Why B2B Brand Ideas Die a Violent Death Before They Even Launch
Louis gave one of the most talked-about keynotes at Drive, all about big brand ideas, and the room loved it. But afterward, people had questions, namely “how do you actually execute this?” Today I’m handing the newsletter over to Louis to share his thoughts on how to get big brand moves past the committee stage. Here’s Louis:
I was TERRIFIED of what I was hiding backstage… “Maybe it’s a sh*tty idea, you French buffoon. There’s probably a reason nobody’s done it before.”
It was Drive 2026. The Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe, Vermont. A proper concert hall, 420 seats, big, elegant, grandiose even. And right before me on that stage: Seth Godin. The guy I’ve looked up to my entire career.
I proceeded with my talk. Every time I said the word “intense,” music played. Ten seconds. Then 20. Then 40. The words “Be more intense” got bigger on my slides every time.
The room got uncomfortable. They knew something was happening, but couldn’t tell what.
For the last 10 minutes, the curtain pulled back to unveil a real jazz quartet with drums, sax, keyboard, and contrabass. They were playing live the whole time.
A loud, pleasant gasp. Then, shock. Finally, the phones came out, and the tension broke.
So satisfying.
That quartet had one massive advantage over your next B2B brand idea: nobody had to approve it but me.
And I’ll tell you this for free. If I’d been speaking on behalf of a company, I’m 99% sure it would’ve been killed.
I’m so glad I went through with it. The messages rolled in for weeks.
If I’d diluted the idea, none of that would have happened.
The Scene Of The Crime: “Love It… But My CEO Would Never”
After the talk, people came up to me. They loved it. They got the point, almost in their bones.
Then came the “but.” Every time.
“Love it… but my CEO would never.” Or my team. Or my clients. The CFO would say no. Sales would say no. Their worry went straight to the people they’d need to convince.
It broke my little French heart. These were smart, experienced people, who understood the power of brand and what it takes to stand the f*ck out, and yet… they were afraid of doing it.
And it shows. When I scored 100 B2B brands on eight distinctive assets for my State of B2B Brand Distinctiveness study, 80 of them were generic or invisible. Meaning, most of their prospective customers wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Or, out of roughly 30,000 B2B software companies, my B2B Mascot Census could only find 105 with a mascot, the single most distinctive brand asset.
B2B has a MAJOR problem with creative and brand building. It gets murdered before it has a chance to see the light of day.
So I wanted to dig deeper. After my talk, Maria, Marisa and I agreed we had to pull the thread. I posted in the Exit Five community and on LinkedIn and asked people to finish one sentence:
“I’d go more intense, but _______.”
18 people finished it. Here’s where their ideas died (oh, and read until the end to help pick my next brand research project).
Finding 1: Death By Committee. 6 Of 18 Ideas Were Smothered In Meetings.
18 answers is not a proper survey, but still… More than half said they’d go more intense if stakeholders weren’t in the way. Same thing I heard all day at Drive.
Take Sarah Skidd. A social campaign for a mortgage company made it through one approval layer. Then the CEO heard about it and sent a late-night “DO NOT POST” email. Back to the boring stuff. As it turns out…
“They’re no longer in business.”
She’s not alone:
- Dalton Handy: approvers “end up muting the boldest messages.“
- Yeshara Devendra: “By approval round six, the risk is gone… so is the idea.“
- Reid Holmes: “Death by a thousand small compromises.“
In short, ideas are optimised so nobody objects. Brand only works when your market remembers.
The more you doubt yourself, the more ammunition you give everyone else.
And sometimes, it never even reaches the committee.
Finding 2: An Inside Job. 3 Of 18 Marketers Killed Their Own Idea Before Anyone Saw It.
The worst stakeholder of all is… you. Me and you. Our own brain.
I like what Josh said. The idea dies “on the way there, edited down in someone’s head before anyone even gets to veto it. By the time it reaches the room, it’s already so safe nobody needs to kill it.“
If I wasn’t afraid, it wasn’t intense enough.
For the ones who do pitch it, there’s one question they can’t answer: does it pay off?
Finding 3: The CFO Pulls The Trigger. If You Can’t Prove Brand Pays, There’s No Budget.
Even if you have a great brand idea, can you prove it?
Here’s the Director of Product Marketing at an AI company:
“A sliver of me worries it’s marketing fanfic… Almost every bold brand is VC-backed, with no proof that the boldness translates.”
Wait… Is brand marketing fanfic?
Look at B2C and it’s full of brand effect case studies. You can find plenty in the IPA Effectiveness Databank and in Les Binet and Peter Field’s analysis of those cases.
In B2B, I could only find about 10 recent, named examples that put a number next to brand work. None of them has a baseline or a control group (in other words: trust me, bro).
- Artisan, “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards (October 2024). The founder says they got “over $2M in new ARR” in two months, and recognition went from “around 5%” to “70%” (Startups Magazine, Feb 2025). The $11.5M seed round landed the day before.
- Delve, billboards (October 2025). “A 10-15% lift in branded search.” The co-founder names her own confounds: a Series A launch and a viral campaign at the same time (Selin Kocalar on LinkedIn).
The best B2B proof today is founders talking on podcasts, with a funding round in the same month. I can do better, if you’re interested.
Your Move: Pick The Case I Crack Next, And I’ll Build What You Need To Get Your Brand Idea Approved.
I’ve got three ideas. Can you click the one that you’d like us to build?
- The Proof Study: “Do brand plays pay off for companies like mine?” You get the first B2B proof from companies your size (with no ad platform paying for it).
- The Blocker Survey: “What’s really stopping B2B marketers from big brand swings?” You get a map of what’s stopping most marketers and what to do about each one.
- The Approval Files: “How did they get buy-in?” You get real cases and real pitches to bring to your leadership.
Click the one you want and I’ll get to work on it.
Bisous,
Louis
