Bader Rutter CEO David Jordan on the key to banishing ‘safe’ work in B2B marketing

The vastly experienced agency leader, who was named chief executive of Bader Rutter in July, is witnessing firsthand an industry on a transformational journey. Technology, not least AI, is accelerating this change.

But this, he argues, is when strong agency-client relationships will become more important – not less. Trusted partners, he says, are the key to banishing ‘safe’ work and ensuring clients realize their creative potential.

Here’s what he told The Drum ahead of our biggest-ever B2B event taking place across Chicago and London tomorrow.

David, you’ll be setting the scene for us in Chicago. Can you give us a little taste of what to expect and the big themes you expect to emerge at World Fest this year?

It’s really about raising the bar in the industry. We’ve assembled all sorts of top experts from across the industry and we’ll lead interactive sessions that should really engage the audience with fresh, new thinking and insights. I see it as basically a live-action experience with B2B marketing influencers.

You recently became CEO of Bader Rutter. Can you tell us about your ambitions for the agency and how you think the B2B agency landscape will evolve in the coming years?

I believe the entire industry, and certainly our agency, are on a transformational journey. As the industry evolves to integrate new customer trends and expanding communication platforms, our agency is focusing on growing and expanding our lines of business. When I took this job, I shared three simple priorities with the agency, each aimed at strengthening our client relationships, our teams and our business: deepening client relationships, dominating B2B and growing exceptional talent. No matter how the B2B agency landscape changes, the value of meaningful client relationships served by smart people will endure. And safeguard our future.

The relationship between marketers and their agencies is one of the themes we’ll be tackling on the day. What, in your experience, are the key ingredients that make for a winning – and lasting – agency-client partnership?

Trust. It’s as simple as that. For years, we’ve talked about our belief in knowing the business, honoring the audience(s) and keeping our promises. When we deliver on those, we build trust by demonstrating that we are dedicated to championing our clients. Pretty basic but it’s helped us maintain multi-decade relationships with multiple clients.

Trust between clients and their partners is always crucial in marketing, but perhaps particularly so in B2B where organizations may need to take a leap into the unknown creatively and strategically. What are the key tenets of building trust and confidence?

Again, when we make it our business to know our clients’ businesses, we frame every challenge correctly. When we honor the audience(s), we correctly prioritize our messaging. That’s why we employ subject matter experts like farmers and chefs; they help us better identify with our various customer channels. Finally, by getting up early and staying up late to keep our promises, trust blossoms and grows. Which encourages bolder creative and strategic thinking. It’s a virtuous cycle.

We know that B2B marketers often face the unenviable challenge of making the case for marketing in the boardroom. What role can agencies play in helping them make the most persuasive argument and secure buy-in for more ambitious campaigns?

This challenge can actually help deepen our client relationships. By truly knowing the client’s business, we ensure their marketing investments align with financial goals that matter to the boardroom. We make it our job to speak the language of value creation and demonstrate how our work drives revenue results, enhances business performance, and manages risk. Concise data points here equip marketing leaders with the results-based arguments they need to build persuasive cases for ambitious marketing. When we showcase marketing’s role in acquiring and retaining high-value customers, amplifying brand equity, and ultimately delivering predictable cash flows for the company’s long-term valuation, we secure buy in. And help ourselves by helping our client partners.

B2B creativity has become increasingly celebrated in recent years. How much obligation is there on the shoulders of agencies to push clients out of their comfort zone and push creative boundaries in B2B?

I’m not entirely sure I believe that. It should be more celebrated but as I’ll discuss when I kick off World Fest, we still need to get beyond some dated notions of what constitutes “safe” work. Today, “safe” isn’t. When we worry more about serving internal cultures than honoring our audiences, we limit ourselves and deprive the market of more daring and breakthrough ideas. But happily, building trust with your partners is the first step to pushing the work and B2B’s creative boundaries.

We’ll scrutinize the transformational role of technology, not least AI, at WorldFest. How is AI impacting your work and teams at Bader Rutter, and how will it influence business between now and next year’s WorldFest?

In one way or another, we’re using AI every day, primarily to enhance speed and efficiency. Generative AI tools shift our focus away from long hours of research and toward exploring and working with actual ideas. It accelerates the creative process by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, which aligns with our idea-first culture.

Creatively, our writers use AI to spark the ideation process, our art directors use it to generate storyboard and layout imagery, our planners use it for faster competitive research and new business insights and our salespeople use it to gather background on client prospects and marketplace intelligence. Functionally, our channel teams use AI to explore keywords and other content applications. Of course, for all the industry noise about it, AI would have made a far more immediate impact on all our lives had we bought Nvidia stock three years ago.

You are going to be participating in our expert marketing clinic – a kind of candid and unscripted ‘ask me anything’ session with our audience. In your role as an agency leader, what are the biggest questions you find yourself wrestling with today?

There’s really only one: what do we need to know to help our clients thrive as the world and the marketing landscape continues to iterate in infinite new ways? That’s a big hairy one.