Make field marketing a strategic driver

Dan Beresh: welcome back to "Don't Lose the Point." This is the podcast created by Fide B2B Marketing, and I'm Dan Beresh, founder of Fide. And we're the agency that helps complex B2B companies go to market with their services. And today I'm really excited to talk about field marketing and the strategic role that field marketing can play, should play, I think in the overall marketing strategy, especially in large organizations.

Jessica, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. I've got Jessica Tavira Augusto with me here. She's a field marketer for strategic markets in EMEA at Kyndryl. Thanks so much for joining me.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Thank you for the invite. It's an honor and a pleasure.  

Dan Beresh: Jessica, I'm so excited to talk to you about field marketing because I think in the moment we're in now, people are so interested in these in-person events, right?

Because we're just stuck behind a computer screen all day, a lot of us working from home. A little bit of travel to see other c- colleagues and clients, but definitely reduced since the pandemic. And so what an opportunity for marketers to be able to get in front of of clients. But what's really interesting to me is it seems to be a three-step process, right?

You have to figure out what you're gonna say to clients first and how to kinda get to that, that point that's gonna get them interested. Then you have to get them to actually, think about the event itself. But field marketing's so much more than that, right? It's about really tying together not only the event itself, but also digital and other aspects of marketing in a company.

So I'm excited to kinda go through that with you today and talk about, how we can position field marketers as these strategic drivers and in such an important time for us to do so. So can we start here, Jessica? I'm curious about Messaging. We know that a lot of consultancies, sound a little bit similar.

Value propositions are not particularly differentiated. What's your perspective on how a consultancy, how a field marketer should a- approach this from the very, very get-go?  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Thank you so much. And to, to your point on the field marketeer, just to level set on how I, I approach it, I see it as a point where strategy meets the customer.

Because we sit closer to the market to understand what matters locally, and we work it close enough to sales to understand where the growth needs to come from, and we are intertwined with the marketing engine to connect the right story. So as part of that, and to differentiate ourselves, we should always go with the three key questions.

One, what is the customer trying to change? Second, what is the difficulty or risk as of today? And the third is, what becomes possible when we solve it? And that moves the conversation away from capabilities and what we ha- are towards a business outcome. It's about translating that complexity of our offerings into relevance, and that's even more challenging on a complex B2B environment that I work on.

At the end of the day, we should see the journey of the customer and not our brand as a whole. They-- the customer should always be the key pi- pillar for us to level set and to differentiate ourselves.  

Dan Beresh: The customer only sees that one brand, right? Exactly. And so especially in such a big corporation, you've got six different teams, and the last thing you want is them to get six different messages, six different ideas, and then they sit there thinking, "Oh my God, what is this company really about?"

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Definitely. So they, the customers, they don't experience the organization, organizational chart. They experience that one brand. But internally, what we see is that journey coming across brand, digital content, alliances, events, account teams. If there's a misalignment on that, there is fragmentation as you mentioned.

And we, that's im- the importance of our role as field marketers, we are the keeper of that story, and that's what I feel every day. It's not by owning every activity, but orchestrating and ensuring that each interaction advances the same narrative to the customer. It connecting the message before an engagement, the experience itself, and the follow-up that is even more important to convert.

And then, of course, hand over to the sales to close that deal.  

Dan Beresh: And you make it sound so easy, and yet in such a big organization, I imagine this is a, it's a massively challenging effort. And I think a lot of the challenge that we see is organizations that are either putting a message out there that is overly vague, overly generic, doesn't really talk a little bit about what it is that the organization does in a unique way.

And I think especially for consultants, it's interesting because traditionally we've seen consultants selling through the, a partner model, relationship-based model, and we know buyers now wanna do more research independently. So that s- in a way, it falls on marketing to make sure the messaging isn't just generic.

It's gotta have some kind of benefit. But at the same time, we see other folks going out with highly technical messaging that kind of shows behind the curtain exactly what a consultancy or, a provider might do to solve a complex issue, which we also see clients saying, "Hey, look, I don't need to know all of this information."

So it's kind of a tough balance, isn't it? Trying to figure out at the top, what is that messaging you should go to customers with? And as you very rightly said the, the what's in it for me, for them, right? And in, in a large B2B sales organization or marketing organization, you're dealing with multiple stakeholders who may also have different perceptions of what's in it for me.

