1. By Tom Stein, President & Chief Creative Officer, Stein + Partners Brand Activation
B2B Marketing: An Activated 'Brand'
Naturally enough, we talk a lot on this blog about Brand Activation as marketing’s
ultimate “end state.”
So I do not say this lightly: I believe that B2B marketing is a brand at an extreme point of
activation--if one may think of a “discipline” as a “brand.”
Granted, I have a vested interest given that I sit on the National and New York boards of
the Business Marketing Association.
While some have said that B2B marketing is dead or in some other form of actual or
notional transmogrification, based on many recent inputs and observations, my feeling is
that B2B marketing is kicking some serious ass.
What leads me, in particular, to this assessment is the sheer star power at two events
coming up in the next couple of months. Both events are part of the BMA’s 2012 “Go
and Grow” global conference series.
On Sept. 27, an event titled “Transformations: Now & Next” will take place in New
York. The BMA’s first-ever event in the U.K., “Global B2B Made Crystal Clear,” will be
held on Oct. 18 in London.
Between the two events, hundreds of top marketers, thinkers, and provocateurs will turn
out to discuss the massive innovations taking place in business marketing.
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2. Here is just a partial list of the companies from which event speakers and sponsors hail:
Acxiom, Adobe, ADP, AKQA, AON, Avnet, Atos, BBH, Bizo, Bloomberg
Businessweek,CNBC, Doremus, Eloqua, Forbes, gyro, IASb2b Marketing, IBM, Google,
General Electric, LinkedIn, Motorola Solutions, Ricoh, SapientNitro, Siemens, The Wall
Street Journal, UBM, and Verizon.
I’d encourage every one of you to check these out. As a booster, I am understandably
jazzed. But as an agency leader, I am amazed at the star power, fire power, thought
power, innovation power, and brand power--all of which tell me that B2B marketing
indeed is activated.
Read more: http://www.cmo.com/branding/b2b-marketing-activated-
brand#ixzz27c0o3Mcq
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