Stop Treating Brand Like a Campaign (and Other B2B Realities) with Sarah Roberts. In the latest episode of Babel’s Back2Brave podcast, Ash Lockett is joined by Sarah Roberts - recently named a top 100 global CMO - to dissect what B2B tech marketing and comms is actually all about, why it feels like it's stuck in the past, and crucially, what to do about it. Whether you're selling a billion-dollar infrastructure solution, or a mobile phone, you're selling to a human. Sarah argues that B2B marketing needs a fundamental shift to a more "B2Human" mindset. She details her experience at Boldyn Networks, where she led a massive global rebrand, using AI to build a distinctive visual identity that resonated with engineers (internal stakeholders) and buyers alike. The conversation also covers: 1. Why we need to stop treating "brand" as a short-term campaign. 2. How to build internal trust (and champions) by executing "grit work" and pilots before asking for big budgets. 3. The dangers and pitfalls of working with AI and how to protect originality in your work.
B2Human Marketing, Brand Transformation, and Proving Value - with Sarah Roberts of Boldyn Networks
Ash Lockett hosts Babel’s Back to Brave podcast, welcoming guest, Sarah Roberts, a top marketing leader and former Global CMO of Boldyn Networks, discussing how to champion a B2Human mindset in B2B by focusing on customers’ ambitions, fears, and motivations, alongside their product requirements. Roberts explains, combining research, internal stakeholder input, and iterative customer dialogue to shape messaging, especially across M&A, where Boldyn unified multiple businesses under a single purpose (centered on an interconnected future). She describes bringing teams along on the rebrand journey, using AI-generated imagery to create a distinctive visual identity that also built credibility with engineers, while noting AI’s limits for repeatable style and originality. Roberts outlines the “grit work”, that marketing leaders can't avoid, as piloting foundational initiatives to build trust and gain internal advocates. She also details aligning marketing metrics to business strategy, by moving from vanity metrics to value metrics tied to true revenue outcomes.
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:45 Sarah Roberts Background & Bio
02:04 What B2Human Means
04:48 Finding Human Insights
08:38 Listening and Iteration
09:43 Unifying Brands After M&A
12:56 Rebrand Change Management
17:09 Engineers and AI Credibility
22:12 Brand Versus Performance Trap
23:16 Grit Work and Pilots
27:16 Turning Naysayers Into Champions
30:32 Measuring Brand Value Metrics
35:42 Brand Metrics Beyond Campaigns
38:04 Dashboards to Business Alignment
39:21 Sales Marketing Metric Handoffs
42:16 AI Visual Identity Experiment
48:25 Originality Trust and Human Edge
53:26 Implementing AI Without Tool Sprawl
57:35 Quickfire Bravery Takeaways
01:01:23 Create Value Without Permission
01:03:38 Closing Thoughts and Thanks
B2Human: Why B2B Marketing Needs to Get Personal
[00:00:00]
Ash Lockett: Hi, and welcome to Babel's Back to Brave podcast, the podcast that supports B2B tech communications and marketing professionals to make brave moves. I'm Ash Lockett, senior director of B2B marketing at Babel, and today I'm joined by one of my favorite people in B2B tech and a recent Hot Topics top 100 global CMO, Sarah Roberts. Sarah.
Sarah: Thank you. Thank you for having me
Ash Lockett: I'm delighted for you to join me today, and I'm sure we'll have a very long and good and educational conversation about everything that's happening within the B2B tech sphere. And for the listeners that might not know you, could you do me the honors and give a quick rundown of your bio?
Sarah: Totally. So I'm Sarah Roberts marketing leader with more than 20 years experience helping complex organizations grow, [00:01:00] transform and ultimately create lasting commercial impact. Throughout my career, I've been operating at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, and execution taking complexity and turning it into clarity, alignment, and then momentum for growth.
Most recently as Global Chief Marketing Officer at Boldyn Networks, I led the transformation of multiple businesses into a single global brand, Boldyn Networks building the marketing function, brand strategy, go-to-market operating model to support the company's next phase of growth. I've always believed that marketing should be far more than a support function.
And I know we're gonna dig into that a little bit more. And when marketing is aligned to business strategy, which I believe in very much customer needs and organizational culture, it becomes a powerful engine to drive reputation, demand, relationships and revenue. And I know that we're gonna unpack all of those over the next little wee while
Ash Lockett: Yeah, I feel like it's constant conversations that you and I have around the alignment of marketing and [00:02:00] really uncovering its true value within the organization. and I think one of the things that I wanted to dig into today and particularly around some of those acquisitions and how you've blended them in, i- is how you've championed this B2Human mindset over the traditional B2B is something that I hear a lot within my own LinkedIn echo chamber. and it's something that I think deserves more air time than it potentially gets because I think we can be very dry, we can be very product-focused, we can be very speeds and feeds in B2B, but ultimately at the end of the day, we're still selling to humans. So could you tell me a little bit about your definition of B2Human and why you think it's important to B2B marketing?
Sarah: Absolutely. And I will clarify that I believe that B2Human should be the mindset, not just for B2B marketing, but also B2C. I think at the end of the day, whatever purchase is being made there is a human involved, even if AI is involved, and I got AI in first, so I know we'll end up [00:03:00] talking about a lot.
I am the winner. I got it in first. ... It will be part of the decision-making but there'll be a human at the kind of tip of that piece. And whether that's a billion-dollar infrastructure contract or whether it's buying toothpaste at the supermarket, there's a human. And that individual is thinking potentially, especially in the billion-dollar infrastructure piece, about their ambitions, their pressures, their fears, the stakeholders they have to manage, the risks they need to navigate alongside, a potential big RFP and all the product specs and technical language and corporate jargon.
But they will be thinking about where their career is going and what they're doing. So a- as marketers, we need to be thinking about, how we're tapping into that and really thinking about how we listen to our customers and understand their pain points and motivations and building our marketing around the, the human needs.
