B2B Videos That REALLY Work: Turn Complex Stories Into Revenue with Stewart Cohen

LINDA: Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast. Today we're going to give you 15 to 20 minutes of dynamic insights and practical strategies so you can make 180-degree shift in your branding and growth plans. Hi, I'm Linda Fanaras, and I am the CEO of Millennium Agency and your host today of the B2B Brand 180 Podcast. My guest today is Stewart Cohen.

He is the founder of a boutique production company and they specialize in high impact video storytelling for B2B brands, which we'll talk about. Stewart is on a mission to educate others on the important role that images and video plays in marketing, brand identity, and client retention. He works with organizations that need to communicate complex, technical or nuanced ideas and actually turn them into clear and compelling visual stories that support sales, marketing, and long-term brand growth.

Stewart, thanks so much for being here today. I am really looking forward to our conversation. STEWART: Well, thank you for having me, Linda. I appreciate it.

LINDA: Absolutely. So I'll, I just want to give the audience three takeaways that they'll get from today's conversation. Number one, you know, the real business goals B2B companies are trying to achieve when they invest in video and how those goals should really shape those creative decisions. And then how to tell engaging stories when the subject might be technical, it's specialized, or maybe it's just not that exciting or it's boring to say, in other words.

And lastly, what it takes to run smooth aligned video projects when multiple stakeholders and in-house teams are involved, and it gets a little complex, so we know that. So I don't know if you'd like to add anything more about your background, Stewart, before we get started here. STEWART: What makes me, I think, a good person to discuss this stuff is I've been doing it a long time. I've used different technologies throughout the years, and I've seen how audiences react to different types of media and different formats, and obviously in today's world, in 2026, you know, the way we're dishing up media is so different, even compared to, say, five years ago, and I think that's something that we could add a lot of insight to for the people listening.

LINDA: Yeah. No, that's great. I think we'll cover a lot, especially we had talked about the storytelling piece, and I really think that sometimes that's being missed in a lot of video production work. So my first question to you is, from your perspective, learn about what are the most sort of common goals B2B clients have when they actually invest in video marketing?

And then how do those goals actually influence the creative approach, whether you're doing it or they're coming up with it. STEWART: Depending on who it's coming from, I would suspect, you know, from your CFO at a company they're looking for ROI, they want a return on whatever they're going to spend. I mean, there's always sticker shock, you know, immediately from the accounting team about how much some of this stuff costs to do. And I would say from above the creative where we normally work within the creative space, but when you get above that in a corporation, they're probably looking for returns, which is definitely normal.

That's what you'd want if you're going to make an investment in your company. So I think when you get from that is then they have to figure out what are we going to show then? What's this video going to be about? What are we, what story are we telling?

Who are we telling it to? And a lot of companies go through the exercise, you know, of who their target audience is, who their target market is. You know, is it to the customer or the non-customer? And I think most companies know that at a high level, and I think it's really important to share that knowledge with whether you're working with an ad agency or your in-house marketing team, or actually coming directly to the production company.

LINDA: Right. STEWART: You know, the more insights that we have at least going into something, the better. So at least we know, okay, you know, you're talking to, you know, whatever doctors that do plastic surgery, you know. At least, you know, okay, well if anything else is useless, I think that's number one.

Again, depending on who comes, you know, it could be the CEO's initial idea and he shares it with, you know, the internal marketing team that shares it with the ad agency that shares it with the production. It doesn't matter, but at least come up with the story, the message that you're trying to get across, and then it becomes, then the creative team gets involved and tries to come up with different ways to, to dish up this. And that's where it gets into starting to be into our space.

So here's the story, this is what we're trying to tell, how do we approach it? You know, are we telling a story? And storytelling is very sticky, so people remember stories. But how are we delivering that story?

Is it going to be just with showing a spreadsheet on the side, which is pretty dry to most people, except if you're an accountant, or are you using emotion, are you using humor? So I think all of that is really important to how you tell the story. And I'm really glossing over this just in, in terms of our conversation. But then also, how's it going to be delivered?

Are you doing a 30-second commercial? Are you doing, you know, Instagram reels? Are you doing, you know, YouTube shorts? There's so many different ways and that's, I think the thing I was touching on earlier about the difference between, say, five years ago and today, there's so many different ways to deliver the messaging.

And I think from where we sit also, we need to know that upfront because we shoot in different formats for different platforms. LINDA: Right. STEWART: I think you need to be aware of, yes, we need this vertical too. We're going to need this square.

