Is it better to be the underdog? 20 Great Answers with Kimberley Marlay, Head of Alliances and Strategic Partnerships, Kyndryl ANZ

Kimberley Marlay (00:01):

I’ve always been a team player. I love team sports. I love the underdog. I love being in a situation where you don’t think you’re going to win. So, I think for me it’s that whole notion of coalition building. So, you see a gnarly problem and you want to build the right team to get to an outcome.

Barrie Seppings (00:23):

Welcome to Plugged In, Switched On, where we pull you into the conversations that matter in B2B tech marketing. I am your host, Barrie Seppings, and the quote you just heard was from Kimberley Marlay. She’s the head of Alliances and Strategic Partnerships for Kyndryl Australia, New Zealand. More from Kimberley in just a moment. Now, if you are new to the pod, let us show you around. We do three things here at Plugged In, Switched On. Firstly, we get some of the most interesting people in B2B tech marketing to tell us how and why they do what they do. Secondly, in some of our special episodes, we take a deep dive into some of the core skills that a B2B tech marketer needs. We pull them apart, see how they work, what’s new, what’s old, and what you need to know.

(01:13):

And finally, we also have special episodes where we pull back the curtain on how these teams and these leaders operate. We look at their day to day, see if we can’t steal a few ideas for our own operations. And you, dear listener, are more than welcome to listen in, steal a few ideas for yourself. Now, we don’t try and do all those three things here in a single episode. We like to focus here at the pod. In today’s episode, we are focusing on Kimberley Marlay from Kyndryl Australia, New Zealand. We got her into the studio, asked her our 20 questions, and got 20 very interesting answers. Let’s go.

Kimberley Marlay of Kyndryl Australia, New Zealand, your first Plugged-In, Switched-On question is as always, the elevator pitch. What is your company or brand selling and why should anybody pay good money for it?

Kimberley Marlay (02:06):

We sell expertise. So, we are a technology services business. Without saying we sell our people because they don’t really love that as a notion, we sell the skills that they have, and our skills are probably focused on the deep, deep technical engineering. We three years ago split from IBM. And in IBM we kind of held the part of the business that was called Global Technology Services. So anytime any part of the organization kind of assembled hardware and software and business technology together and they’re like, “Oh, this is a good idea,” they kind of threw it out of the fence to Global Technology Services who kind of bundled it all together to make it actually work into something that was a solution. So when we split three years ago, we novated a lot of those customers over to Kyndryl.

(02:56):

So, we still run a lot of their technology today, and that’s a lot of the big banks and government organizations across Australia and New Zealand. Globally, we’re about 86,000, I think is our latest number. In ANZ, we’re a smaller part of the 86,000. We’re about 2000 across Australia, New Zealand. My title is Head of Alliances and Strategic Partnerships for Kyndryl Australia, New Zealand, the main players being Microsoft, AWS, and Google, because that’s where a lot of the innovation happens for our customers. And then outside of that, it’s a lot of the smaller, more domain specialists. So, think of, I don’t know, in the security and resiliency space likes of Veeam or Rubrik that have a really niche solution offering that kind of goes into an overall solution for our customer, but has a very unique proposition. So I work with each of them to kind of pull together a full solution for a customer.

Barrie Seppings (04:00):

Question number two, superhero origin story. Did you grow up dreaming of being in marketing or being in technology? What did Kimberley at school thought she was going to do?

Kimberley Marlay (04:12):

I wanted to be a zoologist when I was at school. Yeah, why didn’t I do it? No reason. I still love animals. I still love going to the zoo. I still want to be a zoologist, I think deep down. Where that’s kind of showed up in my current career is leaning into the sustainability side. So, I think I just cared about conservation full stop, and that kind of manifested in zoology because of animals and because all kids love animals. But I think I pretty quickly realized there was not much of a career in zoology. It’s a pretty small market in Australia to be in the zoo business. And I guess my interest areas kind of aligned into economics. I was very much an economics major throughout school and then into university, and I really love the strategy and the macro thinking of business.

