While B2C brands built fandoms, made culture, and turned their channels into destinations, B2B was busy pretending buyers were robots with procurement superpowers and no feelings. Thankfully, that era is over.
Not because B2B suddenly became cool. We’ll always be the suit pants-wearing sibling to B2C. No, it’s because the dynamic between B2B audience, B2B content, and the B2B media landscape has changed. The only rational response? Act a little irrationally (in the best way): lead with story, create for entertainment, and build audiences that actually care.
Audiences have changed: buyers don’t consume content, they avoid it
Buyers are more self-directed in their journeys now – and more allergic to irrelevant outreach than ever. Gartner found that 61% of B2B buyers prefer an overall rep-free buying experience, and 73% actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.
So, what happens when your buyers don’t want to talk to Sales, don’t want to be ‘nurtured,’ and don’t trust anything that smells like a pitch?
They look for signals. Credibility. Taste. Thinking.
Thought leadership is increasingly doing the heavy lifting. Edelman and LinkedIn report that 71% of hidden decision-makers say thought leadership is more effective than conventional marketing or sales materials at demonstrating a vendor’s potential value – and 86% want ideas that challenge assumptions, not just validate them.
In other words: safe is invisible. Bold is useful.
YouTube is TV now and B2B is showing up
If you’re still planning B2B content like it lives in an email attachment, boy, do I have news for you: your buyer is watching episodic content on the biggest screen in the house.
YouTube says people watch over one billion hours of YouTube on TV screens every day, and reports that viewing is now bigger on TVs than on phones. Nielsen also shows YouTube leading media companies in share of TV viewing (e.g., 12.4% in April 2025 in Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge).
Translation: the same device your buyers use for prestige drama is where they also watch explainers, podcasts, live streams, and, yes, business content.
Brands are ‘cutting TV channels’ out of YouTube: building formats, series, seasons, recurring segments, and a reason to come back. Not a content calendar. A channel.
Content has changed from assets to episodes (and watch-time is the new KPI)
The old model used to be: make a thing → gate it → email it → pray it converts. Today, it’s earn attention → keep attention → build habit → become the default.
McKinsey’s B2B Pulse work describes buyers splitting their time across a ‘rule of thirds’: in-person, remote, and self-serve digital interactions. Note that this isn’t a neat funnel. It’s a maze with multiple stakeholders, multiple screens, and multiple moments where your brand can either choose to show up… or vanish.
Your content needs to be good enough for someone to watch it at home, on the commute, and – yes – even on the toilet. If that line makes you uncomfortable, congratulations, you’ve just discovered where attention really lives.
Discover how IBM took AI from lab to living room in Who is… Watson? The Day AI Went Prime Time.
It gave people a reason to lean in together. We built an integrated release across digital and in-person channels – workshops, teasers, quote cards, ‘behind the bet’ snippets, and maker notes – designed like ABM: to build relationships, not just reach.
Entertainment-first isn’t fluff, it’s how you land complexity
B2B likes to cosplay as pure logic. But decisions in our industry are packed with risk – career, social, and otherwise. No one wants to choose the wrong vendor and be remembered for it in QBRs for the rest of their tenure.
An entertainment-first approach doesn’t mean make jokes instead of strategy. It means using story, craft, and emotion to make complexity simple and memorable for an audience that’s tired of drowning in ‘insights.’
Build a channel: formats that B2B should steal immediately
Channels have formats. Characters. Recurring bits. Energy. Momentum. If that sounds like a completely different world to B2B, here’s how easy it is to start building a channel. A starter for six, if you will:
- The Briefing (10 minutes, weekly): what happened, what it means, what to do next.
- The Build (doc series): a real transformation, shot like a mini-series (conflict included).
- The Lab (myth-busting): experiments, benchmarks, teardowns, ‘we tested it so you don’t have to.’
- The Confessional (career realism): leaders talking about mistakes, tradeoffs, and the messy middle.
- The Debate (hot takes with receipts): two smart people disagreeing politely… or not.
- The Sitcom (yes, really): recurring sketches about procurement, IT tickets, ‘quick questions,’ and ‘circle back.’
You’re laughing, but procurement humor might be the most universal genre on earth. See how simple it can be?
This isn’t theoretical, Transmission has done it
As an agency, we’re already leaning into the idea that B2B should publish like a media property, not a brochure factory. Treating stories as programming, and distribution as the product.
Our blueprint: Who is… Watson?
With Who is… Watson? The Day AI Went Prime Time, the ambition was simple: make something watchable enough that people choose it. THEN build an ecosystem around it so the story keeps working long after the first view.
Our manifesto: B2B’s entertainment-first rules
- Stop writing for ‘the buyer’ – write for a real person with wants, needs, and a personality
- If it can’t hold attention, it can’t build preference
- Complexity is NOT a license to be boring. It IS a reason to be creative
- Make shows, not assets
- Publish like a network. Think formats, seasons, and returning segments
- Distribution isn’t a plan at the end, it’s the product
- Personality is a business strategy
- ‘Professional’ is not a tone, it’s a context
- If it wouldn’t get watched off the clock, it probably isn’t good enough
- The goal isn’t leads. The goal is inevitability: when they’re ready, you’re already the default
This is B2B’s era to take. Not because business got simpler, but because B2B finally got its act together enough to finally lean into interesting.
Open a new chapter with your brand storytelling
Discover how to craft narratives that capture the imaginations of everyone in the room.
