Kieran Kilmartin, VP international marketing at Pitney Bowes, sits down with Maxine-Laurie Marshall ahead of his keynote at B2B InTech later this month
Marketing is a science, so what better way to begin your career in this field, than as a scientist? Kieran Kilmartin, VP international marketing at Pitney Bowes, studied geophysics at university and spent the first five years of his career jetting around the world, jumping out of helicopters and living in deserts and jungles conducting seismic exploration for oil companies.
Once he’d had his fill of this adventurous lifestyle, he took his skills in gathering and interpreting data to work as a systems programmer. This led to sales and consulting roles, and his desire to work with customers as well as maintaining a hand in the data pot, meant he found his way into marketing.
The CIO and CMO
Speaking about the latter he says: “It used to be really about the creative, but now it’s much more of a science.” It’s the combination of technology and data that’s responsible for this shift, and clearly the internal alliances marketing has, need to reflect this change. Kilmartin is delivering the keynote speech at our upcoming B2B InTech conference where he’ll discuss the changing profile of today’s tech buyers and how to reach them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering Gartner has been telling us CMOs will be spending more on tech than CIOs for the last four years, Kilmartin says marketers no longer have to go to their CIOs to get all the tech they need implemented.
He elaborates: “I think the role of the CIO has changed dramatically over the years. Historically they’ve been responsible for the tech roadmap for an organisation. These days businesses need to be reactive, they need to move fast. The CIO has to be more in tune with what’s happening with the business on a more granular basis. From the other side, marketing is now more tech-driven than ever. I wouldn’t necessarily go to my CIO and say: ‘what would you recommend for a social media monitoring tool?’ They’re not going to know, but the marketers will because that’s what they work with. The other thing is the accessibility of tech today. As a marketer I don’t necessarily have to go to the CIO and say we need to have a new budgeting system for marketing because I can sign up for one and trial it – that’s what we did.”
Speaking about the two roles, he says: “They have to work as a partnership. You’ve got to assume these people are grown up enough to see they need to work together.” Perhaps easier said than done if the sales and marketing partnership is anything to go by.
A 100-year journey
Something else marketers have struggled with historically is proving the value in brand marketing. This intangible asset is arguably one of the most valuable things a company has, yet it can be tough to get the c-suite to buy into your brand ambitions.
Pitney Bowes, at the grand age of 95, is preparing for its centenary and is on the journey of changing its association as an equipment manufacturing company to becoming known as a technology company. With all this in mind, its executives are well aware the benefits branding can bring, which is why it just launched a new advertising campaign.
Kilmartin reveals his c-suite didn’t have any unrealistic expectations about the scale or importance of the campaign: “Changing brand perception doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a journey over years. There’s an appreciation, the management team understands we’re on a transformation.”
This transformation started with research. Kilmartin explains: “The last brand change was in 1971, so we spent 18 months doing research. We spoke to employees, customers and the market. We conducted over 2000 interviews and many focus groups to understand if people knew us and what they knew us for.”
Pitney Bowes periodically measures its brand perception, so it had a benchmark to compare itself with after the new brand activity had begun. Last year the focus was on internalising it with ‘brand guardians’ ensuring everything, both physical and digital, was brand compliant. Kilmartin tells me the company has just begun the external promotion of the brand with its ‘Craftsmen of commerce’ campaign, initially just in the US.
The campaign will include TV and online advertising as well as social activity, which the technology company has recently invested in via its sales team. Kilmartin reveals he took money from his marketing budget to fund premium licenses for the sales team on LinkedIn. They were taught how to write their profiles in a way that would show them as company and subject-matter experts, and taught them how to engage with prospects. This is combined with other paid-for activities on the channel such as InMails and sponsored updates. Kilmartin says: “In previous years we’ve generated no less than 20 deals from LinkedIn campaigns.”
The focus on social activity came when Kilmartin felt too many frustrations with untargeted traditional media and channels: “People either physically or mentally opt out.”
For a company with such a long history, it’d be easy to become a slow-moving beast. But given its recent activity driven by marketing, Kilmartin is keen it stays up-to-date. Its brand is seen to represent the right thing while the company also keeps up with its customers’ communications preferences and changing habits. He will continue to do this with science and data at his side. As he says: “Marketing is all about measuring objectives, the first thing I do is ask what the objectives are and what success looks like?”
B2B InTech 2016 is a one-day conference, taking place on 25 February, including sessions by high profile thought leaders tackling the big issues; award-winning B2B case studies from some of the most innovative and admired tech brands; and practical guidance on how to address challenges facing tech marketers today. Click here to find out more and purchase tickets.
