An Interview with the B2B MARKETING LEADERS COMMUNITY June 17th, 2026.
The community for B2B marketing leaders across the US and Western Europe to connect with peers, exchange ideas, and share real-world marketing insights.
Olga Bondareva:
Today we are talking about branding and positioning in B2B: how companies explain who they are to the market, for example, communicate their value, and what's hard right now, and actually how AI is changing the process and the landscape. Please introduce yourself, your role, and how brand positioning fits into your current marketing strategy.
Sanders Anderson:
In my current role as brand and creative lead, brand positioning fits into that because we're continuously finding ways to enhance recall, increase brand awareness, and create a stickier, more memorable brand. Day to day, we look at where we are weak, where we are strong, and how we can bridge the gap to create more memorable touchpoints across multiple marketing channels.
Olga Bondareva:
Could you please share an example or a case study of how brand positioning helped your company stand out in the market, maybe from some previous experience or a current company?
Sanders Anderson:
Earlier in my career, I worked for Gregory Mountain Products, and I single-handedly rebranded the entire company with a small marketing staff. And so we're talking soup to nuts, complete rebrand: the logo, assets, marketing materials, everything you can imagine that would touch people in the space, I had a hand in. But that's not the most incredible part of this story.
The more important part is we dove into the research, and we found out that at the retailer, people who were trying to buy our backpacks- maybe they're going for a weekend, maybe they were trying to go to Mount Everest. Whatever the case may be, they would only get home, unpack the product, and then read the owner's manual and find out, Oh my God, I'm not going to Mount Whitney.
So we realized that we had to fix that. That was a problem, and that was also an opportunity. So here's what we did. We combined the owner's manual and the point-of-purchase hand tag into one integrated piece so that when you walked into an REI store and you were looking at a backpack, you would see the point-of-purchase materials. But you could also flip through, see key information about whether this pack was the thing that you needed for a 2-day trip or a four-day backpack, or, if the case may be, a climb to Mount Whitney.
So that was the key thing. It seems like such a small thing, but it monumentally changed the way people interacted with our product at the point of purchase in retail stores. We were up against bigger competitors like The North Face and Kelty. And we were able to double our revenue within the space of about 18 months from 30M to 60M. So that's a branding hero story I’m proud to share with others.
Olga Bondareva:
And doing it single-handedly, it's also very impressive. Thank you for sharing.
Sanders Anderson:
I also want to talk about some mistakes that didn't work because they're actually my favorite. And I think that's true for people in general: we learn more from mistakes than we do from success stories.
Olga Bondareva:
So could you please also share a story where maybe a brand positioning or some branding initiative didn't go as planned and what you learned from it?
Sanders Anderson:
I worked in the outdoor industry for about 5 years, and during that time we came up with a national advertising campaign where the crux of the story was your boyfriend or husband is spending too much time in the outdoors and the girlfriend is upset about it. The story was that she decides to get a chainsaw and slice your weekend warrior gear in half. And all the sales reps loved it. They said this is amazing. This is gonna cut through the noise. So we hired a model. We do the photo shoots. We thought we hit the mark.
We soon found out that we did not. Many of the females in the outdoor industry were heated. They said, Oh my God, this is way off target claiming the angry woman with the chainsaw in the ad came off as borderline sexist. It was the worst response you could imagine.
But a mistake is only a mistake if you don't learn from it. What I learned from that is that you can't be blind when you do your research. Everybody in our feedback loop was a man. And when I, when I actually thought about it, it was like the aha moment: wait a second. You have to make sure you have men, you have women, you have different cultures, different ages, right?
So that was a learning moment, and the aha moment where I said, I will never do that again. I will never have a research panel that's so narrowly focused that it doesn't have that wider integrated audience that would make the difference.
Olga Bondareva:
I love that, Sanders, because I feel the same way as you, like I don't really believe in failure so much. Like, failure is only a failure if you, to your point, if you don't learn from it, if you don't pivot, like if you give up, then like, sure, it's a failure.
Sanders Anderson:
And to follow up on the ad campaign that we created after that, it was brilliant and simple. And the line was ‘A million miles from Monday,' meaning that you're out there, you're escaping, and you're enjoying your time in the outdoors so much that Monday's the last thing you need to think about.
Olga Bondareva:
And I think in every industry, because we have all different cultural and gender differences, so many, many different criteria, yeah, we need to consider those things in messaging and branding. Many marketers, for example, in our community, B2B marketing leaders, are discussing that businesses reallocate some, for example, brand-related investments, some budgets to performance, of course, because they want more leads, more sales, and so on. What do you think about that in today's market?
Sanders Anderson:
Well, we're in an interesting time, right? So now you can basically measure everything. But just because a video gets 1000 hits or a million hits doesn't necessarily mean it was a great video. It just means that particular content resonated. Maybe that particular video didn't even have a message that was going to move your product or increase brand awareness. Maybe it was something silly. You know, ideally you want both, right? You want a million hits, and you want the messaging that's going to move the needle.
Brand strategy and brand positioning are the gas in the tank. You cannot drive a car without it. You're not going to get very far. So they have to work in tandem. And I believe we're in a space and a day and time where the 2 are going to live side by side. I don't think we'll be going back from this. However, there has to be an emphasis on strategy first because you run the risk of basically wasting your money.
