Right folks! It’s round four of the ‘B2Bold’ saga, and let me tell you, these intros are starting to feel like a tightrope walk over Google’s duplicate content check abyss.

Nevertheless, we persevere. As you know, I’ve been digging back into the archives of PR history to find my favourite examples of B2B creativity.

Here’s my top three for this month:

1. The Linked Inn

Back in 2019, LinkedIn teamed up with Heineken to open its first pop-up pub — ‘The Linked Inn’.

In a time when people see clicking ‘connect’ as an effective form of networking, The Linked Inn is a great example of a brand looking to the past to improve its future. By returning to physical networking events, LinkedIn reminds us that its goal isn’t just to drive site traffic — it’s to help people find jobs.

After a brief trial in Shoreditch, the Linked Inn went on tour through Manchester and Bristol, serving up a combination of booze and business advice. The pub even comes with its own networking spaces, jobs fair and a professional photographer — just in case you need a new profile pic.

2. Sharks on a plane

Competing with industry giants Boeing and Airbus, Brazilian aerospace giant Embraer wanted to get its name out there and grab a chunk of its audience’s attention.

To emphasise the strengths of its aircraft in alignment with the priorities of business travellers — think efficiency and profit-making — several of Embraer’s existing models were renamed as the ‘Profit Hunters’, with the noses being painted with fearsome predatory themes.

Painting the nose of a plane may seem like a small thing, but it provided a great picture stunt for the brand. The new Profit Hunter fleet was also used as the basis of events, videos and social media campaigns all targeted towards high-flying business travellers.

The new Profit Hunter planes were also shown off in Embraer’s ‘Incredible Journeys’ video series, turning this small stunt into a fully-fledged multichannel marketing campaign.

Watch the full video on YouTube

3. Shopify makes you a business

Shopify’s ‘Let’s make you a business’ campaign aimed to get the next wave of small business owners to use Shopify to grow and manage their businesses.

To raise awareness, Shopify splashed empty shop fronts with quotes like “Let’s make your mom’s ‘famous’ recipe actually famous”, and “That business you thought of three months ago could be here.”

By using empty storefronts, Shopify was able to create powerful sharable images for social media, encouraging potential customers to imagine just how far their businesses could go — from fledgling idea to real-world business.

Read more on Shopify’s blog