The Consensus Engine: Debbie Kestin Schildkraut on AI, Community, and Influence in B2B Buying

Hello and welcome to the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Lee Odin, CEO of Top Rank Marketing. And today our guest is a force of nature in the B2B marketing world. Beyond her 26 years in marketing leadership roles at IBM, she's a community builder, a board member, an advocate, and according to LinkedIn, also a cabaret singer.

And for the past few years, She's worked at the ANA, the Association of National Advertisers, where she was recently promoted to VP Global B2B Program Lead and CMO Global Growth Counsel. Of course, I'm talking about Debbie Kestin Schildkraut. Welcome to the show, Debbie. Thank you, Lee.

So excited to be here. Great, it's great to have you. It's great to have you. Yeah, what an intro, right?

em And it doesn't even scratch the surface of the depth and breadth of your experience in the industry and the things that you're making happen. So I'm really excited to have you on the show. ah Let's kick things off with one of my favorite questions, and that is, you know, way back in the beginning, how did you, what is your marketing origin story? Like, how did you get into B2B marketing in the first place?

Yeah, no, it's an interesting journey. originally was going to study uh music therapy, being a musician. You already revealed that I'm a cabaret singer or a singer. And my parents, of course, wanted me to do something more practical, where I would earn money and have a consistent income and really encouraged me to have a business degree.

And they were really pushing me on accounting, which I... could do but found it terribly boring. Sorry, accountants out there, we need you. So I was talking to a classmate who was a year older than me and she was a marketing student and she said, You know, if you are really into people and you wanted to do music therapy to help others, she goes, marketing is really understanding people and you should really consider that.

So I always love a challenge. I um took all the core requirements to get into the school of business at the university where I attended, got in um and proceeded to then double major in music and marketing to my parents surprise. So I think I graduated with 167 credits or something insane like that. Not a lot of overlap.

in music and marketing, but I did have some really fun internships at like MTV and other places like that, which really leveraged the combination of forces. But I got involved in the American Marketing Association chapter at my school, became a vice president of that and was part of a. kind of a uh pre-MBA honors program where we got to build a business plan. And I just got exposure to kind of looking at the marketing arena.

had my first couple of jobs were actually on the agency side of the world. In New York City, I worked on brands including um SAP, IBM and Sony. I was tapped to go from one agency to another because uh IBM was looking for people with consumer electronics. experience and understanding and I'd worked on Sony, all of Sony's brands.

So that led me to an IBM agency. And then when IBM consolidated their agencies to Ogilvy back in the day, I interviewed at Ogilvy and they said, you have to meet the IBM client. And that brought me client side to IBM, as you said, for a better part of my life. you know, IBM, I actually worked in both B2C and B2B marketing when I first got there.

I was brought in as a professional hire to lead channel marketing and it was really first to understand how to be successful in the PC space, which was so challenging and so commoditized very quickly. ah But I also worked in the commercial space and then obviously IBM sold off the PC division and then it was really all that B2B from there forward. Wow. Fantastic.

You know, we've had a chance to talk before this and you had described yourself as an entrepreneur. And I'm wondering if you could kind of drill down a little more into that. What does that mean in your experience? interestingly, it was something that I didn't really think about for a long time.

And I think it was maybe three years ago, I was talking to another industry person where that terminology was something that we kind of talked about a little bit. And it was like this realization that even though I worked at IBM for so long, it was a very atypical experience. Like most people are in very traditional roles, like product marketing or systems engineer or what have you, right? Various aspects of marketing.

But every one of my job roles, except for maybe when I was chief of staff for one of the CMOs, was a newly created role. And that was kind of, I realized, like kind of you reflect on your career arena and then especially when you shift roles, that that was my, that was what I did. I was always in a newly created role. And I think what that had to do with was first of all, I learned a lot about channel marketing, integrated channel marketing from a woman.

She's now passed away, but, uh, she died too young, but she was this amazing pioneer in channel marketing. name was Sheila Sasser. And that was an expertise I learned from her that I was specifically brought in to implement at IBM. And we hadn't done anything like that before.

And, um, and, and it was for me right away, you know, learning about sales alignment to marketing and really figuring out how to go serve the customer better and understanding. like what are the challenges? So it's having certain skill sets that can work in unstructured environments and each time I did one of those new roles, it was really about understanding the pain points and being curious and asking questions and bringing whoever the customer was or the partners were together to understand how to solve their, how to explore solving problems and being a builder.

So with channel marketing, was like starting channel marketing. And there was a big IBM channel conflict issue when I came into IBM. IBM sold direct to but they also had business partners that sold to customers and they were tripping over each other. So how do you address that?

How do you remove those conflict points? So first of have to of course explore that internally and work with the internal systems to say, look, we're hurting ourselves, but then it's also building that trust with your partners and really putting proof in the pudding of when we say we wanna partner with you, they're like, okay, but you're taking my business away. How do you address that? So I launched a very innovative um channel marketing ad campaign that was in CRN, is the technology kind of number one still is, magazine out online, sometimes printed, I still get it in the mail every now and then.

What's the most red? You know publications, what's the most read sections of those publications? Where are we going to find people where they can't miss our messaging and created this eightfold campaign and anyway, it led me to then build a partner program for IBM be one of the key people doing that um I then led and launched an innovation center program for one of our brands and that was so successful that I was then asked to do that cross brand across all the IBM brands and launched a hundred centers globally.

And then that led me to start building these other communities and these other new roles like distributors. Distributors are the notorious pardon the expression middlemen. And IBM had 140 distributors globally who kind of felt irrelevant. It was like, They managed thousands of our partners collectively, but what were we doing to help them care about IBM versus our competitors?

