Mumbai: This week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2024 (17 – 21 June), LinkedIn, an online professional network and B2B advertising platform, will be present at the Carlton Cannes hotel rooftop. The theme of what it is doing is ‘the place to B2B,’ with B2B-focussed panels, studio sessions, and networking events.
LinkedIn said that it will showcase the tools and insights to help B2B marketers reach and engage the buyer group, and build “collective confidence” among decision-makers. Linkedin claims to have one billion members and 68 million companies.
LinkedIn’s The B2B Institute, in partnership with Bain & Company, will take to the mainstage at Cannes to unveil new insights on what’s driving $18 trillion of B2B purchases globally. The new research on ‘Buyer Group Marketing’ explores the emotional drivers shaping B2B purchasing decisions and demonstrates that brand familiarity among the whole buyer group is the most important factor.
LinkedIn’s programming highlights at Cannes include:
LinkedIn & Bain present, ‘Unlocking B2B Opportunities: Why FOMU is Greater than FOMO ‘ (June 17 @ 12.30pm CEST, Rotonde stage)
LinkedIn’s VP marketing, Minjae Ormes, and Bain & Company senior partner, Jamie Cleghorn, will take to the Rotonde stage to share new insights on what’s driving $18 trillion of B2B purchases globally and unveil the emotional drivers of B2B buying. They’ll present new research from LinkedIn’s The B2B Institute and Bain & Company on ‘Buyer Group Marketing’ that spotlights the emotional drivers shaping B2B purchasing decisions and demonstrates that brand familiarity among the whole buyer group is the most important factor.
LinkedIn’s 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark launch (17 June 17 at 4.45pm CEST, live stream panel discussion – Creativity Is Not Enough: What’s Critical for Modern B2B Marketing Success?)
LinkedIn will launch the second annual edition of the ‘2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark’ – a study of 2,000+ B2B marketing leaders from across the globe highlighting the state of B2B. Tusar Barik, Senior Director of Marketing at LinkedIn, Vida M. Cornelious, SVP, Creative & Strategy at New York Times Advertising, and Nicholas Mercurio, Chief Growth Officer at Ipsos, will explore the trends defining B2B. The report finds that B2B marketing leaders globally are optimistic about the year ahead; nearly 9 in 10 are bullish on their team’s ability to drive revenue, and the majority (88%) agree that relationship building is key to success – underscoring the importance of building “collective confidence” among buyer groups.
There will be the world premiere of ‘Everybody’s Business’ – a new B2B documentary (June 17 @ 5.30pm CEST, Carlton Cannes rooftop)
The documentary exploring the rise of B2B marketing and celebrating the industry. Created in partnership with two-time Oscar-winning director, Ben Proudfoot and Breakwater Studios Ltd, the documentary follows B2B voices, including Tom Stein, Chairman and Chief Brand Officer at Stein IAS, Andisa Ntsubane, Jury President of the Creative B2B Lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and Ana Buchaim, Chief of People, Branding, Communication, Sustainability at B3, and others, to explore the transformation of the industry, including the creative opportunity ahead. The documentary is available to watch on YouTube.
B2B buying cycles Linkedin explains are long, emotion-driven, and typically involve 6 to 10 stakeholders. In the study of 500+ senior B2B buyers, 81 percent said that the product they eventually bought was known by everyone in the buying group on day one, while only 4 percent said a purchase was made when the product was known by only a few decision-makers in the buyer group.
Ormes said, “This year at Cannes Lions, LinkedIn will offer a glimpse into the future of B2B and show how far we’ve come as a category. We’re excited to unveil new research that will help marketers make better and more strategic decisions by unlocking the black box of B2B buying.
Through the week, we’ll also launch a host of new insights and creative activations to inspire engaging conversations around how B2B marketers can drive growth, spark creativity, confidently measure outcomes, and leverage AI to build the marketing organization of tomorrow.”
Cleghorn said, “B2B markets are a multi-trillion dollar frontier of high-value opportunity that’s yet to be fully exploited. B2B buying is much more complex than many sales and marketing organisations have appreciated. We’re hugely excited that Bain’s research with LinkedIn cracks the code of how marketers can tap this potential.
“Unlocking these markets means understanding and enabling ‘dark populations’ of hidden buyers, who hold massive decision-making influence for B2B, to agree to purchases. While technical experts that B2B companies have focused their marketing on are motivated by the ‘fear of missing out’, we show how understanding the under-targeted hidden group’s ‘fear of messing up’ – FOMU – unlocks marketing strategy for B2B in a fundamental way. And we show how building a powerful B2B brand is the key to dispelling their fear and giving these hidden buyers ‘permission to agree’. At Bain, we believe this offers transformative potential for B2B marketing.”
