A new day for PROse

Welcome to another a new edition of PROse! 😁 

In today’s email, we discuss:

• The vision for PROse

• What to expect going forward

• A preamble: the future of B2B marketing

Yo! I’m Darien from Antidote 👋🏾. Every week I share what I learn about the science of building a brand. If someone forwarded this email to you or you’re reading this online, welcome to the fold! What you're about to read is an unconventional view on B2B marketing.

If you enjoy it, join 100s of other B2B marketers on the journey to build a standout brand.

The Vision for PROse

When I started PROse, it was a way to communicate my thoughts on the landscape of B2B marketing—what it is today, and more importantly, what it could be in the future.

Over time that developed into more tactical content about social media growth. And while that’s a meaningful part of the future for B2B marketing, it doesn’t encapsulate it fully.

I’m going back to where I started. This newsletter will dive into the science of brand building. The goal is to change the perception of brand building from an artsy extracurricular activity, into a viable growth mechanism.

B2C/consumer companies figured this out ages ago. Together, we’ll learn how to adopt some of those methods, and new ones, to build B2B companies that our customers don’t just appreciate, but that they feel part of.

So how will things look different? Here’s my plan for the newsletter going forward:

• Interviews with leading marketers & creators on building a brand and connecting with your audience (no fluffy content you can read in Twitter threads)

• Breakdowns of some of the most iconic brands—B2C and B2B—with principles you can use in your day-to-day work

• Musings on the state of B2B marketing (last week’s letter is an example) to offer a new way of thinking about how we build

It’ll still be a blend of strategy & tactics, with a heavier focus on strategy and frameworks for thinking about B2B marketing through a different lens.

(If you want the best advice on social media growth, subscribe to Tommy Clark’s newsletter, Social Files. Tommy single-handedly flipped how SaaS brands approach Twitter, so he knows his stuff)

The future of B2B marketing

The days of shipping blog content focused solely on ranking in an algorithm or publishing “Best Workplace Award 2023” content on LinkedIn is over. Not because SEO is dead or company updates aren’t meaningful. But because digital media is about storytelling.

Contrary to the saying “people have the attention span of a fish”, the average person spent nearly 2.5 hours on social media in 2022. It’s not an attention span issue. It’s an interest issue. Brands that are putting out content in service of their own interests (PR to their customers/investors, getting emails & demo requests, etc) are going to be left behind.

The future belongs to brands who are unafraid to take risks. Brands who are focus on creating content with high educational & entertainment value. Brands who measure growth not just in terms of leads & revenue, but in terms of loyalty and connection with their customers.

We’ll dive into the mechanics of this in subsequent emails. I’m excited for it!

That's a wrap, folks! But before you go...

Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Your feedback goes a long way (seriously, I read & respond to every email—good or bad!)

See you next week,