And what were we doing to equip them and engage them? So again, it became building this community of how to support our global distributors. And then that went on to other things that I did, digital marketing, workshops, empowering our business partners to be able to sell uh more effectively and so on and so forth. So ultimately, It's the magic is about being a change agent, a problem solver and a community builder.

And as I mentioned, this name kind of came up, you know, a couple of years ago. I also took, I don't know if you're familiar with the table group, but the table group came out with these working genius assessments. So for fun, you know, a bunch of us at work did that. And my outcome was the adaptive designer.

And it was so in line, right? Because it was really about understanding how to address issues and change as needed and not just being stuck in like, is how we do things, but also designing and building things that are going to take impact and be effective. Well, if there was a time for a skill as a change agent, I can't imagine one more uh important than right now because of so much change happening in the world, bringing order to chaos and having your sensibility of understanding channels of distribution and the notion of community and the political aspects of getting alignment.

mean, these are all really central to the notion of change agent, right? You have to understand opportunities, but also have to understand the moving parts that are necessary to align in order to make things happen. pick up on that. that's impressive.

How do you think those skills are important for people who are in the middle of their journey in their career right now? So what I'm thinking about is we published this, Marketers on the Move. When you were promoted, I'd I've reached out and asked for some career advice that you could share with other folks. And I'm just wondering, is there career advice you can share about being an entrepreneur?

Is that relevant for folks who are in the middle of their career, in the market, middle of their marketing career right now? I absolutely think so. I believe in that. um It's just kind of how I function though.

So I'm a little biased in that view. But yeah, from my perspective, I think yes. mean, I think part of it is we get so caught up in how things are done, right? And then falling in line and making sure that we're not breaking glass, right?

And um you have to be able to just kind of open the aperture and just kind of say, okay, look, how can I be most effective? not just like in my career, but to make that impact for others, right? And if you want to grow in your career and you want to be successful at impacting business in a positive way, you have to be able to ask questions. so being curious, asking questions, not being afraid to ask questions, I think that's a big barrier.

People are afraid of looking foolish. So it's really important to be able to be thoughtful, ask questions. um You know, look at, there better ways to do something that we're doing now? You know, like I took over a digital content management and, you know, role at one point and it was such a mess.

And I was like, why is it like this? You know, and when you're working across multiple brands and a matrixed environment, you know, you really need to be able to figure out what are the, you know, probably is going to solve half of this now anyway, but, but, you know, but as a, as the human running things, you really need to look at what's the best way to do this and what do need to do to make it better? Make it more current, make it more. relevant.

So it's really about just looking at things openly and saying if you see something that you think can be done better, don't be afraid. you know, bring that forward to say, I'd like to propose something and then back it up. Like, why do you think that's a better way to do it? And maybe you can design like a little bit of a pilot or a test run.

Like I said, I did an innovation center program for one brand and we saw how much the revenue grew because you allowed customers to play in the sandbox at these innovation centers and see that they're big investments, right? And B2B are not going to, you're not going to spend all this money and then things are going to break, right? You want to know that the technology stack and know, mix is going to work. So we showed that, like we understood the pain points, we tried it with a brand, and then we said, okay, this is scalable, we can take it further.

start small, try a pilot program, and then that can grow into something more meaningful. Well, that's great. as I mentioned, there's a lot of change happening right now. And it's inevitable that we're going to talk about the driver of that change, which of course would be AI.

And I'm just wondering, as part of your role with the oh CMO uh Global Growth Council, what are some of the top challenges as it relates to AI that you're hearing about that CMOs are dealing with? Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely, of course, front and center in almost every conversation. So they're all struggling with, of course, the intensely fast pace that things are moving. um And those in regulated industries are particularly stressed because they feel like their hands are tied a bit more in terms of what they're allowed to do in those kind of environments.

um The CMOS that we're working with, it's not really a question about should we use AI. It's really a matter of whose job is it to govern it, what's the best way to implement it. um And AI touches every part of the marketing function. So again, it do they start small in certain areas and then expand across the marketing function?

Last year, you might recall, I led an initiative at our Masters of B2B Marketing that the ANA ran last June. uh I called it an AI addathon. And it was to show the art of the possible, which is something I've done before, having worked in emerging technologies like blockchain and early AI applications at IBM. And the idea of the AI addathon was to help the CMOs and others see that you could.

I'm not saying it's always the best way, because we are also recognizing the limitations that AI might have in terms of you don't want to fall into the sea of sameness. uh anyway, the idea was to show that you could get marketing insights, do some uh synthetic research to get some insights that are based on real life inputs, but they're kind of quick and insightful. Creative uh development, fine tuning, uh media measurement, media implementation, optimizing the media plan, all of those things within a very condensed period of time.

So of course, the creative brief has to always be your grounding. But how do you then fine tune it with insights that you might get from? your research and from AI. But anyway, most companies haven't really built out the internal accountability structures to govern across the whole scope of what AI can do.

There's definitely a confidence gap. um So what's happening is we're seeing CMOs in all different. places, right? Some that are dabbling, some that are letting their teams dabble, but then they have to kind of figure out how they're going to get that collective learning to really implement optimally.

Some are ory, like they've dove in, they're doing it with various kinds of agentic AI workflows and marketing. So we're seeing really a mix for sure. We're not just talking to them about it, which we are, but we're also partnering with other key organizations to really do research and deep dive into this. we are working, for example, with PwC and with Infosys, who've been doing a lot of research alongside us into this space.

And it's shedding light on things. And when AI is used strategically, not just to cut costs, it really does unlock you know, some significant, you know, business opportunity and business growth. So for example, PWC has been looking at data over the last five years uh across close to 200 companies and found that, you know, they're, uh well, they were analyzing, you know, $1.3 trillion in brand equity was kind of being analyzed.

And so the finding was that companies that excel at marketing, deliver 79 % greater shareholder value than their peers. So you've got to validate marketing as part of this whole mix. And then you've got to validate the AI aspects of it. And the research is pointing to two areas where AI is transforming marketing.