(05:14):

So, from there, I kind of just landed up in the agency world, which I then met your kind self. And then from there I was like, “You know what? I really do like this business strategy stuff.” So, I jumped over the fence and went over client side. And I’ve always, always kind of leant into the strategy piece of marketing. So, for me, I think it was inevitable that I was going to move more into a business role because I never quite got what I needed from being just in marketing. I was always stretching out further than what my remit would suggest, which is why I kind of leaned very heavily into that whole idea of marketing or marketers moving into this whole notion of a chief growth officer. And then this opportunity came up, which is very much in that space. Alliances for Kyndryl are basically our biggest lever to pull for growth. So, this has ended up being the perfect role for me from being a zoologist to now.

Barrie Seppings (06:18):

Do you see yourself being entrepreneurial at any point? Or do you imagine you’re always a corporate…? You’re a corporate animal?

Kimberley Marlay (06:25):

Yeah, I love the machine of a business. That was probably one of the biggest reasons I jumped from IBM to Kyndryl was the opportunity to set up a business and not set up a startup, like set up a proper organization with all of the systems that worked harmoniously together to get to big outcomes, not little outcomes. I am so hyper focused on working on the things that matter and the things that will have impact. I am very okay with letting the little things go to work on the big impact pieces. So, I love working the machine. I guess that kind of leans into the economic side of my head where I like big systems, big macro ideas, systemic thinking. So, for me, working in a corporate I think is probably a foregone conclusion. But growing is ultimately my end outcome. I don’t like to settle. I don’t like to say I get bored because I don’t. I think anytime I’m in something, I’m always in it. I’m like, “Oh yeah, this is awesome, this is great.” But I think, “Okay, I’ve done this. Now what do I do next?”

Barrie Seppings (07:36):

So question three is, “I do this for free.” What’s the part of your job that you really enjoy the most that you find yourself really spending the time on?

Kimberley Marlay (07:43):

I’ve always been a team player. I love team sports. I love the underdog. I love being in a situation where you don’t think you’re going to win. So, I think for me, it’s that whole notion of coalition building. So you see a gnarly problem and you want to build the right team to get to an outcome. That happens a lot, particularly when you’re working with two behemoth organizations, be it Microsoft, AWS, or Google.

(08:13):

And you as the technology service partner, how do you get your own internal workings, the right technical people, the right industry people, the right relationship people to work with another behemoth to get to an outcome for a customer? A lot of people will look at that and go, “Oh no,” but with me, I’m like, “Oh yes, let’s get this going.” And I’m always the person who comes in the room and tries to get people working together as people, not as organizations. And I’d always underestimated that. Well, I don’t even think… I never really thought of that as a skill, but I have a professional coach that tells me that very much is a skill. So, I’ve been leaning hard into something that I enjoy doing and it’s come to life through this whole Alliances role in particular.

Barrie Seppings (09:00):

And are you allowing yourself to believe you are coach? Do you believe now that you have a skill that’s valued or is there still a little bit of that semi-imposter syndrome going on?

Kimberley Marlay (09:10):

It’s not even that I didn’t believe it. I just was not aware of it. I just thought everyone thought like I did. I was like, “Well, yeah, duh. That’s, of course, how you would do it.” Apparently not. And I discovered two things. One, I have a fairness trigger. So if it doesn’t go the way that I think is the right way, I get very triggered by that. And I’m like, “No, no, no. This is not how we partner. We’re not holding integrity in this space. Let’s make sure we’re transparent and honest.” And if we don’t believe it’s going that way, then we declare it. And then the other one is being a natural… Which I think is actually a skill of most marketers, being a natural dot connector. So the stuff that I saw, I was like, “Well, this and that, of course.” He’s like, “No, that of course thing doesn’t happen for most people.” And I was like, “Oh, really?” And he’s like, “Yeah, really.”

