• by Colin Kirkland , November 8, 2023

To promote its business-to-business services, LinkedIn launched a new marketing campaign that zeroes in on the convoluted nature of a B2B marketer’s profession by showcasing their parents’ understandable confusion. 

The business and employment-focused social-media platform’s campaign, titled “No One Knows What You Do,” launched on Wednesday via two spots titled “Cloud Sales” and “Acronym Daughter." The spots humorously depict parents who are totally clueless about their children’s B2B jobs because of misunderstandings about “cloud” (not “clown”) tech and a baffling mix of industry-specific terminology.

“My daughter says she works in B2B where she sells SEO and MRM to CPGs,” the father in “Acronym Daughter” confesses. “I don’t know how this happened. She was speaking in complete sentences before she was 2, and now she just mumbles all these alphabets.”

Each commercial reinforces the idea that with its global professional community of one billion members, LinkedIn is “the place to B2B.”

“Through the “No One Knows What You Do” campaign, we hope not only to inspire our audience of B2B marketers, but also to practice what we preach with a creative approach that speaks directly and distinctly to this audience,” the company said.

By rooting LinkedIn’s message in humor, it’s no surprise that both ad spots were produced by comedian, actor and businessman Ryan Reynolds’ agency, Maximum Effort.

“For decades, my parents could not describe what I did beyond the single word ‘advertising,’” said George Dewey, president at Maximum Effort. “As someone with job duties that parents couldn’t exactly nail, I have special empathy for B2B workers. We love this campaign because of its insight and its humanity.”

The campaign will run in the U.S., the U.K., and 16 additional markets across LinkedIn’s owned channels and paid media, connected TV and social platforms including Reddit.