Boring studio’s Natasha Peskin on going after the businesses no other creative agency really wanted or cared about, bringing a strategic eye to the deepest corners of B2B worlds from manufacturing to insurance. And why it’s ok to have a secret favourite stainless steel producer.

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In a few sentences, describe what you do.

I’m the founder and strategy partner at Boring Studio, which is a fancy title I give myself, and it basically means I lead the strategic direction of brands operating in what I call the world’s dullest industries.

Do you recall a pivotal moment that made you take a left turn and jump into the world of “workhorses, corporate monoliths, and big roaring machines” as you call them?

I’d spent around twenty years working in B2C — luxury retail, hospitality, consumer goods, the “sexy” stuff. Then, a few years ago, after running my own agency, I went back to freelancing and started noticing something. There was a huge opportunity sitting inside these supposedly boring, heavy infrastructure industries. As a freelancer, I kept getting hired by agencies to work on brands nobody else wanted because they weren't cool. But they are quite a complex kind of beast. They're not like a biscuit brand where you don't really need to know how a biscuit is made in order to understand what it is. Here you do need to understand really deeply the complexities of manufacturing and supply chains and the kind of geopolitical environment at large that has a huge impact on all of these businesses because they are essentially keeping the world turning. Once I got inside that complexity, I was hooked.

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What do you think drew you personally to these kinds of industries?

I’m creative at heart, but I actually studied maths and physics. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer — I didn’t end up there, obviously. I switched to architecture and then sort of went the creative route. So I've always had that bit in me where I've been really fascinated by the mechanics of things, how things work.

The Boring website reads like a manifesto — a call to action for established B2B companies in need of new life. What are some of the simple truths you stand by?

I’m a truth seeker. If you tell me that you are a business that does things differently, I will find out how exactly you are doing it differently. And if you don’t, we’re not going to bullshit our way through some shiny proposition about transformation or the future.

The other truth I’ll die on a hill for is that creativity belongs everywhere — in every industry, in every business. A lot of B2B tropes exist because people think they don’t need creativity, or don’t deserve it. “Our product speaks for itself.” “We sell steel.” And I just don’t buy that. The level of care you put into something — even a photograph on a website — can be the difference between you and the competitor selling the exact same thing.

What’s your view on creativity in the B2B space more broadly?

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On a basic level, I think it's about consideration, right? Creativity to me means consideration for the customer. And if you are claiming to be a quality brand, then you have to consider how the customer is going to view you. And if you haven't put that level of consideration and craft into every aspect of your business, including your website, your photography, your words, every element of it, then you are not considering the value of how a brand can essentially influence your customers.

A great example is Big Ass Fans. They sell commercial ventilation systems — about as unsexy as it gets. They used to be called something painfully corporate, like HVLS Fan Company (High-Volume, Low-Speed Fan Company).Then they realized their customers — farmers, warehouse owners kept calling them asking for “those big ass fans.” So they leaned into it, built a brand around it, and did it beautifully. They sold the company for half a billion dollars. If that doesn’t show the value of brand in a boring industry, I don’t know what does.

Were there any big surprises — good or bad — that challenged your own perceptions of so-called “dull industries”?

The biggest challenge has been internal resistance. Even the most forward-thinking CMOs face dozens of naysayers inside the business saying, “Why bother?” Brand still isn’t understood by a lot of people in these environments. That’s partly why I called the studio Boring. I don’t want clients who think being boring means they don’t need to be interesting. Those clients aren’t for me.

Another big learning is that in B2B, you’re rarely branding a product — you’re branding a business. Your brand lives in PowerPoint decks, sales materials, pitch docs. Your brand is going to live in the employees' hands. So you have to build a brand that can behave much more flexibly than B2C, that can be consistent across many hands basically.

How did you apply these lessons to the Anansi rebrand?

First of all it was wonderful working with Anansi because they instantly understood the value that brand could bring to their business. Anansi was essentially a market of one in that they were building a product where there was no incumbent that offered both the insurance and the automated monitoring aspect. So we needed a brand that was ruthlessly simple at explaining the benefits. But we also needed a brand that would land with customers that were so used to the status quo. These were people that hadn't stopped to think about the huge flaws in their manual systems. So the brand needed to have total conviction, strength and resilience built into the brand language - it had to be the complete antithesis to a fragile logistics chain, built on a house of cards.

While the Anansi messaging is trustworthy, direct, and stripped down, the photography brings bold freshness and punch to the table? Can you talk about the way the dynamic unfolded between the two there?
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Everything is 3D-rendered, and we chose specific product categories Anansi works with. The way that they were talking about delivery and logistics was very hands-off. Logistics is such a broad term. I kept asking: what’s actually being delivered? The retailers don't really care about the man in a van, but they do care whether their coffee machines are turning up. Luggage became one of the categories we wanted to feature because, ironically, it’s one of the most frequently damaged items. That specificity grounded the brand in reality and made the story tangible.

Why do you think we’re so quick to separate emotion from functionality — especially in industries where competence is often communicated through distance or coldness?

I don't know if I have an answer for why, because I'm sure there's some behavioral science going on there. But just anecdotally, I think people believe that if the product doesn't have emotional resonance you don't need to sell it as such. So everything gets reduced to the most rational level: price, quality, and speed.  If you've got two things that are exactly the same quality, I'll go for the cheaper version of it. And emotion is a really good way to build value into that business because they're no longer just about cost, quality, and speed. It's actually about what that experience means to that business. It's what that product delivers to that particular individual, beyond the most rational kind of sentiments.

Do you see brand owners hanging onto certain misconceptions about injecting emotions into their language?

I think emotion is a very loaded word. And I have to think carefully about how I also position Boring because I talk a lot about emotion. And it's really difficult to convince people to have emotion - they think it’s got to sound like Innocent or I've got to be risky or really brave. And actually, what we mean is -  just bring life to that story. Imagine your consumer reading it and bringing an energy into that goes beyond fact. And that could mean it's actually just written really well. It's erudite, and it's knowledgeable. And you think, God, I'm really learning something from this person.

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