Why most B2B brands are forgettable (and how to fix yours)

Right now, most B2B brands are losing a battle for memory. If your target clients can’t remember you, they won’t choose you.

Ok that is very dramatic of me – It doesn’t happen as a deafening collapse, but quietly. One year your brand is the one people mention in conversations, the next, you are “that company that… what do they do again?”

Legendary brand thinker Wally Olins warned that identity is the anchor of recall. It is what lets people feel they belong to your world while also giving your audience a clear way to differentiate you from others. Too many B2B brands never create a true identity. Instead, and perhaps unconsciously, they inherit the look, language and behaviour of their category and then wonder why nobody remembers them.

If you think of brands as patterns of familiarity, meaning, fondness, and reassurance that live in the minds of people. In B2B, these patterns often never form because companies trade the magic, empathy, and patience of brand building for the comfort of efficiency, short-term metrics, and long lists of product features.

The problem: built to blend in

Take a scroll through your sector and you will notice the same patterns everywhere. The language is full of buzzwords instead of benefits. The visuals lean heavily on corporate speak. The imagery often relies on stock style photographs of handshakes or offices, even if it’s a commissioned photographer. Internal communication is aimed at “decision-making units” rather than the humans inside them.

When scale-up CEOs come to us, the story is often the same. In a crowded category, and the confusion that LLM’s have brought, fitting in is not a safe option as thats a slow path to disappearing entirely.

Why do smart leaders miss this?

B2B leaders are trained to think logically. They define ideal customer profiles, map pain points, and construct rational business cases. These are valuable tools, but they are only half of what is needed.

When brands focus only on rational efficiency, they can easily strip away the intangible things that make them memorable. Gallup’s research finds that about 70% of decisions are based on emotional factors, while only 30% are based on rational thinking. So logic is in effect stepping in afterwards to justify the choice.

If your brand operates entirely on logic, you are trying to win a marathon having only trained one leg.

The science of memory: why some brands stick

Think about the last business you recommended to someone. It probably was not because you memorised their product sheet. It was more likely the confidence they gave you in a meeting, the clarity of a promise they made, the customer service you experienced or a moment when they surprised you (in a good way) in a way that stayed with you.

Memorable brands own a place in your mind because they have a distinct and consistent sense of self, expressed in a way that matters to people.

The B2P shift: Business to People

At Nalla, we call this Business to People, or B2P. It is a rejection of the outdated B2B and B2C divide and a reminder that even the largest procurement process ends with a human making a choice.

B2P brands speak to human motivations as well as business outcomes. They prove trust through transparency and shared values. They tell stories that make people feel something worth remembering.

It’s a competitive advantage in a market where 76% of consumers would buy from a brand they feel personally connected to over a competitor.

The main ways brands lose the battle for memory

Talking ‘features’ instead of ‘futures’

Listing capabilities are easy, but vision is what inspires action. Instead of saying “We offer cloud-based compliance solutions with robust security protocols,” consider a focus on the real intention for example, what’s the emotional benefit. A true benefit led story is likely to sound much more like this: “We help your team sleep better at night knowing compliance headaches are handled, securely and simply, without the 3am panic.” than the former.

Trying to please everyone

If you try to appeal to everyone, you will connect deeply with no one. The strongest brands know exactly who they want to work with and who they do not.

Blending into the category

If a competitor could swap logos with you and no one would notice, you don’t have a brand, you have a placeholder. This is where many B2B brands are.

How to make your brand impossible to forget

Winning the battle for memory starts with clarifying your core promise so it is human-first and instantly understood. Build stories around people rather than only metrics. Audit every touchpoint for consistency in tone, design, and experience. Put human faces at the forefront so familiarity starts before the first sales call. Commit to evolving your story so you never slide into irrelevance.

One client, a legal business, came to us with a decline in recall within their market. Within ninety days of repositioning to a B2P-led story, they saw a twelve per cent lift in inbound enquiries from their ideal audience without changing their product at all.

The first step to owning the room

Branding pioneer Wally Olins taught that a brand’s survival depends on the strength of its identity, while behavioural marketing expert Brian Goodwin emphasises that lasting customer memories are formed through emotional experiences rather than data and spreadsheets.

The fight for relevance begins with clarity about who you serve, why they care, and how you will deliver every time. That is why we created the B2B Brand Scorecard. It shows exactly where your brand is strong, where it is invisible, and where it is vulnerable.

Book your B2B Brand Scorecard appointment today and make sure that the next time your brand enters the room, it is the one no one forgets.