The Kula Ring

This week on The Kula Ring, we’re exploring how culture influences the marketing strategies of international brands. Sandra Babic joins us to share some of her experience transitioning from Germany to start marketing a German brand here in North America. We discuss the differences in sustainability, messaging and relationship building. Finally, we discuss the regionality that exists here in the U....

This week The Kula Ring is talking with Jillian Childs of Turntide Technologies. Jillian walks us through the intricacies of marketing a sustainability-driven startup. We discuss how much of the marketing effort comes down to education and its inherently circular nature. We also look at the similarities and differences between a startup of this nature and some of her previous work with luxury bran...

The Kula Ring is turning its focus to internal communications this week. We are sitting down with the great Tom Kehoe. Tom has brought a collection of expertise from his varied career in marketing and production to the internal comms team at his organization which has fostered growth, greater alignment and transparency across the enterprise. Tom walks us through the birth of some of these initiati...

On this episode of our show, we are chatting with Jennifer Sunshine. Jennifer brings her varied and impressive background to The Kula Ring to discuss the imperative need for sales and marketing alignment to produce results. We talk about how these teams see leads and opportunities and bring those visions together to create more effective marketing and greater sales velocity.

Abby Guo joins The Kula Ring this week to discuss how she has created global marketing strategies for highly technical AI-driven products. We talk about setting yourself apart in the world of AI-driven startups. We also chat about staying at the forefront of technological changes and how important that is. This is an illuminating conversation featuring a topic that has everyone buzzing, AI.

Wayne Thompson of Pineberry Manufacturing joins the show this week to discuss the increased engagement they have garnered through closer collaboration and partnerships with their suppliers and adjacent businesses. We break down how to get started with an initiative like this and some of the pitfalls to avoid.

Andy Jensen of Sunstone Engineering joins the show this week to talk about a really interesting marketing case study. Sunstone marketed to almost exclusively engineers in verticals like aerospace and electronics. Then, a couple of years ago, an unheard-of order for small light-duty welders came through from one of their dealers, then another, and another. Overnight Sunstone was thrust into an emer...

Herbert Staten Jr. joins The Kula Ring this week to talk about highlighting the beauty of the product you manufacture. Herbert discusses how he considers emotion and personal engagement when developing marketing strategies in industrial manufacturing. We also discuss the potential for vertical differentiation in social media platforms. This fantastic chat offers a refreshing approach to industrial...

In this episode, we sit down with Zak Nelson. Zak talks with us about ArKco Sales’ move to having an in-house marketing asset. ArKco saw that the landscape for manufacturing sales rep companies is changing. Zak is ArKco’s answer to this evolving situation. He walks us through the changes they have implemented and how their sales reps have taken to having new branding and collateral. This is a grea...

Kimberly Day is on our show this week talking about how she moved Finish Thompson, a family-run company, from advertising in trade publications to more of a brand focus, a decision that has fostered growth and recognition in just seven months. Kimberly brings insights from a broad career in many marketing and communication verticals. Finish Thompson is a highly technical, engineering-focused brand...

Neelam Kumar joins The Kula Ring to discuss the strength in value selling. Neelam is an advocate and evangelist of value selling and brings a wealth of knowledge to this week's episode of The Kula Ring. We discuss the need for relationship building, both internally, between departments and externally, with our customers. We also look at asking the right questions, and discovering how to dig into w...

John Patrin joins us to discuss innovation within your organization. For the last five years, John was the head of innovation at DuPont, where he oversaw continued innovation in a Fortune 100 company already known for innovating. We discuss the incremental product innovations that most companies pursue while also getting a glimpse at larger-scale innovations that can affect business models and ser...

Robby Berthume, Head of Marketing at Digitize Designs is on the show this week. Robby shares some of the expertise that he has honed throughout his varied career. We talk about the need for implementing good measurement through strong metrics to ensure your marketing efforts are effective. He also shares some good advice on staying excited and keeping some personality in your corporate brand.

So, you are a rockstar marketer (obviously) and you have increased incoming leads in a major way. What now? How do you manage that growth, that success? Brian Critchfield of Airgain is on the show this week giving us some insight into managing phenomenal growth (like 12x growth). We talk about helping the sales team with new leads at different stages of the funnel. Managing the huge uptick in data...

Sherry Chapman the VP of Marketing at Fortera, joins The Kula Ring this week. Sherry illuminates what Fortera, a green cement start-up, is working on; Building partnerships with counterparts in the industry, and drawing new road maps for economic development, for products that are yet to hit the market. This is a fantastic chat about green industry.

Scott Vosburgh joins The Kula Ring this week to discuss how Sierra Olympia Technologies is facing down much larger competition. Through marketing products that the competition isn’t. Ensuring their online presence is as clean and high-performing as possible. While also keeping an eye on where the big guns in the space are ranking and finding success in online markets to capitalize for themselves.

Jim Lauria is here to talk about some strategies that have worked well for him and Mazzei around content creation and marketing. Adding value to not only his own company but to Mazzei’s partners as well. Jim brings a ton of knowledge and experience on what content looks like done right, and how an AI will never replace the human touch.

Jake Jevric joins The Kula Ring this week to discuss how deep relationships and technical know-how are incredibly important in industries where customers have options when it comes to picking suppliers. We get into what it takes to be a leader in technical sales and marketing. We also get into how both a top-down and bottom-up approach can be employed to ensure a unified customer experience.

Many aspects of our lives changed in the COVID era. B2B marketing was no different. This week we sat down with Nick Baranowski from Keystone Technologies to discuss how the pandemic era solutions have fueled huge success with mobile showrooms that now tour the US all year. This is a super cool idea and Nick shares some of the successes and pitfalls to avoid.

Lauren Scott of Acuity Brands and host of The Resilience Report is on the show this week giving us some significant insights into how the landscape of sustainability is evolving. We cover the new regulations and guidelines that are coming into effect as well as the need to ditch greenwashing and get into the real impact that our sustainable practices are having. Plus, Lauren sneaks in a nod to Arn...

Manufacturing marketers can face a lot of pressure to do more. Include more. Say more. Sometimes it seems like the favourite word in marketing is “and’... there’s always an excuse to add this, and that, and this thing too, and.. well, you get it. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman discuss why you should often choose to do less.

This week we are going guestless! Jeff and Carman sat down to have a conversation around the B2B effectiveness ladder and how that translates into creating a Big Long Idea. Sorting out how B2B manufacturers with long sales cycles and intricate offerings can build an idea that will inform their marketing for years to come, not quarters. This is a super informative conversation where we dive deep in...

Over the Holiday season, The Kula Ring is bringing you a few conversations between Jeff and Carman, the hosts of The Kula Ring and founders at Kula Partners. Agile Project Management is not something that typically comes to mind when discussing marketing. But, when clients discover that is how we manage marketing work at Kula Partners, Jeff and Carman often find themselves answering curious questi...

This week The Kula Ring is looking into something that a lot of manufacturing marketers think is a bad word: commoditization. Matthew Seymour of Hyperion Materials & Technologies is joining us this week to breakdown how he has tackled this issue. We get into a few tactics that have proven fruitful for Hyperion in dealing with a post-commodity world. We look at capitalizing on your value added prod...

This week on The Kula Ring, we pulled up a comfy chair with Evan Hargreaves to discuss the changing landscape in the office furniture industry. With so much of the workforce remaining hybrid or at home full time, the B2B furniture space looks a lot different than it has in the past. Evan walks us through how MillerKnoll is handling this new challenge and how they are adopting some inspiration from...