And as I said, that doesn't mean we're not thinking about product specifications. We're just [00:04:00] thinking about the whole piece of a deal not just one aspect, and the individual that's part of that, and creating those connections with that individual and business, and then obviously driving better business outcomes off the back of it
Ash Lockett: Yeah I think that's super important 'cause I would say for the whole time I've certainly worked in B2B, it is probably over-indexing on the rational, and has missed a lot of that emotional storytelling. To your point, actually understanding their fears, their pressures I think, and I'm sure this comes up in every conversation we have, it still rings true, you don't get fired for buying IBM and that's due to the fact that people fear getting fired and want to maintain their livelihood. And I think to your point, it's how you get those from that customer and the voice of the customer. Could you tell me how you've created those B2Human messages? Is it through customer interviews? Is it diving into they feel and fear, or have you taken a more kind of desktop research [00:05:00] approach to some of this?
Sarah: I think taking a bit of everything to sit on the fence. I don't think there is one right answer of how you need to tackle understanding a customer, because again, every customer may share information in different ways, learn in different ways, and be- wanna be communicated to within different ways.
So I guess when you're trying to understand them, it's potentially thinking about, yes, there's desktop research, there's amazing AI tools that you can dig into to, to understand customer. It's speaking to, your sales organizations, your operation teams. It's, thinking even wider and thinking about other stakeholders in your business and thinking about, the political landscapes and business strategy and even, like, looking at your competitors to truly kinda dig into and unpick the best way to communicate.
And I think the easiest thing you can do to start with is thinking about internally in your business as well. [00:06:00] When we were thinking about our business at Boldyn and we were thinking about how we, truly listened and understand our, understood our customer, we needed to think about what we were enabling for a business in that mix as well.
So not just thinking about, the ,data sheet with all the requirements of a pro- product, but thinking about the end goal of the customer and then discussing that with them and unpicking that with them so that you could truly kinda understand that end piece not just thinking about kind of the story you have to tell, but really getting them to sense check your story alongside with their story once you have done the listening
Ash Lockett: We've done a few customer interviews in our time, often when you start speaking to them more broadly, you'll find that the business outcome they're trying to address is actually much broader than the product solution that you're trying to sell them.
And you're just one component of that overarching a- [00:07:00] outcome they're trying to drive.
Which then makes it really interesting because you can see where you can essentially pull those emotional levers to help them win that, and how you tweak your messaging to reframe it around that particular pain point. I- is that something that you found when you were speaking to customers, that it's, there's a larger play here for most of them and actually you're a, a single component? Or were a lot of the, as you're building out that messaging, were a lot of the pain points directly addressed by your entire portfolio?
Sarah: I think it's a bit of both. And I think it also depends on, who your business is and what you're selling at the end of the day. I think there'll be aspects of it where you can directly deliver a, a solution that meets a pain point. I think sometimes you need to understand what your customer is trying to achieve, and they may not even realize there is a pain point that you can help with.
I think [00:08:00] we found that a lot with, some of the, the work that we were doing was customers understood, the surface level aspects of a solution but hadn't even thought about particular pain points that you could unpick with them. So it's truly sitting down and together understanding what they want to achieve and then really looking at how your solution can help them achieve that immediate goal, but are there also an ecosystem of other pain points that you can also solve and solve for now and potentially in the future as well.
True listening kind of goes two way, and I think that's really important. It's not just they tell you something, you take it and that's the end of it. It needs to be, you talk to them. They talk to you. You've got the backwards and forwards.
You take your solution to them. There'll be more work to be done. It's not a finite process where, [00:09:00] you listen, you deliver, and it's done. I think it's how you iterate as well and truly understand a business, their goals, where they're going, and what they want to achieve to then look at how you shape a, a solution.
Ash Lockett: Yeah. I think that iteration and the constant evolution's a, a key point. I think having that open conversation and relationship with your customers is super important . We know the tech landscape changes at a rapid rate of knots, so their priorities shift, outcomes need to be delivered that are slightly different. And having those conversations ensures that your messaging, your tactical approach, so whether that be an email nurture campaign to a lot of them of the other kind of great solutions you might have available, gets tweaked as you work with them. I think what's interesting when we have a look at kind of the, the B2M and bringing that emotional lens, from a single brand perspective, that's relatively straightforward.
But when you're bringing nine different businesses under one roof, [00:10:00] that becomes increasingly complex, right? And I'd love to t- tap into that 'cause M&A is rife. There's a lot of it taking place in the market. How do you actually identify those human emotional drivers across your different brands?
And do they all kind of ladder up into one, or do they have their own unique narratives that you let play out?
Sarah: So I think at the core and when we did the, the work with Boldyn Networks, we really tried to link what held everything together into... and for us it was our purpose, pulling it together as one purpose that became that overarching piece. Boldyn Networks is digital infrastructure business.
We're talking transport networks, smart cities, stadiums, airports, but the technology is part of the equation, but isn't the end goal. The end goal is helping people connect and move and work and learn and, building connected, [00:11:00] cities and citizens. So for us, when we thought about the brand as the first step, alongside all these acquisitions, is trying to understand the pieces that kind of united the businesses.
And for us it was around an idea of an interconnected future. So it was, that two-way connectivity and it was, what kind of interweaves cities and networks. So once we had that kind of real core to us and our purpose, And it wasn't specifically by business and we brought them all together after our acquisitions, not all at once, but brought them all together under Bold Networks.
But then you started, and it goes back to what we're talking about customer and understanding your customer. For us then it became that core was true, always true, but then how do you understand that in the lens of a particular customer? So it [00:12:00] wasn't about a particular business or a particular brand, it was about that kind of customer group or vertical, and how do you understand that purpose and alongside our solutions with that group of customers
Ash Lockett: Yeah that's fascinating. I think that's the right approach. I think too often people continue to keep those business units distinct when actually combined they're addressing particular pain points for customers. Which is quite hard, right? 'Cause there's p- politics internally at play that don't wanna lose necessarily their legacy. so I think just to recap on that, you have that umbrella, probably more emotional narrative, right? So the interconnected cities and how you're bringing... Or interconnectivity and interconnecting people and how you're bringing that to life. And then I presume your pillars are therefore focused on more those customer stories, use cases that you might appeal to, whether it'll be vertical or aligned to a particular business outcome.
