One of the more salient points made during the recent International Baking Industry Exposition came from Rick Oleshak, vice president of marketing for AB Mauri. “B2B does not mean business to boring,” Oleshak during the IBIE session, Marketing to a B2B Baking Industry with a B2C Lens.

A B2C mindset is all about awareness, he noted, and the facts are that your messaging is 20 times more likely to be remembered through storytelling. Oleshak outlined five secrets to success: speak truthfully, infuse personalities into stories, create likeable characters, have a start, middle and ending, and do give it away.

“We don’t want to be presented to,” he said. “We want to be inspired.”

Also relevant to this discussion are findings from new industry research from Marjorie Troxel Hellmer of Cypress Research, which provided a compelling presentation that included perspective from retail panelist Mitchie Curran, a cake and sugar artist with Mitchies Munchies in Las Vegas.

“Mitchie, I’m going to take us back to earlier when we talked a bit about interesting pandemic pivots. Even though the general business outlook among Retailers looks pretty positive heading into next year, you described the importance of that personal touch and human Interaction to your business model,” Hellmen said. “For retail bakeries, I think you really live and die by the unique customer experiences you provide.”

All in all, IBIE proved a fantastic forum for understanding and responding to the future of retail bakery and the strategies and tactics that are necessary to succeed and prosper in the future.