And that includes content lifecycle management. So content, I've seen this happen, and I'm going say where exactly, but sometimes content will just sit and it gets outdated and it gets irrelevant. And so it's really important to manage your content, making sure it stays current, making sure it stays refreshed with any kind of changes that might be happening, particularly when I come from the tech sector. There's constant evolution and change.

That's not a new thing. AI is moving so fast right now, but my whole career in tech, like, you know, tech was constantly moving pretty quickly. So then there's brand governance around that content lifecycle management. So that's one big piece where AI is really transforming marketing.

And I think also, as I was touching on before, the research is showing insights generation. So any given company will do static research. It's a point in time. And so obviously, you want to keep gathering input and keeping pace with the market and keeping pace with.

getting constant input from the market and that insight generation that AI is facilitating, I think, we think, is a game changer as well. I think there's still so much fear about AI replacing jobs because unfortunately we're seeing that happening across industries, but there's a reinvestment imperative, right? So where there are certain efficiencies that are gained, reinvesting those savings into creative quality, human governance rate of the AI, advanced analytics, and capability development of teams, of your marketing teams.

That's where the money should be going because AI isn't staying still either. So when these cuts happen, who's going to help keep track of the AI as its capabilities keep growing and growing and growing and making sure that there isn't this cognitive disconnect in terms of what AI might be doing and what we need to do in marketing to effectively deliver relevant and trusting messages to our constituents. Yeah, there's definitely got to be some orchestration. um I was talking with Dave Franklin from uh Forrester, the research director there.

we were talking about AI doesn't know what good it looks like, right? Humans do. And so you've got to have, if you're implementing AI uh effectively and at scale within an organization, like you say, you've got to reinvest in the people because you've got to close those competence gaps. um But you have to have people who know what good looks like, right?

And you've got to know what the standard is in order to reconcile what the outputs are being efficiently generated by AI and then what's actually going to have impact. And organizationally, that's not as simple as unleashing, as you know, of tools across the department saying, good luck, you know, um because there's this simulation. There's this sort of, I don't know, uh you know, that the AI is willing to please, even if it's at the expense of accuracy and that's a danger. uh So thinking about this, maybe from uh other impacts of AI on marketing, especially, you know, discovery is so fragmented right now.

It used to be all about the Google, you know, or advertising here and there, but now the diverse discovery channel, the diversity of discovery channels that BDB buyers are engaging with is something we have to reconcile. And I think it was McKinsey that had that study. It was probably a couple of years ago now that said BDB buyers consume information and an average of 10 distinct channels, you know, during their journey. Anyway, AI is obviously the fast riser.

And I'm wondering, here's my question for you. um I mean, what are you sensing are the impacts of this fragmentation of discovery. know, like what is it that marketers need to be thinking about um in terms of the ah AI's impact on how buyers are discovering and consuming information. I think traditionally, from a marketing perspective and building personas, people would approach their target audience or their target customer in a very linear way.

um And they need to recognize that discovery, there's a few things going on. First of all, it's very networked. People are. um reaching out to their peers, like for example, the CMO Global Growth Council, we've got these different sub working teams that will focus on B2B or brand or data tech and measurement, et cetera.

Discovery is very networked, right? So people are talking to each other. when we facilitate that through some of the communities, and you just did a wonderful article on communities, there's a lot of knowledge and sharing and influence that happens in those spaces. So there's a bit of a trust architecture that we have to of consider.

There's social validation of information. companies that are getting stuck are the ones that are still kind of going after individual buyers with rational proof points. But they need to think about the full buyer group and they also think need to think about the emotional piece, right? That you're marketing to individuals who have real pain points every day that might be, for their job, of course, their job related ones, but also just like the kind of world that we live in, there's a lot going on.

So, there's a bit of a, and there's more digital discovery, right? So there's the buying cycle and there's the actual kind of sales cycles. mean, there's long sales cycles in B2B, but that discovery cycle is so much longer. And we've been seeing this, I mean, people talking about, I think a little bit more now than they were a few years ago, but we've known for a number of years now that as digital has evolved, B2B buyers are doing a lot of that self discovery online.

5 % of people are ready to buy it maybe in any given moment. We've had that research note that came out. But that other 95%, you've got to be in it for the long game. So how are you going to reach those people in the long game um and build that trust over time for your brand?

And that's going to happen in a variety of ways and through a variety of mixed media models, um whether it's influencer marketing, digital discovery, social media, communities. There's so many pieces that really need to come together. overall, that fragmentation has to kind of go away when you kind of recognize that you're dealing in more of this kind of social validation structure, this digital long game, this brand building effect, customer advocacy, peer groups, all of that is going to build trust.

Because people need to know that there's some kind of risk mitigation. Like how are they going to feel comfortable? um So we have to recognize that as marketers and kind of go at it, you know, with, that understanding. Yeah, know, it's like visibility is no longer enough.

You know, we've got to optimize for that trust. And it makes me think of also, you you talked about, you know, we're marketing to individuals who have their own distinct pain points, even though we're, you know, buying committees might've been three to five people and now it's 15 to 20 and there's all that. And they have their own agendas as it were. But, you know, one thing I think about as far as the role of content in the modern B2B marketing environment is it's no longer enough simply to inform people.

We've got to help them feel something. um So you've got elements like storytelling and more experiential content playing a bigger role if for nothing else to differentiate one brand from another, right? uh You've got to stand out, but then you've also need to be understood. And there also needs to be, it seems like, more consensus that a particular brand is the right choice.