So this is a, it, it seems simple on the outside, but it's actually, when you start to unpack it something that seems very challenging. How do you navigate that?  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: It is an everyday headache. And def- ... the challenge is not about making the message shorter, snappy, because everybody's doing the same, particularly in the age of AI.

The real manner to do that is actually having a proper relationship. It's not a B2B, it's not a B2C, it's eye to eye, individual to individual, people to people. We are all humans at the end of the day, and what actually gets us to the end game is understanding the persona, understanding the, the customer end to end, on top of understanding the industry.

Getting that specificity, and that's something that we have to start from the get-go, actually from the beginning, with insights. And that's something that at Kyndryl we actually prioritize before any type of engagement, having the right insights, the right data points to validate our tactics. If you know the customer, it's 80% of the job done, because then you can make him as a protagonist.

The customer will think the, us, the provider, is an enabler, and that's how we want to be seen, and we want to be seen as a partner. But the relationship and the understanding of that customer is the center stone, the cornerstone, and that can only happen if you actually are there in the market, in the field, with the sales and having the right insight for the sellers.

And of course, it's a back-to-back, right? We feed the organization, and the organization feed us back with the data points, with the insights.  

Dan Beresh: I love what you're saying about positioning as the helper, as the guide, as the organization that is gonna get your clients to that next level, rather than being the hero of the story yourself.

I think that's such an important part of how any organization should message and should position. And it's funny, it's, it seems simple to say, but you look around and organizations all the time positioning themselves as, "We're the hero, we're gonna do this amazing thing."

And it's really not that, is it? It's we're just here to advance your goals. And so to your point, knowing what those goals are, and so easy to make assumptions about what those goals are. But when we get down to it, if you can really be insight-led, then that's, I think, p- it's pouring the foundation, isn't it?

For the, the house that you're building and on, on that house you're gonna have, events and digital activation and all kinds of stuff. Without the, without a proper foundation, you can pour a ton of money into marketing and the chances of your effectiveness are I would say pretty, pretty low  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: I couldn't agree more.

And for me, that's actually how we actually earn a strategic seat. When we move from asking, "Okay, which activity we're gonna do to the sales?" Or, "What are we going execute? Do you need this?" It's actually, I know this customer, which opportunity or which relationship are we trying to progress, and I can help you with the intervash- interventions, combi- combine a lot of tactics to jump on that.

And that goes to account-based marketing and pursuit marketing, and we have to have the c- the house clean, as you mentioned. It all starts with also what we have in terms of our database and our connection with the customer itself.  

Dan Beresh: That's a great point. It's, you need to pour the foundation and then you need to build the house, but the house also has to be clean.

And one of the big challenges that we hear about all the time is, especially in large organizations, you could have a wonderful set of messages that you wanna go to customers with, but if internally people aren't aligned then that creates i- issues as well, doesn't it? Because we are all just cogs in, in large organizations.

How do you do that? What's the trick? What's the-- How do you get people on board, especially people who have been maybe part of the organization for a long time old messaging, don't really wanna change the way that they're doing things?  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: That's a really great question. What I learned from my experience is that people respond to facts.

So as factual- ... as you can be, as evidence base you can provide in terms of your business case, that's the way to approach it. Of course, there are things that take time to change, but once you show one plus one gonna take you to sum two, at least, people will get on board. And stakeholder management is one of the most complex parts of field marketing, from my perspective.

You really have to have a proper RACI matrix. You have to know from the global to the local who should interact, and then on top of that, the partners that you should include as part of that discussion. Communication for that is the key, and having a proper management system for that communication, structured on paper, that's something that everybody appreciates.

So if I can sum up, go with facts, make everybody on board with a proper RACI matrix, and a- align as always, to show what you deliver.  

Dan Beresh: Here's a question for you around the RACI matrix What we've found sometimes is although it's great to get consensus across a large group of people, and in any big organization, the ideal would be to go out to as many stakeholders as you can and get feedback.

But at the same time, with this type of work and with marketing often, the more people that are in the room, the more you end up with sort of a compromise that fades into, in- into the noise or risks that, right? So how do you handle the idea of, okay, I could include all of these, these people as, people who are able to give feedback, but instead, I, to-- I'm just going on a limb here.

