If you’re a VP of Marketing at a mature B2B brand, you already know the problem.
Your company has scale. Your product does a lot. The market is crowded. Every ad review turns into a debate about dashboards, features, proof points, and whether the spend is justified.
That pressure creates safe ads.
Safe ads blur together.
I think that’s why so much B2B video gets ignored. It explains too much, too early. The audience does not remember the fifth feature or the polished buzzword. They remember the feeling. They remember the joke. They remember the character. They remember the scene.
I’m a filmmaker first, entrepreneur second. Filmmaking was in my blood early. At 14, I was filming skateboard videos and little short films. Later I shot weddings, a fishing TV show, commercials, short films, and then built CinemAds around one simple belief: if you want to stand out, your audience has to actually want to watch.
That’s why I always come back to the same idea. Storytelling has to lead. Sales comes after.
Most B2B Ads Lose the Audience Right Away
The standard corporate explainer video is, in my words, boring as hell.
You’ve seen it. Logo first. Dashboard second. Voiceover piling on feature after feature. Generic music. Generic claims. Then a call to action that sounds exactly like the last 10 ads in the category.
People are tired of that. One study found the average attention span was 8 seconds. And 65% of consumers skip online video ads as soon as possible. A lot of that skipping is habit. People smell “ad” and they’re gone.
That’s why I care so much about the first three seconds. I want the buyer to know right away that the video is for them. Sometimes that comes from a strong first line. Sometimes it comes from a weird visual or an over-the-top setup. Either way, the opening has to hit fast.
A long shot with no audio and no clear idea what’s going on? That is one of the worst ways to open a LinkedIn video. You need a hook. You need energy. You need the audience to say, “Okay, what is this?”
That little moment matters more than people think.
Attention First. Product Later.
One of the most common things I hear from marketing leaders is, “We need to show the dashboard so people know what they’re buying.”
I get it.
You’re protecting the brand. You’re trying to make leadership comfortable. You also want the spend to feel practical and easy to defend.
My answer is simple. Put the product later.
When I make top-of-funnel brand videos, the job is to bring people in. The job is to stop the scroll, build recall, and help drive pipeline. I like making ads that don’t look like ads, so the opening needs to feel like a scene people want to keep watching.
If you still want product in the ad, no problem. I can slip it in near the end. I’ve done that with an actor already holding a laptop in the scene. They say one quick line, we show the dashboard, and we land the message. Or we keep it even cleaner and place the UI in the end bumper with a voiceover.
That structure works because the audience is already invested by then. I’ve already done my job at the front of the ad.
I also like holding the brand reveal until the end in a lot of cases. It feels less like a commercial. We did that kind of thing in the Right-Hand Cybersecurity campaign. The opening situations were there to be funny and relatable first. Then the message clicked into place.
And later in the funnel, we can absolutely go deeper. If someone watched more than half of the brand video, now we retarget them with a product video or explainer. That is where the dashboard belongs. That is where the feature depth belongs. I’m happy to make both. I just want them in the right order.
I also really don’t care for the old before-and-after format in top-of-funnel. It feels cheesy because we’ve all seen it forever. I’d rather show the problem, then hit the audience with a tagline that gives them the aha moment. It’s cleaner, faster, and more memorable.
Storytelling Builds Trust
I’m not a guy who hides behind studies. I’m practical. I care about what works.
Still, it’s nice when the numbers back up what I’ve seen for years.
A Brightcove and Ascend2 survey found that 95% of B2B buyers say video matters when deciding whether to move forward, 93% say it helps build trust, and 70% say it beats things like whitepapers and webinars for raising awareness. And one study found that narrative B2B ads build more trust, stronger personal connection, and more brand advocacy than feature-list style ads.
That makes perfect sense to me.
People remember stories. They remember characters. They remember a setup that made them laugh or a scenario that felt painfully relatable. They almost never remember a list of features stacked on top of each other in a rushed voiceover.
This is why I always say we create videos so your audience remembers stories, not sales pitches. If the buyer feels like they just watched a little movie, a sketch, or a mini-show, you’ve already done something valuable. You’ve made the brand feel human.
And if you’re running marketing for a mature company, that matters even more. You may already have market awareness. What you need now is freshness. You need to feel current again. You need to shake off the dry, legacy, safe reputation that a lot of big enterprise brands carry.
Story helps you do that without making the brand feel unserious.
Turn Dry Products Into Human Moments
This is the part I love most.
A lot of what I do is take a dry, complex, technical product and turn it into something human. That’s the whole job. We create funny videos out of complex products.
Creativity is infinite. Give me a product, a service, a niche, a category, whatever. I just need to understand the problem you solve, what makes you different, who your audience is, and what you want the brand to feel like. From there, I start building the big idea.
