How to Tell Real Influence From Professional Peacocking in B2B Marketing

Follower counts, Campaign quotes, Cannes Lions. Season three of Untrended opens by asking whether any of it actually means anything.

You post on LinkedIn, log off and feel worse about your career. Or you don't post at all and wonder if your work is quietly going unnoticed.

This seasons host Anna Broadhead puts professional status on trial with Publicis Pro's Jamie Fewery, Lucy Gilman and new Chief Strategy Officer Martin Harrison. You'll get a sharper way to judge what counts as success in B2B marketing. You'll also hear a clear case for why awareness beats lead volume, and why the people who look most successful online often aren't.

The conversation covers the visibility economy, personal branding, meaningless metrics and the B2B industry's habit of applauding itself. It's for marketing leaders who care about brand strategy and marketing trends more than vanity numbers. If you're building a personal brand purely to chase clout, prepare to feel called out.

Key Takeaways

- Martin argues that building campaigns around leads means optimising for a rare and unusual human behaviour. His alternative mission statement for brands is simple, and harder to hit than it sounds.

- A Pangram Labs report claims 41% of LinkedIn posts are now fully AI generated. The panel explains why that has made the platform feel even more like noise.

- The collapse of X pushed a whole generation of opinionated marketers onto LinkedIn by default. That migration explains a lot about how the feed looks now.

- Craving awards and validation makes sense in an industry where your work gets rejected daily in tissue sessions. 

Chapter Markers

00:00 Season three opens with a new host

02:33 Professional peacocking: who has really made it?

04:05 What success looks like to a strategist

05:44 LinkedIn and the visibility economy

09:18 Why LinkedIn makes everyone anxious

11:43 41% of LinkedIn posts are AI generated

13:43 Personal brands: clout or contribution?

15:21 The Toyota Prius blog comment that ended Martin's posting

18:37 New segment: Reality Check with audience answers

22:15 Why MQLs are the unhelpful metric

25:46 When does being known beat being good?

28:30 Ads for the lads and internal clout

30:52 Three Cannes Lions hidden under a desk

33:24 LinkedIn dies overnight: where do we peacock next?

37:24 Wrap-up and next episode with System1

Useful Links & Resources

- Publicis Pro: https://publicispro.com/

- The Long and the Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Field (IPA): https://ipa.co.uk/

- System1, home of ad effectiveness testing: https://system1group.com/

- IPA Effectiveness Awards: https://ipa.co.uk/

- Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/

- Substack: https://substack.com/

- The Athletic: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/

Connect With the Show

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/publicisprob2b/

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/publicisprob2b/

- X: https://x.com/PublicisProB2B

- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@publicispro

- Website: https://publicispro.com/

What's the most overrated status symbol in B2B marketing right now? Follower counts, AI visibility scores, award shelves or something worse? Tell us in the comments, and watch our LinkedIn page for each week's Reality Check question. And if LinkedIn vanished tomorrow, where would you go to show off?

Subscribe to the Untrended Podcast and send your questions using the link in the episode description.

#Untrended #B2BMarketing #PersonalBranding #BrandStrategy #PublicisPro