The attention bottleneck

Distribution is no longer scarce - but attention is.

We see thousands of brand messages a day. Emails, promoted posts, sponsored video clips, in-feed whitepapers, chatbot prompts, search ads, retargeting loops. Every one designed to be relevant. Every one hoping we’re in-market. And most of it disappears without trace.

The real challenge in B2B marketing isn’t access - it’s persistence. Brands are fighting to be remembered.

But as their goals converge, so do approaches, and optimising for attention becomes a forcing function for blending in.

Hyper-targeting isn’t the answer

The promise of hyper-targeting was clarity: send the right message to the right person at the right time.

The reality is clutter.

Study after study shows that ultra-narrow targeting in B2B is flawed - and often wasteful.

Gartner’s research shows that B2B buying groups involve 6-10 decision makers, many of whom are invisible to third-party data.

Forrester’s analysis consistently finds that firmographic and demographic data is riddled with errors - often 30-40% inaccurate.

Audiences move. Buying groups change. Real decision-makers are invisible to the data.

Mark Ritson has written loads about the limits of precision targeting, arguing that broad reach with distinctive creative outperforms narrow targeting.

What’s more, if you only speak to who the spreadsheet tells you to, you miss everyone else - future buyers, influencers, even internal champions.

You narrow your message. You narrow your impact.

And paradoxically, you often pay more for it. The tighter the segment, the higher the CPM - and the less room for serendipity or salience.

Broad targeting might feel inefficient. But it builds memory with more people, more often - and in B2B, that’s winning the long game.

When everyone optimises, everything looks the same

The problem isn’t targeting alone. It’s what we do with the data.

Marketing teams under pressure follow the path of least resistance: what’s worked before. Best-practice playbooks. The content formats that get clicks. The messaging frameworks that “convert”.

And if your competitors are doing the same - reading the same reports, chasing the same personas, using the same tools - your campaigns start to draw closer to each other.

Every whitepaper starts with the same stats. Every landing page says “seamless,” “secure,” “simple.” Every ad uses the same visuals.

This is what researchers call algorithmic flattening - the creative consequences of always following the numbers.

Tom Roach has written about this phenomenon, showing how over-reliance on data-driven optimisation leads to creative convergence.

Mark Ritson calls it “tactification” - where brands optimise themselves into invisibility by following the same playbooks as their competitors.

Instead of innovation, you get iteration.

Instead of difference, you get default.

Data tells you what worked - not what will

Optimisation isn’t inherently bad. But it should be the second move, not the first.

Data is descriptive, not prescriptive. It tells you what worked, in what context, for what audience. It doesn’t tell you what people haven’t seen yet - or what might surprise them.

And the more brands follow the same insights, the less insight any of it has.

It’s the paradox of efficiency: by trying to minimise waste, you maximise sameness.

Barry Schwartz called this the Paradox of Choice - too many similar options overwhelm decision-making. In B2B, it’s more like the paradox of similarity: when everything looks alike, it’s easier to ignore all of it.

That’s how content overload turns into content apathy.

Attention loves difference

To stand out in a saturated environment, difference matters more than precision.

Research from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute suggests that only around 5% of B2B buyers are actively in-market at any given time. That means brand-building - creating mental availability long before intent signals appear - is essential.

And what builds brands? Feature specs and gated PDFs? No.

Creativity. Distinctiveness. Boldness.

Campaigns that get remembered use surprise, emotion, story, nostalgia, innovation. They earn attention cumulatively, rather than buying it in spikes.

IPA and WARC effectiveness studies back this up: the most successful B2B campaigns are those that took the most creative risks. The ones that didn’t play safe.

And yet, 80% of B2B ads tested by System1 scored just one star out of five for emotional impact.

The high cost of playing safe

If your ad looks like an ad, and your blog reads like every other blog, what reason does a buyer have to take notice?

In a lot of industries, brands have optimised themselves into invisibility. More spend to make the same results look like they are better.

Or worse - buyers don’t just ignore your content, they downgrade their perception of you because of it (though we wouldn’t know, because we measure it less often).

Edelman’s research has repeatedly found that poor thought leadership can significantly damage buyer trust, with buyers reporting that low-quality content has influenced their vendor selection.

Bad content doesn’t just waste budget. It costs you in trust.

Distinctiveness doesn’t mean guesswork

Being bold doesn’t mean being random.

The best creative work is rooted in insight - but it goes beyond what the numbers say.

It sees what the audience sees. It explores what others ignore. It finds the gap between expectation and delight. It reveals what Jeremy Bullmore called the “penetrating truth”.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute says distinctiveness beats differentiation - brands grow through assets that make them easily recognisable, not through unique features. In crowded categories, how you make people feel often matters more than what you tell them.

This is where the smart brands are headed: blending structured insight with creative bravery. Giving their teams space and bandwidth to invent, not just implement.

Creativity is a commercial multiplier

This isn’t about art for art’s sake.

When you create media that surprises, moves, or delights your audience, everything else works better.

Your ads get noticed. Your leads get warmer. Your brand gets remembered. Your acquisition costs go down. And this accumulates if you keep it going.

As Stephan Vogel from Ogilvy said:

“Nothing is more efficient than creative advertising. It’s more memorable, longer lasting, works with less media spend, and builds a fan community faster.”

Even the most advanced data strategy can’t fix a campaign no one notices.

AI can help - but the risk must still be human

There’s a lot of fear about AI in marketing right now.

Some of it’s justified. Some of it’s moral panic.

But in B2B - where attention is sparse, and sameness is the status quo - creative disruption has to be human. What’s great is that AI can make room for that.

AI can speed things up. It can help us iterate, test, produce at scale. It’s useful for generating content and tightening execution, doing the admin.

But it won’t commit to a creative direction.

It won’t take a risk and stand by it.

It won’t fight for an idea in the face of internal critique and market indifference.

The truth is: attention doesn’t come from creative safety. It comes from decisions that feel awkward at first - because they’re actually distinct.

Take the Jaguar rebrand.

The creative direction was widely mocked - elegant heritage swapped for a sterile future. The creativity and the execution felt hollow.

But imagine if they’d truly committed with depth. If every brand touchpoint, every ad, every driving experience carried that new aesthetic, done right, with consistency and conviction and proper consideration. Over time, the awkwardness would soften. Memory would take hold.

The problem wasn’t just the design. It was the lack of human risk on the line.

Because what makes something distinctive isn’t just the idea. It’s what you put into it to make it distinct and how long you are prepared to live with it.

AI can’t do that.

It can help us make.

But only humans decide what’s worth making.

Only humans carry the weight of taste, judgement, and commitment over time.

The real bottleneck

We talk about distribution. About precision, reach, optimisation.

But the real bottleneck is attention - and we don’t earn it by playing the same tune as everyone else.

We earn it by being recognisable. Unexpected. Human.

By taking a creative direction that might be uncomfortable - and holding to it until it becomes your brand’s second skin.

By making work that feels risky, not just relevant.

In B2B, that’s a shift in a posture deeply entrenched in divisive culture, expectations, and politics.

But it’s a shift from being correct to being remembered.

From following what works to creating what lasts.

When everything can be Ctrl + Alt + Copied, creativity is the only real disruptor.