A Celebration of Effectiveness in B2B

There’s a lot of research about effectiveness in B2B but how do you turn the principles into a reality.

At our recent True Celebration of Effectiveness in B2B, we brought together senior marketers for an afternoon of sharp thinking, practical ideas and a few uncomfortable truths about what it really takes to make B2B marketing work harder.

Looking outside the category

Maria Winn, former CMO of Mitie, kicked things off by showing how some of the strongest B2B ideas come from outside B2B altogether.

Her story of Decarbonisation, Delivered was a reminder that if you want to make something complex feel clear, you don’t start by sounding like everyone else in the category. You find a better idea, a better frame and a better way in.

Translating marketing into value

Next, Cos Mingides introduced our B2B Enterprise Value Framework — a new model designed to help marketers build a stronger connection between marketing activity and the outcomes that matter to the board.

The point was simple: if marketers want to be taken seriously in the room where investment decisions are made, they need to speak in terms that finance understands. Not activity for activity’s sake, but value, growth and commercial impact.

Making B2B more memorable

Then Dan Roche, CMO of Workbooks, took the stage with the story behind No BS Marketing.

The message here was clear: B2B doesn’t have to be bland to be effective. In a market full of sameness, the work that gets remembered is the work that says something sharper, stands for something clearer and earns attention properly.

Our Creative Scale

Following the launch of The True Creative Scale at Cannes, we put it front and centre to give B2B marketers a sharper way to judge creative quality and raise the bar on what good looks like. We asked the audience to evaluate some of the Lion-winning B2B work from Cannes to agree what great creativity really looks like.

Why it matters

The final panel, with speakers from EY, Mitie, Workbooks and True, brought everything together. Building a culture of effectiveness isn’t about choosing brand or demand, or creativity or measurement. It’s about designing marketing that works harder across the whole chain — from idea to impact.

Across the afternoon, one idea kept coming through: effectiveness isn’t something you report on at the end. It starts much earlier, with the quality of the thinking, the clarity of the idea and the confidence to do work that doesn’t disappear into the noise.

That was the thread running through Maria, Cos and Dan’s sessions. Different stories, same challenge — and the same opportunity to do better.

This event was our call to arms for senior marketers who want to do work that is more distinctive, more commercially sharp and more memorable.

Thanks to Maria Winn, Kate Mackie, Dan Roche and everyone who joined us.

Keep an eye out for our next one.