B2B is fundamentally people to people and the best way to help people understand each other is through stories.
Consider this a love letter to the craft, and to everyone finally remembering why it matters.
There’s a moment that happens in some conversations with clients, someone from the project team will mention something in passing; perhaps a problem they solved on site, a relationship that turned a difficult job around, or the instinct that paid off.
And you think: that’s the story.
The bit that makes you lean forward and want to know more. The real stories, pulled from the detail of delivery and shaped into something human, told in a way that lets other people in.
Why we fell for it
The built environment runs on expertise that most people never see, the kind of deep technical knowledge that takes years to develop and can’t be learned from a textbook. Hard-won experience that builds the sort of judgement that only comes from dealing with real projects under real pressure, where every decision has consequences and there’s rarely a perfect answer.
The trouble is that expertise doesn’t travel well; it gets trapped in jargon, buried in specifications, and locked inside the minds of the people who do the work, day in and day out. When it does get communicated, it usually comes out as product features or capability lists and if you’re not careful you can end up with content that reads like inventory.
Storytelling is the antidote for this, which is why we’re drawn to it. It can take complex stuff and make it accessible. It shines a light on the people behind the project and shows how a business thinks, how it collaborates when the pressure is on and what delivery really looks like. In the built environment, where decisions take time and projects involve serious financial and human investment, that’s exactly what people are trying to figure out. Stories answer those questions in ways that brochures can’t.
Why the affair is heating up
Something has shifted recently. There’s more content out there than ever, but audiences have got better at spotting generic and AI content and want something more. They want romance.
Previously we reported on the LinkedIn and MAGNA Media Trials report that found that the most successful B2B brands are moving beyond functional marketing and forging emotional connections with their buyers, prioritising storytelling over feature-telling. Creativity, it turns out, drives better B2B performance.
There’s also more appetite for hearing directly from the people on the ground. First-hand perspective carries serious weight in technical sectors where credibility is earned slowly. People trust it more. See also – why we’re in love with thought leadership.
We’re also hearing from clients that the stories drawn from actual delivery are the ones that stick. Plus, they’re harder to automate and harder to copy, which can really help your marketing stand out.
From the conversations we’ve heard, it feels like others are starting to fall for what we’ve loved all along.
Looking for love
Most businesses already have brilliant material; it’s just locked inside the heads of the people doing the work. The experts who don’t think what they know is particularly special because to them it’s just a standard Tuesday.
This is the bit we love most. Sitting with those people and helping them see what’s worth sharing. Then giving it structure so it can do some work in the world.
When it works, it really works
We fell hard for storytelling when we worked with MiTek on their Aspire campaign. The brief wasn’t to talk about MiTek. It was to celebrate what their customers were achieving, and there was something irresistible about that approach.
The manufacturers, housebuilders and partners using their technology every day had their own stories. Their own challenges, progress, ambitions. By putting those at the centre, the value of MiTek’s work became obvious without needing to be stated. It was elegant in a way that product messaging never is.
Aspire became a platform rather than a campaign, and watching it develop was genuinely exciting. It celebrated real people doing real work, using their voices to show how technology supports better outcomes in modern construction. They were grounded accounts of businesses getting things done, told by the people actually doing them.
That’s when you remember why you do this. When you see a story land with someone and watch their face change because they finally understand what makes a business different. When a project team sees their work given the shape it deserves and realises other people care about it.
For clients like coombes:everitt architects, storytelling has helped buildings feel less abstract. It’s meant exploring how a place gets shaped by heritage, community and future use, rather than just technical specifications, and showcasing then as the amazing places for people, that they are.
What keeps us hooked
You can’t tell meaningful stories without proper conversations. That means taking time to understand the pressures client teams are under and the constraints they’re working within.
Some of the best insights we’ve found have come from people who don’t think of themselves as storytellers at all. Engineers explaining a technical decision or site managers talking through how they managed a tricky relationship. Those conversations are where the clarity lives, where the nuance is. And honestly, they’re some of the most interesting conversations we get to have.
That’s addictive in its own way. Storytelling and relationships are the same thing for us. You can’t do one without the other, and we wouldn’t want to.
Where to begin your own affair
If you’re struggling to find the stories in your business, it’s probably because you’re too close to see them clearly.
Try this: think about what people ask when they’re deciding whether to work with you. Not the first polite questions in a pitch, but the real ones, the concerns that have won a job, the concerns that have saved a job; that’s where you’ll find the reassurance they’re looking for, and you’ll know where to start the story.
Once you start noticing these details, you might find yourself falling for storytelling too.