Ruth Lukaweski

Ruth Lukaweski, founder of RML Research, has over 30 years of market research experience and has operated almost exclusively as a business-to-business specialist in a variety of areas including: transportation and logistics; construction and real estate; electronics and communications; academic (colleges and universities); business services.

She has also demonstrated expertise in specific business research and marketing areas such as B2B targeting (defining business target audiences), and triggering (for defining purchase priorities and practices). Ruth also specializes in business branding research – she has participated in numerous business branding pitches and has focussed on the effectiveness of research in the B2B branding process. Her particular areas of B2B branding expertise include: The dynamics of business “marketing” versus business “branding”; The principles of business branding - a checklist for success (in business branding).

Ruth is active in a number of respected professional organizations: the National Board of the Marketing and Research Intelligence Association of Canada (MRIA) and a Board member of the B2B Division of MRIA for several years -- where she has initiated a number of projects such as the Toronto B2B Learning Series. Ruth developed and hosts the International Webinar Series for MRIA - a series of webinar featuring prominent international speakers in business research and marketing. She has been editor of the B2B Reporter since 1996 - a monthly column for VUE, the national monthly publication for MRIA.

Ruth is also a member of most other business research and marketing professional organizations worldwide including BMA (Business Marketing Association) and BIG (Business Intelligence Group). RML is a member of the Canadian Marketing Association and Ruth has actively participated on the CMA B2B Conference committee.

More on What's Right (and wrong ) with B2B Advertising

“We find it truly surprising that businesses full of smart people produce so much advertising that isn’t...Why then is good business-to-business advertising so hard to come by?” DAVE AND ALEX.

Dave and Alex are a pair of advertising executives who evaluated 79% of a set of 200 B2B print ads as “poor”. They followed up this assessment with a 12-page (highly entertaining) supplement called: “Why do so many business-to-business ads suck?"

1.The misunderstood business customer: some ads would have you believing that business buyers are “soulless automatons with parallel processors for brains”.

MY OPINION: the individual making an organizational purchase is weighing unique parameters – the B2B and B2C purchase processes are not equivalent. Emotions do play a part in B2B decision-making but it is qualitatively different from consumer decisions. The B2B campaign should focus on the feelings generated about the product or the company – the B2C campaign focuses on how the customer feels about himself.

2. The sales guy culture: B2B marketers are more likely to be drawn from sales and engineering backgrounds, and sales guy advertising tends to resemble product brochures.

MY OPINION: somewhat true. B2B marketing efforts are often reactive rather than proactive (i.e. prompted by a specific turn of events). There is a lack of strong training programs focusing on the business marketing, branding and advertising processes.

3.Lazy agency syndromes. According to Dave and Alex, agencies creating B2B ads tend to resort too easily to business terms and clichés such as handshakes and globes and mountain climbers. An internet search (by Dave and Alex) turned up thousands of clichés: “Why we mean business...When we say internet we mean business...We mean business in space”.

MY OPINION: again, a lot of this reflects a lack of understanding of the business marketing and advertising processes including: the role of emotion in business marketing and advertising; the uniqueness of business products and services.

4.Corpo-babble: the inability to speak clearly and directly to the target audience such as the following example: “Anticipating millions of connections your network will support, we deliver a business optimized infrastructure that provides scalability”.

MY OPINION: business marketing has become better than ever at communicating a single meaningful message and utilizing effective creative. Note the following headline for an IBM ad: “Stop thinking like a bank. Start thinking like a customer”. This is an ad informing bankers how IBM can ensure that their customers can open a new account in minutes rather than hours! It effectively uses copy and visuals to back up benefits suggested in the headline.

5. Marketing schizophrenia: Dave and Alex say the typical B2B marketer knows how he has to “differentiate” his product but when push comes to shove tends to back away from creative opportunities and seeks “credibility” and “security”.

MY OPINION: a fading problem – as evidenced by the many good examples of focused B2B marketing and advertising out there but some may be going too far (but that happens in the B2C world).

6.Trying to hard: when they do go out on a limb, B2B marketers will try to be unique and draw attention to themselves in almost a “frantic and hyperactive” fashion”.

