Park & Battery Takes the Boring Out of B-to-B Marketing

When the tagline of your business-to-business marketing conference is “Let's take the boring out of B2B,” the segment’s tedium is implied. That reputation for routine loomed over Michael Ruby’s keynote speech on the opening day of the B2B Marketing Exchange conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., late last month. The title of his speech, Value Creation: The Real Magic and Metric of Content Marketing, blended into the event's jargon-packed agenda and its ensuing torrent of slideshow data. But Ruby used his time on stage to do something novel: Amid days of lectures and breakout sessions that evangelized storytelling, the president and chief creative officer of agency Park & Battery actually told a story. Global Media Agency of the Year Initiative Masters Fame and Flow After co-founding his agency little over a year ago with longtime collaborator and now-CEO Ted Kohnen, Ruby was approached by a bank catering specifically to lawyers that wanted to expand its national presence. His agency learned the culture of the legal community and its values, and created a campaign featuring the bank’s founder that paid homage to roadside and television legal ads. The spots straight out of Better Call Saul took home one of the conference’s Killer Content awards, while reinforcing its thesis that b-to-b marketing doesn’t have to be rote or staid. With technology making b-to-b marketers similarly efficient and nimble, the need for more creative content—and more awareness of the audience it’s addressing—is greater than ever. “If you don't have something interesting, meaningful and valuable to say to the market, then you're just contributing to the noise,” Ruby said. “When people talk about, ‘I want edgy creative,’ you have to find the thing that's going to break through for that particular market.” Park & Battery chief creative officer Michael Ruby (l.) and CEO Ted Kohnen. Don’t be sorry Ruby and Kohnen have spent more than 15 years working in advertising together. Park & Battery was named for two locations: the agency where they first met on Park Avenue South in Manhattan, and the office they opened together at a second agency on San Francisco’s Battery Avenue. Less than a year into Park & Battery’s existence, they were approached by Esquire Bank to help expand its reach among legal professionals. Esquire was looking to gain a stronger foothold in certain regions to expand its national presence. Park & Battery researched the legal community and dug into its competitive nature: Law firms scout each other's ads and want to beat their opponents both in business and in the courtroom. They also seek to make a big impression through either rhymes or catchphrases—as illustrated by the AMC drama Better Call Saul and its (somewhat) shamelessly self-promoting lead character Saul Goodman. Esquire Bank's b-to-b ads appeared on customer-facing channels. Park & Battery seized on the reputation and persona of Esquire Bank Co-Founder and Head of Corporate Development Ari P. Kornhaber—a former trial attorney—and built a campaign urging lawyers and legal firms to contact Esquire Bank for help with three core elements: Kornhaber’s image, Esquire’s phone number and a catchphrase: “Don’t be sorry, call Ari.” But Park & Battery couldn’t just mimic a trial lawyer’s ad; the agency had to hustle like one. They plastered those elements on billboards in Boston, Chicago and Houston. They rolled out digital billboard trucks and hit the streets of those cities outside courthouses and law firms. They even posted ads in the elevators of office buildings where law firms were concentrated. Combined with ads on Spotify, Roku and Hulu, Park & Battery used traditionally consumer-facing media to target its b-to-b audience. “There's a very simple principle that we live by—and I think, by b-to-b not living by this, it's created that boredom—no one wants to talk to a logo,” Kohnen said. “So when you look at the Esquire Bank campaign, it’s Esquire Bank, but Ari is front and center.” Bringing empathy to b-to-b And, as it turned out, a lot of people wanted to call Ari. Sure, it generated plenty of “vanity metrics”—9 million ad views, 305,000 TV spot views, 7,000 website visitors, 1,500 LinkedIn clicks, 300 video views—but the reaction made Esquire Bank a Better Call Saul-level success. The response to the digital ads that was more than double the industry average, and feedback from streaming audio that was more than five times the baseline. Thanks to this success, Esquire Bank had to revamp its sales process to handle the incoming volume. The campaign has since expanded to multiple cities in Florida, with Esquire Bank signing Park & Battery as its agency of record for follow-up spots. How Marketers Can and Should Measure Social Media ROI Often in b-to-b marketing, as Kohnen and Ruby noted, an agency will simply take orders from a company’s CMO or marketing department because it creates the least friction. However, if agencies pursue motivated partners—as Park & Battery has with Esquire Bank, the International Beauty Show, UBS, Meta and others—and push back with creative ideas that understand a client’s culture and intentions, they can create a b-to-b campaign that looks more like a binge-worthy prestige drama than an all-text pamphlet. “If it's done well, these buyers feel seen. … They feel like someone is speaking their language,” Ruby said. “If you're a CFO or a vp of finance, you're getting bombarded from every direction. So when you can give them content that helps them be better at their jobs and demonstrates, on some level, that you are trying to sell them something that aligns with their goals, the response is typically very favorable.”

B2B

How Park & Battery Made a B-to-B Campaign That Would Make Saul Goodman Proud

By studying the space, its subjects and the intended audience, the shop found the fun in business marketing

Jason Notte

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