Big small stories

B2B means business-to-business. Companies who make things or provide services to other businesses, as opposed to doing it for consumers. Technically we’re a B2B service ourselves – most of the creative industries are.

Stand work with a lot of medium-sized B2B businesses (using the official definition – small-to-medium sized businesses have 250 employees or less). And they are businesses who do amazing things. 

Because they’re not dealing directly with consumers, they aren’t household names. But they supply and service household names. You could call them the power behind the throne. Think of Bosch, for example, making components that are used in cars from Fords to Porsches. (We don’t work with Bosch. Or Porsche. But if they’re reading, we’d like to. Call us.)

We meet so many of these world-class medium-sized businesses, who are delivering amazing products and services for iconic global brands. And we see the same challenges cropping up for them again and again.

They’re brilliant at what they do. But terrible at telling people about it.

B2B marketing just doesn’t get the same attention that marketing to consumers does. And that needs to change. Because in order meet their business goals, in order to grow, these incredible, brilliant, world-class medium-sized businesses need to tell people how good they are.

Luckily, that’s where we can help.

Muirhead are a great example. They make leather. Really amazing high quality, high performance, luxury leather. And it’s sustainable too – Muirhead’s is the lowest carbon leather in the world. As part of Scottish Leather Group, they’ve been making it for over 180 years, and they sell to some huge global brands. From airlines like British Airways, Emirates and Air Alaska to fashion icons like Mulberry and consumer technology brands like Philips TPV.

We’ve been working with Muirhead for a few years now, from a full rebrand to guiding their marketing strategy. By helping them develop ways of talking about themselves that focus on what their customers really need, we’ve helped them land some of those famous customers.

One of the secrets is knowing what to say, when and who to. It’s great to focus marketing on key brand messages and to target campaigns for clearly defined customer groups … and of course we help Muirhead do that. But we also listen very carefully every time we speak with them – because sometimes they still don’t realise how amazing they are.

A throwaway comment from the Muirhead team caught our attention. They were working with a customer on a tiny, tiny project. But what an interesting project. Nick Mason from Pink Floyd wanted some very particular leather to trim the seats in a 1927 Bugatti Brescia, being restored for him by classic car specialists Tula Precision.

The Muirhead team saw this is a small project, not something of interest to their global corporate customers. We saw something different. We saw an emotional story with a celebrity client that could show off the craft, care and attention to detail Muirhead apply to everything they do – from a single car seat to an entire fleet of aircraft interiors.

So we made a little film. And everybody, from car club members to corporate CEOs, loved it.