How difficult was it to bring kind of those nine different [00:13:00] companies along for that ride? Like, how did you get them to all play ball to sing from that same hymn sheet? 'Cause I can't imagine that was an easy task
Sarah: No. And just clarify also, it didn't-- You make it sound like we magically clicked a switch and it all changed. So when we brought the Boldyn brand together we brought together, it was six brands, and then we had acquisitions that happened after. And so that was a, a slightly different journey, but very similar.
And I think I probably answered a little part of your question was that it's all about journey and taking people on the journey. When we built the Boldyn Networks brand yes, we started with that, that purpose, but that purpose wasn't a, a magic overnight. That purpose came from talking with customers, talking with board, talking with [00:14:00] exec and what we'd heard from across the different brands and businesses around, what was important to our growth, where would we be different against competitors?
And ultimately, how could we create something that we knew would resonate both with our people and both with the market? And I say that because doing that work upfront Made the journey through the rebrand and bringing the businesses together ultimately successful because of the thinking we did involving people as part of the process.
This wasn't something we did to people, it was something people did together. And we made it really kinda clear throughout the whole process that our brand existed because of what we could bring together to create it. So this wasn't being done to people, [00:15:00] this was X plus Y plus Z plus Q plus P equals the end product.
Not one, brand taking over another, not one group of people taking over. This was genuinely us being able to be this new kind of story, this new business, this new organization that could help our customers, thanks to the expertise and the people that already existed in the business. And that was really important.
And I think why it was successful, because people felt part of a journey, and they felt part of a story. And then ultimately, after we'd launched, they felt a lot of pride in the brand. Anyone who's seen anything I've talked about will know I use the stat a lot around that, a year after we launched our brand, 91% of our people said they were proud of the brand.
Now, this is people that, potentially had lost their brand [00:16:00] that they'd worked with for a number of years. But they felt proud to be part of this new brand because of the work we'd done over, 18 months to get to the pointy end when we had, a name and a logo and a story and a narrative.
And that was really important, and we built it all together
Ash Lockett: Yeah, 18 months sounds about right. These things never happen overnight, and I think sometimes you can get, want to evolve our brand and it's gonna take three months," and you're like it's a lot of workshops that need to be crammed in that time to bring people along. I can imagine with that process, you had a lot of workshops, you had a lot of iterations, you
had a lot of feedback loops to enable you to get to that, that overarching narrative. I guess my final question around this really is you would've had stakeholders that are engineers, sales directors, C-suite executives, people in finance. It hard to convince them that emotional storytelling was the way [00:17:00] forward and move them from the network solutions and feature lists and things like that?
Or were they already bought in and that, that helped with the process?
Sarah: So I think in part, It, i'll talk to the engineer bit in a bit because something I found out through the process I think helped on that. I think overarching though, it wasn't a feeling that I'd taken things away, it was a feeling that I'd created this overarching wrapping paper for maybe some of the more, feature lists and data sheets and the more technical pieces, but I'd created the wrapping paper.
Now, over time, the wrapping paper became more entrenched, and that overarching story and narrative became more entrenched, and we used more of the st- storytelling in what we were doing. And the [00:18:00] super heavy kind of technical information still existed, but in slightly different ways and maybe didn't feature so prominently.
So it didn't magically change overnight, it was a, a gradual process. And I think, that was a really important because you're asking people, you're already saying, "Please remove your, your brand that you've maybe worked with for 10 years. Take on this new brand and have a whole new way of kind of taking yourself out into the market."
I think that's a lot to take on. But if you can do it quite gradually and so that people could start to see the results then they start to believe it. Now, interestingly with the engineers, I didn't deliberately do this, and I know we're gonna talk a little bit more about AI and the brand, but a large part of the brand identity was created using AI, which actually got us a huge lot of [00:19:00] credibility with our engineers.
And, honestly, when I was thinking about, using AI with the brand identity, I didn't think of that aspect specifically. But it was a really good way for our engineers to kinda understand and, think about a brand in a slightly different way. And we were using technology, i- in a way in marketing to showcase a technology brand.
So in some respects for them, they went, "This is really cool, and you're speaking my language. And this isn't about, colors and shapes. You've used something I understand to create this new brand that, I now need to get behind and be excited about." So I think, something that deliberately wasn't done to speak to engineers you know, one of my, biggest learnings that came out of it and I talk a lot about understanding the customer and understanding your [00:20:00] people, was that even when you think of all the aspects in launching a brand, that was one aspect I didn't think about.
But then once, they started talking about that, that connectivity of, a marketing asset with something they understood and how that helped them understand, I embraced it and pushed that further with them so that, so that we could really build pride. 'Cause again, day one you never get pride, it's over time.
So that was something I really harnessed so that, they'd be out there and they'd be talking with their friends and they'd bring the customers, and they'd be talking about how a technology business was using technology to bring their brand to life, and it was something that they could kinda understand and get behind.
So I think, there's things like that, if I had my time again, I would've d- delved deeper and there you go. We're not all infallible and, we all miss things along the way, but as soon as I had heard and started to see that from some of our people, I jumped on board and then used it as a lever to really help grow [00:21:00] pride
Ash Lockett: Yeah. I guess it goes back to translating everything to, into people's language, right?
So they can understand it. And I've worked with a few engineers in my time, and they, th- they are very technical people. However, they are still people. But as long as you can articulate how the marketing function works or provide them a way to engage and interact with the marketing function that speaking on their terms, I think that does get you a lot of buy-in and a lot of progress along the way. Fascinating that AI was the, the, the jumping off board for that one. But equally, I think in the past I've had headless CMSs be something that all of a sudden my engineering teams got interested in because we're talking code and
what platforms and things like that. So there are, I think, different ways in which you can engage them.
But to your point, the more people you can bring along internally along that journey, I think the easier it becomes for marketing to shift, change, and evolve a brand. And to your point, evolve it over a long term. It doesn't snap change overnight. It is something that is a [00:22:00] evolution and something that we mustn't forget particularly when we've announced the Magic rebrand and think it might stop there.
