Get your story straight: how B2B brands can make complex ideas clearer and more relevant
B2B marketing has never had a shortage of information. What it has always struggled with is meaning.
Most B2B brands aren’t unclear because their offering is weak, they’re unclear because they try to explain everything all at once. Features, benefits, proof points, use cases, roadmaps. All technically correct. All cognitively exhausting.
Story is what stops that happening.
At Middle Table, we’ve seen first-hand how story helps B2B brands make complex ideas easier to understand, easier to remember, and far more relevant to the people they want to reach.
Complexity isn’t the enemy. Cognitive overload is.
B2B audiences are smart. They’re capable of understanding nuance, technical detail and layered propositions. What they don’t have is unlimited attention. When content fails, it’s rarely because the idea is “too complicated”. It’s usually because the audience doesn’t know where to look or why it matters to them.
This is where story comes in.
Story doesn’t mean dumbing things down. It means creating a clear through-line. A way into the idea that gives people orientation before information.
That principle underpins how we approach every project at Middle Table, whether that’s a short social film, a branded content piece, or a longer narrative video.
Story gives your audience a starting point
In broadcast journalism, which many of our team come from, you’re trained to answer three questions before anything else:
What’s actually happening here?
Why should anyone care?
What does this change?
Those questions apply just as much to B2B brands.
We’ve worked with organisations whose first instinct was to lead with product capability or organisational scale. But when we reframed their content around a human situation (a problem, a tension, a decision point), the message landed far more effectively.
Once the audience understands the context, the complexity can follow.
You can see this approach across our work, where the focus is rarely on explaining everything and always on guiding the viewer through something that makes sense from their point of view.
Story makes relevant obvious
One of the biggest challenges B2B marketers talk to us about is relevance.
“How do we make this feel like it’s for them?!”
Story answers that question by allowing the audience to recognise themselves in what they’re seeing. Not literally, but emotionally or situationally.
In our branded content and event films, we often anchor the narrative in real environments, real people and real momentum. Not because it looks nicer, but because it helps the viewer place themselves inside the idea.
That’s why so much of our work avoids overly abstract visuals. We’re deliberately grounding stories in reality so they feel credible and relatable.
When relevance is clear, engagement follows.
Story reduces friction in the decision-making process
B2B buying journeys are rarely linear. There are multiple stakeholders, competing priorities and long timelines. Story helps by doing something subtle but powerful. It reduces friction.
A well-told story doesn’t try to close the sale. It helps the audience understand the shape of the problem and the role your brand plays in solving it.
We’ve seen this particularly clearly in work designed for social channels, where attention is limited and intent is mixed. Content that leads with narrative consistently outperforms content that leads with explanation.
Not because it’s flashier, but because it respects how people actually consume information.
This isn’t about formats, it’s about thinking
A common misconception is that story equals a brand film or a big campaign moment. In reality, story is a way of thinking that applies across formats:
Social content
Event coverage
Internal communications
Brand and employer films
Documentary style pieces
At Middle Table, we use the same narrative principles regardless of output. The execution may change, but the thinking doesn’t.
That’s why our services span everything from social content to branded films and event coverage. Story isn’t a layer we add at the end, it’s the foundation we build from.
Clarity is the real competitive advantage
In crowded B2B markets, clarity is rare, and rarity creates advantage.
Brands that can explain what they do, why it matters and who it’s for without overloading their audience are the ones that get remembered.
Story is how you get there.
Not by oversimplifying, but by structuring complexity in a way that feels intentional, interesting and relevant.
If you’re wrestling with how to make your message land more clearly, or how to turn complex ideas into content that actually connects, we’re always happy to talk.
Sometimes all it takes is the right story.