Barrie Seppings (10:05):

What’s the part of your job that you still have to kind of do that you really don’t like doing, but you know you’ve got to get done?

Kimberley Marlay (10:10):

I don’t like people that bring negative energy, like they would just be naysayers. I find that really, A, draining and B, frustrating because I’m like, “Just get on board or get out.” It’s a very easy decision. You can own that if you’re not going to bring the right energy. And I think that will come up a lot in this alliances space because look, often there’s a path of least resistance where it’s just you running as a lone horse. But there’s that analogy of, “Yeah, you can go…” What is it?

Barrie Seppings (10:40):

Yeah, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Kimberley Marlay (10:43):

That’s it. So that’s my new mantra. Yeah. So I feel like there is that obviously, especially in a business that has come from not needing to work within an ecosystem to a business that absolutely has to work in an ecosystem to be successful.

Barrie Seppings (10:59):

Question four, control, alt, delete. What’s the one career move or moment or friction, if you like, that you wish you could go back and undo? Or even if you can’t undo it, it’s that moment you realized you probably just learned something, perhaps a valuable lesson?

Kimberley Marlay (11:17):

I love this one because I learned from this. I would not undo it because I wouldn’t be in the role I’m in now, and I’m much better suited to this role than this other role. But the learning from it is something that… Another age old adage, time kills all deals. So, I was like pontificating, asking everyone’s opinion, trying to convince myself to take the role really, which is what I should have seen it for what it was. And as a consequence, the person that was kind of looking at me as an alternative started to speak to other people and then found someone that was better suited. And at the time I was outraged. Like, “How dare you? I was making my decision. We were talking.” But time kills all deals. Like if you’re not there actively having conversations and showing interest, then people are going to move on because they’ve got their own agenda that they need to meet. So yeah, that was a very acute learning for me.

Barrie Seppings (12:17):

You missed out on a role because you were taking your time to suss it out for yourself?

Kimberley Marlay (12:23):

Yeah, you’ve always got to know that… You’ve always got to be aware that they’re obviously meeting their own outcomes. And in this instance, they needed to find someone in that role much faster than I was making my decision.

Barrie Seppings (12:35):

Question five, shout out. Who have you learned from the most in your career, or even if perhaps it was what not to do?

Kimberley Marlay (12:44):

I’m going to say three people. One what not to do because you sparked that and I don’t think I would ever do it anyway. But watching a team leader belittle teams in a public forum, it very quickly demonstrates how ineffective that is to actually creating a culture of positive morale and productivity. So I’ve seen that throughout my years and very astutely have found alternatives to get to a much better outcome with much happier employees. So I think definitely had lessons around what not to do, won’t shout that person out. But the other two people I would give a shout out, one is my previous manager, Lisa Gilbert. She works for global marketing for Kyndryl now and also was an IBMer as Well. She has endless energy to push boundaries. She always wants to go big and bold. And I would say that I don’t like to sit still. She puts that on steroids in the fact that she likes to deploy that energy into…

Kimberley Marlay (14:02):

She likes to deploy that energy into defined, declared outcomes. Like, this is what I’m going to do this year, and she really pushes her teams to do the same. And it is, it’s a great way to build a strategic mindset of your team. Number two is Tara, our good friend, Tara Moody. She’s very good at work-life balance and giving herself the space to be creative. It’s complete opposite to who I am. I’m all like, “Okay, this is how we get stuff done.” I was like you very, and I guess that’s my more strategic mindset. I order things. I’m like, “This is the outcome. This is the three things that we need to mobilize to get to the set outcome” where she would not look at it in the same way.

(14:48):

She’s like, “Okay, I’m going to give myself three hours. Two of those hours, I’m going to go for a walk on the beach, have a swim, and I’m going to do these things.” And then she’ll come down and then she’ll crack out the same amount of work. And it’s, again, I think a beauty to watch. I was like, “I know everyone says that you should do that, but I don’t have time to go for a walk and get it done.” And then she goes and dances it and you just go, “Fine.” So it would have to be Tara.

