B2B marketers are under constant pressure to find the next breakthrough campaign idea, yet only 12% say they exceeded their goals over the last 12 months, according to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs 2026 B2B Content and Marketing Trends report.

Key Takeaways:

• B2B marketers who copy competitors produce the same ideas, so standout campaigns often borrow from unrelated industries.
• The “Where else?” approach starts with an experience buyers love outside work and the emotion that makes it compelling.
• Teams should find the psychological principle behind that experience, not its surface mechanic, and apply it to one friction-filled touchpoint.
• Before building, pressure-test whether the principle fits the buyer, feels natural in B2B, and differentiates from competitors.

Almost universally, marketers respond to pressure by looking at what other marketers are doing—competitor campaigns, industry benchmarks, and award-winning B2B work. That’s the problem. When everyone in a category draws from the same sources, everyone produces the same ideas. This is why some of the most distinctive B2B campaigns of the last decade were built on ideas borrowed from completely unrelated industries.

The process is simpler than most teams expect. Identify an experience your buyer already loves in another part of their life, understand why it works at a structural level, and rebuild that principle inside your own marketing touchpoints. I call this the “Where else?” approach. I learned its power firsthand at Disney.

In 2011, my team reframed a challenge around the guest experience, with the goal of eliminating a major pain point. The biggest one was lines: at hotel check-in, park entry, character meet-and-greets, and food and merchandise counters. So, we asked, “Where else has someone already solved this?” The answer came from well outside theme parks: radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. That led to the MagicBand, which made the park and hotel experience feel effortless.

Any B2B marketing team can apply the same thinking to its next campaign. To discover how to run it in four steps, read the full article on MarketingProfs.com.

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