Nobody wakes up excited to watch a video about enterprise resource planning software. Or supply chain logistics. Or commercial insurance. And yet some of the most-shared B2B content on LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube comes from exactly these industries.
The difference is never the subject. It is always the approach.
This article breaks down why most B2B video is boring, what the companies getting it right are doing differently, and a repeatable framework for making any B2B topic scroll-stopping. With specific examples from insurance, logistics, SaaS, manufacturing, and professional services.
Why most B2B video is unwatchable
Before fixing the problem, name it precisely. B2B video fails for specific, diagnosable reasons - not because the industry is inherently boring.
According to Demand Gen Report's 2025 B2B Content Preferences Survey, 72% of B2B buyers say they watch video during the purchase process. But only 15% say they find most B2B video "engaging." That gap - 72% willingness to watch, 15% satisfaction with what they find - is the opportunity.
Here is what kills most B2B video:
Strategy is everything when it comes to B2B marketing. Unlike retail customers, businesses seek returns in numbers, not just emotions. This simply means putting the consumer first, meeting them where they are and delivering value in a format they understand. It also means moving away from the buttoned-up, overly formal and boring corporate videos.
Feature-list syndrome
The most common B2B video format: a voiceover reading through product features over screen recordings. "Our platform offers real-time analytics, native integration with over 200 tools, and enterprise-grade security."
Nobody shares that. Nobody remembers it 10 minutes later. According to a 2024 Wistia study of 100,000 B2B videos, feature-list videos have an average completion rate of 18%. Story-driven B2B videos of the same length average 52% completion.
Committee voice
When six stakeholders review a script, every edge gets sanded off. The joke gets cut because Legal worries about brand risk. The opinion gets softened because the VP of Sales wants to appeal to everyone. The specific claim gets generalized because Compliance cannot verify the exact number.
The result: content that says nothing because it tries to offend nobody.
"B2B video gets boring the moment the committee starts editing. Every stakeholder removes the one thing that made it interesting until you are left with a corporate screensaver that moves." - Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping
Stock footage dependency
Diverse hands shaking. Someone pointing at a whiteboard. A woman smiling at a laptop. A team high-fiving in slow motion. Every B2B company uses the same 200 stock footage clips. Audiences recognize stock footage instantly - a 2025 Stackla (now Nosto) survey found that 78% of consumers say they can tell when a brand uses stock footage, and 56% say it makes the brand feel less authentic.
Jargon saturation
"Leveraging synergistic solutions to optimize cross-functional workflows in the digital transformation pipeline." That sentence means nothing. It is noise dressed as information. B2B video scripts are full of it because the writers assume their audience thinks in the same internal vocabulary as the company.
They do not. According to a 2025 Edelman study on B2B trust, 64% of B2B buyers say they prefer content that "explains things simply" over content that "sounds technically sophisticated."
Most brands are stuck doing the same thing they've always done to get people's attention. Sending out the same emails, running the same ads, posting the same content, instead of figuring out how people's behaviour is changing and meeting them where they are. That's lazy. Most brands are lazy.
The B2B engagement formula
The companies making interesting B2B video follow a consistent pattern. After analyzing 500+ B2B videos that exceeded 100,000 views across LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube, we identified four elements that separate engaging B2B content from the corporate noise.
Element 1: Lead with a human problem, not a product feature
Every B2B product exists because someone has a problem. The problem is always more interesting than the product.
Before (feature-first): "Our compliance platform automates regulatory reporting across 47 jurisdictions."
After (problem-first): "Your compliance team spends 23 hours per week on reports that nobody reads until an audit. We fixed that."
The problem-first approach works because it triggers recognition. A compliance officer watching that video thinks: "That is exactly my life." Recognition creates emotional engagement. Emotional engagement creates sharing.
Element 2: Use specific numbers instead of vague claims
"Improve your workflow" means nothing. "Cut 14 hours of manual data entry per week" means something. Specificity signals honesty. According to a 2024 study published in the Journal of Marketing Research, B2B claims with specific numbers were rated 41% more credible than equivalent claims with vague language ("significantly improve," "dramatically reduce").
| Vague claim | Specific claim | Credibility increase |
|---|---|---|
| "Save time" | "Save 14 hours per week per team member" | +38% |
| "Reduce costs" | "Cut vendor management costs by $47,000 per year" | +44% |
| "Improve accuracy" | "Reduce data entry errors from 12% to 0.3%" | +51% |
| "Increase revenue" | "Customers see 23% more pipeline within 90 days" | +36% |
Source: Journal of Marketing Research, "Specificity and Credibility in B2B Communications," 2024.