Barrie Seppings (15:14):

Question six. The only constant is marketing cliches. You’d have to say that being in technology and being in business, the rate of change, it’s not just celebrated, it’s fetishized, right? If you’re not moving, if you’re not progressing, you’re standing still, all that sort of stuff. But humans, if we’re honest, don’t really change that much. What’s your secret? How do you convince yourself to be constantly leaning forward, constantly leaning in, constantly accepting of change without burning out?

Kimberley Marlay (15:41):

It’s exposure. My threshold’s probably a lot higher than most because I am and have been in technology for a long time, and it is very constant and we are at the absolute apex of change at the moment with things like the security and resiliency landscape of cyber attacks that’s going on, generative AI emerging, and all the niche players that come with that. Then you’ve got crazy technologies like quantum that’s coming into bear, and then how that comes to life in all its different forms from a security and cyber attack perspective, all the way through to what’s possible from gen AI now.

Barrie Seppings (16:19):

I mean, I’m exhausted just listening to you reel off that list. I would like it all to stop. Thank you very much.

Kimberley Marlay (16:25):

You know what, the thing I’ve noticed, particularly even in an organization full of technologists, is you do have your laggards and you do have your first movers. I’ve always been a first mover, even though I said I want to be a zoologist. I think I was the only year six kid that had a Nokia 3610. I was just holding on that phone by myself playing snake because no one else had a phone. I’ve always been a first mover.

(16:51):

So I think you have to participate with the change. You have to be part of the change. If you’re sitting there going, ” Oh, it’s going to take over the world, it’s going to take over my job, it’s going to do things. It’s only going to do that if you’re not a part of the journey. If you’re just standing as a bystander watching someone else use it and become more effective and more efficient and be a better employee or whatever they happen to be, then you’re almost taking yourself out the equation, not the technology. So I think you need to participate within the change.

Barrie Seppings (17:24):

Question seven. Here’s to your health. What do you do to stay physically and mentally healthy? Because these are big brain jobs. You talk about how you lean into this strategy a lot. It’s a lot of thinking, a lot of talking, a lot of emotional energy. What do you do for you? How does Kimberley look after Kimberley?

Kimberley Marlay (17:43):

I’m glad you said that because I think that awareness, which is going to be ironic given I am a yoga teacher, but that awareness of energy out is only a real learning for me, particularly in this role, probably because I am learning so much and probably leaning more into something that’s new than something that I could do with my eyes closed at the moment. It wasn’t draining as much energy, but I’m so much more exhausted at the moment because of the mental drain, and I don’t think I ever really gave that enough credit. I just always went, “Yeah, yeah, physically, I get why I’m tired if I do a lot of exercise.” That makes sense. But it’s only most recently that I’ve gone, “Ooh, I’ve done a lot of mental output, that’s why I’m physically tired.” I just never drew that. I don’t know why. It seems so logical when you say it out loud.

(18:35):

So you’ve got to give yourself a little bit more space. I have not. I’ve been really bad at that. I’ve done up to the hours, not given myself as much opportunity to rest. But one element for me, I think that always has to be consistent is the physical side. So like I said, I do play. I do love teams, so I still play lots of team sports. I play netball twice a week and touch football once a week and then moving closer towards my perimenopausal age, I now do weights because apparently that’s something you do according to podcasts. So I’ve put weights into the regime.

Barrie Seppings (19:16):

Oh God, you do yoga, you do Pilates, you do netball, you do touch football, you run a massive… Do you see your family at all or do you just send them postcards?

Kimberley Marlay (19:22):

Yes. Well, I mean a 10-year-old and 8-year-old, you really do have to put in some way in that arena as well. I do. I’m very fortunate that I work from home a couple of days a week so I can still see them. Although that is something I need to get better at, especially after COVID, is that whole boundary has been crossed. Whereas before, they never saw me as the work person, so I never really shut them out. But now, I’ve gotten into a space where I shut them out really easily, whereas I never ever did that beforehand. I do need to get better, but I do show up for all the things.