It unfortunately doesn't.
Sarah: No, this is start. It's the start. It's always the start
Ash Lockett: Exactly. Which I think brings us nicely to talk about brand a bit more, and I think it, it seems to be the topic on everyone's list. And w- we were both at MadFest recently, and I think I heard the word brand and talking about brand stories and from brand perspectives more often than I have done.
And granted that's in a retail FMCG consumery type arena. But we are seeing it more and more in B2B. It is being seen as that critical growth driver for businesses, particularly in generating long-term demand. And I think it's something that has been undervalued within B2B marketing, where we've been caught in performance marketing, delivering MQL reports for the quarterly reports or QBRs. and we really have, have that drive to generate leads at pretty much all costs. I've been [00:23:00] there. I've been caught in this trap at a scale-up where I was reporting on every single metric under the sun to prove that I was generating leads. Um, Successfully navigated through this trap by doing what you call the grit work, I think you quoted. Which is the u- unexciting fundamentals. I'd love for you to explain a bit more around grit work and what you think unexciting fundamentals are that are needed currency with internal stakeholders to invest in brand campaigns and what you do.
Sarah: I guess at the end of the day, grit work is all the stuff that doesn't maybe make you famous in a business, and probably takes up a large chunk of your time. And for me, and over my career, I've always thought about it as really the, the hard yards in a business that builds you the trusts the trust proves the value, and does it before anyone else asks.
I think my team would probably call me the queen of a pilot [00:24:00] because, ' cause I love the word pilot and I use it a lot, and I have used it a lot in, in my current role, or my role that I've just finished up. And really that's because so often it's hard to get stuff across the line. And some of that actually a lot of it's the grit work.
And I think if you keep trying to push stuff uphill, and the big meat, meaty pieces, you really burn yourself out. And so I've now lived the philosophy of when there is something that needs to be done that maybe isn't super sexy, when you know that there is maybe a smaller piece of work that's a foundational piece that needs to be done, try and run it as a pilot.
Run it like a small experiment. And [00:25:00] then demonstrate results, and then use that to build. So when I'm talking kind of grit work, I'm talking block by block, and the way to kinda build those blocks is through, test, learn, pivot, find champions, build the credibility in a business, find the people that will speak up for you.
Marketing is shocking at s- talking about their successes or I've found that generally. We'd always be communicating everyone else's success and not communicating our own success. So sometimes the way to make it easier was to find the champions for these small pilots so that you build the foundations.
And then they tell oth- other people about the work being done, and then you start to build those foundations, so you build more and more trust. That then longer term means that potentially you can do some of the bigger pieces of [00:26:00] work
Ash Lockett: Yeah. So basically, say you have and correct me if I'm wrong and I've understood this. if you have like a, and y- and I'm one of these people that have a great big brave idea that I want to execute for clients. And I have them regularly. I'm one of these people that doesn't stop thinking and thinking of different ways we can do things.
But I guess to your point, break it down. Where can you start that's small, that's a small win that can prove some form of value? It might bleed into actually getting some of that foundational elements right across the marketing function to bring that to life, get those small wins going, build that momentum, and then you can build up to, okay let's go this.
Whilst along the way, you'll probably learn a thing or two around whether that campaign's gonna work. Pivot, change, make sure that it's gonna appeal to people. Would that be about right?
Sarah: Yeah, and build the, and there's build the champions and advocates that support your work as well, so that when you go in and maybe you need to ask for a bit more money or maybe the next thing you wanna do means you need, [00:27:00] new operating tool, you've got people that will back you in the conversation as well.
So it's not just marketing doing stuff, it's marketing driving change and growth in the business alongside the business and understanding the business and the process
Ash Lockett: Have you got any examples you could share to bring this to life a little bit? One of the-
Sarah: Oh, lots of, lo- lots of examples. So some of them I probably don't wanna talk about 'cause other people externally will hear this. But primarily because, marketing jobs are tough, and we feel like a lot of the time that everyone's saying no or not believing in what we're doing.
We had a particular vertical at Boldyn that we knew that we could do some great campaign work around. But we had some incredibly dubious sales reps that didn't feel... Not that we didn't have the right [00:28:00] intelligence and the, the approach was right, they were just more skeptical and felt their way of a- approaching the opportunity was gonna gain more traction.
So in- instead of us turning it into the f- kind of full-blown campaign that we were looking to do, we tackled one or two kinda key targets. So rather than biting off kind of a larger set of customers in the vertical, we did a small subset and tested the campaign with them and built some really good results that we delivered back into that sales team.
And one particular sales lead who was dubious about the effect of the campaign delivered those results back. They then became support for the next phase in taking that campaign wider. And since that [00:29:00] person, the person that was our biggest naysayer about our work, has now become our biggest advocate, and when there are other times that we were looking to do and run campaigns, we'd be able to touch on them to be able to talk through and share what we'd done to support their business line and support it.
So that it was not just again marketing driving the business and the revenue. It was marketing and sales driving the business and revenue and being able to round back for future campaigns as well
Ash Lockett: Yeah, I think when you can overcome a, someone that's a kind of an objector and might turn them into a champion, that's probably one of the strongest advocates you can have to help influence the business. I think that's pretty cool. A- and I think starting small, like you say, I think marketing is a load of pilots and experiments in my view.
It's part science, part creative magic. And I think Rory Sutherland calls it fat tail. [00:30:00] You'll do loads of, run loads of different experiments, one will pay off, and it'll deliver exponential returns that you might not have been expecting. And I think that's kind of the point of how you bring people along on the journey.
You have to run those different experiments, show them the- share their results, get their kind of feedback, buy-in, engagement in the th- in the whatever you're looking to run and know that it might not be perfect first time, but work with them to improve and optimize it. I think that's super important to showing the ROI of, o- what marketing can do.
Which then kind of brings me onto the next thing. And particularly when you think of brand and when you're looking at doing those big brand campaigns or even those small kind of pilots, ROI is a term that gets floated around so often. But actually for me I find it difficult to track and measure the impact of brand, right?