Olga Bondareva:
Yeah, 100%. And do you have any tips for marketers who are struggling with justifying investment in brand and brand positioning to the leadership? So how can they communicate it, for example, to the leadership to get these investments?
Sanders Anderson:
Yes, what I would say is you have to be able to show results, right. Stakeholders want to see the revenue build; they want to see an increase in brand awareness. So you need to show them some proof points. Hey, this is a recent campaign that we did. We spent X amount of dollars. This is the number of leads that we got from it. So there's a gap there, and you need to be able to show the proof points and also prove why investing in brand positioning is going to add value not just today, but in the immediate future as well.
Olga Bondareva:
So you would start maybe with some experiments showing the increased conversion?
Sanders Anderson:
Not so much experiments; I would show them like actual real things that you did, tangible actions that you took as a team or an individual, and say these were the results from this action. We would love to do more of this. And we believe investing in this is going to pay off. It's going to pay dividends. And here's the proof. First, show the results and then ask to scale the initiative.
Olga Bondareva:
It's a great, great thought. In B2B, there is a stereotype that it's more about rational communication and less about emotions. What do you think about that?
Sanders Anderson:
I think it's a great question, and it's something we need to consider more. Typically, when we market a product, we speak to the features, the benefits, and the results, but we don't always go to that next level.
That next level is going to be aspirations, right, for the end user. And it's not always evidently clear what those are. So let's say I have a product and it's solving this person's problem, whatever that problem or challenge may be. But there's another side of the story. Maybe they just want a better way to work or get home sooner. Or maybe they want to spend more time with their family. Maybe they want to attend their daughter's Little League game. Maybe they don't want to have to work on Saturdays.
You know, I can give you a personal example that will resonate a little bit stronger. So, for instance, I'm pretty much a Subaru loyalist. I love Subarus. I'm driving my third Subaru right now. They were the first to innovate with all-wheel drive. Subarus have amazing performance, but I don't buy the car for performance. I buy the car because it gives me Peace of Mind. I know that if we were to get hit by an F150 truck, there’s a good chance we would be OK.
So I think there's some opportunity there to speak not only to, as I mentioned, the product, you know, the brand, the features, the results that that product can give someone, but also reach a little bit higher. Touch the aspirations, because if you touch the aspirations, you're going to touch the emotions. And what do we know? People buy with their heart before they process the benefits in their mind.
Olga Bondareva:
I also want to ask about the place of AI in B2B brand positioning, because of course now everyone is talking about that. So what do you think about that? How do you use AI in your current work related to brand positioning? What kind of tools and platforms are you using? How is AI helping you?
Sanders Anderson:
Well, we're in a unique situation where I feel that our competitors have a lot more marketing dollars and investment going towards brand positioning and advertising and all those things. So for us, essentially, AI is a force multiplier. So the way that our teams use it is like having 10 interns, right? I don't just take what AI spits out. I've seen situations where people will like just do prompts for an article or paper and say it's already done.
That’s not the way I work with AI; I spar with it. Show me the proof and the credible references; make it better! Write the same thing from three different vantage points, right? So if you're building a story, for instance, you can include those links, and now you have proof points; this is not slop, hallucinations, or something made up.
In addition to that, we've started to use Agentic AI, which is kind of the next level to build, let's say, a full-scale test pilot, like let's say a landing page or a sales enablement tool. I recently built a full-scale test industry ROI calculator. So someone could put in certain numbers and parameters and see how much revenue they would gain if they spent this much on a particular asset, how much that would increase efficiency, and reduce overall cost.
So I think it's amazing for those sorts of things. I do have to be honest. I'm a little bit worried that if we rely on it too much, we will atrophy that part of our brain that makes us smart and capable marketers and creatives. MIT recently came out with a story talking about the three different classes of AI adopters, and they basically said you don't want to be a total adopter. You want to use it for targeted efficiency. You want to be like a Centaur, not a Cyborg, where you're half in, half out. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/3-ways-to-use-ai-are-you-a-cyborg-a-centaur-or-a-selfautomator
You're using it in a way where it helps you, but you don't necessarily rely on it. It's more like an assistant. You know, the research capacity- you know, you have a team of virtual people that you didn't have before. Now you have these powerful research assistants that can help you get things done. It's also really good when you already have an idea of what you want to do.
An example would be: we have these pillars, we have this strategy, we have this road that we want to build. I think it's less effective when you don't know what you want to do.
It’s also possible it may push us into higher-level strategy work since lower-level tactical things will be handled by AI sufficiently. And I think there will always be a place for powerful creative thinkers who can look at all this stuff and edit it down to the essence, right? And that essence is going to be the story, the narrative, how that story connects to the product, to the consumer, and how to tell an integrated story that's going to have impact and create resonance with the target buyers.
Olga Bondareva:
Yes, that's a great point. Yeah, our roles will change, and they will become more strategic. I think that operations can be partially automated, but of course with the human loop. You've shared real stories and examples from your branding and business experience, past and present. This is the most valuable thing we can get because real-world examples, real stories, give us practical things and insights we can apply to everyday challenges. So thank you so much for sharing your insights and for spending your time with us today.
Sanders Anderson:
You’re welcome, Olga. It was my pleasure.