(20:00):

I show up for all the school concerts. I’m the netball coach. My husband’s the cricket coach and the touch football coach. So we show up in the domains where we can really show up. I really lean into the team sports and I can do it with all of my daughter’s friendship group. So then I know all the friend… all the male come over the house. So that part is where I show up for the kids.

Barrie Seppings (20:25):

Question eight. Unique snowflakes. Every market or industry or territory likes to think they’re special and unique, particularly from a marketing perspective. Not many of them are, but surely you’ve met one or two.

Kimberley Marlay (20:36):

Anyone that’s in the defense space and defense, particularly in technology now, is so much broader than what you’d think it would be. They have their own crazy ecosystem within the ecosystem. If you think of things like a ballistic missile, like the software that’s been created for that, the networking that needs to be in place, everything has to be sitting on a very secure cloud somewhere that needs to communicate across countries. It is such an insane amount of sophisticated tech that’s going on. Not to mention things like satellites, which is now a new thing in space, which is a whole new domain.

(21:13):

So I think if you’re marketing to an organization such as defense or any type of military organization, you need to lean into their language. You need to understand their culture and the way that they interact with each other and, say, in a technology sense, you might be speaking to the CIO of defense, but if they’re not on the same footing as the three star general, it doesn’t really matter what they think. They can’t just go and knock on the door and go, “Oh, can you sign this PO for me?” That doesn’t work that way. So I would say defense is a space where you really got to understand the nuances of the environment that they work within.

Barrie Seppings (21:56):

Question nine. Green with envy. What’s the campaign or event or idea or launch or even just an ad that you really admire that you wish you’d done?

Kimberley Marlay (22:06):

Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the company Go-To, Zoe Foster Blake, Hamish Blake from Hamish & Andy, his wife. She’s incredible in her own right with all the things that she’s done from a generalist perspective. But she also created a beauty company called Go-To because she’s been writing about beauty products for so long, and she’s like, “Oh, it’s a really complex area. Women don’t really understand it.” You get to a certain age and people start talking to you about hyaluronic acids and you’re like, “What the frig does that mean?” So she identified very quickly that there was this niche, well, there was this gap of just knowledge for women of how they created a really healthy beauty and wellness routine and demystified all of the science jargon that went around these crazy products that obviously people were just using well, to a degree, marketing around to make them sound way more complex than they needed to be.

(23:14):

So she created this company where she was really, really rooted in science. So she spends a lot of time on her product development, but then she simplifies the language around what it is and what it does in a really personable, humorous, approachable way in every single touch point, from the back of the box to the opt-in on your email to when you… to getting to the delivery part of the shopping cart, they’d label as the boring bits. Just every touch point has been considered, and it’s just so true to the brand. Every time I go through it, I’m like, “Oh, such an enjoyable experience.” As a marketer, you’re like, ” You’ve really thought about every single piece of this journey for a customer.”

Barrie Seppings (24:04):

All right, question 10. That really gets my goat. What’s the one thing in this industry that you think has gone on for too long and probably needs fixing?

Kimberley Marlay (24:15):

Marketing and the perception of marketing within an organization as the coloring department really gets my goat. As a strategist at the core of who I am, I used to get so angry when people would use the phrase, ” Oh, they’re just the coloring department.” I was like, “Oh, you do not have one strategic bone in your body and you’re calling my team the coloring department.” I was like, “Let’s go.” So that would really get my goat.

(24:44):

From a, and this actually applies to marketing and technology, I would say probably more so on the client side is diversity. So most often, on a client side, marketing organization is females. Most side in a tech organization is males. So there is a diversity issue in both those sectors, I guess, within the overall organization. And that’s just a pipeline thing. It’s the same with all of it. You’ve got to have a pipeline of talent that’s coming up and then you’ve got to nurture that talent to make sure that they reach the aspirations that they want to reach.