Because it can't be something that's done in a 90-day attribution window. It's often got a long-term time horizon. The buyer journeys are not [00:31:00] linear. So whilst you might have a brand campaign going off over here, they might have a conversation over here, but which would've been influenced but not tracked in a CRM system. How did you go about proving the ROI on these, these pilots, these big brand campaigns? What was it that you were looking to measure or track, or how did you get sales to feel like they were being a success?
Sarah: So I'm gonna answer it in two parts, what you just asked. So the first one, and I wanna correct your language slightly, I would stop talking about brand campaigns. So you can talk campaigns, but I think as soon as you say... you kinda said it when you asked the question. As soon as you say brand campaign, everyone thinks short term.
'Cause, campaign is, might be a one-month campaign or a three-months campaign or a six-months campaign. Campaign has a, a [00:32:00] timeframe, and campaign has an ROI. So I think as soon as you put the word brand and campaign together, you're already doing yourself a disservice because brand is so much bigger than that.
And, brand is around your reputation, it's around credibility, it's around business value. You're talking trust you're talking consideration, which obviously drives sales and you're talking the internal piece. So you know, I talked a, a lot already about, culture and pride and that's important with brand.
So I think For me, I al- have always tackled brand. I'm gonna tackle ROI in a minute, so don't worry, I'm not gonna not get there, and I'm not, like, escaping it. But I just think we need to be really careful because The way that I really believe that we should be thinking about brand is more of a full business driver and all the [00:33:00] aspects.
And it's never a cam- campaign, it's the overarching being for a business. And it what... it's what drives, sales and trust and long time... long-term growth. And, from a marketing perspective, you can bring it to life, and sometimes it may be through part of a campaign, but it'll also be through, your comms and your PR and your stakeholder management, and could be government relations if you're dealing with government and all those aspects.
So I think I've always been really careful not to talk brand campaign because I think it's time-bound, and I think it's hard to measure. Now, I think you can obviously measure brand and you can think about it from, the, the awareness and consideration piece. I think there's, a big bit around the valuation of a [00:34:00] brand, and especially in the, the land of M&A.
There's that aspect. But I think it's part of the story around how you measure success. And what I actually did when we... when I was at Boldyn, is I ran a piece of work around moving from vanity metrics to value metrics. And the way that I looked at this, so one I sat down, I actually sat down with finance and I sat down with our strategy team, and I looked at the, the business strategy and business goals, and then looked at that alongside, the revenue targets and the numbers.
And then looked at what are those marketing metrics and how do they drive towards those? And created a model around awareness, which, was some of the, the brand aspects. And then, so it was awareness and demand generation, which led through into revenue and aligned with the strategic business goals.
[00:35:00] And a way for the marketing team to still think about their marketing metrics, because you still need marketing metrics. Don't get me wrong here, you need marketing metrics because that's how you see what's working, what's not working, how you improve, and making sure that your marketers clearly know their job to be done.
But then it's extending it further and thinking about how do some of those targets, whether it's, And I could talk through metrics till the cow comes home. You've got- Your leads, you've got cost per lead, you've got conversion, engagement metrics. There, there's a whole lot. But how do they actually lead through into the, the actual revenue link?
So we were looking at revenue to target marketing source revenue, influence revenue, closed won, won rates, and average days to close. And then we were linking that through to looking at, how were we looking at recurring revenue? How were we looking at deal [00:36:00] velocity? And then also looking at how we were diversifying customers and solutions.
So we were linking it together, but I never specifically was looking at it from a one cam- campaign only. I think, I was thinking about it in terms of brand being how does it help us enter new markets? How does this improve win rates? How does it attract talent? How does it strengthen our customer relationships?
And making sure that, those marketing metrics could line with the business metrics, and it was wrapped around together. So hopefully that kinda answers your question, but I guess I looked at, the two pieces together, but also never as just a campaign because a campaign, as I said is time-bound and marketing job is about business growth.
And yes, there are time-bound campaigns and you measure that and you use your marketing impacts on that, but you've got that [00:37:00] longer term view that needs to align with the business strategy
Ash Lockett: I've definitely learned something today, not to use the word campaign so much. I think that's just where I've been brought up in agency life. and everything's a campaign 'cause it's got a scope of work attached to it. But I agree, like brand... When you're thinking of a brand, it's often a longer time horizon, like two, four years. You see particularly in the consumer world, they'll run brand advertising or brand messaging or brand positioning over a number of years until it gets cut through. So I do agree that it is that long h- term, time horizon. I agree that the impact of marketing can never be put down to a single activity channel or kind of tactic. It's the amalgamation of everything that drives influence, that drives the cost per lead down, or that drives the, the cost of acquisition down, or whatever the other metrics you might be tracking are. deal velocity being a big one, I think. [00:38:00] So I think it is the amalgamation of everything that, that provides that influence. And I think that there might be a... I know when I was definitely head of global marketing I used to have these dashboards full of metrics, to your point. There was metrics that inundated the board, and they had no idea what I did because I just threw loads of numbers at them. It was something that I learnt the hard way. So I think you sitting down with finance and sales, and actually figuring out the metrics that you were responsible for is a really good lesson for a l- a lot of people. 'Cause it's hard. Because there are so many metrics, it is determining the ones that are right for your business and the business outcomes that you're driving.
Sarah: And I think the other knock-on effect as well of sitting down with other stakeholders and not making it insular to marketing is that, one, you're educating other areas on the business around what you do and what, how you can impact the business. But again, it goes back to my point I made earlier around, but then you've ended up with other advocates.
So when you're, in [00:39:00] a room and someone's maybe challenging your budget, you've got other people that will stick up and say actually, there's a rationale and a methodology behind this, and, by do- by pulling these levers, we're helping drive this business growth." And again, you're building advocates in the process as well as creating a much more robust model
Ash Lockett: And I've got a little question around that. As you were talking to finance and sales and defining those metrics, w- were there crossover metrics with sales? Or did you have defined metrics for marketing and defined metrics for sales?