It's about making sure the right stakeholders are in the right positions to be able to give the right kinds of feedback, while also being able to say to other stakeholders who may want to be involved We appreciate you very much, but let us, let us run with this for the time being.

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Definitely. And there is a Japanese concept that I appreciate, which is nemawashi, which is the meetings before the meetings or that engagement in the corridor or in the water cooler. From my standpoint, that one-to-one conversation that happens before the meeting and that pre-agreement that happens before you show something, it's halfway the job because it-- you have them, their buy-in, you learn from their feedback on a one-to-one, so you don't have that challenging setup where you're gonna have the questions that you're not expecting or you're not prepared.

You set the scene with the right people that you think it's the right people. They can guide you even further. And then when you have the whole structure in place, showing that to the key stakeholders, it should be okay. I... That's what I experienced as well. And that's, again, the importance of knowing who is who as well.

It's not just the political side in terms of the organizational chart, but who actually is on the field and doing the job. And the-- even for me, delivery is more important sometimes than the customer partner in terms of engagement because they understand the  

Dan Beresh: customer. Oh.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: So talking to delivery first, actually before sharing something with the customer partner- Huh

or with the managing director gives me the insight to actually give something valuable to that customer. So at the end of the day, yes, that concept of actually having that one-to-one, very solid, very casual conversation takes you places.  

Dan Beresh: So you're saying the delivery partner who is managing the team that's actually doing the work and in the trenches as it were with the client may know the client better than the partner who is just doing, the sales and the reach outs at the top.

That, that client that, excuse me, that delivery partner has so much more experience that they can actually give you insights that you maybe couldn't get anywhere else.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Definitely. Of course, it can be a case-by-case basis depending on the relationship, but particularly at Kyndryl and what we provide as a infrastructure, IT infrastructure provider, one of the largest, if our delivery fails, everything else fails.

So the delivery- Yeah ... not only has a specific pressure on their plate, but they have so much experience that you can tap into and so much know-knowledge of that industry, of that customer, that it's just a source really- of truth.  

Dan Beresh: And there's an element of fear when it comes to a buyer thinking about doing a huge implementation, isn't there?

Because not every implementation is successful. They're all very expensive. For some of the big ones, it could be the buyer's career on the line. They said, "Hey, let's hire this provider." They didn't do a good job, tens of millions down the drain, and the company's no better ahead. So I think that there's an interesting insight there where we can think about how to allay fears or message in a way that, that reduces that perceived risk because, hey, we've done it before, and let me not only say we've done it before, which of course every competitor's gonna say, but also let me talk to you about some of the details that you can then uncover That are actually part of the real project.

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Certainly. And again, with the delivery relationship, it also can get so much easier to get the customer voice to support the other customer. Because at the end of the day- ... what sells the best always is references and having case studies, press releases, having a customer saying how good the job was, it sells much better than we actually doing any type of campaign, and that's organic.

And taking that step and having them as advocates can only be done if you have a right delivery and the r- right relationship in place. And something that we at Kyndryl maximize as much as possible with communications, customer voice as a priority for every deal.  

Dan Beresh: It's so important because I think that consultants are in a tough spot.

Certain consultancies, and they'll remain nameless- ... love to put people who might not have a huge amount of experience in, for example, a lead role where the client would expect them to have a ton of experience. There's this idea of, okay, there's a sales team, and then, okay, you sold the project, and now the delivery team is gonna be the B team or the C team, and the A team is gonna keep sell sell.

And so in no way am I suggesting, that Kyndryl would do that kind of thing. But I think the challenge becomes in a market where the client has seen that happen before anywhere else, you're almost starting from a, a perception of, "Okay, prove to me that you've done this before and prove to me that you've been successful with it because I wanna know that I'm getting that, that A team."

So actually going and talking to that delivery team and having the client say, "This is an incredible team. What an amazing experience we've had." Because it's... a- and it's twofold, isn't it? It's successful outcomes, but it's also successful project delivery process where the client is happy throughout, especially for a long-term engagement where, they have to be involved over, months or years.

God, y- you just wanna make sure that you're gonna enjoy your life with a delivery partner that's not only doing a good job, but also... and so that's interesting, like a... would you agree? Is that part of it, is making sure that, that journey is also gonna be a good one?