(25:28):

In some instances, in the tech space, a lot of girls are qualified out really early. Science and engineering maths are positioned as more male fields so that needs to be addressed. And then the pipeline issue will take care of itself once you get them in. And the same for marketing. It’s considered the coloring department, more creative. You get, oh, it’s easier to do, you can do it flexibly around children, all of that, yada, yada, yada. And that, I think, inevitably men might be like, “Oh, that’s not me. I’m not that” so they move out of those more creative parts of the business.

(26:06):

So needs to be both. And it’s interesting now being on the business side for the alliances piece, I’ve never had to consider it. When I came over from IBM, I was very fortunate that I got to select the team. I had to convince them to come, but I got to select them based on their skill set. And I wasn’t really looking at it from a diversity perspective. I just knew what skills I needed to bring over. And I knew them all so well personally that it was a moot point.

(26:35):

But now that I’ve inherited a team and I’m looking at hiring a team, it’s the first time where I’ve had to be really aware of diversity and bringing diversity in intentionally because a whole roots, a belief that I thought I had or I assumed I had, which now I know I do have, is I do believe in diversity of thinking. And if you don’t have those people in the room to challenge ideas or challenge thoughts, you’re never going to get a different thought.

(27:06):

So I’ve been really hyper conscious of that, so much so that I’ve gone to the talent team, I’m like, this is the cohort of people that I want to see from an interviewing perspective. Qualify out everyone else because we need diversity of thinking in the team, and that requires diversity of people within the team.

Barrie Seppings (27:24):

Question 11. Truth serum. What is the one question you’d ask an agency if you knew they had to tell you the truth?

Kimberley Marlay (27:32):

Performance media.

Barrie Seppings (27:40):

Under advice from my lawyer, I’m taking the…

Kimberley Marlay (27:45):

Yeah. Do you know what? I welcome the days when third-party cookies get turned off because our creativity is going to go out. It’s going to go on hyperdrive because we don’t all get suckered into the world of analytics and media performance because there’s no longer these really crazy media performance because there’s no longer these really crazy, major-sized world of third-party cookies and who’s coming from where and yeah, I don’t know if anyone really knows what’s going on outside the computer and the algorithm in that space.

Barrie Seppings (28:15):

Right, right. Is it just because it’s too opaque? Do you think nobody knows or do you think people are deliberately not telling you the truth?

Kimberley Marlay (28:21):

I think it’s murky. So if it’s not really transparent and there’s not a clear following about symbol, then it’s really hard to argue because you’ve got to remember, and I mean if you’re a good marketer, you would never try and argue this with back into your organization. You’ve got to simplify it even more so, again. But you’ve got to remember, you’ve got to be able to argue your investment. So if you are like, “Yeah, yeah, it’s medium investment and we got this many.” If you can’t argue those numbers, then you don’t understand it enough to be investing that type of money into it. So I just think it needs a lot more transparency.

Barrie Seppings (29:05):

Question 12. Better together. How do you make the call between collaboration and working solo, either for yourself or letting your team work solo so that they can learn from their own mistakes? Is there a pattern? Is there a structure? Is it gut feel because you’re a self-styled teams that you love teams? How do you balance those decisions?

Kimberley Marlay (29:28):

Yeah, I think you really need to A, spend a lot of time with your people to understand their strengths and weaknesses and B, know yourself very well to understand your strengths and weaknesses because I do truly believe that to go further to your point, you really do need to deploy a team mentality because everyone’s going to bring a different strength to get you to accelerate because the whole world we’re living in at the moment is pretty much everyone’s got the same group of skills in some capacity. It’s who can deploy it in the most efficient way to make you better, faster, more focused than the five other people that are doing the same thing in your market.

