Webisodes and B2B

There are a growing number of entertaining webisodes from B2B and B2C companies that are popping up on places like Youtube and companies websites. But lets call them what they are: commercials. The web takes the sting out of producing a commercial because you don’t have to buy airtime. This changes the dynamic of traditional commercials:

1.) Viewers are not watching something else on TV and inadvertently exposed to your commercial.
2.) Viewers can promote your spot themselves with email or word-of-mouth.
3.) Viewers can more easily choose simply not to view your video.

For B2B companies, creating video spots online opens up a whole new world. In the past, it didn’t make any sense to advertised an industrial packaging machine or a pharmaceutical processing system during primetime because you would be spending a huge amount of money to reach a huge audience, 99.9% of whom couldn’t possible produce a sale.

Today, an entertaining, informative video can be a fast and simple way of articulating the value of what you do. But the hard and fast rules of B2B still apply:

Put the Benefits First
Highlight The Business Value
Avoid Tech Jargon
Speak to the Highest Level Specifier
Keep it Short

BtoB is still BtoB and being entertaining only gets you so far. People have real business needs and, while entertainment might get their attention, its not going to hold them. After all, there are movies, TV shows, video games, music, and, oh yes, family and friends who fill in the leisure activities for most business executives.

There are some examples of videos that have worked well. The most famous is from Blendtec which makes industrial grade blenders. I had no idea this product category even existed until I saw this set of videos. Their site willitblend.com became hugely popular when they blended an iPhone shortly after it came out last summer. Incredibly, their sales also went through the roof.

I suppose that there is a good BtoB case to be made for this. If someone is sitting around in their business thinking ‘Gee, if only we had a more powerful blending capability, our business would really take off,’ then willitblend.com definitely demonstrates the capabilities of the system. I’m guessing that only a fraction of their audience buys industrial blenders, but they’re appealing to a broad enough base of markets that this works well.

However, would this approach work with something like a large piece of integrated equipment or service that will require hundreds of thousands if not millions in investment from customers. Probably not in exactly the same way.

Anythinggoesmarketing has a post that compares a BtoC effort from Kraft with some BtoB webisodes. There’s one called ‘Get the Cat’ from Lawson Software that’s pretty entertaining. It also gets across a pretty good point: the competition offers overblown solutions that don’t really get the job done. Lawson listens to your needs and comes up with simple solutions (Lawson’s tagline is ‘Simpler is Better.) It’s a good message, but I still don’t really know what Lawson does. Now, you could rationalize that I could visit their website to find out more, but isn’t that kind of a shame? They clearly spent a lot of time, money, and effort on the spot. Shouldn’t I walk away with a more clear idea of what they do? See the video below:

Here’s another take along the same lines. It’s from a previous post The difference between features and benefits. It’s snappy, to-the-point, fun to watch, and you understand what they sell, more or less. I don’t have the need to manipulate video images, but if I did, I’d call these guys first because I know exactly what they do and they seem pretty good at it.  As a matter of fact, I’d venture to say that there may be someone who didn’t even know this could be done with software and would see a need fulfilled.