If you run marketing for a mature B2B brand, you probably feel this pressure already.
The company is solid. The product is powerful. The customers are real. The budget is there. But the creative still feels dry on screen. It feels safe. It feels old. And in a crowded market, old gets ignored fast.
I’ve been making videos since I was 14. I started by filming skateboard videos, then weddings, then a fishing show that aired on TV, then commercials. So when I look at enterprise marketing, I don’t just see features and dashboards. I see scenes. I see characters. I see a chance to make people care.
That’s how I think dry brands get modern again.
You do not need to act like a loud startup. You do need better creative. You need a campaign your audience actually wants to watch. You need a commercial that looks like a movie, like a CinemAd.
Enterprise Buyers Are Hard to Reach
This is the first thing I’d keep in mind.
Gartner says buyers spend only 17% of their buying journey meeting with suppliers. When they compare multiple vendors, any one rep may get only 5% to 6% of that time. That is barely any time at all.
So what happens before the sales call matters a lot.
Your brand has to feel familiar before the rep ever shows up. Your buyer has to feel like they’ve seen you somewhere. They have to remember a story, a character, a visual, a joke, a feeling. If they don’t, your sales team starts colder than they should.
And enterprise buying is messy now. Gartner says a typical B2B buying group includes 6 to 10 decision makers. McKinsey says buyers now move across an average of 10 interaction channels. So one dry explainer is not carrying the load anymore.
That’s one big reason I think the traditional corporate explainer video has lost a lot of power. It worked much better 10 years ago. Today, there’s too much noise. If you’re doing what your competitors are doing, you’re not gonna stand out.
LinkedIn’s B2B Institute says 95% of B2B buyers are out of market at any given time. I think that stat says a lot. Most people are not ready to buy from you today. They are building memory. They are deciding which brands feel sharp, modern, and worth noticing later.
That is why I care so much about enterprise video campaigns. They help shape the feeling around the brand long before the buyer books a demo.
And video is not some side project now. U.S. digital video ad revenue reached $78 billion in 2025. CTV, social video, online video, short-form. This is where attention lives.
The First Three Seconds Decide Everything
This is where a lot of enterprise campaigns go wrong.
Product teams want the UI right away. Leadership wants to explain the platform immediately. Everyone is scared the audience won’t get it. I understand that. I can accommodate it. But I usually push for a better opening.
I want the first three seconds to stop the scroll.
I want strong visuals. I want cinematic lighting. I want some gag or shock value image where people say, “What the heck is going on here?” That question is useful. Curiosity buys you time.
Keep the Hook Less Dashboardy
I say this all the time. Top-of-funnel should be less dashboardy.
For Maple, I pitched a crazy visual at the front. A guy appears naked with a laptop covering himself while romantic music plays. Then the record scratches and you realize he’s talking to a doctor over telehealth. That hook makes people lean in.
For Replicant, I shot a rainy diner at night. The framing was inspired by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The power goes out. The scene feels tense and cinematic. It feels more like a mini movie than an ad.
For Right-Hand Cybersecurity, I avoided mentioning cybersecurity at the start. I wanted the audience to enjoy the scenario first. Then the brand and message land at the end. That made the videos feel less like a commercial up front.
That’s the goal for me. We like to make ads that don’t look like ads.
YouTube’s ABCD research supports the attention part of this. It recommends surprising visuals early and bringing in the product or brand in the first five seconds. I agree with that nuance. I still like brand cues early. A logo. A color. A tagline. A recurring character. A sonic cue. All good.
I just don’t want the opening clogged by a full dashboard demo.
A quick brand cue can live there. A full feature tour can wait.
Hook First, Explain Later
A lot of B2B teams try to make one video do the whole job. That’s too much pressure for one asset.
In my world, a top-of-funnel brand video should create a feeling. It should create a laugh. Or a mental laugh. Or at least a moment where the audience says, okay, this is different. Then later, once they’ve watched enough, you can retarget them with an explainer that goes deeper into the UI, features, and workflow.
That sequencing works a lot better.
I’ve done this many times. I’ll make the brand video funny, cinematic, and memorable. Then the client can retarget people who watched more than 50% with the more direct product video. That gives each asset a clear job.
I just handle the bucket of video. Your media team can do the rest.
Turn Dry Features Into One Clear Scene
This is one of my favorite parts of the process.
When I start with a client, I ask very simple questions. Tell me what your product does like I’m 10. Tell me what it does like I’m 20. Or just give me a metaphor for how your product works.
That opens everything up.
I also use a content doc at the start. I ask what the brand would be like as a person. I ask what single-minded message matters most. I ask which brands feel tonally aligned. That gives me a better read on the company before I start pitching ideas.
Tell Me What Your Product Does Like I’m 10
I can market anything. Software. Physical products. AI. Compliance. Customer support. I just need to know the problem, the differentiator, and the audience.
Once I understand that, I start thinking in metaphors.
For Maze, the product helps security teams cut through false positives and focus on the few alerts that really matter. That’s a hard thing to explain with jargon. So I look for a real-world analogy that makes the idea easier to feel.
