Think Audiences, Not Ecosystems: B2B2C Without the Hyphen

The marketing industry loves its labels. B2B. B2C. D2C. Each comes with its own playbook, metrics and specialist agencies. But outside our bubble, that distinction doesn’t exist. Business buyers are also consumers. Procurement leads are also parents, partners and fans. And consumers increasingly judge a brand not only by the product they receive but by the companies, suppliers and systems behind it.

The traditional B2B2C chain - where one party makes, another sells and a third consumes - has become an ecosystem of mutual influence. Corporate reputation shapes consumer choice; consumer sentiment shapes business procurement. The hyphen between them has vanished. Yet too many brands still run their marketing as though those audiences live on different planets.

That mistake is getting expensive. The latest IPA Bellwether shows budgets recovering but still fragmented - spread thinly across short-term activations and siloed channels. That fragmentation doesn’t just waste money; it weakens meaning. The biggest danger for modern brands isn’t inconsistency - it’s incoherence: when every department says something different, and no one remembers what the brand stands for. The brands that will win in the next five years are the ones that move beyond audience segmentation to belief integration: one core idea expressed differently for every participant in the system. That’s what makes creativity scalable.

When a business customer sees the same story reflected in how a brand treats its consumers, trust compounds. When consumers recognise the same values their favourite retailers or service providers trust, brand preference strengthens. When employees understand how their work connects both, motivation rises. It’s one continuous conversation.

The real efficiency play isn’t automation; it’s emotional coherence. A single brand idea that flows through communications, operations and culture is more cost-effective than ten disconnected campaigns. It’s the creative equivalent of economies of scale.

Look at companies that have successfully crossed the B2B and B2C divide - Canva, Amazon Business, Adobe. Or Maersk, which turned a freight network into a storytelling platform that celebrates global trade and human connection. They didn’t invent two marketing strategies; they scaled one belief system. They used the same promise - accessibility, simplicity, creativity - to unite business customers, consumers and employees alike. The result is faster adoption, higher loyalty and lower wastage.

B2B marketers have long been told their buyers are purely rational. But research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute and System1 (The 5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing, 2019) found that emotionally led B2B campaigns drive around twice the profit growth of rational ones. Procurement decisions are made by groups, not algorithms; they depend on trust and shared conviction. That’s why the most effective B2B communications now borrow from B2C craft - storytelling, humour, empathy - while B2C brands are borrowing B2B discipline: data, accountability, efficiency. The most progressive companies don’t choose between those two approaches; they integrate them. We call that participation – when head and heart, business and culture, meet in the same idea, and brands earn their place in people’s lives.

Building an ecosystem brand doesn’t mean flattening nuance. It means designing ideas that flex by audience but stay anchored in one truth. When a logistics company talks to businesses about reliability, that same idea can inspire consumers to believe in trust and everyday dependability. When a technology brand talks to enterprises about transformation, that same story can excite consumers about innovation. The creative challenge isn’t multiplication; it’s translation. Integration becomes a creative act, not an operational one. It’s what turns marketing systems into belief systems.

In volatile markets, brands that can act as unifiers - across departments, partners and audiences - earn disproportionate trust. They become the emotional infrastructure of their category. They make collaboration feel natural because everyone’s working from the same purpose.

That’s what B2B2C without the hyphen really means: removing unnecessary divides, replacing segmentation with connection, and designing creativity that works in every direction. It’s not about talking louder to more people. It’s about talking more meaningfully to all of them at once. That’s the creative challenge we set ourselves: to design ideas that don’t just reach people, but connect entire ecosystems.

The strongest brands in 2026 won’t measure success by how many audiences they reach but by how many they unite. Because when businesses and consumers believe in the same story, budgets work harder, relationships last longer and creativity scales faster. 

The hyphen is gone - and that’s a very good thing.

Ben Essen is the global chief strategy officer for Iris.