When playing it safe is the biggest risk

We get it - playing it safe feels sensible

But there’s an undeniable and uncomfortable truth - safe marketing carries its own risks. The cost just shows up differently. Instead of a campaign that misses the mark, you get a campaign that nobody remembers and forgettable work that sails through approval because it looks like everything else.

That might feel like a win in the short term. Over time, it's anything but.

Why so much B2B looks the same

If you've ever scrolled through a trade publication or conference sponsor wall and struggled to tell one brand from another, you've seen this problem in action.

It happens for understandable reasons. Category conventions feel reassuring. Competitor benchmarking seems prudent. Internal compromise smooths the approval process.

The trouble is "best practice" has a way of becoming "lowest common denominator". When everyone follows the same playbook, the playbook stops working. You end up with entire sectors where the messaging, visuals and tone are interchangeable. Tech companies that all promise transformation. Professional services firms that all lead with trust and expertise. AgriTech brands that all feature the same drone shots and soil close-ups.

Each individual decision makes sense, but the cumulative effect is invisibility.

The real risk profile

We often hear "safe" used as though it means "low risk". But marketing that blends in carries substantial commercial risk too, just not the kind that shows up in a campaign report.

Consider this: recent research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute found that only 19% of B2B video ad viewers both remember the advert and correctly identify the brand behind it. Put another way that means 81% of the time the creative and media spend behind a campaign fails to create any lasting brand connection. The risks of sameness compound over time.

Weak recall means your brand doesn't come to mind when buyers are actually in market. Poor mental availability means you're constantly fighting for attention from scratch, relying on performance media to do the heavy lifting. And when everyone else in your category looks and sounds like you, the only differentiator left is price. Does that still feel like playing it safe?

How to stand out in B2B?

Distinctiveness.

A term which is often misinterpreted as meaning gimmicky when it doesn't! Truly distinctive brands share three qualities.

First, a clear point of view. They have opinions about their market, their customers and the problems they solve. Those opinions shape everything from messaging to visual identity.

Second, recognisable patterns. The visual cues, verbal style and brand assets that help people identify the brand even without a logo. Jenni Romaniuk from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls this "Brain Engine Optimisation" – showing up in memory, not just in search results.

Third, consistency over time. The brands that stick are the ones that commit to their distinctive elements and reinforce them consistently, resisting the urge to refresh every year.

Distinctiveness isn't about being provocative everywhere you can. It’s not a flash in the pan guerrilla marketing tactic. It's about making brave choices that others in your category won't make, and sticking with them long enough for those choices to register in buyers’ minds.

Three questions you should be asking

Frameworks can be useful, but only if they lead somewhere practical. Here's a simple way to pressure-test your current marketing that you can do without any complicated tools or processes – just some self-interrogation:

1. Would someone recognise your brand/organisation without the logo? Cover your brand name and look at a piece of your marketing. Does it have any distinctive visual or verbal elements that would identify it as yours? Or could it belong to any of your competitors?
2. Does this say something only we could say? Look at your key messages. Are they genuinely specific to your business, your expertise, your perspective? Or are they category generics that any competitor could claim?
3. Are we the same? If your competitor could swap in their logo and run your campaign without changing a word, you haven't differentiated effectively. The most effective work says something rivals can't or won't say.

If the answers make you uncomfortable, that's useful information in itself.

Where boldness pays off

Being distinctive doesn't require being bold everywhere. Organisations that try to be radical across every touchpoint often end up looking incoherent rather than distinctive.

The smarter approach is to be deliberate and identify where boldness creates the biggest returns – then commit to those choices. Sometimes that's a visual identity that breaks category conventions. Sometimes it's a messaging stance that takes a clear position. Sometimes it's simply being more human in a sector that defaults to corporate formality. The specifics vary but the principle holds:bravely choose where to be different, and be consistently different there.

Small, deliberate choices, reinforced over time, build the mental availability that makes brands easier to remember and harder to ignore.

Permission, not pressure

We're not suggesting you blow up your marketing and start again. Radical overhauls rarely stick, and they create their own risks with equity and managing stakeholders.

But we are suggesting you examine where caution might actually be costing you. Most marketing teams have at least one "safe" decision they've never really questioned; a messaging approach inherited from years ago, a visual style chosen because it blended in with the competition, a tone that smoothed internal approval at the expense of external impact.

Find that decision. Question it. Ask what would happen if you did something different. Being bold isn't a personality – it’s a series of strategic choices. And in a market where most B2B brands fade into background noise, choosing to be memorable might be the safest bet of all.