This year’s ANA Masters of B2B Marketing Conference covered plenty of familiar territory: AI innovations, complex buyer groups, diverse media strategies and the evolving role of marketing technology.
But the takeaways that lingered after sessions ended weren’t about tools and tactics alone. They were also about trust.
Across keynotes, panels and hallway conversations, one theme surfaced repeatedly: B2B organizations are rethinking brand’s role in their growth strategies and exploring new opportunities to deepen trust with buyers.
While B2B marketers have historically had to defend brand rather than prioritize it, this narrative shifted at Masters of B2B Marketing 2026. Speaker after speaker reinforced how today’s B2B buyers are conducting more independent research, consulting more information sources and involving more stakeholders in purchase decisions.
In this environment, trust is a prerequisite for growth — and that’s elevating brand from a marketing initiative to a strategic imperative.
As the average B2B buying journey grows in complexity, the organizations creating the most value are building systems where brand and demand reinforce one another, not choosing between the two.
Here are three lessons from Masters of B2B Marketing we believe B2B marketers should pay attention to, and what this year’s attendees had to say about each.
Key takeaways
- Organizations that build trust before buyers enter a purchasing process are positioned to grow more efficiently.
- B2B buyers are navigating more information, more channels and more stakeholders, making trust increasingly valuable.
- PR, thought leadership and third-party validation help shape perception before B2B buyers engage with vendors.
- Consistency across channels is essential as B2B buyers encounter brands in more places than ever.
Lesson 1. Brand is in the boardroom
Masters of B2B Marketing 2026 opened with a session from David Haigh, founder and CEO of Brand Finance, on the value of B2B brands today. For years, B2B marketing conversations have centered on performance. Marketing teams were expected to demonstrate impact on pipeline, revenue and customer acquisition costs. Brand was secondary to these shorter-term metrics.
According to Haigh, however, the strongest B2B brands now consistently inspire confidence, drive innovation, build trust and create both rational and emotional reassurance for buyers.
One observation from Haigh’s session captured a broader truth: Marketing shouldn’t have to do the brand’s job of explaining what the business stands for.
The strongest brands build clarity before buyers ever enter a sales process. Their positioning is easy to understand. Their reputation is well established. Their value is recognizable.
In other words, the brand itself reduces friction before decision-making starts.
This reality is increasingly important as B2B buyers today rarely begin their journey with a sales conversation. Instead, they start with a search query, a recommendation from a colleague, an analyst report, a media article or an AI-generated summary.
The stronger the brand, the more confidence buyers gain from these initial interactions and then carry into sales conversations.
During a conference networking reception hosted by Walker Sands, it was clear organizations are increasingly viewing brand as an enterprise-wide capability that influences growth and requires a seat at the biggest tables. We heard from many marketing leaders about the dual challenge and opportunity of brand taking center stage, and how navigating this evolution will remain a top priority in H2 2026.
Lesson 2. Trust is the ultimate competitive advantage
If a single word appeared across nearly every Masters of B2B Marketing session this year, it was trust.
Juliet Randall, CMO at SAP Americas, framed the challenge with a simple observation: What happens when everyone sounds intelligent and intelligence stops being the differentiator? Trust does.
AI is making expertise easier to package and distribute. Buyers have access to more information than ever. But more information doesn’t automatically create confidence — in many cases, it creates uncertainty.
Several speakers explored this dynamic. Melissa Washko, Chief Brand Officer at GE Aerospace, described brand as the human connection that earns permission to innovate. Greg Boosin, CMO at Equitable, discussed what he called a “trust recession.” Eva Heath, VP of Commercial Group Growth & Retention Marketing at Kaiser Permanente, shared how trust often becomes a deciding factor in healthcare decisions.
Perhaps the most memorable example of trust for B2B brands came during a Q&A with Richard Parkinson, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer at Prudential Financial. Asked whether he would rather double his media budget or double trust in the Prudential brand, his answer was immediate: trust.
Parkinson’s reasoning was simple. Trust compounds. Media budgets don’t.
For B2B marketers, that’s an important reframing. Trust doesn’t always appear neatly in reporting, but its impact shows up everywhere, every day. The organizations that build trust effectively earn advantages long before a prospect fills out a form or expresses initial interest.
Lesson 3. Consistency is an underappreciated growth lever
If trust was the dominant theme at Masters of B2B Marketing 2026, consistency was the mechanism behind it.
B2B buyers encounter brands through search engines, earned media, analyst reports, social platforms, peer communities and increasingly through AI-generated recommendations. By the time they visit a brand’s website, they’ve often already formed opinions based on dozens of prior interactions.
Every touchpoint contributes to perception. When experiences feel disconnected, buyers — and generative engines — are forced to reconcile conflicting messages. Conversely, when they feel consistent, confidence grows.
Randall again captured this challenge nicely: Speed is no longer just about execution. It’s about how quickly you can transform insight and foresight into action — and ultimately into trust.
This idea surfaced elsewhere throughout the conference.
Jann Schwarz, Senior Director of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn, led a session on buyability that emphasized how B2B buyers are looking for more than the best solution. They demand tools and services they can confidently defend internally if something goes wrong.
Michelle Lynn, Global Head of Data Science & Insights at Bloomberg, shared research on storytelling that reinforced a similar point. Across more than 50 campaigns, human-centered narratives consistently outperformed brand-led messaging. Buyers may embrace new technologies, but they still rely on human judgment when evaluating risk and making decisions.
The lesson for B2B marketers? Consistency is about creating a coherent experience wherever buyers encounter your brand — and it’s a key factor in achieving growth.
What Masters of B2B Marketing 2026 made clear
If this year’s ANA Masters of B2B Marketing Conference made one thing clear, it’s that the best B2B marketers are redefining growth.
For years, B2B growth strategies centered on efficiency: more leads, more pipeline and more measurable performance.
Those metrics still matter, but they’re harder to achieve when buyers increasingly make decisions before engaging with sales, rely on peer networks and third-party sources for inspiration and interact with brands across dozens of touchpoints.
Treating brand as an awareness play isn’t enough anymore. We have to approach brand building as a critical mechanism to drive familiarity, credibility and confidence before buying decisions are ever made.
That means brand is in the boardroom. Brand is the ultimate competitive advantage. And brand is a B2B growth lever organizations can’t afford to underappreciate.
At Walker Sands, we approach brand and demand as part of the same growth system. In a market where information is abundant and AI is making expertise easier to replicate, trust is one of the most valuable differentiators a brand can build.
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