Spending millions to say something nobody understands

B2B messaging can often sound like a jargon-filled word salad

Picture the scene: you’re standing in an airport terminal, and a huge billboard looms overhead. It’s sleek, confident and flashy. It’s the kind of placement that costs millions and took a huge amount of manpower to get live. 

And yet, for all the polish and impressive placement, the strapline confuses you. You read it again. It's still unclear, but now you're focused on the security queue. The chance to grab a potential customer's attention has slipped away.

This isn’t a general dig at the state of B2B messaging (although there’s no shortage of examples). It’s based on a real copy test I ran for one of these big campaigns. I won’t name names, but what came back was telling:

People didn’t really understand what we were trying to say.

Here’s some of the feedback we received:

"I had to do a couple of double takes to understand it."

"I had to re-read it three times to understand the message. It's an unusual sentence."

"I don't think this triggers a positive reaction in me."

"I had to read it a few times to get the tagline."

It was a strong reminder of the risks in amplifying messages that haven’t been tested. 

Campaigns like this involve huge amounts of coordination, talent, effort and money. But when deadlines loom and messaging has already gone through several approval rounds, testing can feel like a luxury.

And in many companies, messaging doesn’t even start in Marketing. It may originate from Brand, or Content, or a cross-functional positioning sprint. So by the time it lands with the team responsible for launching it, the opportunity for feedback is limited.

That’s why testing needs to happen earlier - before the message is finalised, and ideally, before it even reaches the execution stage. When marketing depends on other teams for messaging and assets, it’s crucial to establish early feedback loops together.

This need for clarity is even more urgent in today's world of AI-everything. Labelling a product or service as "AI-powered" might sound impressive, but on its own, it says very little. If anything, it raises more questions than it answers.

In a noisy market full of similar claims, clarity becomes a competitive advantage.

Of course, not every company has the luxury of a billboard in Terminal 5. The same risk is there, whether you spend millions on OOH or just a few hundred on paid social. Unclear messaging can quickly become very costly.

In Product, strong habits often develop from quick testing and rapid feedback loops. We challenge assumptions early, build prototypes fast, and validate value before scaling anything. It’s tougher to do this in Marketing. Many decisions are still based on vibes and opinions. However, the same mindset can and should still apply.

What feels obvious internally often lands very differently outside. And once your message is live, learning that it didn’t quite land is literally the most expensive kind of feedback.

The good news - it doesn’t take much to start earlier. The copy test I mentioned cost a few hundred dollars and delivered feedback from 30 targeted users in just a few hours. The bad news - it rarely happens early enough to make a difference.

I’m curious how others handle this. Are you building in message testing before launch? How are you working across teams to introduce feedback loops earlier?