Kim Cattrall Slips Back Into PR-Queen Mode for Meltwater
Updated: 1 day ago
Meltwater launched its global Intelligence Is Always in Style campaign starring Kim Cattrall around 13 October 2026, marking its 25th anniversary with a rare B2B celebrity push.
What happened
Around 13 October 2026, Meltwater launched Intelligence Is Always in Style, a global brand campaign starring Kim Cattrall and timed to the company's 25th anniversary. For a B2B martech player selling media intelligence to marketing and PR teams, a big-celebrity, consumer-style campaign is a conspicuous departure from the norm.
Casting Cattrall is a knowing move. She carries decades of association with glamour and public relations, letting the campaign wink directly at the marketing and PR buyers it is trying to reach, who recognise the reference instantly.
The anniversary framing gives the spend a reason to exist. Twenty-five years lets Meltwater present itself as an established category leader confident enough to invest like a consumer brand rather than a scrappy vendor fighting for attention.
Why it matters
B2B marketing usually defaults to feature lists, webinars and rational proof points. Meltwater is betting that distinctiveness and fame, the classic tools of consumer branding, work on business buyers too, because those buyers are people who respond to the same emotional and cultural cues as everyone else.
A 25th-anniversary milestone gives the splurge a narrative anchor. It reframes a software vendor as a confident, established leader with the resources and ambition to spend like a consumer brand, which is itself a credibility signal in a crowded and noisy martech market.
It is also a bid for salience in long buying cycles. B2B purchases happen rarely and slowly, so the brand that is already famous and liked when a need finally surfaces has an advantage that no amount of bottom-funnel lead-gen can replicate.
The B2B-as-brand framework
The insight worth stealing is that fame creates mental availability in B2B just as it does in B2C. A memorable, emotionally resonant campaign makes a vendor the name buyers recall when a need finally arises, which matters enormously in long, infrequent purchase cycles where recall is everything.
The casting is doing strategic work, not just lending star power. Cattrall's PR-queen persona flatters and amuses the target buyer, turning an ad into an in-joke that signals Meltwater genuinely understands the world of the people it is selling to.
This is the opposite of the usual B2B temptation to explain every feature. Meltwater is trusting that being memorable and likeable earns the right to a sales conversation later, rather than trying to win the whole argument inside a single ad.
What businesses should do
B2B marketers should ring-fence a share of budget for brand building that creates fame and feeling, not just lead-gen that harvests demand that already exists. The two jobs are genuinely different, and most B2B spend is lopsided toward the latter at the expense of future growth.
If you use a celebrity, choose one whose associations map onto your category so the casting carries real meaning rather than borrowed shine. The payoff is being the brand buyers already know and like before they ever enter a sales conversation or shortlist.
And measure brand, not just clicks. Fame-building campaigns pay back over quarters through recall and preference, so hold your nerve and track the metrics that actually reflect mental availability rather than demanding immediate leads from a brand play. The trap is judging a fame campaign by performance-marketing metrics and killing it before it compounds; brand investment works on a slower clock, and the discipline is holding that clock steady while rivals chase the next quarter's leads and wonder why no one remembers them.
Quick FAQ
Why is Kim Cattrall a fitting choice?
She carries decades of association with glamour and public relations, letting Meltwater's campaign speak knowingly to the marketing and PR buyers it is targeting with media intelligence tools.
Why is this notable for a B2B brand?
A big-celebrity, consumer-style campaign is rare in B2B martech, where marketing usually leans on feature lists; Meltwater is applying consumer branding tactics to business buyers for its 25th anniversary.
I keep telling B2B marketers that their buyers are humans who watch the same shows and feel the same things as everyone else. Meltwater gets it. Casting a PR icon like Kim Cattrall is not vanity, it is mental availability. When the need arises, buyers reach for the name they already know and smiled at. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
Fame and feeling build mental availability in B2B just as powerfully as they do in consumer marketing.
How much of your B2B budget builds fame, versus simply harvesting demand that already exists?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: Adweek, Ad Age, PRWeek
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