Sarah: So we, so I had defined metrics for my marketers that worked towards the business commercial targets, and I... So sales had a clear mandate around what they needed to deliver, and then I [00:40:00] committed to a certain part being contributed by marketing. So that was us putting our hand up and saying, "Yes, we can help the business with this amount of revenue."
Ash Lockett: Cool. 'Cause often I find the sales and marketing relationship is one that fascinates me because it's different everywhere you go. and we ultimately do completely different things. And it's, the amount of talk around metrics and what we're responsible for and what sales are responsible for and where that crossover lies I, I just find fascinating.
Technically should we be... was a conversation I was listening to the other day around should we be responsible for delivering leads, or should we be responsible for influencing kind of the opportunities? in regards to a salesperson's gonna go out and capture leads as well, and they can always claim that there's, it's theirs. and how much marketing can actually drive is an interesting one because are they doing [00:41:00] the contact us form? Is that where the handover is? Is that classed as like a measurable value, or is it just someone that's interested for now and might circle back? So the sales team still has a lot of role to play to qualify them.
I just find it a really interesting where that handover lies and
Sarah: Yeah, and look, I think it it's an art, not a science. Maybe some people would tell me off for that. And it's a lot to do with the relationship you have with sales, and it's a lot to do with different verticals, and there is no s- I don't believe there's one set formula. I do believe that tr- aligning both sales and marketing with the business revenue and not turning it into a nitpicking, "You're meant to lead- deliver 20 leads, and you only delivered 12 leads."
That doesn't achieve anything. So if you're both to... working towards the same revenue goal, if you both don't hit the same revenue [00:42:00] goal, then you both haven't hit your numbers. So I think it's trying to align your targets as best you can as well and not having it as a us and them target.
I think that's the other kind of big watch-out
Ash Lockett: Yeah, definitely. Okay. Let's change gear quickly here. 'Cause obviously you talked about developing your brand and using AI to do part of that. And obviously it wouldn't be a marketing communications podcast or even conversation if AI wasn't mentioned and took a bit of kind of the conversation. y- what I read around that is you were a bit of a pioneer when it came to using AI within the marketing function specifically for generated, that AI-generated imagery to build the visual identity of Boldyn Networks. So could you tell me a bit more about that? What did you do and how did you go about it, and ultimately did it work?
Sarah: Yeah. So it's funny that we sort of-- I mean, everyone talks about AI now, but four years ago, it's funny, isn't it? Only four years ago, [00:43:00] it was like, it was just starting to be dabbled with a little bit. And in part... So key part with the brand and what we try and do we had already at this point thought about our purpose.
So everything started with the purpose that I spoke about earlier, and then we really wanted to show how we could differentiate ourself in market. We're, hugely important and big projects globally around the world. But, in terms of the size of the business We had to, in some respects, compete with the big telcos when we were never gonna be that big.
So we needed to be different. That was gonna be our way to cut through. And it was actually working with our brand agency, and that was very early days around playing with some of the AI tools, and a, a lot of the work was actually done on Midjourney. And they They came to us and said would we be comfortable having a bit of explore to see what was possible?"
And as [00:44:00] soon as I remember the very first presentation we had, they had some of the AI work, because actually the work before they'd presented, and I was like, could literally cover up the brand on this, and it could be any telco. I was like it's not gonna fly. We need something that brings to life our purpose.
So we're talking interconnected future, and at the base of that kind of the creative idea was the interwovenness that, if you think about networks and cities and connectivity and the inter- interconnectedness, we wanted to play with that. And the f- the first pieces of work they showed me around the AI, some of the AI tools, I was just blown away.
And I was like... I saw straight away that this was completely different to anything that was sitting out in market, and that it was brave and that it would get us the cut-through. As I mentioned, I hadn't even thought about the engineering piece. I did think it was really important as a technology business to be using technology to bring to life our brand.
But, I hadn't thought all the way through down to our [00:45:00] people, and I should have, so that was a learning for me. And I think the other big bit that I thought would be fantastic is I think many of you know in B2B marketing we normally have very tight budgets and multiple markets, and we have to create, distinct assets, and they have to scale globally but work locally.
And so I saw AI as a way for us to be able to very quickly pivot and change and create new visuals that were unique and flexible and ownable. I think that was really important, ownable. And do it in, in a quick and timely way. And what I've discovered along the process was actually doing it in AI made it 10 times harder, and no tool created the same style ever again.
Even if you put the same prompts in, things always slightly changed. It was really hard to work with. We're also working in the land, there's a few cases starting to come up around copywriting. So I think something that we thought would make our lives easier probably made it harder, but I don't think we ever would've changed the fact that we'd built it on [00:46:00] AI and that it helped to bring it to life.
And look, you know- And just, the purpose still was the purpose. AI was never the idea. AI was a, a way to bring our life to i- bring to life the idea. So I think that was really important. But it, it created that really distinctive visual look that helped gre- bring, the cut-through in market.
And actually, we did research not that long ago and we were sitting at aided awareness of 50%, which they benchmarked against other telcos. And for a two-year-old telco brand, you'd be looking at maybe 15 to 20, 25% at most, and we were sitting at 50%. We'd cr- we'd really put a lot of effort into kind of the awareness piece and getting that cut-through, and AI was a really important tool to help us do that
Ash Lockett: And I think that's super important 'cause I think B2B is probably the least distinctive category, B2B tech, right? You can go onto almost any website, take out the [00:47:00] logo, put someone else's on, and they all look pretty similar. I think actually creating a distinctive brand and what you guys did was really different and made it stand out from competitors, from the market, and that makes you memorable, right?
And to your point, no one has unlimited budgets, th- particularly to spend on brand visual identity, which is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. It takes a lot of designers hou- design hours to get those kind of carefully crafted assets. But we're seeing, but and we're seeing it more and more that actually you can use AI to get your own assets, your own distinctive identity.
The way you prompt, the way you create it, the organizational context that you provide it can make things uniquely yours.
