Full service independent agencies are stealing a lead locally and internationally within B2B marketing services, according to LinkedIn’s global head of agency partnerships.

Whereas holding companies have spent the last three decades “fragmenting” divisions and services, Valerie Beauchamp said B2B marketers are largely seeking end-to-end services from specialists.

As a result, “We've actually seen many of the independent agencies in lots of markets around the world begin to earn and to win portions of assignments from large global B2B marketers who would have historically consolidated everything they did with a holding company – because it was easy and the structure and operational excellence was there,” the former Amazon and Publicis exec told Mi3.

But she said holdcos now pulling together B2B units, if they can seamlessly package specialist capability end-to-end, have plenty of runway – echoing the her boss, global CEO Ryan Roslansky’s Cannes call to arms.

Roslansky, singled out four B2B brands – ServiceNow, Salesforce, Block and Nvidia – that have quickly eclipsed some of the world’s biggest advertisers by value.

At US$89bn, ServiceNow has a bigger market cap than Ford and Ferrari combined, yet most people have never heard of it. Collectively, those four B2B businesses “have a market cap that is greater than Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas and GM combined. For the advertising industry, these new B2B categories and the businesses like them, that is where the growth is going to come from,” per Roslansky.

Creative firepower required

The challenge for agencies is that B2B buying cycles and decision makers are very different from B2C. Per research via Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and the LinkedIn-funded B2B Institute, 95 per cent of B2B buyers are out of market at any one time – and may be out of market for years at a time (see the 95:5 rule) with multiple parties in the buying chain, each with different incentives.

But Beauchamp thinks consumer-focused agencies that invest in strategic B2B capability have an advantage in creative firepower. That’s because most B2B ads are still mediocre at best – and lacking in emotion.

A study of 600 B2B ads found 71 per cent were highly unlikely to deliver any growth due to formulaic structures and poor creative. Per the Institute’s Derek Yueh: “B2B ads often feel like a very boring PowerPoint presentation … If you can’t get your creative right, nothing else matters.”

Beauchamp agreed: “I think that B to B is more emotionally charged than just about anything else in the B2C space. Imagine being the person or the committee of people that have to migrate an enterprise … There's no margin for error. The emotion in that is really deep. If you've been doing diaper advertising for years, you should have people who are really, really good at telling emotional stories or tapping into emotions," she added.

“So that's the opportunity for agency leaders, particularly in the creative space, to help drive some reappraisal and reframe what it could mean to build your craft in the business space.”

“Worlds apart”

However, there’s evidence locally to suggest that while B2C-focused agencies recognise growth potential within B2B, specialist capability may be lacking.

ASX-listed challenger brand telco Superloop, recently appointed full service B2B specialist Green Hat following a pitch in which B2C-focused agencies were also vying for the business.

Following the review, CMO Ben Colman offered some frank thoughts.

"B2B and B2C are not the same," said Colman. "This isn't a nuanced argument – they're worlds apart and the simplest evidence of that is the average B2C transaction is five minutes versus five months for B2B. Bearing that in mind, we wanted an agency that had a breadth of marketing expertise but really knew the B2B market."

Which suggests LinkedIn’s global boss has a point.

“If I was going to start an ad agency today, B2B is exactly where I'd go. This is where the creative challenge and the economic opportunity lies,” per Ryan Roslansky’s valedictory words at Cannes. “It's where the money is going to be.”