Articles › Brand to Person (B2P): The Only Model That Actually Exists
By Stu McLaughlin — December 03, 2025 — 5-minute read
For years, marketing teams have tried to segment themselves into a specific category: B2B, B2C, B2B2C. They're useful for some direction, but they're also a crutch. Teams hide behind them, strategies get built around them, and in the process, something obvious gets lost.
You're not selling to a business. You're not selling to a market segment.
You're selling to a person.
The distinction sounds meaningful on paper:
In reality, that separation breaks down quickly. The person evaluating a manufacturing component for a defense system is still a person. The founder choosing SaaS infrastructure is still a person. The marketing lead reviewing agency proposals is still a person. They all:
The context changes. The psychology doesn't.
Brand to Person (B2P) isn't a new channel or tactic. It's how you should be thinking about connection. It means:
At the end of the day, every deal, every click, every conversion happens because one person decided to move forward. (Yes, it could be their own AI agent, but that's a topic for another day.)
A common pattern: teams over-index on category labels.
"We're B2B, so our messaging needs to be more formal."
"Our buyers are technical, so we don't need all this branding."
"This is enterprise, so it has to be more complex."
What happens next:
The connection never actually happens. Because the person on the other side isn't looking for "B2B messaging." They're looking for something that makes sense, solves a problem, and earns trust quickly.
At the same time, teams underestimate what they're actually competing with. It's not just competitors in your category. It's everything else that person is dealing with in that moment.
Your message isn't being evaluated in isolation. It's being evaluated in context, against everything else that person is processing.
If it doesn't land quickly, clearly, and meaningfully, it gets ignored.
This is where Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and personas actually matter, but most teams approach them backwards.
An ICP isn't just a description of a company. It's a way to define the type of organization where your solution actually works.. where there's real need, real budget, and a real reason to act.
From there, personas bring that into focus at the individual level. They represent the people inside those organizations; the ones responsible for making decisions, evaluating options, and carrying the risk of getting it right or wrong.
Without that clarity, teams default to broad assumptions. Messaging gets generalized. Targeting gets diluted. And everything starts to feel like it's written for everyone, which means it connects with no one.
Done right, ICPs and personas help you understand:
Not just:
It's important for companies to have their ICP as well as their personas, which are derived from that ICP.
A lot of teams still treat product and service marketing as fundamentally different. They're not.
The packaging changes. The delivery changes. The sales cycle might change. But the underlying dynamic is the same.
You're still trying to connect with a person who has a problem, is evaluating options, and is deciding whether or not to trust you. Whether that's a physical product, a complex system, a SaaS platform, or a service, the process doesn't change as much as people think.
The goal is still to:
The format changes. The fundamentals don't.
B2B and B2C aren't wrong ways of thinking, they're just incomplete ways of thinking. They describe the structure of a transaction. They don't describe how decisions actually get made.
Brand to Person (B2P) is a better way to approach it.
Because every time, in every scenario, you're asking one person to make a decision.
That's how brands and organizations should be thinking. Not in segmented categories, but in how they connect with the person on the other side.
If you want to discuss B2P — Brand to Person — further, feel free to reach out.
Stu McLaughlin is Vice President of Brand Strategy at TheRiot Agency, where he works with people to build brands, lead digital transformation, and drive measurable growth through strategy, creativity, and technology.