And you talked about that, know, validation, the role validation plays, you know, like you and I might talk about something and then we go to Google or go to GPT and ask about it. And then we come back to each other or someone else and Hey, did you hear about that thing? You know, and that's a process that happens over months and months over many different people. And it's, it's something you can architect.

um but not without data, right? You say you've got to have your fingers on the pulse of data at any given time. You can't just do a uh point in time survey, as it were, and think that's still going to be true six months or nine months from now. And like I said, that's all something one can architect when you have the right system.

um So I want to drill down a little bit more on that idea of building consensus, right? trust and validation amongst these different folks that are either stakeholders for the decision or those who influence the stakeholders, right? And so my question is, what are you seeing, you know, leaders in marketing doing right now um to help those buyers feel more confident that they're making the right choice and that they can defend that choice? Yeah, mean, it's a combination of things.

It's again, taking that not that singular focus, but that broader focus of looking at the full influential team. And I think successful brands will take action in variety of ways. It's really deep diving and understanding those personas. It's the...

throughout that buyer journey, having those touch points to engage and reaffirm. It's building trust through these peer group opportunities, ah having this whole understanding this, the GDC talks a little bit and Dean Aragon, who is our A &A new chairperson over the past year. He's a big proponent of B2H, business to human, right? And so we talk a lot about that within the global growth council because you're not just marketing to specific specs that are needed for a purchase investment.

It's those emotional wins. And so the way you do those emotional wins are, you know, Use cases of course help, but they're not the only way, right? But it's arming your influencers, know, within any given industry, those influencers can be, you know, and I know we want to talk a little bit about that because, know, I've talked about this one a lot, but influencers are a really key um component, not just the peer to peer influence, but the other influencers that come into play in your industry.

So like in tech, all the channel partners that we work with, whether it's a managed service provider, a value-added reseller, one of the hyperscalers who are doing a lot of technology consulting, they all play a role in terms of the expertise that they bring to the table and working with customers to kind of help them understand the market, what works, what doesn't work, and building trust with brands that they are aligned with. So there's a lot of aligned values and mission and proven trust that also comes into the picture as well.

um So I think there's a lot of those pieces that if you have a very thoughtful go to market plan that makes sure that you're hitting on all of those things, it can build that trust and consensus that's really, really needed. Yeah, I think it's interesting how not only is the notion of consensus important amongst a uh group of decision makers that are tasked with procuring a new uh solution of some kind for a business, but when we look at AI even, building consensus is what uh LLM is using to calculate or predict uh who's the right answer.

All right. a prompt or a query. It's like, oh, across earned media, across influential voices, across brand content, and elsewhere, there's a pattern it can detect. And again, that's just something you can architect, but not a lot of folks are thinking about it that way.

And speaking of thinking about, I mentioned before that we do this uh B2B Marketers on the Move series, one of our missions is for editorially and market engagement-wise is to shine a light on talent. And both you and Dagmara have been featured in that, as I mentioned, when you were promoted. And one of the things we do in that series is look at changes in the labor market. And I have a question about changing needs of marketing organizations and how are they changing how they're structured.

I'm kind of wondering, what do you think are the skills and capabilities that marketing leaders, CMOs, need to be prioritizing right now um as they think about how to better structure their organizations for success in this sort of AI influenced age. Yeah, this is a very big topic um for us. So one of the global growth council areas is actually focused specifically on talent. But then even within my B2B cohort, actively talking about it right now, had a meeting about it this week with some CMOs.

um So what the GDC, Global Growth Council talent working team came out with a couple of years ago was a marketing and capabilities framework, marketing and talent capabilities framework. And that looked at, of course, like across the different... kind of marketing skill sets that come into play, what was important. But it was also looking at some of the soft skills, having the right soft skills that people need, not just your more traditional marketing skills.

it's being able to, some things we were talking a little bit before, understanding cultural influence, taking data and turning those into narratives that resonate. understanding cultural influence, like a combination of some of those more soft skills. But of course, AI fluency is like front and center, right? So it's understanding how to ensure your current team is upskilling um and, you know, because you want to...

Ideally retain them, but upskill them and make sure they're optimizing everything new that's kind of coming at us. And also even looking at how you hire new talent. So it's been really interesting. Like one CMO in particular literally told me that he was able to hire an excellent performer out of his IT department and get him moved into the marketing department.

And he's building a sub group within his marketing team that's going to really focus on a lot of this, you know, important data analysis and AI evolution that's coming into play. So there's definitely a lot of organizational marketing structure that's evolving and changing right now. And there's a few other CMOs that we're talking to right now that have done something similar. So I think marketing organizations of today have to look at that AI fluency and ongoing, you know, skill building, data fluency.

is really important. Storytelling, as I mentioned, being able to take the data and translate that into narratives that really resonate. And then of course, there's a lot of the really traditional B2B skills, because again, I got the B2B hat on, account-based marketing. And now there's a bit of an expansion of account-based marketing as we think about buyer groups.

So it's account-based. based marketing with buyer groups, know, and understanding how to kind of leverage those relationships and, you know, best serve them in a strategic kind of focused way. um Channel marketing, as you know, big component of that. And even influencer marketing is growing in the B2B space.

So I think. CMOs as they're looking at these organizations need to take into consideration, you know, a lot of these things as they're fine tuning their structure. And so that's what we're trying to help build with them actually right now as we speak, which is like looking at some new kind of organizational, you know, um optimization that they can be doing that takes all of that into account. Yeah, you know, I've always said that marketing is a team sport, right?

And it's it's uh not just internally, but externally. And, know, you've had such a depth of experience in building communities, right? um Creating a movement, creating resources that allow align people and help them, you know, do advance a cause or or something that they have as in terms of shared interests and that sort of thing. You know, you've, as I mentioned, you've had uh experience in terms of uh community development, um know, IBM, ComTIA, and I'm just wondering, can you talk about the importance of community building for B2B brands?

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely been central to my career, go to market strategy, you know, as, an entrepreneur. And it was kind of before I knew it was a thing. It was actually what I was doing.

