In an industry where technology plays a fundamental role when it comes to output and performance, Elfried Samba remind B2BMX 2026 attendees that human connection is still the most powerful growth lever in modern B2B.
Titled Building a Sexy Brand in an Unsexy Industry, Samba challenged attendees to change they way they view B2B marketing and aim higher.
“Being unsexy isn’t a category problem, it a courage problem. The worst thing a brand can do is believe that it’s in a boring industry and act accordingly,” said Samba. “What you realize that the best brands rewrite the rule books of what you are allowed to be in your industry. And it requires a little bit of bravery. Unsexy is when you act, smell, taste like everybody else, right? You’re basically just a template. You say, How are other brands in the space doing things? And we’re going do it exactly like that, right?”
Elfried Samba’s Bio
Samba brough first-hand operating experience to the stage. Butterfly Effect is a community-centric marketing agency that helps brands grow through community-driven marketing, culture, and creativity. His agency works with brands including Netflix, Bumble, Formula E, Square, LinkedIn, Adobe, and Vodafone, helping them build community-powered growth engines that compound over time.
As former Global Head of Social Content at Gymshark, Samba helped scale the brand’s fitness community from 1.5 million to over 20 million followers, contributing to its rise to a £1.4 billion valuation alongside giants like Nike and Lululemon.
Know your Target
In the B2B space, Samaba said the key is to make an emotional connection not with the person signing the check but the person they are going to talk to signing up the check. And that is making sure you are telling a story.
“If you can’t give your information to them in a way that they can understand and translate it to everybody else. You don’t win,” said Samba.” So it’s important to be really great and clear with the story, [making an] emotional attachments. People forget you as soon as they stop speaking to you, right? You’re supposed to make sure that you make them feel something, and a lot of brands just don’t do that.”
Building a World
Samba is one of LinkedIn’s most influential creators, with a fast-growing audience built by applying the same community-first principles in real time— proving that the rules of brand, community, and trust work just as powerfully in B2B as they do in consumer culture. In front of a packed audience, Samba offered three touchpoints to make B2B campaigns stand out
- World Building: Build a world that has a tone, a language, a universe that people want to exist inside. Community creates belonging that features never can.
- Defines Villain: Have an opponent. The biggest, most tolerated pain point is that everyone suffers but nothing changes. That’s you point of view, a characteristic that makes a brand impossible to ignore.
- Elevates Heroes: Make your customers look like geniuses for choosing you. When people feel smarter for being associated with your brand, they not only stay with you but become your biggest promoter. That’s when you stop renting attention and start earning trust.
“You paint a world or a destination that you want to be a part of, and you position what you do as unlock to get there,” said Samba. “ And that’s what the best marketers do.”
Four Avenues in 2026
For 2026, the opportunities are in four different pots, according to Samba. The first is personal branding as “people buy from people.” This happens when you activate your leaders, team, and customers to highlight the humans who represent what your brand is really about.
Next was creators, where Samba says is the biggest phenomenon in marketing right now. B2B marketers should be identifying and teaming with creators who are story tellers on behalf of brands, as “they drive trust and commercial growth in ways traditional content can’t.” This dovetails with podcasts, particularly when paired with video, are having a resurgence as more brands enter the space.
The final opportunity is having in real life (IRL) experiences, which Samba labeled as “the new disruptor…when every thing in life is digital, being in a room for that can’t-miss moments is where the brand becomes real and breakthrough. “
Opportunity to be Bold
Samba took the stance that consumer brands understand how emotion, identity, and belonging influence behavior, one that could be transferred over to the B2B market.
“In B2B, those forces still exist – they’re just expressed differently,” he said. “People aren’t buying products; they’re choosing partners. The lesson is that even rational decisions are shaped by how safe, confident, and understood someone feels.”
“You need to build your own world for people to want to step into it,” said Samba. “An unsexy industry is not an obstacle, it’s an opportunity, because the bar is very low. All it takes is a brand with genuine conviction and little bit of bravery to rewrite what the whole category is allowed to be.”
“An ‘unsexy industry’ isn’t an obstacle-it’s an opportunity,” said Samba. “The less sexy the industry, the lower the bar. All it takes is one brand with genuine conviction to rewrite what the whole category is allowed to be.”
