As B2B marketers, we spend a lot of time in the briefing process talking about what a piece of work needs to say, and the desired outcome, but we don’t always put much emphasis on the feeling we want to leave behind.
This month’s Five is a good argument for flipping that order. Every campaign here started with a feeling and worked backwards, and they’re all the more memorable for it!
– Jeanne Kirby, CMO
Today in marketing school: Finding the feeling inside a technical subject
Data migration is important and complex, but as CJ Hutchings, Senior Art Director at Inviso, puts it, “it’s not naturally cinematic.”
While servers, cloud icons, and employees staring at dashboards can visually explain data migration, CJ wanted to create a video that made people feel something about the process.
So he asked what the subject represents, rather than what it looks like. Movement. Risk. Transition. Carrying something valuable through uncertainty and making sure it arrives at its destination. He landed on a cattle drive, rendered as an animated Western-inspired oil painting. Data becomes the herd, and someone is in charge of delivering every “byte” safely.
AI handled the script, storyboard, and assets, but as CJ writes, AI was not the idea. The idea was to make data migration feel like a tangible journey with something critical at stake.
A lesson in emotional design
Everyone knows the recycling arrow icon, but now there’s a new symbol on the block. Global alliance PR3 has just launched its mark for reuse, and there’s more to it than just the design. It reads as a spiral, and when you look closer, an R for Reuse.
The spiral nods to the idea of time as something that circles back around, rather than the straight line of consumer culture.
The designers admired the original recycling symbol’s universality, but felt it had curdled into something faintly shaming (see undertone of guilt). You recycle because you feel bad about the planet.
The new mark is designed to avoid those negative connotations. It differentiates reusables from recyclables and other single-use waste, enabling consumers to keep reusable items out of landfills, all while inspiring the shift towards an un-throwaway world.
Storytelling at its best: Making science feel human
Pharma ads aren’t typically memorable (or enjoyable), but Eli Lilly and Wieden+Kennedy’s recent campaign is a beautiful exception.
“Never Over” launched at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, and it does something we rarely see in this category. Instead of talking about medicine, it talks about the grind.
Blending a 1950s-style voiceover with archival footage of sport, lab work, and medical imaging, the ad draws parallels between athletics and medicine, both defined by relentless, never-quite-finished work.
Alongside the ad, Lilly’s Milestones into Meaning program donated $5,000 to health-focused nonprofits for every Team USA medal won or record broken at the games, backing its visual storytelling with real-world impact.
The takeaway
Effective campaigns don’t ask people to care about something new. They tap into what people already care deeply about and then show them where a brand or product intersects with those feelings.
August’s word: Emotion
Maya Angelou once said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
We think about this a lot as B2B marketers.
Everyone assumes emotion belongs to consumer brands, while the rest of us have to make do with dry feature lists and endless spec sheets. But that’s never been the case. Customers buy B2B products for the same reasons they buy Nike trainers, because the logic justifies a choice they’ve already made emotionally.
Need some fresh marketing ideas? We can help you explore them.
Marketing in the wild: Sell the feelings, not the product
Whether you love football or loathe it, everyone can relate to the emotional roller coaster of the game.
Coca-Cola’s “Feel It All” campaign for the FIFA World Cup barely shows any football. Instead of goals and players, the ad focuses solely on the fans. It mirrors the emotional rhythm of a match, moving through anticipation and anxiety to celebration and relief.
The campaign is designed to show how football creates a shared emotional experience regardless of geography, status, or background, whether you’re in the stadium or on the sofa munching a bag of popcorn.
For marketers, there’s an idea here worth stealing. Don’t ask what’s interesting about your product. Ask what’s interesting about the feeling your customer has when they’re using it.
Got your own “marketing in the wild” find? We’d love to see it!
Send a pic to max@invisomarketing.com with your favorite bits of IRL ad genius.
Emotion is our whole job, really.
See you next month!
The Inviso Marketing Team