MY OPINION: this is still very true – sometimes it is very hard to tell who some business ads are targeting. Fortunately it’s not all bad news. Many more B2B companies are investing in business marketing and there is a noticeable increase in the variety and number of business advertising campaigns. BtoB Magazine, for example, in its monthly evaluation of business advertising campaigns (Chasers) has no trouble digging up examples of both well and poorly executed B2B campaigns. This suggests we’ve come a long way as an industry but there remains lots of opportunity for improvements.

What's Wrong with B2B Advertising? -- Not as Much as You Think

“We’re not saying all business-to-business advertising sucks – many achieve mediocrity and a few are excellent”.
Dave and Alex

A few years ago a pair of young advertising executives (Dave and Alex) rated 200 B2B print ads: only 5% were rated as excellent; one-fifth as mediocre and the large majority (79%) as poor. Dave is still around and is currently paired with someone called Eddy (of the Dave and Eddy show) but the evidence shows that B2B advertising has matured substantially in just a few short years.

Dave and Alex received a lot of attention for their opinions – but by their own admission they admit that their approach was not very scientific: they basically selected an assortment of ads from six trade magazines. Nevertheless business advertising executives would agree with a number of their conclusions about what constitutes a poor or mediocre business ad:

No creative concept
Business ads with a simple product photo shot and headline with a poorly worded selling proposition: Everything you need is a router at half the price...Why not cut costs without cutting corners. Compare these to another ad for a healthcare company targeting HR personnel in small companies: Cut costs, not coverage – a captivating headline in bold white copy or red background which meshes with the selling proposition.

The trite analogy
B2B ads riddled with clichés such as: canyons (symbolizing depth); geysers (dependability); lurking wolves (competitive threats); bouncing balls (flexibility).

The creative misfire
Usually refers to tasteless ads such as one targeted at the beef trade featuring a live cow over the image of a cooking fire with the headline: Smoke gets in your eyes.

Sponsors of the five excellent ads mainly included large and well known companies: Microsoft; EDS; Internet Security Systems to name a few. In most cases the production values tended to be described as competent and noted for their clarity: single message and easily understood; their creative indivisibility (where the headline and visuals work well together); their restraint (simple graphics and tight copy).

Reality check
Even though this study was conducted a few shot years ago, the measly 5% of B2B ads classified as excellent would easily climb to 40% or more today:

-B2B advertisers include some of the biggest companies in the world – Intel’s Intel Inside campaign continues to be regarded as one of the best campaigns of the 20th century; and the gold standard for B2B ingredient advertising.

-BtoB Magazine in its monthly feature called 'Chasers' probes into the mechanics of B2B ads and has no trouble finding both the poor and excellent examples.

-Chasers recently compared two airline ads targeted at business customers offering 'comfort': one featured a stylized visual of a woman blissfully at rest on a flight but the rest of the copy failed to exploit this theme; the second ad featured the business class section (of a new airplane) floating on clouds and displaying extra wide comfortable seating and luxurious in-flight service.

Hybridization -- And the Changing Landscape of B2B Branding (the hidden challenges)

About a year ago I upgraded my laptop. My search for a new model started at the Dell website but ended up at the company’s booth at the consumer home show (somewhere between the condiments and electronic brooms) and ended at the Dell kiosk at Sherway Gardens shopping mall. What’s Dell to do with customers like me who look for a serious business computer at shopping malls and consumer home shows – but that, unfortunately, is the essence of “hybridization”.

The “fruit” wars -- iPhone versus Blackberry – last winter the New York Times featured a run of full back page ads for the iPhone in the business section – targeted at business customers and focussing on the iPhone’s powerful access to Internet business applications. RIM, on the other hand, has claimed for a while that the large majority of “new” Blackberry customers are consumers (not traditional business and government users).
In addition to overlapping into each other’s “territory”, RIM and Apple also appear to have different marketing approaches: Apple basically markets ONE smartphone model (the iPhone), tends to focus on a myriad of applications.

By comparison, the Blackberry comes in several models (at last count there are nine featured on its web site excluding half a dozen versions for each of the Pearl and Curve).

Dell, Apple and RIM are all basically marketing “hybrid” products – a trend initiated mostly by B2B companies expanding into the consumer world. Even companies that deal mostly with business suppliers and customers are becoming more and more conscious of end users and consumers.