(30:17):

So I think it’s not so much around going solo, it’s what skill set can be deployed alongside someone else’s skill set in real time or in a waterfall way, whichever makes sense to get you to go faster. And it’s funny, when I coach my daughter’s netball team and they’re all like, “Oh, you made a mistake.” And now they have their own matcher and each time they say this is a mistake. And I’m like, “Yep, yep, that was a mistake. What’s a mistake?” And they were like an opportunity to learn. And I do, I believe that truly, a mistake is an opportunity to learn. So if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning, you’re not getting better and you’re not going to move faster in the next time.

Barrie Seppings (31:10):

Question 13. Change your mind. What’s a long-held belief about marketing that you no longer hold and what caused you to change your mind?

Kimberley Marlay (31:19):

Marketers and salespeople don’t like each other, basically. They’re two different people cut from the two very, very far sets of material. Very far away from each other. It’s just not true. Marketers are some of the best salespeople in the organization. They are really, really good storytellers. They know how to tap into emotion. They’re really good at doing project management. So they’re really good to getting to outcomes. So they’re very good executors and they’re long term in their thinking and that is a kick-ass salesperson. So everyone’s like, “Oh god, salespeople are so annoying and marketing, “Oh, marketing is the coloring department.” Whereas they’re both, it’s just so not true.

Barrie Seppings (32:12):

You think they’re more similar than they realize?

Kimberley Marlay (32:13):

Yes. And a really good salesperson is very good at tapping into their marketing people because they see what is missing from… And I think that if you go into a sales domain, and I know and I always went, ” Oh, sales are a bit icky. Yuck. I don’t like sales.” But then I met some truly pure professional salespeople and they are really good marketers. So I look at, I’m like, “Oh wow, you’re really lovely to be around. You’re really good collaborator, you’re really good at setting a vision and then a strategy and you’re really good at teaming” and they are pure salespeople.

(32:55):

Whereas there’s a whole lot of people in the middle that just fall into sales or falling into marketing because they’re probably the same on the marketing side where they’re very short-term, they just turn key, want to get it done, want to get it done for themselves. They want to just their next buck in the bank as opposed to trying to move an organization or move a team forward. And I think that’s the bad representation of both, whereas we’re so much closer than we think we are.

Barrie Seppings (33:22):

Question 14. Put your money where your mouth is. In terms of effectiveness and ROI, stuff that’s working, think back to the last 6 to 12 months, what tactics or approaches are you pulling back on because they’re running out of juice and where are you seeing potential?

Kimberley Marlay (33:38):

Kyndryl’s in a really interesting position because we’re only three years in, so we are that startup, especially from a marketing perspective, when you’ve got no brand. So you’ve got to do some big brand stuff, but then you’ve also got to be a lever that the organization can pull for growth as well. So what we struggled with was what’s the right mix for a new company with a brand new brand that had to get scale relatively quickly because you had a lot of people riding on it. So I think we got the mix right in the fact that a lot of our brand stuff was anchored in our purpose work. So a lot of our brand launch elements were around our reconciliation action plan because we could tie our brand and who we were as people to something that was a bit bigger than what we, well not just a bit, a lot bigger than what we were as a company, the stuff that really mattered and our brand tagline is the heart of progress.

(34:43):

And I think you’ve got to find what that means because that can be a really, especially for a group of an organization of predominantly men that can lose strength as a tagline pretty quickly if you don’t put it in the right context. So once we could deploy it in things that were meaningful, like sustainability, reconciliation action plan, a lot of the men in our organization are very big proponents of women in tech. So we put a lot of our brand work… aligned a lot of our brand work to those anchor moments around social and corporate responsibility. So that was a really clever thing for us to do as a team. And we got a lot of traction, a lot of mind share from our customers by doing it that way. But there’s got to be a point where you’re moving past the customer set that you already had because that was merging as this new brand within our customer set, now we need to move into this new brand that’s for new customers.

