Anyone who walks into my co-working space this morning won’t see anything out of place: just a woman in her mid-thirties munching on a bagel and coffee.
But anyone who looks closer as I bite into my grain-free bagel with dairy-free cream cheese will see something that says a lot about buyers in 2020.
I can only speak for myself, but in this case I represent a real perspective Millennials, Gen Z, and to a certain extent Gen X bring to every purchase decision, B2C and B2B alike: we want what we want, no matter how ridiculous or unrelated it might be to what we need.
(I mean, what is a bagel without wheat? Or cream cheese without cream or cheese?)
I think this is why we see B2B brands succeed with very warm, approachable visual branding like Greenhouse, or downright hilarious, self-aware marketing like Contently, and countless other examples I’ve come across in the past seven years.
The next generation is coming into the B2B buying space, and we have a real sense of skepticism — and humor — about the way things work. We want to feel aesthetically pleased when we manage candidate relationships, and make people chuckle when they think about office supplies.
We want what we want.