“There used to be a time when we would create five or six creative pieces over the course of a year. That’s turned into 400, 500, 700. There is this insatiable thirst for content. I’ve seen RFPs that literally say, ‘We need an agency to make 1,000 pieces of content for us.’
To say what? Nobody is asking that question.”
— Bob Goulart
Last week, we shared an article from Marketing Magazine titled Creative Clash: Are Big Agencies Burning Out? What caught our attention wasn’t the burnout, it was that someone in the industry was finally asking the question highlighted above.
And we’re relieved to see it being asked, because this isn’t a big-agency problem or a small-agency problem. It’s an industry-wide issue.
For us, it’s the biggest question, and it’s still not being asked often enough by either clients or agencies:
What are you trying to say?
Who are you speaking to?
The idea that carpet-bombing the marketplace with hundreds or thousands of content pieces is a sound strategy is madness. In a world already saturated with visual and informational noise, how is producing more, at lower quality, supposed to help anyone stand out?
It doesn’t.
“If a brand doesn’t know who it is at its soul, and why it exists, it’s not going to be a very positive experience when it comes to marketing.”
— Susan Credle
So how do you stop the cycle?
By creating work that tells a story. When brands focus on expressing the truth of who they are and why they matter, they become known for that exact thing. Over time, that clarity builds recognition, trust, and stronger relationships.
Does This Apply to B2B?
Absolutely.
The principle is no different for B2B than it is for consumer brands. At the end of the day, marketing is still about interactions between people, whether it’s someone buying a television or a facilities engineer deciding to invest in a large metering system.
All of them want to know who they’re engaging with. And you can’t answer that until you have a very clear understanding of who you are.
Why you?
What’s your brand?
Why should anyone care?
Why should they choose you over your competitors?
When you can answer that question, the Why You, you can finally focus on what you should be saying to the marketplace.
Too often, our industry has defaulted to taking orders instead of collaborating with clients to figure out how to distill their brand and tell their story with intention. The result is unfortunate but common: companies that don’t clearly understand what makes them unique and valued, and that blindly push messages into the void hoping something, anything, lands.
At some point, quantity was crowned king. That’s where we disagree.
Quality will always matter more than volume. And quality always starts by understanding who you are first.
If your content efforts feel loud but ineffective, contact us, we’ll help you focus on what actually matters.