Hybrid products (and companies) have a unique set of challenges -- how to match different products/models with specific target audiences; how to accommodate consumer versus business audiences and differing (and sometimes incompatible) needs and requirements; how to prioritize all of these issues.

“Hybridization” is more complicated than it appears:

• About one fifth (22%) of the Top 100 Interbrand brands can be categorized as hybrids and outnumber the “pure” B2B brands (8%). But the fact is that many “pure” business brands don’t have a hope of making it to the top of anybody’s list. The top hybrid brands spend an enormous amount of money ($$$) on both consumer and business marketing which substantially increases their brand profile (and equity).

• “B2B companies shouldn’t try to become consumer brands... but they should seek to attain the maximum value possible within their industry (from the Hidden Wealth of B2B Brands)”. Pure B2B brands consistently achieve lower brand equity scores – in a recent ranking by Corebrand the strongest “pure” B2B brand was Caterpillar with an equity rating of 12% (versus 18%/19% for hybrids like Fedex and UPS); the next highest “pure” B2B brand was Emerson with an equity measure of only 5%.

• B2B versus B2C – these represent two very very different buying, marketing and branding processes. The problem is that the business side of these processes is not well understood. Identifying and profiling business target audiences is a complicated process: there can be several audiences within a client company (from C-levels to buyers to end users); there are secondary influencers (external to the business customer but either directly or peripherally involved).

• B2B trumps B2C – business suppliers, customers and intermediaries often have excellent “insight” into end users and consumers. Business intermediaries should be asked to provide feedback with respect to new products, services or marketing strategies before they are rolled out to consumers.

• “I find that there is currently a blurring and fusing of B2C and B2B research... and there is less of a desire to identify B2B and B2C research as separate or different disciplines” – these are the words of Phyllis Macfarlane a longstanding member of the U.K. B2B research community. B2B research has the same issues as B2B marketing – and also requires a better understanding of the business buying, marketing and branding processes.

Consumerization - The Changing Landscape of B2B Branding and the Hidden Challenges

B2B advertising sucks
A few years ago a pair of young advertising executives (Dave and Alex) conducted a review of 200 full-page B2B print ads most of which (79%) were rated as “poor”. Dave and Alex don’t work together anymore – Dave is now partnered with someone called Eddy. In the meantime things have changed. Business marketing (and advertising) has become more creative and interesting and has shamelessly borrowed from consumer marketing. But has it gone too far?? And have the underlying issues (that originally bothered Dave and Alex) still evident? Which leads to a discussion of consumerization.

What exactly is consumerization?
Consumerization basically involves applying consumer marketing approaches to business products and services. This can lead to: a lack of focus on the unique aspects of business products, services; and a poor understanding of the business marketing and branding processes.

The signs of consumerization
This is evidenced by: the misuse of mascots and similar advertising tactics; too much emphasis on establishing emotional connections with target audiences (to the detriment of responding to real needs); too much emphasis on entertaining business target audiences.

Consumer marketing is facing many challenges too – but consumer marketers have at least had many years to navel gaze and develop a good understanding of consumer marketing and advertising principles. Business marketing hasn’t even established a strong baseline in this respect.

The New Pig Corporation
In1985 New Pig invented a “sock” to clean up industrial and factory spills (the first prototype was made by stuffing corn cob bits into pantyhose). Over the next 20 years New Pig expanded the industrial sock to 4500 related products and, along the way, invented and dominated the "spill and leak containment" category. One day New Pig decided to add some sizzle to what they thought was a boring product line: the company introduced a mascot (Sparky the Pig) and a catalogue (called a PIGALOG) – and used these tools to successfully generate interaction with their customers.

HP and Mr. ‘Z’ the superhero
HP has released (recently) a series of Z-series workstations to challenge Apple and target the “digital creative market” comprised of graphic arts, broadcast and architecture professionals. The promotion will be built around a 3D cartoon character called Mr. ‘Z’ who will have his own website. The creative used to launch the product line resembles a series of movie trailers for blockbuster summer movies and Mr. ‘Z’ is supposed to represent the relevant product values of power, performance and reliability.

Both companies have clearly tried to spice up their creative but both are focused exclusively on business and industrial clients and are in a good position to control and monitor the message.