You know, it was just really interesting. And like you said, across my career and even outside, I have a whole like parallel life in, in, community service. It's really been about, you know, building these professional communities. It's almost like having a support group, like a professional support group, because there's a real power in.

in building community and bringing peers together with common challenges and fears where they can learn from one another. even in the ANA, like when I was at IBM, I was participating uh at the ANA in their digital marketing committee, because I was doing digital marketing for a portion of my career focused. it can be... under, you know, it can be a very, if you leverage it, let's say, let's put it that way, as I say, it's an under leverage driver of growth.

But if you leverage this notion of communities, it really can make a strong impact. so as I mentioned, you know, when I was, you know, working with business partners, and then working with distributors, etc., it was really about, you know, understanding common pain points. And you you literally have like competitors sitting at the same table who are willing to talk and share, which is kind of like mind blowing to some people, which is why they don't always think that this kind of thing will work.

But when you kind of say, want to bring trust into the room, like first and foremost, know, regardless of who you are and where you sit, you have shared. issues, you have shared common issues and challenges that you need to address, shared accountability that you've got to work towards. So it's really about those transformative conversations that starts to surface like where, for me it was like, where can I help you? And that's kind of always where I started is tell me what's going on and how can we help you?

And... And so even with the global growth council, it's like, it's been so natural for me to move into the global growth council because it's a community, right? It's a community of CMOs and it's so refreshing when you bring them together to talk because they're like, wow, um I'm so caught up in my day to day plethora of things that are going on, all the things coming at me, you know. that when they have peers that are like, yeah, me too, it just gives a certain energy.

And then when you get those collective voices together, for us, it's like about how can we help drive the industry agenda? How can we help bring together some best practices? In today's environment, where things are moving so fast and buying journeys, as we said, are not linear. And trust is harder to earn with AI because people aren't knowing what's authentic and what's not.

So peer influence helps with a lot of things. I might be sitting in a different industry than you are, but we're at the same table. And I've just learned something from you. So when I'm making a purchase decision, it might be like which marketing agency to hire or whatever it might be.

Peer influence carries weight that goes beyond even brand voice, right? It's that like asking a friend, know, like, what do you think? But in the professional, right? But now it's like in the professional, like, of context, right?

So, you know, those things, you know, those communities create a space where influence can scale and uh have such a, you know, it's those shared experiences, those shared frustrations, that shared learning that just... generates a lot. so for me, it's not been about a single interaction. It's been about this sustained engagement where relationships develop, trust develops.

You can pressure test things, you know, amongst peers. And then for me, regardless of the program I ran, whether it was a community of business partner innovation centers or distributors or digital marketers or blockchain solution providers, or even emerging leaders, I ran an emerging leaders program. When millennials were entering the workforce, two different bosses came to me and they said, we came and landed on you, Debbie, because we said we want to really upskill and make comfortable the new kind of early professional hires and make them kind of fully engaged.

And we thought, who better to do that than you? You go figure it out, right? And then you know what to call it, you know, but I came up with the name Emerging Leaders and they liked it and we they bought into that. And I built a whole Emerging Leaders community over three years, you know, around the same concept, right?

This concept of you bring people together, okay, you're a new professional hire. What challenges are you facing? And a lot of it is that imposter syndrome, that fear, that can I ask this question? What's my career trajectory?

A lot of people think their career trajectory is just going up a ladder. But then when you say to them, no, maybe for some people. But most of the time, it's a path. And that path might take different turns.

And new things will come into your life that you go, wow, I never thought of that. That's really cool. oh, I just got this. Yeah, and it's OK.

That, oh and again, my formula was really around having these conversations in a repeating kind of, I can't find the right word, but kind of repeating, like monthly, quarterly, on what the right cadence is word, cadence is the word I was trying to find, that right cadence. And then you start to get grounded, right? I would build web portals where people... kind of knew they could always go and get the information.

I would do monthly webinars. I would have, you know, quarterly newsletters. You you kind of build a community because you're bringing them back together. And then, you know, I would, I then like added in advisory councils twice a year where you like get them physically together.

So all of these things combined that I would do with each of these communities really built up a lot of what I was just describing before that. those shared experiences, those meaningful conversations. And then any company or business that is taking advantage of this go-to-market approach really gets those insights right away. And again, that human input that you are not going to get from an AI search or an AI asking anyone on the AI platform.

Well, this is why you're the perfect person for the role that you're in with this perspective. uh of course, we recently published a list of communities. Of course, ANA is there um on our blog to help folks connect with their tribe, whatever that may be. And I think I know a lot of people are members of multiple communities and it makes sense.

Right. um So I want to ask a couple of marketing centric sorts of questions that tap that big brain of yours. um And well, so one of the questions about research and data, um we did a research report on B2B thought leadership and really dug into the intersection of original research and content and influence. And we found that uh 93 % of marketers say that original research is effective, but a lot less than that actually invest in it consistently.

And so my question for you is that, you know, how should data and even proprietary insights that have a company might have play a role in differentiating the brand? I've always loved research because of the insights that it brings. And research can be helpful or not helpful. You've got to design the research questions right to ask the right questions.

So it's always been really important to understand that. For example, at CompTIA and even with A &A B2B practice, asking questions that are kind of foundational. or something like the first thing that I did. And again, I've done that with the communities too that I've run before.

You've got to ask those questions up front that are going to give you the insights for what your customer, your constituents really want and need. And how are you going to serve that differently? So if you don't get the research and don't get the right research and insights, both qualitative and quantitative, then you're just kind of spitballing. You can ask AI too, but that's not going to be the only way either.

You've got to get the human input, the direct input. And it's interesting because as synthetic research has been really growing, and it's very cool and it's got wonderful benefits, you don't want it in isolation. I think you need to kind of mix it together with the actual live human feedback. that's going and you're going to kind of do it, not just like one and done, you like you've got to keep, keep doing it right.