Jessica Tavira Augusto: It has to be seamless. And for us, we always need to have a happy customer. Even when we start the negotiation process or when we start the deal, we take a photograph, let's say a snippet, on what's the status at this time and what will good look like in, at the end of the project, and what milestones should we achieve.

And that, for us in marketing, is a campaign From beginning till the end. And this can only happen if, again, the experience is seamless from the beginning to the end with the KPIs that were agreed early on. And we are seeing this particularly for pursuit marketing, specific large customers. It's important to show that journey because that's what they want to feel.

They want to feel safe, comfort, and trust. We need to frame it as we are consistent, we are relevant, and we are close to you. Consistency, giving the best experiences, being credible. Being relevant means we know your contacts, we know your internal agenda, and proximity is always being with the customer every single day.

We have to have people engaging with the customer. In marketing, we should also be there And that's something that I always try to emphasize. Take me to the meetings, I wanna be there. Enjoy. I want to learn. I want to meet that customer. I want to meet the marketing my counterpoint, my counterpart, so I can have a conversation and again, get that as a use case.

Dan Beresh: It's brilliant, and it all comes back to understanding and empathizing with the customers. Yeah. Such an important point that that I think is so often skipped over. But I think the other thing you're doing, Jessica is bringing us back here, and so let me let me do that as well to the purpose of field marketing, right?

And what I love about your perspective is you've talked about how field marketing can really be the glue between the various elements of the, the marketing machine, especially in 2026 when we know that clients want to attend these events. But at the same time, they don't wanna see an ad for, for example, Kyndryl, in advance of an event.

That just makes no sense in terms of the messaging, and then suddenly they get to the event and something completely different is being is being said. So how do you do that? H- how do you glue the strategic parts of the marketing organization together to make sure that the end client sees just that one single brand instead of the six or eight teams that are working on various parts of the organization's marketing?

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Definitely, yeah. So when I mentioned that we act as a keeper of the story, it also ties to that, to what you're mentioning. And we often frame the digital and physical engagement as competing choices, right? It's like you do this, you do that, and most of the times they can be siloed, or they have different directions on how they want to approach the market.

For me, I see them performing different jobs within the same relationship strategy. So as field marketing, our perspective is glue those two by knowing that, okay, these digital tactics that we can-- we took from global, from local, will help us identify the interest, sustain attention, personalize communication to the customer, and being present over time.

And that digital will be a layer on top of that in-person experience because the events itself, it creates depth. It's about context, and it's about exchanges more at the end of the funnel that is very difficult to reproduce at scale. So the opportunity on this is to design them in a connected journey, which again starts with communication and with the insight.

But we definitely should see these two together combined, where digital it's at scale and it's more about knowing that interest and sustaining attention for a long period of time. And then the event side, knowing what digital is doing, is how can I build that on context and create depth for a meaningful exchange between Kindrel, that customer, and that's not ha- gonna happen at digital scale.

That relationship only happens one-to-one as far as I know  

Dan Beresh: Exactly. The digital has to be that entry into the journey, doesn't it? To get the person to come to the event to start that and it's-- we were talking about earlier, we know that people wanna do more and more asynchronous research, and yet people also really wanna go to in-person events.

So there's some kind of, you know, magic that we have to cook up as marketers to try to form that one-to-one relationship that people feel like they're gonna have a great time or get a lot of value out of the thing that we're running. But then fundamentally, it is about forming that human one-to-one relationship, isn't it?

Especially in, in today's world where I just think there's so much less trust than there used to be. People are on edge about whether they should trust a company to provide a service. Is this company gonna take my money? Are they gonna be successful? Are they gonna bait and switch me with the, B or C team?

There's so many things that I think are going on in their mind, and we've really built ourselves up, even myself, I don't know about you, but, we all get pitched on, of service providers who want us to hire them. And I even say to myself, "Oh my God," like I have so many mental blocks against even the email I get that I think, "Oh, that might be useful," and I'm thinking, "Oh my God what if they take my money?"

What if... and then, the the mental mode just starts and starts, and you start to say, "Oh my God I've gotta empathize with the folks that I'm trying to sell into or I'm trying to market to," because they're probably thinking the same thing.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Definitely. And trust is, again, also the, the key habit.

And you mentioned very well that without trust, you won't buy. You'll you get fear. You don't-- You're not confident to proceed forward. And building that trust can only happen after multiple touches. It does not happen quick and easy. It's not gonna happen straightforward. It's about consistency and showing that you know what you're doing and that you know the pain point and the challenge of that customer, and that you can respond to that.