So now you know when we get briefs now, it used to be say we're shooting a 30-second commercial, but now it's going to be a 30-second commercial, then it's going to be a 15, then it's going to be a 6, and then it's going to be vertical also for TikTok and for shorts. And then we need it square for Instagram for posts. So I think having all that information upfront is super key. That's just the technical part, but truly, I think for the crux of our conversation, the creative is going to be the most important.

And I think that's what's the longest lasting is what's the story you're telling and how are you telling it? LINDA: Right. And to your point, I think you can do it either way. Like you may get a request from a CEO who wants to get a specific message out.

So how do you back into that? So who are you talking to? What's the messaging? Does it need to be creative?

Does it need to be more direct? So there are a lot of different strategies. It sounds to me like when you are tackling that and how are you analyzing it to make sure that you're pulling in the right plan to get it executed in the right way, or it could be a creative marketing in-house team that's like, oh, we want to do this super creative out of the box ad, and this is what we're thinking. And maybe you would come in and help flush some of that out.

So when you're talking about highly technical or specialized markets, how do you actually approach storytelling so the content is actually clear, it's engaging, and it sounds human? STEWART: Well, I think part of it also is knowing the audience. Because, you know, say if you're doing like what you're talking about, a B2B, very highly technical piece, the people watching it, you're not trying to go for, you know, the scattershot approach. You know exactly who your target is, and you know that if you dumb it down too much, you're not going to be able to keep their attention because they're, you know, you're, you respect their intelligence, for lack of a better word, in that space.

So even if you only have 15 potential customers in the world that are very highly technical, I think you need to speak to your audience on their level. And I think the challenge of course becomes, say if an engineer is talking to their marketing department in a company, and then they come to us, so marketing department talking to us, and then we're trying to tell this story to this highly technical customer, you need some good pre-production, and we need to know going into it, Hey guys, just so you know, this is a super technical, these guys get it.

So you could make jokes like we've had projects that we're making jokes on technical data that go so far over my head. And then, you know, the people that know what we're talking about, it's like, oh, that's funny, you know? LINDA: Yeah. STEWART: But so I think part of that is, is really communication and, and I think circling back to this whole thing is, is pre-production is really super important.

You know, there's a lot of money that happens on the shoot days, a lot of money spent, and I think you could never be too prepared and everyone really needs to be aligned and on the same page. And our job is to make sure that all those elements show up, you know, on the shoot, on the set, and that they get executed within the timeframe allotted. Because that's where you're doing the burn. LINDA: That makes sense.

Do you have an example of maybe one B2B video that you did that statistically or analytically move the needle? STEWART: The biggest challenge from where I sit is that a lot of times, we don't ever get the results, you know? You're the agency owner, you would get the results. Sometimes when we have clients that, yeah, and we, the one thing about us is we do keep our clients, you know, for years, but, and I always ask and it's like, oh yeah, it was good.

That's what I get. You know, there's sometimes that you hear, oh, this really moved the needle, or, you know, it was just a thud. LINDA: With video, because it's video and audio and you've got people involved, there are also psychological triggers or emotions that really matter, especially with the B2B video campaign strategy side. So do you intentionally try to incorporate some of that into the, into your work, and how would that occur?

STEWART: I don't think any of it's done like really, you know, we want to pull on their heartstrings or, uh, that's a common one. But if you think about just human emotion, whether it's about human connection or, you know, winning, losing, striving, you know, you use some of those adjectives to find the direction you're going to go with the message. And I think it affects everybody a different way. But that's why if you think about old Hallmark commercials, why they were so successful.

Because they tug on your heartstrings, you know? Or you think of, we've done like say Gatorade commercials and it's all about striving to win. Right? You know, being better or, you know, we've done American Airlines commercials where it's like getting there in comfort.

Everybody wants to travel comfortably these days. Well always. And I think it, you just need to, to somebody that doesn't travel or that travels once a year with their family, you know? An American Airlines commercial, talking about business class and ultra-high luxe service doesn't mean much to them, but to somebody that's traveling for business internationally throughout the year, it's really going to appeal to them.

So, again, it's about speaking to your audience, and most things these days are directed to somewhat of a niche. It's pretty hard to have a product that you're, you know, you're trying to get everyone in the world to love it. As you know, it's hard to please everybody. LINDA: Yep.

It can be challenging. STEWART: Yeah. LINDA: So when you work with like in-house teams and you're, you are working on more complex B2B projects, like how do you make sure that there's alignment, efficiency, collaboration from start to finish? STEWART: Sometimes it's easier.

