Informational, Aspirational, Transformational

All of your messaging, whether video, text or pictures, is either informational, aspirational or transformational.

In B2B, 99% of everything every company puts out to a public-facing audience is informational: this is who we are and what we sell. Most of what a B2B company publishes should be informational. Just not the first thing someone sees. The first thing should be aspirational. That's the sweet spot. That's where you start with hope: I understand your negative present. We eat, breathe and sleep this stuff, so come spend some time here. B2B companies should start at the aspirational level. We understand what's wrong, so let's talk about what's possible.

Transformational, the third level, you almost never see in B2B. I can think of only a few transformational messages that have worked in the last thirty or forty years. The internet was the first: for ten or twelve years everyone was asking, is your business online? What does .com mean? What is e-commerce? Blockchain and crypto sort of were. AI certainly is. What you find is that transformational messages die out sooner and sooner. The web lasted more than a decade. Most companies are already tired of hearing about AI three years in.

Today, transformational messaging tends to be B2C only, in categories like health, beauty and dieting. There's a secret way to pick stocks, you can be a millionaire in thirty days, and the only reason you're poor is that you don't know it. All scams live at the transformational level.

The covert message of informational is: this is who we are and what we sell. Aspirational is: you could be different. Transformational is: you could be new. That's psychologically alluring for an individual or in B2C, but rarely works in B2B. Never lead with it, and don't even use the word in B2B marketing. No one will trust you to rip their business down to the studs and rebuild it into something new. No way.