You know, at, you know, different points in time so that you're collectively checking in, know, and validating and revalidating and, pivoting and adjusting and fine tuning your point of difference on what value you're going to bring. And again, if you don't have that customer input and that true customer input and make sure you're validating it, right. You know, take those different, you know, again, those different places of where you're going to gather it. That's the only way you're going really get your messaging, a point of differentiation and value really honed.

You know, it's interesting. I, you know, yeah, I've seen what companies like Evidenza are doing with synthetic data. It makes sense, right? um As far as collecting, you know, uh predicted trends and insights and that sort of thing.

uh But I also very much agree with what you're talking about as far as complimenting that with real research and survey, because a lot of folks don't understand the market engagement value that you're creating by collecting, asking questions of real human beings. is not only collecting information, it's also introducing concepts to those people who might become your customers, who might become advocates of your brand and never become customers or influencers of others who, and it's a way to drive conversations really in a marketplace, especially if there's a schedule or cadence of research that occurs over a period of time, right?

uh And sometimes, know, companies have to react very quickly to something that maybe happened in the market, right? Like, you know, and so like Evidenza in particular, like perfect for that. Like if you've got to execute something very, very quickly, you don't have time to go field research, right? So Evidenza has been, again, it's like a fine tuning engine, right?

He's, you know, they're constantly fine tuning. So that's like a perfect example when like that would be a go-to, you know, if you, if you want to just kind of validate something before you have to quickly get it out to market. use that engine, right? They've put in a lot of work and extensive data.

Yeah, yeah. there's you. So there's use appropriate use cases for what you're trying to achieve. Yep.

So you're, you're deeply involved in major marketing industry events like, uh, and ACE masters of marketing and Ken Lyon. What, what role would you say experiences play in, in B2B marketing today? Right. Like what distinguishes And also what distinguishes experiences that actually influence buyers, you know what I mean?

Versus those that are just, you know, we're checking a box. You know, we're humans, right? So again, this whole business to human, you know, kind of approach and um experiences really resonate for people. just, you know, makes it more memorable, more impactful, more, you just, take more in, you just, cause you remember experiences.

It's like, just think about your life, right? Things that, that you've experienced, you know, whether it's on vacation or in school or at work, you know, things that, that stay with you, right? So um I'm a big proponent of experiential marketing in B2B. Some places where, you know, we've done it.

is of course when you're doing demos, that's part of it. Some of those demos can be kind of dry depending on what the industry is. So how do you make it a little bit more fun? So like for IBM blockchain, one of the um things that we did one year was the journey of a coffee bean.

We literally did that and did a display about it at one of our conferences because I mean, look, there's more high value things that you want to track maybe through a blockchain like diamonds, for example, or food trust though is a really big thing. So uh this was really about understanding that when people are sourcing coffee beans, like what's the quality? Is it good? And it was just of like a fun thing because not everybody loves coffee, but a lot of people love coffee and need coffee.

And it was just kind of a fun way. we were doing a lot of food trust implementations for blockchain and working with sustainable farmers was I helped build and uh storytell a whole blockchain for good series of great blockchain use cases. So when you kind of understand the farmer in Costa Rica or whatever and how that coffee bean has been through all the processes it goes through and then when it gets into the market. We did that with food too.

It's like any pick any food, you you want to know that your food is safe and that it's good quality. So, you know, kind of showing that in a fun way, you know, was very until, know, and then maybe you get a cup of coffee out of it at the end. Um, the AI addathon last year, you know, like what was so fun about that was, know, when I brought forward the different kind of, you know, clients and the different providers we were using just to demonstrate the purposes of, of what AI could do.

And we said, look, we're not going to say that a two and a half day, you know, uh campaign development should replace everything else you do, but let's just show you what can be done to the art of the possible. and so literally I had set up the house of B2B. Right? Sounds fun.

know, House of B2B, and it was this space where the AI Addathon was going to continue to take place. We like launched the conference with that and then just said, look, go to your sessions, go to the main stage, go to the breakout groups, but pop back in and see how the work is happening as it's happening. Right? And that really resonated for people.

Like, you know, they were learning, they were asking questions. We set it up, you know, in a way, you know, that they could do that. I kind of made sure everybody was comfortable with that. The clients were comfortable with it.

solution providers were, and that again was an experience and it was our highest ranked, you know, kind of component of the conference last year. again, people were experiencing it, seeing things in action makes a difference. did another thing when I was at CompTIA around emerging technologies, because I ran the emerging technologies community and I brought in a speaker who... And we couldn't do virtual reality headsets, because that's not practical, and you've got a room of a few hundred people.

But I worked with this individual. She works at ADP. She's amazing. She does inclusive uh product marketing development.

uh She created these uh little cards. And we ensured that the QR code was safe, whatever. But when you put your phone over this card, it gave you a view of the room. I don't know how she did it, The idea was I wanted people to experience a flavor of what the technology could do.

So you give somebody something cool, they were like, my God. Again, it was like the biggest deal of the conference, or one of the two biggest deals, the other one. I did a communities around the world implementation. as uh a global trade association, we had communities in Europe, Asia, North America, and we literally did a And overnight, boy, this was so much work.

I can't even believe that I did it. We orchestrated different communities, meeting online as well as in person. If you were a virtual person sitting here, you could stay on for 12 hours or whatever and watch it all if you were so inclined. we had obviously interactive components, polling and other things built into the people that are sitting at the computer.

we had literally online physical handoffs from You know, we started in Sydney, Australia to, you know, Amsterdam to the UK to Chicago. And those, and then when it landed in Chicago and I was on the stage with the chair, chairwoman of the board, people thought this isn't going to work. Like this live feed is just going to go flat. And they were like, totally skeptical.

