Mobium Creative Group releases results of “What’s wrong with business-to-business communications?” survey

2002-11-29

Mobium Creative Group has reviewed the results of an audit of business ads conducted by the Starch research firm and compared Starch’s analysis of the failings of b-to-b communications against the opinions of client and agency side b-to-b marketers.

In a nutshell, Starch found that the business ads they viewed and analyzed had three distinct problems. In Starch’s words:

•	They are univisual and more about content than appearance, typically using several illustrations rather than a single powerful image. This may be based on the presumption that b-to-b advertisers feel that their audience is hungrier for information than “illustrations that delight the eye.”
•	They emphasize the abstract rather than the human element. Business-to-business communications overestimates its viewer’s interest in their products.
•	They fail to tell the viewer what the product will do for them.

To see whether the opinions of b-to-b practitioners reflected these findings, Mobium surveyed e-mailed business marketers as well as mobium.com visitors and members, asking a series of questions designed to measure their opinions compared to Starch’s physical audit. Marketers were asked to name the three biggest problems with business-to-business communications. Here are the results:

“What’s wrong with business-to-business communications?”

74% Tries to say too much or show too many things, so the message gets lost. 66% Doesn’t address the needs, concerns, problems or questions of the audience. 39% Full of company chest-pounding. Companies are obsessed with talking about themselves and how great they are. 38% Talking more about their company, product and services than what the audience would gain from them. 28% Lack of human interest, emotion or passion. 20% Too safe. They don’t take any creative risks to stand out. 19% Contains expected stock photographs of office environments complete with multi-ethnic groups of corporate stiffs. 13% Lacks visual interest. An abundance of unvarnished facts, figures and specs that are not in a human context. 6% Talks down to the audience. 4% Too much business-speak, jargon and acronyms. 2% Uses irrelevant borrowed interest. 2% Campaign executions don’t look like they came from the same company. 1% Poor production values, weak layouts and bad photography

The Mobium analysis

Mobium Creative Group determined that there is a general agreement between the impressions of business marketers and the three points expressed by Starch in their visual audit analysis. Mobium feels, however, that "visual interest" is not as top-of-mind for business communicators as it was to the experts at Starch, who were visually auditing ads. Additionally, the problem of “trying to say too much” seems to be more important to marketers.

The Mobium bottom line

If marketers concentrated on developing and judging business communications on the three points found by Starch, they might discover what their audience is interested in hearing and seeing. Marketers should try to focus on what they can uniquely contribute to this dialogue of interest to their customers and prospects rather than attempting to jam messages down the audience’s throats with the hope that they will magically imbed themselves in the minds of their intended audience. When you have a human dialogue with your prospects and understand what they are interested in hearing about, the issue becomes saying enough, not saying too much.

Marketing out loud: The Mobium New Paradigm Survey

Mobium Creative Group conducts bimonthly marketing surveys on topics that address grassroots issues of change important to business-to-business (b-to-b) branding, advertising and marketing professionals. Surveys are conducted through the Mobium website, which contains one of the industry’s largest aggregations of business marketing and branding data. The current, ongoing survey measuring customer relationship communications is being conducted in real-time, with results instantly available to respondents. You can view this survey and past surveys at: http://www.mobium.com/community/surveys/survey_3.asp

For additional information on this and other surveys contact Steve Lundin, at 312.527.7408 to arrange an interview with Guy Gangi and Gordon Hochhalter of Mobium Creative Group.

About Mobium Creative Group
Mobium Creative Group is a full-service, integrated business branding and communications firm specializing in integrated communications, branding, relationship marketing, interactive media, and information architecture. Clientele include MeadWestvaco Corporation, NEC-Mitsubishi, Motorola GTSS, CNH Global, NovaMed, Farm Progress, Tellabs, and Ondeo Nalco Company. In January of 2002, Mobium launched its new Web site which is an interactive book that helps business marketers, communicators, brand builders and change agents, as well as its own employees, better define revolutionary paradigm shifts and explore ways to take advantage of them. www.mobium.com