Business-to-business - for so long the forgotten and unsexy sector
of Britain’s ad industry - is to be given an image makeover.
The initiative is being spearheaded by the Institute of Practitioners in
Advertising, which is boosting the size of its business-to-business
committee and rebranding it as the Business Communications Group.
One of the group’s first tasks will be to kick off a research programme
to discover the size and nature of the UK’s business-to-business
activity.
The moves reflect the mounting frustration by business-to-business
specialists which have been unable to shake off their old ’industrial
advertising’ image.
They also claim that it is business-to-business clients which have
driven the spectacular growth of the internet and that they, rather than
mainstream agencies, have been the true pioneers of integrated
marketing.
Keith Dunnell, managing director of Primary Contact and chairman of the
Business Communications Group, said: ’The industry has changed with IT
and business services companies becoming major advertisers, and
standards are improving. Some business-to-business advertising is still
appalling. But the best is as good as any.’
Business-to-business specialists in the UK aim to follow the lead of
their US counterparts, whose profile is much higher, and to promote the
services of IPA agencies to advertisers in the sector.
The research is intended to find out the true scale of the sector whose
extent is hard to quantify because of the difficulty in markets of
separating consumer ads from business-to-business campaigns.
’The research will provide a clear view of the industry,’ Dunnell added.