For AskNicely, I pitched a few directions and the team chose the one with a host in a park asking strangers questions. That worked because customer feedback usually lives on a screen. Putting that behavior into real life made it funny right away. The host had this awkward deadpan energy, kind of like someone from The Office, and that made the whole thing land even more.
For Contact Point 360, I still used the familiar customer service rep with a headset. I just put that person inside the customer’s house. That visual instantly made the point. The company wanted to show how on-the-ball and loyal they are. So I made the support rep physically present in the problem.
For Schoox, the client told me their new brand personality was fun and magical. So I gave them a magician. I always listen first. If the brand gives me a strong tone or personality, I can build the character around that and move quickly.
For Aligned, I helped turn a B2B sales process into a dating scenario. The guy brings up “next steps” on a date. He even pulls out a PowerPoint presentation about the relationship. If you work in sales, that joke lands immediately because the behavior is so familiar.
For Replicant, we helped build the “Turn On the Lights” idea around a dark diner scene at night. When the power goes out and then comes back on, the metaphor becomes visual. You feel the confusion. Then you feel the clarity. That is how an abstract product starts becoming memorable.
And in cybersecurity, I’m always looking for an analogy that makes a technical pain point easy to feel. On Right-Hand Cybersecurity, we used the “don’t check the box” theme and showed a guy doing chores badly. One example was dumping dog food all over the floor and technically calling it done. I even wrote my own dog Coco into that spot because a dog adds natural warmth to a dry B2B topic. Small things like that help people remember.
Recurring Characters Build Recall
One of my favorite ways to build brand differentiation is with recurring characters.
When a campaign works, I want the audience to feel like they’ve seen this person before. That familiarity matters. It builds recall in a very natural way.
Lavender is the best example of this. The big idea was ‘bad sales emails in real life’. So we created Lavender Joe, this terrible salesman who would say things like “Do you want to explore synergies?” in social situations where nobody would ever talk like that. He even got dragged away by the email police. He A/B tested greetings at the park. He slowly grew into the story and started seeing the value of the product.
That campaign kept going because the audience got it. Sales teams could relate to the pain. They could see themselves in the joke. We ended up doing over 300 videos for Lavender across a year-long retainer. At one point, the actor who played Lavender Joe was recognized in Italy. That’s strong brand recall.
Big brands can use this same approach. You do not need one hero film and then a pile of disconnected assets. You can build a mini-show. You can build a world. You can give your buyers something familiar to come back to across LinkedIn, YouTube, CTV, and retargeting.
I think this matters a lot for mature brands. If the company has a long history, repetition and consistency help make the brand feel alive again. You start becoming recognizable in a way that generic one-off explainers never do.
Cinematic Craft Is a Differentiator
I have a rule for my company: Always Be Cinematic.
That means I care about lighting, framing, sound, casting, wardrobe, props, pacing, and location. I want a commercial that looks like a movie, like a CinemAd. I want it to hold up on a phone, on a laptop, on a TV, and on a big streaming screen.
This is not just me being artistic for the sake of it. Nielsen found that strong creative can drive up to 80% of a TV campaign’s success and 89% of a digital campaign’s success. And comScore reported that 52% of sales lift from TV and digital campaigns came from creative quality. So when I obsess over craft, I’m not being precious. I’m protecting performance.
You can feel that on campaigns like Replicant, where we shot at night in a diner and gave it that darker, more cinematic style. You can feel it on Sparkpolo too, where we spent about 90 minutes setting one overhead light because the shirt had to look premium on camera. You can feel it on PetMeds, where we shot 20 assets in two days with dogs and cats and still made sure the spots looked clean enough for TV and social.
I also use AI tools to brainstorm ideas and help with scripts. I’m open to where AI video is going. But I still trust humans for the little moments that make comedy work. On one cybersecurity shoot, an actor made this tiny hand gesture while looking at the therapist, and the whole room laughed. That kind of nuance is hard to fake.
And if you’re buying CTV, this matters even more. My wife and I watch the 15- or 30-second ads on our basic Netflix plan, and we actually watch them. We don’t automatically grab our phones. If a joke is good, we’ll repeat it to each other after. I’ve even had one client cover the full production budget with a single sale from a CTV ad. So yes, B2B video on the big screen is very real.
If your ad is going on CTV, TV, a conference screen, or a jumbotron, weak craft shows up fast.
Bold Beats Safe, if You Handle It Properly
A lot of B2B brands are afraid of going too far.
I understand that. You have a reputation to protect. You have legal. You have leadership. You may have a whole room full of people trying to make sure nothing feels risky.
Still, I think safe ads will lose over time. For a mature brand, safe marketing is often the fastest way to become invisible. There are too many companies doing the same thing, using the same hooks, the same pacing, the same language, the same generic visuals.
The best marketing wins.
