Every week, the B2B world produces another thousand “storytelling” attempts that are really just feature lists pretending to have feelings. 

And then, once in a while, a brand drops an ad so sharp, so strange, so emotionally illegal that it reminds us:

B2B isn’t becoming entertainment. It always was entertainment. Marketers just got scared.

This newsletter isn’t just a list of campaigns, It’s a breakdown of the deeper shifts shaping B2B Video ads and what they mean for the stories you create next. 

Let’s get into it.

There’s a sickness in tech nobody talks about:
the fetishizing of misery.

“Real developers don’t need pretty interfaces. Real developers eat pain for breakfast. Real developers haven’t seen sunlight since…”. Anyways you get the gist. 

Monday Dev doesn’t argue with this belief. It plays with it, pulls the thread, and lets the entire myth unravel on camera.
When even Steve in the cage admits dark mode is his love language, the ad does something profound: It gives permission for the identity to evolve.

People don’t buy tools. They buy identity upgrades.
If your customer’s culture worships difficulty, you can’t sell ease, you must first invalidate the ritual holding them hostage.

Ask yourself: What dumb rule in your category are prospects following out of habit, ego, or tribal loyalty? And what would it look like to break it publicly?

Most hardware ads fight on two axes: speed and accuracy. Steadfast said, “Cute. Look at this man wiping his ass with cash.”

Suddenly, “manual counting is inefficient” transforms into: Manual counting is bodily harm.

This is B2B horror done right. Not the cheap kind, the kind that rewires your neural pathways so you never see the category the same way again.

Specs persuade the mind. Sensation persuades the body. And the body makes the fastest buying decisions.

If your competitor sells logic, ask yourself: What physical reaction can you trigger that logic can never undo?

Two founders drown in admin work.Enter a silver-haired corporate shaman who reminds them of a truth they’ve forgotten:

“You’re not interns. You’re captains. Captains delegate.”

Upwork doesn’t sell “access to freelancers.” It sells a restoration of self-worth, with a side of emotional chiropractic adjustment.

The sandwich trade at the end isn’t comedy. It’s ritual sacrifice: give up the tasks that diminish you, regain the identity that defines you.

Your product doesn’t solve problems; it restores status levels.

Ask yourself: What identity is your buyer desperately trying to get back to and how do you show them the version of themselves they miss?

Customer support is now 93% bots, 5% auto-replies, 2% escalations that go nowhere.

Kinsta weaponizes this cultural decay by giving us something almost taboo:
a crush on competent support.

So when a developer in Kinsta’s ad finds a dashboard that’s actually easy to use, he assumes something’s wrong. His colleague tells him to try the live chat.
He immediately snaps: “You’re talking to bots.” She corrects him without blinking: “His name is Marcus. We talk sometimes.”

When he asks, “Are you flirting with customer support?”
she doesn’t answer. Because the real point isn’t flirting, it’s that she trusts Marcus more than the systems she works in every day.
That’s a commentary on how low the industry bar has fallen.

The more your industry dehumanizes itself, the more power there is in radical humanity.

Think to yourself: What human trait (empathy, taste, judgment, humor) has your category accidentally made rare and how can you make it your unfair advantage?

Bob doesn’t need a logo. Bob needs a lifeline. A reason to exist in a market where “good enough” is death.

Canva turns a vanilla Ice cream vendor into a goth icon by giving him the power to do the one thing small businesses never get permission to do: be weird enough to matter.

This ad isn’t about creativity. It’s about the economics of specificity.

The more niche you go, the more your market starts finding you.

If you want mediocre results, appeal to everyone. If you want unfair results, pick a audience and over-serve them.

Ask: What’s the most extreme version of your customer you can help create? And what would it look like if you showed that transformation unapologetically?

Across all these ads, something undeniable is happening:

They’re trying to be felt.

These aren’t ads.
They’re acts of cultural rebellion inside industries that forgot they had culture in the first place.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

It’ll be defined by how far you can connect to your buyers emotions.

The brands who win won’t be the ones who explain their product best.
It’ll be the ones who say the thing everyone feels but nobody else will put on film.

Pick one:

The future of B2B video is not neutral.
It’s not safe.
It’s not a checklist.

It’s performative psychology for people who pretend they only buy rationally.

And if you make them feel something real? You win every time.

Anyways, thats a wrap for this weeks newsletter. If you need any further inspiration, check out our B2B Video Ads Library. We’ve got tons more video ads on there that are helping to change the way we do B2B video ads. 

Catch you next time,
Regan George | [email protected]

P.S. If you see a B2B ad that commits a moral crime in the best possible way, send it. I want the dangerous ones.