5 September 2025
I recently read an article which boldly claimed that PR had to be based around storytelling and must also strike an emotional chord with its audience if it is to be successful.
Well, here’s another bold claim.
That’s rubbish.
And when it comes to B2B PR, where the writer of the aforementioned article was pitching his ‘knowledge’, it’s rubbish with bells on! (If that works, which I don’t think it does, but I’m sure you get what I mean).
Buyers in the business-to-business arena do not get gooey-eyed if they’re buying screws or ladders or even photocopiers. They want what they’re buying to do a job. They want it to be reliable. They might even want it to fit within a budget.
They don’t care, necessarily, how the screws/ladder/photocopier were made or assembled, or even if the CEO likes flower arranging in their spare time, they just want things to work as they’ve been promised.
They might feel reassured if you can show that a product uses the best quality materials, that it is guaranteed for life and, if you’ve got any quibbles with it after trying it out for a week or two, you can return it for a full refund – no questions asked.
These are not emotional purchases. You do not need to have a deep-seated connection with the seller or its employees. You do not need to know that they have planted some trees in the Gobi Desert (laudable though that might be) or that the company’s founder struggled with dyslexia when they were at school.
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These might be interesting stories, but they won’t convince anybody to buy the products.
Quite simply, people don’t care – despite what you read on LinkedIn.
This is not being harsh, it is reality.
Think about it.
Even as a consumer, have you ever bought anything that wasn’t your first choice because you were so moved by a back story of the company or its employees? Patagonia maybe. Anything else?
B2B PR needs to focus on what’s good about your products and what’s in it for the buyer. Not in an ethereal, dreamy, I-have-a-warm-feeling-inside kind of way, but in a hard-nosed, value for money, bottom line, how much cash do I want to spend/can I afford kind of way.
Otherwise, your own PR story might not have a happy ending, it could be more of a Grimm fairy tale.