And when When that live feed came on with the handoff from the UK and this room full of people in the UK, and we had a room full of people here in Chicago, the room erupted. So again, it was like this experience of we are all connected around the world. I believe in like finding creative ways to do that. And it's been so fun to do that.

you know, A &A, we're trying to do more things like that. You know, we've made our masters of marketing, you know, kind of, you know, more of an open conference. And we have, in addition to the main stage, we have these second stages, you know, that are called accelerator labs, which are a little bit more workshop oriented. Again, to give people more of that experience.

You didn't just hear somebody talk about it on stage. Now you're kind of working with it seeing how it actually would work. Yeah, yeah, that's great. And, you know, the, the sensory involvement of a real world experience is more important than ever.

think there's a hunger for that. Um, just like there's the hunger for, you know, in-person connection, um, these days as everyone's working, a lot of folks are working remotely or whatever, but at the same time, digital experiences are part of this too, I think. And the bar has been raised, you know, it's not about. spec sheets and white papers and all those other traditional means of communicating.

being able to, podcasts are almost all video now, or a lot of them are video like this one. Or being able to have interactive experiences online, which people can code their way into more easily uh because of AI platforms. there's an increasing expectation to experience information, to interrogate information, not just consume it. because who has time to read a 45 page report these days, right?

They just use AI to summarize it for them. So if you know that in advance, can you create an experience that you can easily differentiate in the scheme of things yourself over another brand because you are delivering something that is empathetic to the expectations of the modern buyer, right? You know, I know I asked about research before, and of course you've been involved with research at ANA and you had put out a report, the strategic rise of B2B creator and influencer marketing that highlighted, which of course is a topic that's near and dear.

And you highlight a lot about what modern B2B influencer marketing needs to be, especially as a driver of credibility. And there's a lot of ways to do that, right? To build trust and to build belief. But what is it that you'd say is so unique about how influencer and creator collaborations can drive brand credibility?

What's so unique about that? um Well, first of all, a brand needs to make sure that whoever they're going to collaborate with as their creator or influencer is aligned, that they're aligned with your mission and your values. And it's really important to do that homework and make sure that there isn't anything that's going to hurt your brand. So it's really important to do that.

um And then there's, as you mentioned, there's all different flavors of how you can um leverage the influence in B2B. It could be um SMEs, people that just kind of really know the brand. might be authors who've earned some credibility. um It might be um customers, these customer advocacy kind of programs, I think speak heaps, because customers actually don't want to give testimonials very easily um and share use cases.

Sometimes they're afraid it's going to give away the secret sauce. um interestingly, because at ANA, we do these amplify presentations where we take any of the thought leadership that we've published and we will amplify them to our members. So like I've presented several uh of our member companies. uh one example I found recently was kind of a little unexpected, which is an employee advocacy one.

uh And it was from Staples. There's this young lady who's very active on TikTok and Instagram. And she was basically a print specialist. And Staples, of course, has a B2C as well as a B2B company.

IBM, we procured a lot of supplies from Staples. um And she decided to go a little rogue in a positive way. And um did you see this? It was so fun.

And she was like kind of. telling you about the products that are available at Staples. And she would just really have fun with it. Stuff that's kind of like, isn't this products?

It's kind of boring. But she would just do it in really fun way. So there's a content creator not known to others who got very just creative. here's an employee that you might listen to the employee more than the company branding, because the company branding, of course, wants to sell to you.

But here's an employee that was authentically telling you about why you should come to Staples. Just getting a little fun with it. When you peel it back, to answer your question, think before you can amplify anything, regardless of the format you use, whether it's through a podcast or through a platform or traditional social media, you have to build around fundamentals of trust and um I kind of talked about it in concentric circles. Trust is at the core of everything.

And then what can you do to build that trust? How do you build that credibility? And that credibility is from actual use cases, is from data, is from customers. validating, right?

And then, then relevance is like another part of the circles. And so, you know, you could talk about trust, credibility, whatever you want to talk about, but, you have to be talking to people in a way that's relevant to them. So when we come back to like, right, the buyer groups we were talking about before is you have to be relevant. You have to be talking about what's relevant to their needs and find them where they're, meet them where they are.

Where are the platforms that they're hanging out on? Uh, is it Reddit? Is it LinkedIn? Where is it?

And then once you have that kind of understanding of trust, credibility, and relevance, it's only then that you could be really successful with the amplification through influence. for sure. So, so yeah, and you know, we've we've actually been tapping the B2B marketing community for years on original research around what are those who are implementing influencer marketing? What are they doing that's working?

What's not? And helping answering questions around what does it take to be successful? And, uh you know, you touched right away on the value of finding values aligned influencers and you know, finding the right influencers actually the number one challenge year after year. We've done four research reports on B2B influencer marketing.

We're actually just starting data collection on our fifth uh very, very, very soon. But uh yeah, finding the right influencer is a top challenge. And part of the issue is not just finding the right influencer, but it's the brand itself understanding what is the application because not all influencers are created the same. The utility of working with what we call a brand individual, a very famous keynote speaking book writing, you know, that kind of person is not someone that you engage with with the expectation to drive leads, right?

They're driving awareness. And there's a different type of influencer that you might work with for simply engaging. So super user uh or end of funnel as it were, I know there are funnels, but For decision-making type of uh influence, we might be working with that customer, case studies and those sorts of proof points. having some level of sophistication around what kind of influencer do you need to work with works right along with the idea of, now that we've identified someone who's uh relevant, we know that the content will uh resonate.

And of course, they have the reach that we're looking for. We also need to make sure, as you said, that the values align, they're not going to behave in a particular way that is problematic. ah And obviously, I think another thing that you said that really uh stands out is, in terms of differentiating through influencers, is authenticity. This isn't about authentic.

