing affinity and purchasing decisions at an almost subconscious level. I aspire to buy a Tesla not because I think the vehicles themselves are any more luxurious than their German or Italian peers, but rather, I want to experience the future of transportation and do my part to help accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Prior to having children, my wife and I would make an annual pilgrimage to Disneyland, not because we were particularly passionate about theme parks, but because we wanted to access the wonder and imagination of our childhood. The B2C world understands the power of brand in driving business results, a notion from which those of us in B2B marketing can draw inspiration, but seldom activate in our day-to-day jobs of building and optimizing marketing funnels.

But the world is changing. The B2H reality that I described ...