What was your first job in marketing?
I started my career as a marketing executive for Renault in Germany, helping the sales team strengthen its leadership in former Eastern Germany. A year later, I joined Renault’s advertising agency, Publicis, in Singapore.
Which B2B brand do you most admire?
Intel, as they have managed to transform processors, a commodity product that no one wanted to hear about, into an iconic brand.
What’s the best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given?
A market share is neither a reality, nor a finality. Consumers just are.
To succeed, a B2B marketer must?
Think SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed. This is critical to remain strategic and avoid marketing being perceived as a randomising cost centre.
What is/are the most important trait(s) in a B2B marketer?
B2B marketers have to be pragmatic and strategic. What differentiates B2B marketers from their B2C counterparts is their ability to come up with imaginative solutions to stretch limited budgets; what differentiates great B2B marketers from their peers is the ability to avoid creative complacency in the process. Customers are also consumers and they deserve the highest marketing standards.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
I probasbly overuse seven-plus-letter words like “correlated”, “circumvallated”, “antepenultimate” … The fact that I am not a native English speaker leads me sometimes to complicate my lingo, and yet I must admit a certain jubilation in puzzling Brits with their own language.
My biggest extravagance is?
Tartiflette, a culinary speciality from the French Alps: rich, hearty, creamy, cheesy … and yet divine.
What marketing challenge are you currently wrestling with?
Google is such a dominant player that it has turned into a verb… However, the product is not meeting the needs of users who suffer from search overload. Our challenge is to make them realise that there are alternatives available.
What was your last marketing epiphany?
A recent market research study identified that 25 per cent of search queries do not drive to the desired site, and yet users tend to blame themselves, not the engine. This is a very rare user behaviour for a mass product (imagine if your car was refusing to start one time out of four).
Which marketing campaign or idea do you wish you’d thought of?
When I came to the UK, I was introduced to Marmite and its marketing activities… Well, I hate the product, but I love the campaign.
Which marketing or business books would you recommend?
Everything is bad for you, by Steven Johnson to inform your marketing strategies and story-telling in light of the new media consumption trends and The Search, by John Battelle to understand what is at stake with search engines.
What’s the next big thing in B2B marketing?
Social media and search joining forces: both techniques have been around for a while, but we will definitely see an acceleration of their penetration and cross-fertilisation amongst small and medium-sized businesses. The main challenge associated with this will be to maintain strategic integrity and avoid falling into the pitfall of tactical mimicry. What works for your competitor may not be relevant for you.
Which individual has had the most influence on your career?
My first manager whose welcome note has become my professional mantra: “work with your head, your hands and more importantly… your heart”.
