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Humor in international B2B marketing? Are you kidding?

Rule #5: Never use humor in international B2B contexts

In global marketing circles, there’s been some sort of unwritten (but often stated) law that it’s foolish and even dangerous to use humor when you’re dealing with oh-so-serious B2B marketing messages and more than one culturally cohesive region of the world. So, when a large B2B corporation dares to go out on a limb and use humor toward its largest key accounts, we figured it’s something everyone in a B2B global marketing or communication department should hear about.

Stand out from the crowd

The company is DuPont, famed for its broad, science-based activities. The business area in this story is the dairy industry segment within DuPont Nutrition and Health, and the daring is due to not one, but a number of managers with both a sense of humor and the courage to stand out from the crowd.

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