Understanding the message and the, the way that you're approaching, AKA which I normally see on LinkedIn a lot. Don't go straight on to the gutter, to the gut. Don't say, "Oh, I have this awesome product for you. Buy it now." "Have it. Please buy it. Here's the link. Register, get the sponsorship, align on this."

No, start a conversation. It's a funnel. It's a trust-building exercise. Try to understand the person. Try to get a connection, a true connection. The best value that I observe, it starts when a connection has been created, and then you go to the sales And that can happen digital, yes, but it takes multiple efforts.

It's not just one buy with a standalone message on as a end-of-the-funnel type. It really has to be consistent.  

Dan Beresh: And I think something that underpins that is everything that marketing in B2B typically doesn't talk about. Me- B2B marketing loves to say, "Okay, let me feed you some metrics. Let me, let me show you how we can be successful through all of our features of our specific solution."

And yet this trust is about everything that underpins that, isn't it? It's the fear of failure. It's the ability to really take the leap with a, a vendor and say, "Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna do this together." And, a-and also know that, that team is gonna be a team that fundamentally wanna work with.

So it's all of the sort of emotional side of the marketing and sales that I think especially today is more and more important. I think 20 years ago it was a lot easier to say, "Look, we've had a 98% success rate," blah, blah, blah, show metrics, and person say, "Oh yeah, that's great."

But we receive so many of these cold pitches now, I think it's just hardened us against the desire to do anything with anyone who we don't feel like we really know.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Exactly. And you need to know them. At this time, it's very hard to go just by, by metrics and by marketing attribution and marketing influence and look at how it progress.

There are so many options, and particularly on the age of AI, it's so much easier to actually search and find the options, that you can only differentiate yourselves if people actually have a solid relationship, a solid understanding that they know me, so I should know them too. The way that we are seeing in terms of the KPIs, it's not just about the overall funnel and the overall influence.

It's how can we make sure that we keep that specific customer engaged over time, and that's the whole value to the customer, the lifetime value concept, right? For the way that we assess is Growth success for us, meaning that lifetime value, customer revenue that we have should increase by X fold.

It should grow X percent within a year, and that's how we show success. And then the tactics that help them is a multi-touch attribution, right? It's not just one event that closed the deal, we know that. It's not just one banner that led them to actually sign to something. It's getting that customer on a long journey with us and getting that lifetime value maximized.

Dan Beresh: That's something we talk a lot about, is ensuring that you don't put all of your eggs into one marketing basket and have, call it unreasonable expectations around the effectiveness that a single tactic will have. I think to your point, the journey is extending. People are not always in a buying mode, and even when they are, especially for, large enterprise implementations, these are sales processes that take a long time.

And so I think it's about thinking about where, in consumer you might 20 years ago have said we're gonna buy a really expensive Super Bowl commercial, and we're gonna get a ton of sales out of it." In this world we work in, it's take that same budget and divide it into 10 assets, 20 assets, and create a journey for that customer that can continue to engage them over time.

I think the mistake we people-- we see people making is to say that I'll have watched this video on LinkedIn." Firstly, assume people are gonna watch the whole video-  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: No ...  

Dan Beresh: and 'cause your video's amazing. And maybe some people will, right? But I think by and large, it's about investing in multiple touches with the right stakeholders so that you can access them at the right time, so you can stay top of mind, so you stay in that short list.

And even if that means that I maybe the controversial opinion for a creative person to say, even if the quality of the output is a little bit lower, as long as it doesn't- Yeah ... do damage to your brand, right? Like you don't need a Super Bowl quality commercial at every single touch.

You might do-- You could do a web banner, you could do a, a leader who's, talking i- in an office for 30 seconds about something that's interesting, right? And it doesn't need to have a million dollars behind it. What it needs is to create that moment where the customer says, "That was a really interesting thing they said."

And obviously be high quality enough that it, that it looks good. But creating that journey, I think to your point is is what's so important and I think events are Such an important part of that journey. One question I wanted to ask you, I think something I'm seeing a lot these days is u- the use of events really just to move things along.

