Mark Jackson, group head at Lucre, says it’s important to remember that B2B decision makers aren’t always thinking about work

It’s no secret that reaching business-to-business decision makers is tough. In our current economic circumstances, it seems everyone is doing at least two people’s jobs and simply doesn’t have time to read in the way they once did. Add to that a bewildering – and ever-growing – range of off- and online publications and the towering presence of social media and it’s no wonder that achieving “cut through” is an almost impossible task, particularly when audiences are becoming more cynical by the month.

For a while now, I’ve been wondering whether it might be possible to approach the task in a different way that might actually help companies connect with B2B decision makers. My theory is that as B2B PR practitioners we’ve spent our careers reaching people as job titles. If we’re trying to reach accountants, Accountancy Age is the type of publication we go after; if IT Directors are the target, then it’s ZDNet or ITPro.

But what if we stopped treating our target audience as job titles and started treating them as real people? What if, instead of their work lives, we looked at what media they consume as everyday people? After all, our target audiences are parents, have hobbies, go on holidays and do all the usual things consumers do. If we were able to reach our B2B audiences in their leisure time, then there is a good chance they would be less cynical and might be more open to targeted messaging.

The theory was partially put to the test in research we conducted recently which showed that during work hours, B2B decision makers were far less likely to spend time reading generalist media (newspapers and business publications). Outside of work, though, newspapers were regularly read.

This tallies exactly with my own experience which finds me reading the Sunday papers front to back (or back to front in my case) but only briefly flicking through the daily newspapers. While my theory has some grounding, in reality, there are still some challenges to overcome. Not least of these is how to drive coverage for, say, databases in Golf Monthly, or semiconductors on Daybreak. Some brands are making significant inroads and Intel’s Remastered programme is a great example of how it’s possible to take a dry subject (microprocessors) and make it interesting for media which B2B audiences consume in their leisure time.

There is one other challenge which my theory is not yet equipped to deal with and that is the thorny subject of how audiences might react to having their leisure time invaded with B2B messaging they might think more appropriate dealt with elsewhere.

So for now my theory remains just that: a theory. But what is clear is that we need to find ways to achieve cut through in an environment where there is so much white noise and our audiences are increasingly cynical of corporate messaging.