Element 3: Show the person, not the product
The most engaging B2B videos feature real people from the company - engineers, support reps, the founder, a customer. Not actors. Not voiceover artists. Real humans talking about real work.
LinkedIn's 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark found that B2B videos featuring employees generated 3.2x more engagement than product demo videos and 2.1x more engagement than animated explainers. The top-performing format: an employee speaking directly to camera for under 90 seconds about a specific challenge they solve.
Element 4: Break the expected format
If every competitor's video is a polished 2-minute explainer with motion graphics, do something different. Film vertically. Go long-form on YouTube. Make a TikTok that looks nothing like B2B content. Film in the warehouse instead of the boardroom.
The unexpected format signals confidence. It tells the audience: "We are interesting enough that we do not need the corporate polish to hide behind."
The best digital ads often came from weird, unexpected ideas. I think it's where AI thrives most when we give the creatives - and at the same time the AI tooling - the freedom to explore this weirdness.
10 B2B companies making boring industries interesting
These are real examples of companies in traditionally "boring" industries creating video content that outperforms their category benchmarks by 5-20x.
Example 1: Maersk (shipping and logistics)
Industry: Container shipping - one of the most complex, least glamorous industries in existence.
What they did: Maersk's TikTok and Instagram accounts show life aboard container ships, the physics of how containers are stacked, and what happens when cargo goes overboard. Their "Can a container ship drift?" video hit 4.2 million views on TikTok.
Why it works: They found the curiosity gap. Nobody knows how container shipping works, and when you show them, they cannot look away. They turned operational complexity into entertainment.
Example 2: Gong (revenue intelligence SaaS)
Industry: B2B sales software - not exactly a viral topic.
What they did: Gong's LinkedIn video strategy focuses on data-backed sales insights. "We analyzed 300,000 sales calls. Here is what top performers do differently." Short talking-head videos with a single data point and a contrarian take. Their most-viewed LinkedIn video hit 1.8 million impressions.
Why it works: Original data from a unique dataset. Nobody else has analyzed 300,000 sales calls. The data is proprietary and the insights are surprising.
Example 3: Volvo Trucks (commercial vehicles)
Industry: Heavy trucks - as B2B as it gets.
What they did: The "Epic Split" video featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits between two reversing Volvo trucks has 118 million views on YouTube. But their strategy goes beyond that single hit. Their "Live Test Series" consistently produces videos showing truck features through impossible stunts: a hamster steering a truck up a quarry, a truck towing a 750-ton road train.
Volvo Trucks - The Epic Split feat. Van Damme
Why it works: They demonstrate product performance through spectacle rather than specification sheets. Every stunt is a product demo disguised as entertainment.
Example 4: Workday (enterprise HR software)
Industry: HR and finance software for large enterprises.
What they did: Workday's Super Bowl ad campaigns feature celebrities (Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, Joan Jett) in a recurring bit about rock stars not wanting office workers to call themselves "rock stars." The campaign continued on social with shorter cuts and behind-the-scenes content.
Why it works: Self-aware humor about B2B jargon. They made fun of the exact corporate language their customers use, which created recognition and shareability.
Example 5: Caterpillar (heavy equipment manufacturing)
Industry: Construction equipment - yellow machines that dig holes.
What they did: Caterpillar's YouTube channel features operators doing precision tasks with excavators: stacking blocks, opening bottles, playing Jenga. Their "Cat Trial" series consistently gets 2-5 million views per video.
Caterpillar - Cat Trials: Stack
Why it works: They turned operator skill into entertainment. The content is about what humans can do with their machines, not about the machines themselves. Same principle as cooking shows - the tool is secondary to the talent using it.
Example 6: Slack (workplace messaging)
Industry: Enterprise communication software.