For Contact Point 360, I wanted to show speed and loyalty in customer support. So I put the support rep physically inside the customer’s house. Same message. Much more memorable.
For AskNicely, I took surveys out of software and into a park. A host asks strangers to rate their bench experience in real life. That simple twist helps the audience understand the brand fast.
For Aligned, I used dating to explain B2B sales behavior. The guy asks, “So, what are next steps?” on a date. He even pulls out a PowerPoint about the relationship. Sales teams get the joke right away because the lingo lands in a familiar but funny setting.
For HockeyStack, I took the tension between sales and marketing and turned it into a hockey referee giving penalties for “high dissing.” Again, you get the problem fast because the metaphor does the heavy lifting.
For Schoox, the answer came from the client’s own rebrand. They described their personality as fun and magical. So I created a magician character. A dry LMS category suddenly had some life.
Creativity is limitless. It’s infinite.
Collaboration Is What Makes the Idea Safe
This part matters too.
I don’t assume my first metaphor is perfect. Art is opinion, not fact. The client knows their industry far better than I do. My job is to take their product and turn it into a memorable, funny, engaging campaign. Their job is to tell me if the metaphor really fits the brand.
So we work together. We revise. We change lines. We keep shaping it.
That back and forth can take days or weeks. It usually takes two or three rounds before we get something really strong. And honestly, this is one reason I don’t think AI can replace the ideation phase still. There’s too much human conversation in it. Too much nuance.
I’m not a professional in their industry. I’m a professional in my industry.
Build a Campaign World People Can Remember
One hero video is not enough anymore.
Buyers move across channels. Different people in the buying group see different things. Some will catch the LinkedIn ad. Some will see the CTV spot. Some will see the event screen. Some will get the retargeting ad later. The creative needs to feel connected across all of that.
So I like building campaign worlds.
Characters Make B2B Brands Stick
LinkedIn’s B2B Institute cites research showing that characters almost doubled brand recognition. And B2B barely uses them. That’s wild to me.
Lavender Joe is the clearest example from my own work.
We built a whole world around bad sales emails in real life. He gets arrested by the email police. He awkwardly pitch slaps people on park benches. He grows over time. Later, we even introduced a rival AI character to add more tension to the series.
That campaign kept going because the character stuck. Over a year-long retainer, I produced more than 300 videos for Lavender for under $120,000 Canadian. And the market remembered him. People referenced Lavender Joe by name. I even saw people recognizing the character around the Collision event in Toronto.
That kind of recall is hard to get from a generic explainer.
LivePerson is another good example. I shot that campaign in a studio using the brand’s orange backdrop. Then I changed the characters, wardrobe, and setups so the series stayed fresh. A pilot. A surgeon. A little kid acting like a businessperson. Same campaign world. More variety. Less ad fatigue.
Ipsos found that high-performing creative showed brand assets 34% more often than low-performing creative. That makes sense to me. The more your colors, taglines, characters, and campaign world show up in a smart way, the easier it is for people to remember you later.
CTV Gives Enterprise Brands a Premium Feel
I’m very bullish on CTV for B2B.
Why? Because it gives you TV-level attention with digital-style targeting. You can target company size, industry, geography, intent, job titles, all of that. And your creative gets room to breathe on a big screen.
A funny or cinematic ad hits much harder on a 65-inch screen than in a tiny LinkedIn feed.
I see this in real life too. My wife and I watch ads on our Netflix plan and sometimes repeat the jokes to each other after. That attention is real. People are not always half-looking the way they do on a phone.
CTV also changes how the brand feels. It gives the company a premium perception. For a legacy brand trying to feel fresh, or a newer brand trying to feel more established, that matters a lot.
Replicant is a good example from my world. They recouped their production investment from a single CTV sale within six months and came back for more. I never promise that kind of result. I can’t guarantee results. But it shows what strong creative can do when it gets the right placement.
Humor Carries Real Business Weight
Some teams still think humor is soft. I think that’s a mistake.
Kantar found that the best creative generated more than 4x as much profit. Kantar also found humor was the top reason people gave for not skipping ads in 30 of 42 countries.
That lines up with what I’ve seen for years.
People remember funny. People remember an emotion. Whether it’s a mental laugh or an outside laugh, like an LOL, the brand sticks more.
LinkedIn’s B2B Institute recommends a 50/50 split between brand building and sales activation. That feels right to me. The emotional stuff helps in the long term. The rational stuff helps later when the buyer leans in.
And I’ve seen these cinematic brand awareness videos outperform more traditional direct-response ads for some clients. So I’m not treating humor like decoration. I’m treating it like a real business tool.
De-Risk Bold Creative with a Better Production Model
Now let’s talk about the part enterprise teams care about most.
How do you do this without turning the campaign into a mess?
You need scale. You need control. You need clean approvals. You need a lot of assets. You need multiple formats. And you need leadership to feel comfortable the whole way through.
That’s why my model is built around prep and volume.
Shoot a Batch, Not One Lonely Ad
I usually structure short-form campaigns so we can shoot 10 to 15 ads in one day, often in one location. House. Office. Diner. Studio. We stay there all day and move fast. That saves a ton of time.
It also gives the brand more room to test.
