There’s an awful cringe moment to endure on B2B marketing Linkedin most days. It happens when some B2B visionary will tell us he (normally a ‘he’) thinks we all ought to “sound more human.”
If it’s a really shitty day, he’ll add that ‘we are, after all, marketing to other humans’, “Right?”
If a ‘B2B is actually H2H’ (™2009) post has been copied and pasted directly from ChatGPT, it’ll sound all: “Here’s the quiet but uncomfortable truth: the strongest brands aren’t the ones that arrive with the biggest fanfare. They’re the ones that manage brand deliberately. Consistently. Relentlessly.”
And while it makes you wince, you know you have to be the bigger person and forgive. Because behind it, is good intent. The bigger problem is that while B2B marketers are ace at saying it, most seem incapable of just doing it.
“In today’s competitive B2B landscape, value-driven lead generation is not about aggressive selling but about offering meaningful insights, solutions, and resources that help buyers make better decisions with valuable industry expertise, and personalized experiences, you can position yourself as ‘a trusted advisor’ rather than just a vendor.”
“Solutions. Insights. Outcomes.”
(Real LinkedIn post from an Enterprise business in February 2026).
Blah. Blah. And blah.
Emails are shit. Landing pages are shit. Whitepapers are shit.
Linkedin posts? Unspeakably shit.
So what’s new?
Well, a long time ago I started experimenting with writing marketing copy in my own tone of voice - regardless of the ‘style’ or ‘tone of voice’ guide to which I was supposedly faithfully working.
You know what? The stuff I produced got read, commented on, shared and downloaded to the tune of about 10X.
And that all happened pretty much immediately. My sales colleagues felt the impact. Nobody quibbles about style internally if the numbers start racking up.
Doug Kessler, founder of crack B2B creative agency Velocity Partners once told me tone of voice is ‘the only multi-million dollar weapon B2B marketers wield’.
If that’s true (and it probably is), would you entrust something so valuable to the person in your business who once wrote a corporate style-guide, now hidden deep on the company drive and which nobody chooses to read?
Instead, I began studying and stealing from the authors, columnists, bloggers and screenwriters that made me laugh out loud, inspired me or simply shot jolts of wake-up energy through me whenever I read or heard their words.
I learned from the best; I injected my marketing emails with what I hoped was as close to the rhythmic sing-song of Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue as I could manage.
I looked to Caitlin Moran and Ian Dunt for permission to be 100% authentic, ‘unprofessional’ and real.
For grown-up storytelling, Malcolm Gladwell and Carole Cadwalladr.
For the sharpest ‘can I get away-with-it?’ humour, Marina Hyde, Armando Ianucci and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
For joined-up ‘systems thinking’, David Simon, Jonathan Freedland, Anne Applebaum and Ken Robinson.
You get the picture.
I nicked ideas and inspiration for content as well as looking at the way they all wrote or spoke. Still do.
Which brings me in a roundabout way to why I’m writing this column. There’s some incredible writing happening in TV right now - some of it British and European but predominantly in the US.
Bill Lawrence. One Brit who has excelled now for several years is actor and comedian Brett Goldstein. Embedded in LA writers’ rooms with American producer, director and screenwriter Bill Lawrence and other top brains, they’re responsible for Apple TV shows Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
If you care about writing that actually sounds like how people speak in 2026; the speed of it, the rhythm, the compound blend of sarcasm and sincerity, those two shows should be your syllabus.
Go read the scripts. Not the clips on TikTok or YouTube; the actual scripts, all available online. The dialogue is as tight; the language and diction bang up to date so that you’re made to feel culturally ‘in the know’.
And while the comedy comes frequently in rich, ‘laugh-out-loud’ punches, it’s heartfelt and much kinder than that which we’re known for in the UK.
There’s such amazing depth and understanding invested in character that when Derek from Shrinking, tells racist neighbour Pam to “eat a dick” in his best ‘good morning’ voice, it's somehow far less vicious than anything Blackadder ever threw at Baldrick.
The care writers on both shows take in crafting even the most throwaway lines and exchanges laced within each episode, does more brand work for their audience’s ‘heart-love’ than the totality of copy posted on Linkedin today.
"You can be a reindeer. Not the fancy one... but one of the randos... like Fluffer," joyously grouchy Harrison Ford’s Paul tells Jimmy in Shrinking.
"Do you believe in ghosts, Ted?" AFC Richmond chairwoman Rebecca Welton asks Ted Lasso.
"I do, but more importantly I think they need to believe in themselves."
Gorgeous. So readable. If you’re a fan of either show you’ll have read those lines in Paul’s precise growl or Ted’s Kansas drawl. You’ll have smiled when you read them and if you're at work, you may have fought off the urge to reach for your phone to dive into some clips on YouTube.
Bet you never felt that same warmth while choking over the laminated language on most B2B landing pages. All that “driving digital acceleration.” and “unlocking transformative growth.”
What’s the point I’m making? You obviously can’t swear like Goldstein's Roy Kent in your business writing, or smile as you tell your more annoying clients to ‘go eat a dick’.
You can, however, note how real and current the writing is on these shows and others.
The characters interrupt. They deflect. They say something too honest and then undercut it with a joke. Like how people actually protect themselves after over-sharing in mid-conversation.
When you recognise something you’ve written in your company’s style or vocab sounds hilariously weighty or pompous, try puncturing it with levity - maybe something lightly self-aware in brackets - to show you recognise how twatty we all have to sound sometimes.
Study these writers to understand how to be authoritative and credible but also trusted and warm in the same breath.
Your audience will love you for it. They’ll feel relieved, refreshed and included and they’ll come back to you again and again. And that, after all, is exactly what we’re all being paid for.