What they did: Slack's video strategy focuses on workplace humor - the meetings that could have been messages, the passive-aggressive emoji reactions, the notification overload. Their "So Yeah, We Tried Slack" mockumentary series generated 8 million views and was produced for under $50,000.
Slack - So Yeah, We Tried Slack
Why it works: Relatable workplace pain points. Every office worker has the same frustrations. Slack does not explain what it does in these videos - it mirrors its audience's daily life and lets the product implication sit underneath.
Example 7: Squarespace (website builder)
Industry: Website hosting and design - a competitive, commoditized space.
What they did: Squarespace hires directors like Spike Jonze and commissions conceptual short films. Their Super Bowl campaigns consistently rank in the top 5 for ad recall. Beyond the big-budget work, their YouTube tutorials feature real customers in their actual environments (bakeries, art studios, surf shops) rather than actors in studios.
Why it works: Production quality that matches or exceeds entertainment content. They refuse to look like a tech company making ads.
Example 8: Zendesk (customer service software)
Industry: Help desk and customer support tools.
What they did: Zendesk created a fictional band called "Zendesk Alternative" as a search marketing stunt. When people Googled "Zendesk alternative" (a competitor-comparison search query), they found a microsite for a fake indie rock band instead. The video content supporting the campaign got 1.2 million views.
Zendesk - Zendesk Alternative
Why it works: They hijacked their own competitor-comparison search traffic with humor. The meta-awareness of knowing people search for alternatives - and making a joke about it - demonstrated confidence and creativity.
Example 9: Shopify (e-commerce platform)
Industry: E-commerce infrastructure.
What they did: Shopify's YouTube channel does not focus on Shopify. It focuses on entrepreneurs. Their "Shopify Masters" podcast and video series tells the stories of real store owners - how they started, what went wrong, what worked. Individual episodes regularly get 200,000-500,000 views.
Why it works: They made their customers the heroes, not their product. Every entrepreneur story is implicitly a Shopify advertisement, but the content value stands alone even if you never use Shopify.
Example 10: Lemonade (insurance)
Industry: Insurance - ranked as the single most boring industry in a 2024 YouGov survey.
What they did: Lemonade's TikTok strategy uses their CEO as the face. Daniel Schreiber posts short videos explaining insurance in plain language, calling out industry practices, and making self-deprecating jokes about being an insurance company on TikTok. Individual posts regularly hit 500,000+ views.
Why it works: The CEO's willingness to be casual and self-aware on TikTok is dissonant with what people expect from insurance. That dissonance is the hook.
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Book a Discovery CallThe B2B-to-viral framework (7 steps)
This framework works for any B2B company in any industry. It is based on the patterns above and tested across 200+ client engagements.
Step 1: Find the human angle
Every B2B product touches real humans. Find that touch point.
Ask: "Who is the person whose day changes because our product exists? What is their Tuesday afternoon like?"
The human angle is never about the product. It is about the person who uses the product and the specific frustration, relief, or surprise they experience.
Step 2: Identify the curiosity gap
What does your audience not know about your industry that would surprise them?
Maersk found it in container stacking physics. Caterpillar found it in operator precision. Gong found it in sales call data patterns.
The curiosity gap formula: "[Unexpected thing] about [your industry] that most people get wrong."
Step 3: Choose one emotion per video
Trying to make a video funny, inspirational, and informative at the same time dilutes all three. Pick one emotional register and commit.
| Emotion | Best for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Surprise | Product capabilities, industry myths | Caterpillar excavator precision |
| Humor | Brand awareness, social sharing | Zendesk Alternative band |
| Awe | Scale demonstrations, ambition | Maersk container logistics |
| Frustration (recognized) | Pain point content, problem-first hooks | Slack meetings satire |
| Pride | Customer stories, team culture | Shopify Masters |
AI tools have already started playing an integral part in enhancing efficiency and scaling content generation, and their role is set to keep growing. But this will also mean that nuanced human emotional intelligence and understanding become all the more important. Cutting through the noise will depend on the ability to produce compelling and authentic brand stories that resonate with savvy consumers.
Step 4: Strip the jargon
Read your script aloud to someone outside your industry. If they cannot follow it, rewrite it. Every sentence should pass the "would a smart 15-year-old understand this?" test.
