B2B Marketing Needs More Barf Bags
- Richard McClurg
- Apr 23
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 26
Lessons from a defunct airline on how to make B2B copy less boring
October 2017. Hurricane Ophelia is bearing down on Ireland. Yep, you read that right. The most easterly major hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin. My brother and I, unfortunately, need to reach a funeral in Northern Ireland—fast. Every legacy carrier wants a kidney and a vow of lifelong servitude. Only one airline can get us there on time: a fuchsia-pink‑painted minnow called Wow Air.
Seats harder than a stale airline pretzel? Yep. A pit stop in Iceland? You got it. But the cabin walls cracked fresher jokes than half the comedians at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—and I’m still talking about them eight years later.
How to Stand Out in B2B Marketing (The Psychology Bit)
Neuroscience 101: emotion tags memory. If a budget airline can make you smile while dodging a hurricane, your B2B brand can make a prospect feel something stronger than mild curiosity. Humans don’t toggle between “consumer” and “corporate buyer” modes—we carry the same neurology into every decision. Spark a grin, and you’ll occupy neural real estate when it counts.
A Guided Tour of Wow Air’s Wordsmithery
Wow Air didn’t just slap a logo on a plane and call it branding. They treated every square inch as a storytelling opportunity. Every surface seemed to ask: “What’s the funniest thing we could get away with printing here?”
The baggage trucks weren’t just vehicles—they were billboards. One rolled past with “Truck Yeah!” plastered on the side. Headrest covers welcomed you with, “Hi, I’m your seat.” “Honk if you’re hungry” appeared by the overhead flight attendant button. And the wall behind the last row? A declaration: “Only cool kids sit at the back!”
Even the plane itself wasn’t safe from wordplay. Painted on the left wing was the phrase: “This is the West Wing”—a pun that surely made someone snort water through their nose.
And then there was the barf bag. Or as Wow Air called it, “The Vomit-Meter.” From “Our competitors’ prices” to “Obscene clouds” and “The pilot’s jokes,” the bag featured a satirical scale of what might trigger an upset stomach. Sick? Absolutely. In the new meaning of the word.
These weren’t throwaway gags (the vomit-meter aside). They were deliberate, human touches that made the entire experience feel like it was built by people who liked people. It made you smile, made you share, and—more importantly—made you remember.
Now imagine what might happen if a B2B company took that same approach to its dashboards, packaging, or just one overlooked customer touchpoint. Because let’s be honest: if a barf bag can earn a grin, so can your onboarding email.
Three Ways to Make It Stick
1. Pick Your Punchline Territory
If you are going to insert some humour (even without a ‘u’), you don’t need to be funny everywhere—just predictably somewhere. Maybe it’s release‑note titles, maybe it’s invoice footers. Consistency beats volume.
2. Hire a Chief Vibe Officer (Temporarily)
Not a real title—put the pitchfork down. And I’m not talking about flavour-of-the-month ‘vibe marketing’ everyone on LinkedIn seems to be discussing these days. I’m talking about somebody to patrol slides, booth graphics, and user flows with a red pen that screams “DELETE BORING.” This used to be the ‘Brand Cop.’ Call it whatever you want—just make sure someone’s in charge of deleting the dull bits. If no one inside has the chops, borrow an irreverent freelancer for a quarterly scrub.
3. Build the “T‑Shirt Test” into Messaging Reviews
Would a prospect willingly wear your headline in public? Cybersecurity firm eSentire nailed it with “If they F&*k with you…” (front) / “…they F&*k with us.” (back) T-shirts. Offensive to HR? Possibly. Magnetic at a Cybersecurity conference? Absolutely. Your copy doesn’t have to swear like an Irishman staring at an empty pint, but it should pass the T‑shirt litmus: short, clear, brag‑worthy.
Wait—What About Frameworks?
Frameworks are friends, not formulas. Wow Air instinctively nailed the fundamentals of great positioning, messaging, and distinctiveness—not by ticking boxes on someone else's canvas, but by embracing the core human truths these tools champion.
Positioning: Wow Air never pretended to be Emirates. It owned “ultra‑low‑cost, ultra‑light‑hearted transatlantic hop.” Nail your who/why before you riff. (Read April Dunford's Obviously Awesome)
Messaging: Value first (“Get there cheap and smiling”), benefits second (memorable journey), features last (unbundled fares, fuchsia pink everything). (Read Emma Stratton's Make It Punchy)
Distinctiveness: You don’t need a new product category; you need a memory hook. Fuchsia pink paint + puns did the job. (Read Louis Grenier's Stand the F*ck Out)
Treat these frameworks like scaffolding: sturdy enough to hold your ideas together, flexible enough to graffiti with personality.
The Dark Side of a Good Giggle
Wow Air died in 2019, proof that snappy copy can’t offset razor‑thin margins, fuel‑price roulette, and a fatal blunder of buying the wrong-sized planes at the wrong time. Cheek alone won’t save a brittle business model (or a sh!t product, which Wow Air wasn’t)—but it will amplify a solid one. Marketing is a megaphone, not a life‑jacket neatly tucked under your seat.
Epilogue: The Last Line That Shouldn’t Be Boring
I know what you’re thinking: “But Richard, we sell complex, high-touch solutions to serious buyers.” But those buyers are drowning in “industry‑leading, best-in-class, AI‑powered” boring sameness. Hand them a reason to feel clever, seen, even mildly amused, and they’ll repay you with attention.
Maybe you won’t paint your servers fuchsia pink, but you can:
Add a quip to the 404‑page your web devs forgot.
Rename your pricing tiers so prospects chuckle before they compare columns.
Send merch that people wear unironically on Zoom.
Standing out in B2B marketing isn’t about shouting louder; it’s being the one line in a thousand that makes a stressed‑out prospect grin.
Your move.