Like you're not thinking of events as, "Okay, we're gonna go out and capture a ton of new customers." It's really about forming that in-person relationship that you've already been building for quite some time.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Yes. From our standpoint, it-- we have a segmentation. It's a twofold strategy. You do have events that is for the brand, that is for the sake of the whole momentum, like Leap in, in Saudi Arabia, GITEX in Dubai, and Mobile World Congress, or I don't know, so many others that it's relevant for us to be there.

But it's such a huge investment with such a low ROI that you really need to be smart in how you approach it. Do you want to be there every year? Do you want to actually execute something just as a booth? The way that we are approaching is really setting up the stage for that intimate setting, for that not lead capturing, but that progression that we can see it in our metrics.

And this is by handpicking the custom- the customers, the persona, and by ensuring that e- before any event, there is a commitment from the sales to say, "These are my targets, and I expect this much." With that stakeholder management, with that feedback from the sales, at least you can proceed with executing, knowing that there'll be some type of ROI.

I don't recommend to anybody just going for the sake of going. One thing that really works, even at large events, is you can have that booth, but the meeting space, maximize it as much as possible. The activation space, maximize it as much as possible for do one-to-one, or even do a satellite event.

There's a big event, you can do that small dinner roundtable as part of that, because people are already there. Again, depends on how much you're willing to invest But at the end of the day, you field marketer they'll have to know best what works for the customer, and they have to have an objective in mind always.

Even if it's brand, you should have always a, a, an outcome, a ROI.  

Dan Beresh: So some events might be a brand-focused event where you do want a huge booth, you wanna show up, you wanna build that equity. And other events you're saying might be actually no, the purpose of this is pipe in room. The purpose is to move deals forward.

So we're, maybe not gonna do a booth, a big booth, maybe not gonna do a booth at all. Maybe it's a restaurant activation, maybe it's i- in-person meetings. Maybe it's renting out more meeting space than, we otherwise would've before moving that investment from the traditional, "Let's get a huge booth and look great."

Maybe  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: sometimes it's a podcast.  

Dan Beresh: Yeah. We're s- we're certainly seeing a lot more podcasts from large B2B organizations, and I think it's great. To provide value to your listeners is is a fantastic way to to promote yourself as an organization. And here we are, I won't I won't mince words like that, that's what we do as well, right? Is, i- is trying to get the best and brightest voices to give us their leadership. And Jessica, I really appreciate you you giving us your insight today. O- one last thing I'd love to ask you about, because I think this is such a challenge that I've seen among people in the market and people who we've worked for, is it's one thing to say, "I'm gonna align all these teams."

And it's one thing to align, your business stakeholders around the messaging and get that through. And that's a, a challenge in itself, as we talked about. I think the other challenge is to align sort of peer group teams, like a digital team, as a field marketer.

And something we've heard in the past is look, you're in charge of the event. Stay in your lane. We've got this digital..." Everyone's got an ego, right? And I love this idea of being the glue, but how do you manage that? How do you broach those conversations, and how do you deal with a person who might say, "Look, Jessica, I really appreciate what you're saying, but we've already got a strategy.

We've already got a different thing. And by the way, it doesn't dovetail with what you're doing. So you go do your thing, and we're gonna do our thing, and please stay away from us," for lack of a better  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: word. I have to say that I have a, a blessing that we are in a lean organization, and they really value the feedback and insight of the person on the ground as a field marketer.

So that definitely is not so challenging at Kyndryl, the way I see it. Yes, we are the orchestrator, and they have to rely on us on what works best. Yes, they can come and say, "But this is not part of the global strategy. This is not part of the overall point of view and what we want to position."

But we need to understand that we have that accountability. We know the customers. And consistency, in terms of the brand, does not mean uniformity. Does not mean to be uniform in terms of how you go to the market. The core promise of digital, yes, should be always recognizable and seen, but we have to translate that promise from the global into the customer's language, into what makes it relevant to them and the market context.

And yes, at least at Kyndryl, they definitely circle back, "Okay, this is what we have," but there is flexibility enough to make sure that we are locally relevant. And that normally this conversation happens, but it's smooth. It's smoothed quite s- quite fast, to be quite candid.  

Dan Beresh: That's wonderful.

I'm so happy to hear that. And for those listeners who maybe don't feel like they're in an organization like that, I think something I heard you say really is just coming back to that, that customer insight, isn't it? It's we're all trying to market to the same customer, and if we have good insights and if we have a good sense of what their pain points and challenges are, then, and to your point, it doesn't need to match perfectly.

