Re-humanizing B2B marketing

Welcome to Spark, a newsletter from Vivace. We curate and publish the most interesting thinking and ideas from our community on themes ranging from business and finance to culture and creativity. Send pitches and feedback to [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

Hello Spark reader,

‘How can we make it more human?’—is a question that has been asked by many a marketing team trying to sell data, software, and technology in businesses around the world. How do you captivate audiences when your product exists mainly in 1s and 0s? In chips and bytes? Product screenshots artfully inserted into device interfaces will only get you so far…

Cesare Serventi—or Ces as he’s known to us—has been solving this problem for many years, which is why he’s one of our go-tos when our clients need to tell compelling stories through sound and screen. And as with most of our bench of great senior talent, he is also a close friend, and now joins the distinguished ranks of Spark contributors.

This mini masterclass in human storytelling for the digital age is one that no B2B marketer or communicator should miss.

—joel

Creative storytelling, emotion and AI: Re-humanizing B2B marketing in the digital age

Guest essay by Cesare Serventi

I have a confession to make: after I finish editing a video or a podcast show, I watch it back repeatedly, examining each and every detail as though I was watching it for the first time.

I’m looking for spots in the edit where I can make subtle adjustments—the color grade over a clip, a transition in the music—all so that I can draw out more of one thing: emotion. These kinds of changes are the ones that probably no one else will notice, but I make them nevertheless because I feel they are important for the story.

Having produced and led many professional productions over the years, supporting corporate communications and B2B marketing for financial services companies, I learned early on that emotion is the driving force that makes content impactful and memorable.