A red flag
I recently viewed a conference presentation focussing on creative approaches to profiling the personality of a mascot for a large Canadian institution. A major issue (for me) was to see business and consumer samples treated as one entity – leading to the assumption that both groups would respond similarly to the mascot; the business target audience wasn’t clearly defined; nor did there appear to be a separate creative strategy or separate objectives for the business sector.

The jury is still out
As business marketers try to maximize the appeal of their marketing programs it is tempting to glamourize the product or the marketing approach – but there are pitfalls:

• The emotional business buyer -- "Business buyers are people too – they have emotions" - this is one of the biggest myths of business marketing: the belief that a business manager uses similar parameters to buy breakfast cereal and make purchase decisions on behalf of his organization is not quite correct.

The role of emotions is, in fact, remarkably different in business marketing – business marketing emotions are 'outward' versus 'inner - directed and should be focused exclusively on feelings towards the brand or the company (versus how any brand makes you feel about yourself).

• Tactics vs. Strategy -- the temptation is to focus on the tactical versus the strategic side of business marketing – or the 'how' versus the 'what' of message communication. As the New Pig and HP case studies demonstrate, strategy should trump tactics.

• Hybridization -- one of the major factors impacting business marketing is the trend towards hybrid brands – mainly driven by business brands expanding to consumer markets (such as RIM). About one fifth (22%) of the Top 100 Interbrand brands are categorized as hybrids and outnumber the pure B2B brands (8%). Recognizing and sorting out business from consumer branding strategies is a challenge.

• The consumerization of business research -- business marketers can always learn from the consumer marketing world. But the case study described above demonstrates how tempting it is to throw consumer and business research into the same pile. It makes life so much easier but leads to false assumptions.

B2B Trends -- What a Difference a Year Makes

The financial crisis has had a big impact on marketing and advertising resulting in a realignment of priorities – a point emphasized by the ISBM in a recent presentation by their Executive Director. The Institute has monitored business marketing (and research) trends since the 1990’s and projects out 2 to 3 years – but the ISBM recently re-visited and revised the 2008 study – resulting in the emergence of new priorities (and downgrading of others).

What's hot now (keeping both your short and long term focus and compiling the right customer profile)

-Keeping tomorrow in mind – the advice is to build and enable an organization capability to stay focused on current issues and but don’t forget about investing in the future.
- Discerning the right customer profile for your organization – making the hard choices and identifying the “value” versus “price" versus "commodity buyers" versus the “pigs” (the latter being comprised of the high maintenance/low profit guys). This involves making hard choices about your customers. Marketers may also have to segment customers (and related offerings) more aggressively.

Still hot, kind of (the need to better understand and measure customer needs)

-Understanding and translating needs – getting at those special “insights” that will provide true competitive advantage (if only market researchers would use the right tools).
- Better measurement – defining and documenting “value” in business markets (from the customer’s point of view) and constructing better B2B marketing metrics to achieve more accountability.

Not so hot anymore (three issues have dropped off the radar)

-Competing globally (especially with China)
-Improving the rate and speed of new product offerings.
-Selling the “C-Suite” (making the case for marketing with top management).

Observations and comment

The ISBM B2B trend analysis is something that many B2B marketers and researchers follow religiously but there are some nagging questions which come up consistently over time.

Value, value, value
This term first appeared in business marketing research about 15 years ago; everybody wanted to define and understand the meaning of "value”. Some academic researchers have even reduced “value” to an equation. In the B2B world “value” can be an overused term and is often confused with costs and pricing. In reality “value” is just a code word for “benefits” - a much simpler concept that is relevant to business target audiences.

Tool, tools, tools
There is always pressure on researchers to use better “tools” – and get better insight, to understand, to identify, etc, etc. There is no doubt that B2B marketers should borrow more from the B2C world in this respect – but the emphasis is wrong. There needs to be more emphasis on the “what” than the “how” we evaluate – on organizational (versus individual) needs; on the strength of the corporate profile; on the needs and associated benefits of various target audiences; on business objectives and priorities.

Insight, insight and more insight
There is also a consistent demand for more "insight” into business thinking. It’s actually more about how to deal with the realities of business marketing: where one company dominates and everyone else is fighting for survival; where even the market leaders have poorly defined images and profiles; where marketers are more worried about the size of the sales force than the strength of the brand.