But if it comes from that same place of trying to solve that same problem, then that alignment itself, I think, can maximize effectiveness compared to, a, a world where perhaps we are making a little bit more of a, an  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: assumption. Okay. And again, with fact cannot d- nobody can disagree with fact.

And having The leadership support, having the right stakeholders aligned from the beginning makes the job much easier.  

Dan Beresh: Exactly. Exactly. Setting that up, building the foundation, building the house, keeping the house clean, making sure that everything is ready to go, and then building on top of it with the campaigns and events and the strategy that that ultimately are gonna dovetail with one another if you've set it up right.

Jessica Tavira Augusto: Hopefully we always do.  

Dan Beresh: I think this is what's so fun about marketing is there's no right way to do it, right? There's no perfect way to do it. If there was, then the machines would've taken over our jobs six and eight months ago. Instead they'll just, instead they'll just take over our jobs in five or six years.

Jessica Tavira Augusto: There's certain statistics stating that 80% of our role might disappear with the age of AI, but I don't see it as a disappearance. I see that as a, as an evolution, and we're still going to be there because it'll always be needed to have that person-to-person feedback and approach to marketing.  

Dan Beresh: E- exactly.

And if things continue as they are now, we see AI tools being built by myriad companies but on the same, what is it? Four, five, six LLMs across the board. So if your company's marketing is relying on the same brain that all of your competitors are, I certainly hope that you have someone in the staff who can exercise judgment and who can h- bring that really human lens to it.

Because to your point, that's, I think, increasingly becoming such an important part of what we do because the human is being removed from the equation, right? Because we're so remote, because we, you know, work online, because so much work goes through LLMs, and because there's so much AI slop out  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: there now.

And there's that concept of human in the loop, right? So we should always consider marketeer in the loop as well when we do that judgment call.  

Dan Beresh: Yes.  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: We need that critical judgment analysis to execute. Sometimes it's always the same type of visual lens message that you can always tell, "Okay, this was just approved in one go.

Nobody actually reviewed it."  

Dan Beresh: And on the consumer side, we see things that get approved way too easily and then blow up into, a, a huge fiasco for a variety of organizations. I'm sure everyone listening has a, a, a sense of a recent commercial that, that does that. I think maybe we're a little more conservative in B2B, and it doesn't happen as often.

But failure doesn't have to look like a news story. Failure can look like just no movement Failure looks like the customer says, "You don't understand me," and moves on. Even sometimes silently, doesn't attend the event, doesn't inter- interact with your emails, doesn't interact with your marketing. And, your competitor's putting something else out that feels a little bit more personalized, feels like they wanna build trust.

And so you've lost a deal without even knowing the deal existed. That's, I think, the scary part of the  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: world we're moving into. It is quite scary. And to your point, yes, getting that POV specific to that customer and perhaps not learning the failure is the worst part. You can fail, but always learn.

Get that insight to trigger something different in the future.  

Dan Beresh: E- exactly. And the market is gonna keep moving. So what worked yesterday won't work tomorrow, and iteration is the name of the game. It's the only, it's the only way, I think to win in the, the complex world that we work in. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

This has been incredible. I- is there anything else we didn't get a chance to talk about that you wanted to add, that you wanted to mention to the listeners before we wrap up?  

Jessica Tavira Augusto: I would advise, and what I would position is that the future of field marketer is not just prod- about producing more activity or adding more events or doing more and more campaigns.

It's creating coherence and commercial relevance. Again, I keep on putting the relevance and consistency into play because when we connect the right story, the right experience, and the right relationship with a genuine customer priority, we stop seeing, we stop being seen as a support function. We stop seen as a growth enabler, and that's how we should position.

That's how we earn a seat at the table. So yeah, learn that language of the business. Get, understand the priorities, and get the ball rolling with insights. That will be my key message.  

Dan Beresh: Brilliant. Jessica, thank you so much. Thanks very much for coming on our podcast. Folks, this has been "Don't Lose The Point," and we are Fide B2B Marketing, the marketing agency for complex B2B services.

I'm Dan Beresh, founder of Fide, and Jessica, it's been a, a wonderful pleasure talking to you today. Thanks very much.

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