Mediaweek has teamed up with the IMAA to give its indie leaders a platform to talk about their work, thoughts about the industry and their interests outside of their working life.
Samantha Cunliffe is the Chief Client Officer at Grove B2B, based in Sydney but operating across APAC. Grove B2B is a marketing-as-a-service consultancy specialising in B2B marketing advisory, activation management, technology enablement, and custom training.
What sparked your interest in launching your own indie agency?
We’ve always had a deep belief in the power of B2B marketing. It’s our craft, our passion, and the most under-appreciated engine of growth in the marketing world. Grove B2B was born from that belief and from a shared desire to solve hard problems for marketers who deserve more than templated thinking and generic campaign outputs.
Frankly, we got tired of hearing, “B2B is just B2C with a longer buy cycle.” This statement is not just wrong, it is lazy thinking.
That mindset diminishes the complexity of modern B2B buying and downplays the pressure marketers face to drive revenue impact for every dollar invested into marketing.
Too often, B2B gets siloed, sidelined, or slapped on as an afterthought inside traditional Holdcos. We built GroveB2B, to change the mediocre agency choices B2B marketers have to select from and to set a new benchmark for B2B marketing success.
At the heart of it, we set out to build something we’re proud of, a place where smart people want to work and smart clients find a true partner.
That’s the meaning behind our name and logo. Like a grove of oak trees, we stand for shared wisdom, fresh perspective, and collective growth.
A grove grows stronger together, and that’s how we think the best work gets done.
The team at Grove B2B.
What sets your agency apart from others?
We enjoy B2B! We don’t pretend it is easy, and we specialise in complexity. Grove B2B is built for the real world of revenue responsibility, shrinking teams, and expanding buyer committees.
We are a strategy-first hands on partner helping to drive better execution. Our clients aren’t looking for brand awareness slides; they’re looking for an agency offering that reflects complex sales cycles, media plans that can drive business impact and marketing execution that delivers revenue growth.
Our Marketing-as-a-Service model gives B2B marketers specialist experience with on-demand access to senior strategy, ABM activation, market insight, and content execution without needing always-on headcount.
We speak the B2B marketing language and we help clients define, architect and then execute programs that align to how buying decisions actually happen.
B2B marketing should drive the business forward and that’s our starting point and biggest differentiator. We want to be measured by sales velocity, deal stage acceleration, and marketing’s contribution to revenue: we don’t do clicks!
How do you switch off from work and unwind after a busy week?
One of the most refreshing aspects of starting Grove B2B has been the complete removal of Sunday dread. I look forward to Mondays because the week ahead always promises new challenges, hopefully some business growth, and the kind of professional stimulation that gets me fired up.
It’s genuinely the most satisfying accomplishment of my career to date… and long may that continue.
Of course, that’s only possible with some balance, and for me that comes from the simple things. More often than not it involves the ocean – having a beer with a view of it, preferably on the sand, going for a walk alongside it, sitting and staring at it (literally for hours), or just getting in the water.
Sundays are also sacred and not something to shortcut or wish away. I’ll usually get up early, at some point visit a pub, cook a proper dinner, sometimes make a few jars of pickles, and then end the day dozing off on the couch far earlier than I’d like to admit.
When I really want to switch off completely, I lean into the guiltiest of pleasures – trash TV.
At the moment I’m shamelessly bingeing Below Deck and, at my husband’s suggestion, rewatching One Tree Hill.
It’s hard to overthink work when you’re caught up in yacht drama or small-town teenage angst, and that’s exactly the point.
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Top image: Samantha Cunliffe