This article by, Financial Marketing Insights' podcast co-host and Founder of Two Jacks Communications, Kaila Yates, was first posted on LinkedIn here.

Why risk‑averse cultures quietly strip out what buyers actually respond to.

Most enterprise leaders believe that business buyers are rational. The unintended consequence is that much of enterprise marketing loses distinction — and therefore becomes forgettable.

I see this pattern a lot in my work. Not because leaders don’t care about brand or growth, but because in complex organisations, risk culture quietly shapes what marketing is allowed to say, how far it can go, and how different it is permitted to be.

In enterprise environments, the word emotion is often treated with suspicion — almost taboo. It is associated with manipulation or gimmicks rather than with sound professional judgement. That caution is understandable. Used badly, emotion does damage brands: fear, FOMO and shortcuts are easy to spot, and most experienced buyers see through them quickly. But emotion used well is something very different. In enterprise buying, it is not about excitement or persuasion. It is about risk, safety, trust and defensibility.

The emotional weight of enterprise decisions

Enterprise buying looks rational on the surface. In reality, it is one of the highest‑pressure forms of decision making in business.

When a CIO, CFO or General Counsel signs a multi‑year, multi‑million‑pound contract, they are not only choosing a supplier. They are choosing a relationship they expect to shape the performance of their business — and often the stability of their own role — for years to come. In doing so, they are protecting their career, their reputation and their identity as a credible professional.

Those are not abstract concerns. They are very human judgements about risk, safety, trust and defensibility in a business context. This is not controversial. For decades, behavioural science has shown that complex decisions are rarely made on logic alone. Emotion and reason work together, and emotion becomes more influential when decisions are uncertain, high‑stakes and visible to others. Enterprise buying is one of the clearest examples of this.

And yet many organisations continue to suppress emotion in their marketing — not because it is ineffective, but because leaders fear it will be misused and misinterpreted. In doing so, they underestimate how business buyers actually decide and quietly weaken their own ability to grow.

Why leaders resist emotion

The resistance to emotion in enterprise marketing is rarely philosophical. It is practical. Leaders — including CMOs — are accountable for reputational risk. They operate in cultures shaped by compliance, audit and procurement, and they are trained to avoid anything that might appear unserious, manipulative or uncontrolled. In that context, rationality becomes a form of safety.

The difficulty is that suppressing emotion does not remove it from the decision. It merely removes it from the organisation’s ability to influence it. When marketing becomes purely informational, something predictable happens: messages converge, differentiation weakens, brand memory fades and demand becomes more fragile — not because buyers are irrational, but because they are human.

How organisations quietly neutralise differentiation

There is another reality here that CMOs rarely talk about openly, but almost all recognise. In enterprise organisations, creative work is rarely judged by the market first. It is judged by the organisation.

Campaigns are socialised internally across functions, regions and senior stakeholders. Each review adds perspective and each perspective adds constraint. Over time, ideas are adjusted not to work better in market, but to feel safer inside the business. Emotion is usually the first casualty. Anything that challenges, provokes or risks being misunderstood is softened, language is aligned and edges are removed. What began as a distinctive idea becomes a carefully negotiated compromise.

At that point, something important has happened. The organisation has replaced its buyers with itself as the primary audience. Internal stakeholders — intelligent, experienced and deeply familiar with the brand — are shown work designed for people who are none of those things. Familiarity replaces freshness and safety replaces impact.

What is rarely done is the simplest and most valuable test: taking the work back to the audience it is meant to reach. Even when tools exist to test ideas quickly, organisations rely on internal judgement instead — not because they believe it is better, but because it feels safer.

What sophisticated leaders do differently

The most effective enterprise leaders I have worked with do not ask whether emotion belongs in B2B. They ask a different question: which emotions are we addressing, and are we addressing them responsibly?

They understand that trust reduces perceived risk, familiarity increases confidence, credibility creates permission and consistency builds memory. They do not use emotion to manipulate; they use it to reduce uncertainty. They invest in ideas that make buyers feel safer, not more excited — more confident, not more pressured, and more supported, not more sold to. In doing so, they treat emotion not as a creative tactic, but as a leadership responsibility.

A final thought

This is not an argument for more emotional marketing. It is an argument for more precise leadership judgement about risk, trust and how enterprise buyers actually decide.

Enterprise growth is rarely constrained by effort. It is constrained by how well organisations understand the emotional weight of the decisions their buyers are being asked to make — and whether they design their strategies, leadership culture and communications accordingly.

When emotion is misunderstood, it is avoided. When it is understood, it becomes one of the most practical tools leaders have to reduce risk, build trust and create durable, memorable growth.

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About the Author: Kaila Yates is a global Chief Marketing Officer and board advisor with more than 25 years’ experience building brands and growth engines in complex B2B and technology markets. She works with CEOs, CMOs and boards on enterprise growth, governance and marketing effectiveness.