Sarah: Needs a lot of human intervention though. I think that's the bit that it- to get that differentiation and to get it where you need it, there is a ... And I think that's the b- people forget that bit. There's a lot of work that has to go [00:48:00] on behind the scenes from people, and iterations and prompts and everything to be able to create that really distinct look
Ash Lockett: So I imagine like that it's a good starting point, provided the starting visuals create something a bit more unique. You have your human layer that adds a level of creativity on top, and then you're feeding the loop constantly to get to the end goal.
You can't just give it a prompt, let it run and it's a brand. And actually to pivot slightly, and I think this is because AI is being used more and more particularly around marketing teams, it's touted as that time saver, but are we seeing... Without that cr- the human element, right? That comes in, the human layer starting to see more and more AI slop.
We're starting to see more people just publish what it gives back to them. Something that I don't think is going anywhere, purely because most AI deployments aren't getting that organizational context layer, aren't having that human in the loop they're [00:49:00] just getting pushed out, which is an aggregation of what the internet thinks anyway. Do you think it makes it more important for brands as we go through this process, as more people use AI to come up with something that's distinctive, that's something that's bold, something that's human-centric to really stand out? Are we gonna see that become more and more critical as we try, as we use more and more AI within our workflows, tactics and identities?
Sarah: Yes. I, I think the big thing is AI makes content creation easier. I think we all know that you can do things faster, 10 times more, like... and you can understand audiences and target it and... But I d- I don't think it's making originality easier in any way, shape, or form. And interestingly, I was at an event, oh, a few months ago, and someone was talking about building a brand, and they had been more recently building their brand using AI.
And [00:50:00] they built their brand, and three months... It was one month... It was one week before they were about to launch, and they'd done the work on AI three months earlier, and I think someone was playing around something or testing something and they realized that what had been created around their brand was being generated and used by someone else So AI, yeah.
So they pivoted and changed aspects and things like that. And we're not talking exactly, right? But
Ash Lockett: close enough
Sarah: yes, because they'd obviously put in similar things and been said s- fed similar information, and by the time they actually went to launch, someone else was already out there using some of the s- the similar aspects.
So because AI only knows what AI knows, and it doesn't necessarily [00:51:00] have that level of creativity that, humans have. So I think there's a real risk that we lose all originality and all creative thinking from work if, if it was just from AI. So then our superpower becomes how, we add that level o- of thinking and how we can be distinctive and how we can cut through how we're adding unique perspectives to what we're doing, the insights, the bravery, the emotional resonance.
There, there's lots of different things that you can kinda harness to try and create that distinctiveness, but I do think it's gonna become important alongside trust. So for me, it has to be the distinctiveness alongside trust. Because, the more and more content that you're gonna get served up you're gonna look for the signals and the, the things that you trust instinctively, 'cause it goes back to my be [00:52:00] the human.
It's, we're all people and if we have to make a decision, you're gonna go to the aspects that you can trust. And that's gonna become really important. So I think that's, yes, the bravery and distinctiveness is important alongside ensuring that you're building trust as well, 'cause that's gonna become really important within decisions
Ash Lockett: Yeah I think so. A-and I think it's telling that a lot of the LLMs, and the AI that we're leaning on more and more go to humans for that trust element. It's why they prioritize Reddit and LinkedIn in citations. It's why Google's built that EAT framework, which is experience, expertise, authority, and trust.
It's all leaning towards we need more human input and the human opinion and human creativity to deliver a trusted answer to our prompter. And I think it's no different from a brand's perspective. We need to be more human. We need to celebrate and champion our humans in our campaign [00:53:00] or our marketing strategies. And we need to make brands more human and stand out. And I think we shouldn't be looking for shortcuts with AI. We should be looking for ways in which AI enables us to be more creative and to your point, leans into our superpowers and hopefully stops us turning mundane.
You've obviously been using, like I said, you- you've built some of the visual identity through AI, and I've no doubt you're using it through different parts of your role. I guess for those looking to implement it more widely into the marketing function, what were the kind of key lessons you learnt from utilizing it?
Sarah: So biggest piece of advice I can give anyone that from my perspective is start with the problem or the pain point Then look at what technology might help. I think, we're... All you have to do is open your LinkedIn or your Instagram or anything, just spammed with so many AI tools. It [00:54:00] reminds me of, ten years ago when it, we were constantly contacted about every, I don't know, martech tool possible, right?
And we overstacked our martech stacks and had all these tools, and then none of them talked to each other, and then the next tools became the ones that talked to each other. So they ended up with another layer of tools that talked to the ones that you already purchased. And now we're just adding an o- an AI overlay on top, and then everyone goes, "Oh, but wait a minute.
This tool doesn't... This AI bit of a tool doesn't talk to another AI bit of a tool. So then wait a minute we need another AI tool that makes sure that everything talks together." It's a giant mess. So the way that I tackled it when I was working through kind of AI and the marketing team was putting all the marketers together.
I put them all together and I said, "What are the pain points we wanna solve? Don't tell me what technology might solve it. Don't d- go down that route, but tell me what actually you're looking to solve and where we can [00:55:00] add the most value back to marketing and what we do, but also the business."
And then we can look at the technology that can enable that, and ensuring we're bringing in the right tools for the right job, not just because we got sold a shiny toy that looks really exciting and does a whole lot of stuff. Thinking alongside, the technology teams because, every technology team I've spoken to says everybody in the business wants every single tool.
You can't... They can't do everybody's requests. Building that plan and that strategy alongside technology team and getting their buy-in. We approached it from a crawl, run... crawl, walk, run kind of model. Reality is nobody can absorb information. They can do it fast, but not at the speed of light.
You can't give them three tools to use on top of their day job. How do you gradually ro- roll out a full kind of, tech stack? Thinking about champions in amongst that as well. But taking your team [00:56:00] along on the journey at the same time. So it's not something that's done to them, it's something they've helped build.
They helped solve. They said these were their problems, and now you've built a model and a plan to help, make their lives easier. So I think that, that's really important when you're thinking AI. Think about that, what are the problems you actually wanna solve, and then you can kinda work out the longer term solution to solve them.