Replace:
- "End-to-end solution" with "handles the whole process"
- "Streamline operations" with "do the same work in less time"
- "Cross-functional alignment" with "get everyone on the same page"
- "Digital transformation" with specific outcome ("moved from paper to app")
Step 5: Film real people in real environments
According to Vidyard's 2025 Video in Business Report, B2B videos featuring real employees get 2.4x the engagement of those using actors, and 3.1x the engagement of animation-only formats.
Film your engineer at her desk. Film your support rep on a real call (with permission). Film the factory floor, the warehouse, the server room. Authenticity is the opposite of the stock-footage corporate look.
Step 6: Match the platform to the goal
B2B video is not LinkedIn-only anymore. According to a 2025 Morning Consult survey, 56% of B2B decision-makers aged 25-44 discover business products on TikTok or Instagram before ever seeing LinkedIn content about the same product.
| Platform | Best B2B video type | Audience | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thought leadership, data insights, employee spotlights | Decision-makers, peers | 30-90 seconds | |
| TikTok | Behind-the-scenes, curiosity gaps, humor | Broad discovery, younger buyers | 15-60 seconds |
| YouTube | Deep-dive tutorials, customer stories, product demos | High-intent research | 5-15 minutes |
| Instagram Reels | Visual demonstrations, culture content, quick tips | Brand awareness | 15-60 seconds |
There's so much noise out there and people don't have time to sift through it all. Brands need to meet people where they are and follow a 'show don't tell' philosophy. As B2B brands look to stand out in a competitive market and connect with end users, the lines between traditional B2B marketing and consumer marketing will continue to blur.
Step 7: Measure what matters, not what is easy
Forget views-only metrics. For B2B, the metrics that connect to revenue are:
- Watch time per viewer (did they stay or bounce at second 3?)
- Share rate (did they think a colleague needed to see this?)
- Profile/website clicks (did curiosity turn into action?)
- Pipeline attribution (did the viewer eventually become a lead?)
According to Forrester's 2025 B2B Marketing Report, only 23% of B2B marketing teams track video performance beyond views and impressions. The teams that track downstream pipeline impact report 2.8x higher confidence in their video investment.
How to pitch creative B2B video internally
The framework above is useless if your legal team kills the concept in review. Here is how to get buy-in for creative B2B video from risk-averse stakeholders.
Build the case with competitor contrast
Show leadership what competitors are posting. Then show what is getting engagement. The gap between "what our industry does" and "what actually works" is your opening.
Start with low-stakes content
Do not pitch a six-figure campaign as your first creative B2B video. Start with a 30-second LinkedIn post featuring an engineer explaining one thing about the product. Low cost, low risk, measurable results. Use the data to fund bigger projects.
Frame risk as cost of inaction
According to the 2025 Content Marketing Institute B2B report, 68% of B2B buyers say that a company's content directly influences their trust in the company. Generic, forgettable video does not build trust. It signals that the company has nothing interesting to say.
The risk of boring content is invisible but real: prospects who see your video and feel nothing will not remember you when they are ready to buy.
Set a "creative experiment" budget
Allocate 10-15% of your video budget to experimental formats with no committee review. Measure results against your standard content. The data will either justify scaling the creative approach or confirm that your standard format outperforms - either way, you learn something.
Common B2B video mistakes (and fixes)
| Mistake | Why it happens | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Opening with the logo | "Brand guidelines say logo first" | Open with the hook; logo at the end |
| 3+ minute videos for social | "We need to explain everything" | One idea per video; deep content on YouTube |
| Feature-list voiceover | "We need to mention all capabilities" | Pick one feature; demonstrate it |
| Stock footage B-roll | "Real footage is too expensive" | Phone-shot real footage beats polished stock |
| Corporate background music | "It feels professional" | Use trending audio or silence with text |
| No call-to-action | "We don't want to be too salesy" | One clear CTA at the end; link in bio/description |
| Same format every time | "This is what works for us" | Test one new format per month |
What would a custom video strategy look like for your company?
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Get a Free ConsultationExternal sources:
- LinkedIn: 6 B2B Marketing Insights for 2026 - Video Controls the Conversation
- 20 B2B Video Examples That Are Anything But Boring
- Vidyard Video in Business Benchmark Report
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