Back in 2007, Cadbury had a problem. Salmonella scares and product recalls had dented the nation’s love affair with this iconic brand, so it called in an ad agency to help reverse the decline. 

Imagine the boardroom conversation: “We propose a 90-second film of an animatronic gorilla playing the drums to ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins.  Who knows how many pins you could hear drop.  

But fair play - they went for it. Embracing creativity and smashing convention, sales soared by 10% over the rest of the year. The ad still ranks in the top 1% for long-term memory encoding.

As human beings we’re hard wired for pattern recognition, we seek out logical sequences to reduce our cognitive load all thanks to our good friend the neocortex. When something breaks convention or doesn't naturally fall into order it becomes harder to process and as a result draws focus, sparks our attention and demands an immediate and new emotional response. That’s why brand strategists and creatives like us embrace the strange and break conventions: to get people to notice and recall your brand in the right ‘buying situation’ - attention is the first step towards connection.

On average, 80% of B2B customers will not buy a product or service for at least a couple of years. Which is why building memorable campaigns is so crucial. Effective brand campaigns work by building and refreshing memory links to a business, service or product. These memory links are activated when a customer comes onto the market with the right buying mindset. So, if your campaign is better at building brand-relevant memories, it will become more competitive. Creativity boosts memory, and the more memorable you are, the more you’ll drive profit. Simples.

This principle applies whether you’re in the B2B or B2C game. Yet so many of the B2B campaigns we see go for a cookie-cutter approach. And if we’re bored and you’re bored, then your target audiences are definitely bored – and there’s no chance of long-term memory encoding.

Cadbury’s Gorilla worked so well precisely because it didn’t get caught up in dry product benefits or technical detail. Instead It focused on telling a compelling, memorable story and conveying a strong, relatable emotion - joy. When our brains finally understood what was happening, that’s the point at which the ‘branding moment’ occurred and the memory encoding peaked. Enter Pantone purple 2685C and the ‘Glass and a Half Full of Joy’ promise - an enduring imprint was made.

Next time you’re thinking about getting your brand out there, remember there’s more to it than shouting from the rooftops about your product or service and the world has seen enough cityscapes with a light trail - trust me.  It’s only by delivering consistently distinctive stimuli that B2B brands will earn customers’ attention, build memories and be front of mind when those buying opportunities appear.

You have to think about making neurological connections, about how to imprint yourself on people’s minds. Geckos, meerkats, carrots, gorillas and ostriches all feature in some of the world's most memorable campaigns - It’s only by delivering consistently distinctive stimuli that brands earn people’s attention, build memories and create an expectation that they’ll deliver on their goals. The average person sees 400 to 600 advertisements per day, people actively try to block ads and most choose to skip them as soon as they are able. Marketeers shouldn’t fear being bold at the risk of getting it wrong - they should fear being forgotten or even worse, never noticed at all.