That does not mean you need to offend people. It means you need to create something the audience has not seen a hundred times already. I usually pitch a range of concepts, from safer scripts to bolder, more unhinged ones. Then I encourage the client to film one or two riskier ideas and test them. If you’re already doing a big shoot day, why not learn what really grabs attention?
I’ve pushed this with conservative brands too. Maple approved a telehealth spot where a man appears naked behind a laptop. I still pitch a cybersecurity concept built around “practice safe tech.” One founder liked it. An older investor thought it was too much. That’s how this goes sometimes.
Art is opinion, not fact.
Somebody will always think the joke is too weird. Somebody else will love it. My line is simple. I never want humor that punches down or makes fun of people. I’m very careful with that. You can make bold, humorous, unhinged videos without putting anyone down.
And if 10% of people don’t like the joke? Fine. I care more about entertaining the 90% who do than sanding the whole idea down until nobody feels anything.
Make It Practical for Your Team
All of this has to work in the real world. I know that.
A VP of Marketing does not need one beautiful ad and a massive production headache after. You need approvals, aspect ratios, enough assets to test, and a team that can actually execute.
That’s why I built CinemAds around a very structured model. I visualize the commercial in my head before we shoot. We spend 30 to 45 days in pre-production. We write, rewrite, storyboard, cast, scout locations, sort props, and make sure the client is happy before camera day even starts.
If you need internal buy-in, I can help there too. I often write free sample scripts and big ideas so the person inside the company can take something concrete to the CEO or leadership team. That makes the decision easier because they are reacting to a real concept, not a vague promise.
On set, I like staying in one location all day so we can move fast. That’s how we can shoot 5 to 10 spots in a day, sometimes more. A 90-second explainer is different. That usually needs a full day by itself because there are more angles and more moving parts. But short brand ads can be planned to move very quickly without losing quality.
We’ve handled animal wranglers for PetMeds, street-style interactions in the park for AskNicely, kids in the studio for LivePerson, and more specific casting needs on other campaigns too. For Replicant, the casting even included French and English-speaking actors. Complex shoots are fine. They just need planning.
Clients are part of the process as well. They can review audition tapes with me, approve actors, and sign off on shots while we film. And these campaigns also need human-to-human management outside the shoot day. Sometimes that means a Slack message at 9 p.m. and a quick tweak before launch. That part matters.
From a budget point of view, efficiency matters too. We typically charge around $30,000 for a package of 10 high-quality commercials. That brings the cost to roughly $3,000 per video. For a team running media across LinkedIn, YouTube, CTV, TV, or event screens, that kind of cost per asset gives you a lot more room to test what works.
Final Thought
If your brand feels dry, feature-heavy, or too safe, the fix is not more product language.
The fix is a better story.
Hook the audience fast. Make them laugh, or at least make them curious. Give them a human moment they remember. Bring the brand in at the right time. Then let the deeper product story follow in the rest of the funnel.
I’ve believed this since I started filming as a teenager, and I still believe it now. Buyers remember what they enjoy. They remember what feels fresh. They remember what stands out from the sea of boring ads around them.
So if you want real B2B brand differentiation, treat the ad like a film. Make something your audience actually wants to watch.
Always Be Cinematic.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I justify shifting budget from multi-channel media distribution to creative production?
I always tell marketing leaders: reach means nothing if the audience skips. Nielsen found strong creative drives up to 80% of a TV campaign’s success. By investing in cinematic storytelling upfront, you make your multi-million dollar media buy exponentially more efficient. You cannot outspend bad creative.
How do we satisfy sales teams demanding complex feature visibility without ruining the ad’s hook?
You have to protect the first three seconds. Consumers skip online video ads 65% of the time. If you lead with a dashboard, they are gone. We satisfy sales by hiding the UI in the end bumper or retargeting engaged viewers with explainer videos later. Attention first. Product later.
Is it possible to modernize a legacy enterprise brand without alienating our existing Fortune 500 buyers?
Absolutely. Being bold does not mean being offensive. It means being memorable. Studies show narrative storytelling actually builds more trust with decision-makers than feature lists. We modernize legacy B2B brands by grounding complex tech in highly relatable, human moments that Fortune 500 buyers instantly recognize and respect.
What is the biggest logistical mistake massive B2B organizations make when producing CTV campaigns?
Treating a CTV spot like a generic web explainer. When your ad plays on a massive living room screen, weak craft shows up immediately. The biggest mistake is juggling multiple disconnected agencies instead of locking down one cinematic vision and capturing 20 unique assets in a single, highly structured shoot.
How do I convince a conservative executive board to sign off on an unconventional, character-driven campaign?
Pitch concrete assets, not vague ideas. I write sample scripts so leadership can visualize the story. Remind them 93% of buyers use video to build trust. We shoot one bolder concept alongside the safe scripts, test them in-market, and let actual engagement data win the boardroom debate.
