e get it: Adding emotion to content is unsettling for B2B companies. It takes them places they’ve never been before, places where it doesn’t feel quite right.

Being all business feels safer. 

Yet connecting with customers and prospects on an emotional level is precisely what B2B enterprises should be doing because it gets results.

There’s plenty of evidence that emotions are deeply ingrained with business decisions. Back in 2013, Google and CEB (now part of Gartner) asked 3,000 B2B buyers how they connect with brands. The surprising answer? B2B customers are significantly more emotionally invested in their purchases than their B2C counterparts.

They’re also likely to be unaware of it. When researchers asked IT infrastructure buyers to rank the elements of greatest value to their purchases, cost reduction topped the list. The buyers’ answers to other questions, however, revealed that the strongest predictors of customer loyalty included vendor expertise and responsiveness. Cost reduction didn’t even make the top 10.

To help you loosen up, here are a few examples of how B2B companies are bringing warm fuzzies to their content.

Humor

Advertising is the easiest place for B2B companies to hone their comic chops. Enterprise software maker ServiceNow has long relied on humor in spots like this one. The subject of hybrid cloud solutions probably doesn’t immediately tickle anyone’s funny bone, but Hewlett Packard Enterprise found a light-hearted approach. CRM vendor Zendesk makes anyone who has ever called customer support laugh (or cry) with this parody.

Humor has a place in B2B written content, too. Take Tintri. The provider of intelligent infrastructure spares its readers a dry, techie drone on data-center storage manufacturers and instead finds a parallel with Mexican food. A wry take is a great way to connect with readers. It also produces tangible results. In this blog post, Cognizant executive Ben Pring gets real about the travails of working from home and garnered 5,000 views, making the post a major hit in the B2B sphere. (In full disclosure, the company is a client.) Lenovo’s integrated campaign Users Happen combined funny 30-second videos with a series of e-book Survival Guides and notched a 250% lift in qualified leads.

Surprise

One aerospace company congratulating another sounds like a snoozer. But Airbus’s video in which the multinational corporation tips its hat to rival Boeing hooks viewers with a simple script and great pacing. It pulls a switcheroo, deftly shifting from what appears to be a competitive poke in Boeing’s chest to good-natured birthday wishes on the company’s centennial. It’s a feel-good experience that stays with you. Nearly five years later, we remember it — and that’s saying something in B2B. As one observer of the video points out, human memory is the most valuable real estate on earth. Airbus’s skillful use of the unexpected stakes its claim to that turf. (Click here to watch Boeing’s response.)

Compassion

Long considered the most unbusinesslike of emotions, compassion has had a reckoning among B2B companies. The global pandemic scared the bejesus out of those of us fortunate to be healthy and employed, and it gave everyone — businesses included — permission to feel more deeply. It’s okay to be a little tenderhearted. The logical place for many companies to begin adding compassion to their content is their diversity and inclusion initiative, where they tend to allow themselves to loosen up. Accenture’s standout video movingly explores the pain of workplace exclusion. Its theme of inclusion has never felt more relevant or been conveyed by a company more poignantly. I defy you to watch it without a sniffle.

But compassion is about more than tugging at our heartstrings. It’s about communicating to customers that you understand them on an everyday level. Valero Energy Corp. is an example of a B2B enterprise that excels at telling its own corporate story through a humanistic lens. Valero’s expansive website, #fueledby, successfully connects its brand with people. It wants us to look at the company not as an operator of oil refineries but as an organization that gets us. Valero wants us to feel something — and we do. The site’s opening video documents a shelter dog’s journey to its new home. There’s also a slew of lushly photographed written content, including profiles of individuals like the innovative jeweler and the Michigan outfitter who offers fly-fishing expeditions. It’s empathy marketing at its best.

3M is another B2B company that successfully creates content with a B2C sensibility. Despite deriving just 15% of its revenue from consumer products, the conglomerate makes good on its tagline — “Science. Applied to Life.” – with consumer-focused content that includes at-home science experiments. The videos teach kids concepts like kinetic energy and physics. (I recommend Mr. Bonner’s lesson on building a rubber-band guitar to learn about sound waves.) In a time of remote classroom learning, any content that lends families a helping hand is indeed compassionate.