NCR
b2b doesn’t have
to be boring
but when you’ve been in the b2b biz for 137 years, it can be hard to … FIND your spark.
Let alone clearly articulate what you do. And for who. And why.
That’s exactly why the new CMO of this 137-year-old tech company wanted to shake things up.
Her, to us:
“We have 30,000+ employees doing business in 185 countries and no one is telling the same story about what we do.
“CAN YOU JUST MAKE OUR STORY SIMPLE???”
SURE NO PROBLEM
AHHHHHHH!
(journey to sanity?)
There was a LOT to do. Interviews. Facilitated discussions. Talking to leaders across functions—especially sales teams who actually knew what customers were facing and asking for. Then of course a million iterations and testing ideas….
but we made it look easy
(We hid our tears.)
and then distilled it all into
a simple strategic narrative
That leaders aligned to and stood behind. (Often that’s the hardest part.)
The CMO then wanted to make sure the marketing teams could fluently express all this too.
“Also, please make it fun.”
Challenge accepted.
“CAn you now just train our teams on how to tell this story effectively?”
so we brought the fun.
Because brains learn best when feeling good. (As our behavioral scientist friend BJ Fogg puts it.)
At the end of every workshop, participants were asked to make a commitment and share it (to help stay accountable):
How will you activate this story in your everyday work?
And they seemed to have a pretty good time through it all …
Marija Zivanovic-Smith, CMO