Ash Lockett: Yeah. I actually heard this in probably the best way from, we're working with a, an AI consultant at the moment as, obviously we are looking to adopt all the different kind of ways in which we can improve the way we work with AI. And she said, "You need to start with the problem, not with the tool that's looking for a problem to solve." 'Cause all these tools are out there trying to look for your problems to latch onto to sell you. Whereas, really if you start with the tool, it's just, gonna create, like you say, an overtech- overstacked martech Whereas if you start with the problem, [00:57:00] you'll probably find that you'll streamline some of those tools and find that there's one or two that'll do the job more than the five or six that, that you currently had. I've always enjoyed streamlining a tech stack, but I find it so difficult in this world where there's a new shiny toy for almost anything today
Sarah: And they'll find a problem. Don't you worry, these tools will find you a problem so they can sell to them. You've gotta think about, what do you do every day as a marketer? These people are doing the same to you
Ash Lockett: They are honestly, like Salesforce, HubSpot and the likes are some of the best marketers in the land, and they know how to sell a solution to you. All right. I think we've covered heaps of ground here today and I always like to try and leave everyone with a bit of kind of actionable takeaways, things that they can hear today and they can implement tomorrow. So we'll have a little bit of a change of pace to end with. A few quick-fire questions. So I'll start with this one. What is one widely accepted B2B marketing rule you think our listeners should bravely ignore starting tomorrow?
Sarah: Hopefully by the end of this [00:58:00] they know how I would answer that question. That B2B marketing isn't B2B. B2B marketing is B2 human, and you need to think about the person at the other end. It's not just, about that one kind of product set. It's not just about, that, that solution only.
It's about the individual at the other end, and it's about talking to them on what makes them tick
Ash Lockett: Yeah, no, I think that's definitely come through today. Mine's like, don't talk about campaigns anymore.
Sarah: C- you can. Like they have a place, but I'm just saying that, the word campaign to a lot of people has a ti- is a time-bound and hard ROI. So it's part of the puzzle, not the whole thing, I think is
Ash Lockett: Oh, I've
Sarah: what I'd say
Ash Lockett: learned that lesson there. next one. If a PR or marketing professional listening to this wants to be 10% braver in their job tomorrow morning, what is the first thing they should do when they open their [00:59:00] laptop?
Sarah: So I guess I'd say to you, send the email, make the call, share the idea. Most people I talk to, it's not-- people aren't limited by their capability, they normally just hesitate. Working with my team, they'll have great ideas, but they get waylaid by something else more urgent, or they don't think their idea is quite good enough, or it's not shaped up enough.
I think, just don't hesitate. And it goes back to the whole idea of the, the podcast. Be brave. I think some of the biggest opportunities for me have come when I've been willing to have a conversation that maybe everyone else was avoiding. So yeah, don't hesitate
Ash Lockett: I think one of the things that I'll do when I open my laptop tomorrow or later this afternoon, is ping my CFO to talk to them about the marketing metrics that we need to be tracking have that conversation. It's always a conversation that I've always tried to feed the CFO the answer rather than actually working backwards. So th- these are the kind of benchmark marketing metrics we should track, but [01:00:00] rather than actually speaking to them and going what is it that you wanna track? How do we bring these metrics into those overarching narratives?" So I'll be doing that later. And on the topic of internal stakeholders, where do you think PR and marketing professionals need to be braver in their roles when dealing with internal stakeholders?
Sarah: Yeah. So I guess at the end of the day, I'd have to say stop behaving like a support function as marketing. That's the biggest thing. And start behaving like a strategic business partner. And just like you alluded to with the conversation you are gonna have tomorrow, don't go in and say, this is my marketing numbers and this is how I'm supporting," but start talking and thinking like a, a business partner and how you're gonna help grow the business.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't listen. Don't get me wrong here, I think marketing needs to listen. But we also need to have our own ideas. And we need to challenge assumptions, and sometimes disagree with, different things happening in the business and present [01:01:00] different perspectives around things.
So I think for me, I've learned over my career to be confident in the ideas I have and listen and challenge, but remember that marketing can help grow the business and be confident in that understanding, and I think that's really important.
Ash Lockett: Definitely. And that kind of moves me nicely onto the last question I have. What's the best piece of practical advice you've received, and how did you bring it to life day to day?
Sarah: I had a, a, a boss a number of years ago and I don't know if I properly delved into it enough and, but I think I really did kinda harness it a lot more as I got more confidence. I think don't get me wrong, confidence doesn't happen overnight. I touched on it before, but I think confidence happens over time.
But I think the more you're brave and realize that you can put yourself out there then it comes. But I think with that, don't wait for permission to create [01:02:00] value. And it goes back to the point I just said as well, marketing is there to help drive growth. Think about, what problem you're seeing and think about the solution and show what's possible before anyone asks you to do it, and that's about being a, a business leader, not just a support function too.
And then through doing that, you'll earn trust. And then over time, that will build through to your credibility and your influence and the growth and the ability to do what you want to do for yourself personally, and also to be able to ensure that marketing really delivers in a business.
So yeah don't wait for permission to create value. If you've got something that you really believe will change things and, drive things forward, then find a way to do it and build the respect you need and the stakeholders you need and, yeah, go forth and conquer.
Ash Lockett: Do those pilots and experiments, build that [01:03:00] trust
Sarah: Yeah. Don't do anything radical. Let's be, let's be cra- don't be... we're not doing anything super crazy here. But yeah, 'cause when I say, don't ask for permission you do need to ask for permission sometimes, but, just back yourself a bit. Yeah. Back yourself a bit.
Ash Lockett: Budgets involved
Sarah: yeah
Ash Lockett: To us bravery doesn't mean reckless. It's being,
Sarah: Yes
Ash Lockett: in the confines and the guardrails of the business of the organisation and that needs to be adhered to. Couldn't agree more with that. Even though I do love a big, brave, creative idea.
Sarah: But that's not reckless. That's not reckless, just to clarify. It's not reckless.
Ash Lockett: I've really enjoyed the conversation as always, and I think there's lots of takeaways from this. So yeah, big thank you for taking part
Sarah: My absolute pleasure. It's been really good to chat today