In the case that you talk about the Staples creator, this is an authentic expression that they instigated on their own. And if you know, part of the influencer discovery process might be to identify those people that are already talking positively, advantageously about the brand and finding opportunities to collaborate with them, as well as finding people who are hyper relevant that probably would talk about your brand or about topics that are of relevance to your audience that you're trying to reach, and then coming up with programs to activate, right?

uh So yeah, it's exciting times. I just posted on LinkedIn uh before we got on today, uh a Google trends graph showing the upward and to the right of people searching on B2B influencer marketing uh just over the last year. It's just boom, you know, and it's very, very interesting. And it's a great time for B2B companies to understand the role of influence in terms of trusted voices outside.

and also be investing in building up those trusted voices inside their company, just like you talked about employee advocacy and that sort of thing. So as we kind of wind down, I want to ask you a question about measurement. And there's more, I think you agree and people watching or listening can agree there's more pressure to perform for marketing than ever. And I'm wondering in your work at ANA and discussions you're having with CMOs and other marketing leaders, um How are they working to improve how they uh report on marketing's contribution to growth?

What's different? What's better? Yeah, no, that's a very big topic, of course. um In fact, two years ago, I worked on a marketing impact measurement study, um which really did kind of talk about the alignment of the CMO and the CFO, making sure that there's a good relationship there.

um And marketing teams really needing to understand how to talk the business language within their companies. m traditionally uh marketers would get caught up with reporting on marketing impressions and other things that the rest of the C-suite kind of glosses over when you talk about that. So how do we transform the marketing successes and things that we measure into more of a financial kind of language? ah we're working on some of the work right now that will be coming out soon.

So I can't give away all of that, but. I could tell you that we're working closely with PwC in particular around brand valuation m and how to represent brand valuation. um We've also, of course, worked closely with um Masby, the marketing um advertising standards board on financial value of brands. I was trying to see if I had some statistics handy here for you.

I don't know if I pulled them up. But the idea really is that um you know, any research that we can bring forward or content and. You're to have edit this part out. I can't come up with the language I want to say.

was trying to find this. I thought I had it on another screen. But the brand valuation space, the metrics that we bring forward as marketers really has to be relevant for the business. So it's this understanding of the trajectory of why brand makes a difference.

The buying group research, for example, that's been going on right now has really been validating this notion of brand marketing mattering and why brand matters and um building up that mind share over the course of time. So what PWC is doing is also showing that, how does that appear on the balance sheet? How do you kind of communicate that brand value as a part of business value and how it's impacting the business? So a lot of work in that space.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's wrap things up with a fun question, uh or I'm hoping it's fun, right? uh So it's about your dream career if it wasn't doing what you're doing right now. And you've had a very uh substantial career already, but if you could be doing anything else and it wasn't what you're doing now, what would it be?

I mean, it would be something in the realm of social impact, um something that brings together the things I enjoy the most that give me energy, uh leading, kind of leading communities for impact. A lot of... I'd say repeating patterns in my career have been around partnerships, so getting the energy of bringing different groups together for the greater good. So I've done partnerships with the Olympics and Disney and of course, hyperscalers, different technology business partners, but where I've really loved...

some experiences were like kind of like in the community service kind of leadership area. So I don't know if I've ever mentioned this to you in the couple of times that we've spoken, but I was very involved with two key initiatives that I would do this full time if I could. And one was social impact through partnerships for a company called Plastic Bank. I posted about it on Earth Day um where I brought together Plastic Bank, is a company that is dedicated to keeping plastic out of the ocean, also giving livelihood to underserved communities where most of the plastic garbage collects and makes its way into our waterways and into the ocean.

So um that was really all about bringing together a business partner, IBM Technology and Plastic Bank to use technology to solve this problem and I'm happy to report that over 63,000 plastic collectors have prevented close to $10 billion, $10 billion bottles from entering the ocean, right? And so I helped, I was the personal broker of getting Plastic Bank in touch with the right technology people. Mm-hmm. their business partner to solve that problem, to do this vision that they had to give, you know, underserved people like low end smartphones with a digital currency on blockchain to earn a living safely, to bring in the plastic and then sell that plastic to big, you know, packaged goods manufacturers who bought that plastic to put it.

back and recycle it and put it back into their manufacturing lines. So like that was like this huge initiative that grew, it was featured in IBM campaign. And I just. I grew a whole sustainability practice based on this showcase kind of use case, right?

So I also was sent to Chile to work for a month on a program called IBM Corporate Service Corps, where I consulted on a program supporting women in underserved communities to help them to become entrepreneurs. So I guess my dream job is where these, you know, I kind of bring these. entities together in partnership to tackle challenges like environmental sustainability or economic empowerment and making those initiatives come to life, raising awareness to those needs and then creating programs that can work at scale.

And so, you know, helping Plastic Bank achieve their mission, helping women in underserved areas of Chile, um there was kind of an entrepreneurial school. They piloted it, didn't know what to do with it, how to get government funding and all that. And I helped them with that business plan and marketing plan with it. Of course, as a marketing person, I really drove a very marketing, like very deep marketing components of it.

And that program... was spread out throughout Chile and into southern Peru. So if I could pick my dream job, it would be like taking the skills that I have and doing those kinds of things. Yeah.

Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. Where is the best place for people to connect with you, Debbie?

I guess LinkedIn. um it's kind uh of a logical answer, but you never know. You never know. And I'm sure people can find out more about your work and we'll link to it with the CMO Global Growth Council as well and ANA.

Yeah, for sure. to the ANA, come to me on LinkedIn, come, I don't know. I'm in New York and New Jersey. Okay.

Well, fantastic. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing the depth of your insight and expertise here. And I'm sure our community um appreciates it.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me and it's always fun to talk to you and talk the B2B language together. Fantastic. I want to thank you for tuning into the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast.

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