An interview with ‘Marketer of the year’ Kathy Seegebrecht

Kavita Singh spoke with Kathy Seegebrecht, CMO at UL, about her ‘Marketer of the year’ win at our Elevation 2020 awards.

Q: What was your reaction to winning the award?

Kathy: We’re so appreciative about it because B2B marketing is so different from B2C, and B2B has made strides over the past few years, especially at UL. We have really improved our capabilities and talent over the last five years and I just felt like “Wow, this is a wonderful recognition.” There’s so much more to do and we have to continue to evolve along with the market as a trend. I was extremely proud and excited.

Q: What did UL look like when you first joined?

Kathy: I started UL five years ago as the president of corporate marketing. They didn’t have a CMO, and we had about 12 people in corporate marketing. We were working with an agency in New York at the time who was not doing us favours and taking a lot of our money. They managed our website and it was so poorly done. Businesses didn’t enjoy working with this agency and they ended up building their own websites, so it completely proliferated our digital landscape and the same for social media. Our service offerings were, I’m not exaggerating, 248 websites and 80 social channels, and you just can't have impact with that and we didn’t have inhouse capabilities and did not have a demand generation function. We did not have a marketing automation platform or CRM either.