And the worst cliché in B2B marketing is…

The worst B2B marketing cliché? It has to be “The best-kept secret.”

There are tons of awful clichés, but this one is undoubtedly the worst. Don’t argue with me; I’m fully prepared to die on this hill. 

Doesn’t seem so bad. Why is it the worst of the worst? 

4 reasons. 

First of all, it has been WAAAAY overused and just won’t seem to die. I saw my first “best-kept secret” print advertisement 25 years ago when I entered the industry. I was served another “best-kept secret” digital ad earlier this year. 

Second, it’s lazy. I picture a Sales Manager brainstorming some marketing copy and busting out this tired old trope after five minutes of Googling. “Good enough!” he says to himself as he ships this headline with some mediocre support copy off to a graphic designer with explicit instructions to find a shhhh finger photo. After a total development time of 15 minutes, he’s convinced he has a winner and doesn’t need to spend on marketing professionals. 

Third, this particular cliché actually admits to the world that you’re bad at marketing. You’re basically congratulating yourself for having no brand awareness. Your products should never be a secret, best-kept or otherwise. They should be well-known and celebrated, even if the audience is small. 

And finally, when you create marketing that is identical to what companies all over your industry have already created, it’s an open invitation to your audience to tune out what you have to say. After all, they’ve seen it before. Why should they re-read it?

Fair points, but hang on. We try to tell people about our products, but we don’t have the budget to compete. We truly feel like a secret sometimes.

All right, I’m done ranting for now. I’ll take a few deep breaths.

You’re right, of course. Some companies have competition that looks like Goliath. In fact, we work with many of those companies since one of our specialties at Ivor Andrew is B2B challenger brands.

So, yes, it is indeed possible that your product is strong, and it’s also possible that not many people know about it. In other words, you truly are a best-kept secret.

That’s what I’m saying! I’ll tell our team to run that Best-Kept Secret headline.

Not so fast. Because here’s the key point: it’s still an eye-rolling cliché. Most clichés are true, after all. People use them (nonstop over multiple decades) for a reason.

So what are we supposed to do?

You communicate that same old message in a fresh and exciting way.

We recently ran into this challenge with one of our B2B industrial clients, Enshu Japan. They make high-quality CNC machine tools. Their marketing budget is small, but the performance of their equipment is anything but. 

During our brainstorming phase, the Best-Kept Secret concept came up. It holds true for Enshu: their products are not well known. Additionally, given the massive difference that these machines make for shops, users are hesitant to talk about their Enshu machines for fear of giving away some of their competitive advantage. 

While there was truth here, the Ivor Andrew creative team knew that we needed to work past the cliché and come up with a better way to convey it. So we kept our nose to the grindstone,  eventually landing on a new tagline: Machines of Legend.

A legend is something fantastic that is widely held as true, but not personally witnessed. This concept plays particularly well with Enshu, as many people may have heard of but never seen their machines. The Machines of Legend launch video script is equal parts boastful, playful and self-aware, delivering a contrast to the cookie-cutter solutions, innovations and partners and spec-heavy videos that plague the machine tool industry. 

Gotta say, pretty cool video.

Sure is! We had a lot of fun making it, which is usually an excellent sign. We’re grateful to Enshu that they recognized the potential of the campaign.

Now, if you feel compelled to share your familiar message in a new and attention-grabbing way, remember that’s exactly what we do at Ivor Andrew. 

I used to be on the manufacturer side of things before I started this company. I know what it’s like to wish your budget was a little bigger, or to wish you had a little more time to be creative, or to wish you had a LOT more time to learn the Adobe Creative Suite.

But now this marketing agency exists, and I’m surrounded by brilliant strategists, creatives and account executives. They work to understand you, your company and your differentiators—and find the right way to tell the world about them.

It will take some courage on your part. It’s not easy green-lighting something bold and different. But the way I see it, there’s no one better to challenge the industry than the challenger brand.