And I say this because sometimes when it goes through, you know, the corporate end, then it goes to the ad agency and multiple teams at the ad agency, then it comes to us. Sometimes everyone's, you know, everyone's not exactly on the same page. I'll just say this, and the one thing that we've tried to do and I've tried to do my whole career is to listen and you know, because you meet everybody and you're on the pre-production calls and you're on prep calls and you understand this person really wants to make it really funny, you know?

But this person really wants to get this messaging across. And it's kind of up to us to really try to please everybody because you know, you want it to be engaging, you want it to be memorable, but you also want it to move the needle because if it doesn't move the needle for the client, in the end, it's- LINDA: No point. STEWART: Useless, right? And I think the projects you do that do move the needle are the ones where people are happy and they come back and they, they sense that we have an understanding, you know, and we've done very highly, you know, technical corporate pieces as well, and a lot of those are storytelling, I think.

Because people in the corporate, like in say in the industrial world, I mean, they understand processes are processes, and I think if you could tell a good story about a process, whether it's pulling oil out of the ground or a food processing plant, I mean, it's still a process to get, you know, raw materials to final product. The challenge there, I think, is to try to make universal stories that everyone can, you know- LINDA: Relate to? STEWART: and understand. Yeah.

LINDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's, that makes sense. I mean, storytelling definitely is stickier than just a matter of factly video or something that's a little bit more just straight on technical. So...

STEWART: The challenge between, say, watching a good TV show that's entertaining and what we do, which is supposedly entertaining as well is, but we're trying to wrap a product around it. Right. So it's got to be entertaining. But you need to remember that they were drinking a can of Coca-Cola.

You know? LINDA: Yeah. Exactly. STEWART: Or something like that.

Yeah. So that's the difference. And that, that is a challenge. And even when I speak to friends in, you know, purely the entertainment world, they're like, yeah, no, it's, advertising is hard.

Yeah. And we have to tell the story in a really short amount of time. LINDA: You do. Yeah.

You have to be super clear and concise. So do you have anything else you'd like to share? STEWART: One, I think you should advertise and you should use live action. You should use a combination of live action and stills.

You should make sure when you do your productions, you aggregate a lot of content that can be used in a variety of mediums for at least a year. STEWART: I do think updating your content regularly is important. I know a lot of people really try to stretch it out because of, you know, just averaging out the cost, which I understand. Yeah.

But sometimes when things change, trends change, you know, keep it up to date. It's probably the best money you'll ever spend. LINDA: Yep. No, that's great.

Alright, so we'll get started on the rapid-fire questions. Love you to answer it in maybe two or three, four sentences and we'll get started. STEWART: Got it. Alright.

LINDA: Awesome. So what's the most underrated element of a successful B2B video? STEWART: Somehow getting your core values out on the screen. LINDA: Yeah.

Okay, awesome. What's one mistake you see B2B brands make repeatedly in their videos that maybe, you know, you're not in charge of? STEWART: I think trying to follow really short-lived trends. LINDA: And what's your favorite tool or software for video production right now?

STEWART: I mean, any Adobe products, you know, for editing. LINDA: Yeah. That, I was going to say that's probably your go-to. STEWART: Yeah.

LINDA: And what's the best time of day to publish a B2B video for engagement? STEWART: Everyone has different times. I've heard like, you know, late morning is a good time. Not Mondays.

That's what I've heard. Yeah. LINDA: What's one word that sums up your approach to B2B video storytelling? STEWART: Engaging (and fun).

LINDA: Yeah. Great. No, that's helpful. Thank you, Stewart.

Thanks again for being here today. I appreciate all your sharing. You gave some really good practical, I think, thoughtful perspectives on how B2B brands can use video more strategically and definitely more effectively. So that's, that's great.

I think you gave some great tips. So I would love for you to share how our audience can get in touch with you and what the best way is, so I’ll let you... STEWART: Absolutely. Well, I'm easy to find.

My website, it’s just scpictures.com . Email stewart@stewartcohen.com .

I'm on LinkedIn , I'm on Instagram, SC Pictures . Yeah, we're pretty easy to find. LINDA: Awesome. Awesome.

Great, and to our audience today, if you enjoyed this episode, please like, share, comment, or subscribe, and let's keep elevating B2B branding together. If you are ready for your own brand 180, visit us at mill.agency or lindafanaras.com and we'll see you at the next episode.