I like to diversify the scripts from safe to bold to unhinged. That way the team has options. Leadership feels protected. Marketing still gets to try something fresh. If one or two bolder concepts outperform, great. Now you know.
I don’t really care for safe videos when safe means forgettable. But I’m also practical. If the CEO wants a more conservative brief, I can execute that at a high level too. I just want the campaign to have a real shot at standing out.
For about $30,000, a client can often get around 10 high-quality commercials. That drops the cost to about $3,000 per spot. We can also deliver horizontal, square, and vertical versions so the campaign is ready for CTV, LinkedIn, YouTube, social, whatever the media plan needs.
That’s bringing down the budget by 50% or more and adding 10x the content compared with older agency models.
And if a prospect comes to me asking for one commercial, I usually explain that a batch of 10 or 15 in one day is only marginally more expensive. So we may as well build a real campaign.
Great Logistics Protect the Creative
A lot of brand modernization work actually gets won in pre-production.
I storyboard. I build shot lists. I scout the location. I cast carefully with the client. I make sure the actors have the scripts. I make sure the whole day is realistic before we ever show up on set.
A typical campaign can take 30 to 40 days of pre-production and around 45 to 60 days from brief to delivery. I’ll even write free scripts in the early stage if a VP needs help getting the CEO or CFO excited enough to approve the budget.
Then on set, the client can be there with us and sign off on takes in real time.
That structure is how we handled PetMeds. We produced 20 assets in two days, across three aspect ratios, while working with a professional animal wrangler. One of those spots reached more than 63,000 likes and over 1,000 shares. Different category, same lesson. Tight production makes bold creative easier to trust.
And when the client needs a 90-second explainer, I give that asset its own full day. That kind of video needs more camera angles and more time. I don’t force everything into one bucket.
Craft Is What Makes a Brand Feel Current
Messaging matters. Craft matters just as much.
My rule is ABC. Always Be Cinematic.
That means the lighting matters. The framing matters. The acting matters. The sound matters. The edit matters. If one ingredient is weak, the whole thing can fall apart.
For Replicant, I leaned into the rainy diner and the flickering power. For Aligned, I used a dim restaurant so the ad looked beautiful before the joke even landed. For Sparkpolo, I spent an hour and a half building a soft overhead light because the shirt had to feel premium. For Lavender, I used moody lighting in an abandoned house so the audience would think, wait, am I on LinkedIn or am I on Netflix?
That feeling is huge.
It makes the brand feel current. It makes the company feel sharper. It makes dry categories feel watchable.
I still prefer horizontal because I’m a filmmaker. But I’ll always accommodate square and vertical because your media plan needs all three. And I still believe real human production has a real edge. On one cybersecurity shoot, an actor made a tiny hand gesture in a therapy scene and the whole moment got funnier. That human nuance is hard to fake.
I use AI for brainstorming. I’ll keep testing it. But for now, there’s that human nuance that AI doesn’t have.
What I’d Tell a VP of Marketing Right Now
If your brand feels dry, start smaller and think bigger.
Start with one audience. One pain point. One big idea. One campaign world people can remember. Keep the opening less dashboardy. Give the viewer a reason to stay for five more seconds. Then let your explainer and your sales team do their jobs later.
Build a system. Build a series. Give yourself enough assets to test. Put one or two bolder ideas in the mix. Let CTV do some heavy lifting if you want more premium perception. Keep the craft high. Keep the messaging clear.
At the end of the day, it’s the best marketing that wins.
By the time your sales rep gets their few minutes, the brand should already feel familiar. The buyer should already remember something. A joke. A scene. A character. A feeling.
That’s what modern enterprise video should do. It should make your brand feel alive again.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does cinematic video sway a complex enterprise buying committee?
A typical B2B deal involves 6 to 10 decision makers, each gathering information independently. You can’t reach all of them with one dense whitepaper. Cinematic video scales across the organization. It builds a shared emotional memory, so when those buyers finally convene, your brand already feels familiar.
Why invest in high-production video when our enterprise sales cycles take years?
Because 95% of B2B buyers are out-of-market. Enterprise deals move slow. Direct-response ads fail here. Cinematic campaigns build deep memory, ensuring you are the very first vendor they call when their buying window finally opens.
If we delay the product demo, how do we ensure viewers remember our brand?
You don’t hide the brand. You hide the boring stuff. Google’s YouTube ABCD research actually recommends introducing the brand within the first five seconds. I just use a sonic cue, a brand color, or a recurring character early on to anchor identity while keeping the cinematic hook intact.
Does emotional, narrative-driven video actually translate to enterprise revenue?
Absolutely. Ads eliciting emotion are 4x more powerful in driving brand equity. Some leaders think humor is soft, but it captures real market share. When you build a premium campaign world, you stop competing on dry features and start winning deals.
Why do we need a high-volume video batch instead of one perfect hero commercial?
Buyers don’t live on one platform. B2B customers now navigate an average of 10 interaction channels. One lonely hero video can’t cover that footprint. Shooting a batch of 15 distinct, cinematic assets allows you to dominate CTV, LinkedIn, and YouTube without burning out your executive audience.
