SITA took home the trophy for Best Brand Initiative at 2012’s B2B Awards. Its SVP marketing and sales operations Arthur Calderwood speaks to Maxine-Laurie Marshall about how he measures his brand
‘We built this city’ going round and round my head. SITA, a provider of global information and communication solutions for the air transport industry, isn’t immediately synonymous with rock ‘n’ roll. But once you’ve been to its UK office and see it is in the Old Vinyl Factory, the original headquarters for EMI and His Master’s Voice, has an entire wall filled with seven inch records and Starship’s lyrics painted onto the reception wall, you get the link.
In true rock ‘n’ roll style Calderwood flies in, from his Geneva office, to see me – well it’s for a meeting, but we can pretend.
Knowing the ongoing mini war some marketers seem to have with sales, I was particularly interested to find out what had happened to marketing at SITA since Calderwood moved from SVP marketing to SVP marketing and sales operations
last year.
So the rumours are true, when working together sales and marketing are much more effective. Calderwood’s intentions, like most marketers’, were always good, but he openly admits it’s much easier for marketing to be effective now he has a greater insight into the sales operation.
Good intentions
Thinking marketing may have had to take a back seat to sales, Calderwood proves my suspicions wrong and says, “Last year we changed our regional organisation and I got global sales operations. The biggest change is that we’ve aligned more of our marketing activities to support the business and sales challenge. I think if you have marketing a bit detached from the business, you could believe that the activities you’re doing are supporting it directly, but actually you’re not. Now we’re fine-tuning what we’re doing.”
He says, “I thought marketing was close to sales but taking that responsibility you actually do see the gap that exists. We always talk about marketing helping and enabling sales, but taking that over you do see their challenges from a different perspective. That’s been very revealing so I do really appreciate having that function.”
Calderwood’s recent addition of sales to his job title isn’t the only reason he can empathise with marketing’s supposed nemesis. He began his career at IBM where he spent three-four years in sales. “The first six months of my time with IBM was spent training, which is an immense investment.”
This is something that has clearly stuck with him because he says the second most important area for reaching customers is the sales organisation. “After your web presence, the second area they go to is your sales organisation, they expect to be meeting people who can really offer value and enter into a discussion with you. That’s meant we’ve taken a different approach to our sales teams around the world and the knowledge and expertise they need to have.”
Building up a brand
Sales and marketing’s ability to work together isn’t the only myth this marketer has busted. He makes measuring a company’s most important intangible asset – its brand – a priority. After being asked by the board, ‘are we relevant for the future of air transport, what does our brand represent?’ Calderwood says, “I was very keen that we went out and got some objective data. You have to measure and be willing to stand up to measure what impact you’re having.”
Calderwood first looked to reposition SITA and measure the effects three years ago and has since run its global perception survey every year. “In 2010 we heard a lot of things we liked and some things we didn’t, and you have to address them. It was important to measure progress.”
There are four elements to the SITA brand that Calderwood was particularly interested in monitoring: whether it had a good portfolio of products, its level of service, culture and how it communicates/tone of voice. His brand campaign work not only won him the respect of his board but also impressed industry peers as SITA’s brand repositioning won ‘Best B2B Brand Initiative’ at 2012’s B2B Awards.
Results included a positive rating of 92 per cent when respondents were asked to rate the knowledge and expertise of SITA’s workforce and an eight per cent increase from last year when asked if SITA stood out from the competition.
A company’s most important brand ambassadors are its employees but reaching SITA’s 4800 staff across the globe is a major challenge for Calderwood. He explains, “Extending our [brand] reach is our biggest challenge because of our total group of 4800, 60 per cent have remote managers, and those managers may not even be in the same country. So we’ve been very focused on our internal communications.”
To take the brand nearer its employees, SITA implemented a pilot scheme in Montreal that saw its offices refurbished so the look and feel of the location aligned with the brand as well as introducing new ways of working where no-one had an assigned desk. Calderwood says, “We’ve taken learnings from that to change the working environment in other locations.”
He concludes, “For the brand in terms of touchpoints, marketing is sometimes seen as a support activity but is one of a few functions that can touch the whole organisation, so it is extremely powerful.”
Calderwood’s top tips for marketers
1. Ensure marketing isn’t detached from sales or the business as a whole or the activities you believe are beneficial could be missing the mark.
2. Measurement is key. You have to be willing to stand up and measure what impact you’re having.
3. Your brand is nothing unless your product and service levels are extremely competitive and you continually invest in them. Add that to the right company culture and bold communications approach and you have a chance to shift your brand perception.
4. Invest time to understand how to reach the market and your employees through creative communications channels and an integrated approach.
5. Don’t accept being a support function, marketing is more than that.