(35:50):

And it’s a lot noisier out there and it’s a lot harder to get traction. And we tried a few things with getting our SMEs on stages, be that tech stages or more business type keynote stages, and that worked for that person and getting that message, but it still is just a moment in time. So there needs to be that continuity of not just single moments like how do you, it’s the same age-old customer journey, how do you string all of these moments together? And that’s what we probably need to focus on moving forward. And obviously, I’m going to say this, but integrating our alliances partnership work more into our marketing campaigns because ultimately, that’s what our customers buy is that ecosystem.

Barrie Seppings (36:45):

All right, question 15. Overhyped and underrated. What buzzword or concept do you think is getting far too much airplay in our industry right now?

Kimberley Marlay (36:53):

I mean, obviously, it’s generative AI, but I don’t think it’s overhyped. That’s the problem there. Oh God, the potential is phenomenal. The challenges are we’re almost hamstrung by our own imagination of what’s possible. And I think there’s a lot of fear around it. And I think even, I was on a panel at Forbes the other day and I was talking about the fact that you should give your generative AI persona. So I used an example that I had used that week where it was Rose’s, my daughter’s birthday party, and I had no time. I’m like, “Shit, I’ve got to do this party plan. I don’t know what I could do.” So I put it into Copilot as everyone does these days, let’s do that. But I gave it a persona and said, you are the best child’s party planner in the world. Your specialty is for eight-year-old girls.

(37:52):

And I gave it this whole persona and I spent a lot of time building persona. I’m a marketer. And then I asked the question and you get such a good result. And I gave that example and so many people came up to me, so many, including all the people on the panel, they’re like, “I didn’t know you had to do that.” I was like, so there’s just… No one knows the potential because they don’t even know where to get started. It’s such a scary, scary place for people. All the headlines are like, it’s going to steal everyone’s jobs. And no one thought it was going to go into creative spaces and oh my God, what’s next? That no one’s like… Everyone’s a bit tentative to play with it. So I think it’s not underrated because we haven’t even started using it properly yet.

Barrie Seppings (38:34):

Question 16. The supermodel question. So Linda Evangelista once said that she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day. We need to adjust that for inflation. That’s probably $19.86. Kimberley, what do you get out of bed for? What’s your motivation every morning?

Kimberley Marlay (38:49):

Oh, I feel like a broken record. It is, for me, going to work is like a team sport. It’s like going in to be part of the team. We’ve been quite lucky in Kyndryl that our CEO and chair Martin Schroeter, he has been very good and I haven’t seen it across many organizations. Very good at setting a really clear consumable strategy. And he’s obviously been working with the marketing team out there as well. He’s netted out to three As. He uses it in his investor talks. He uses it in all the town halls. He’s very consistent with his messaging. And you can ask anyone in Kyndryl, what are the three As and they’ll absolutely tell you what it is and what we’re trying to achieve around it. So thankfully, one of them is alliances so I really am a big part of it because I wouldn’t want to be there if I wasn’t important.

(39:44):

I get a lot of joy from a lot of the little things that I can’t… Like if everyone said to me, “Oh, why was that a good day?” I’m like, “Oh, just so many little things that were great happened that got us moving along.” And I actually, again, spoke to my coach about this. Once you get the big win, that’s not, you’d think even how excited I get along the way, I’d be all stoked about the, “Oh wow, we did.” But I don’t, I’m like, “Okay, cool.” And then I move on to the next thing.

(40:12):

I think I must be one of those people that are more about the journey and it’s the little stuff that matters than the big one. I probably don’t give as much kudos as I should because other people get really excited about the big win and that’s the way they’re wired. And I’ve got to remember that.

Barrie Seppings (40:28):

We’re at question 17. This ain’t happening. What’s the most unexpected or unusual situation or person that you’ve found yourself with thanks to work and your career?

Kimberley Marlay (40:37):

You know what? This one’s so weird. It was recent, actually, I think it was maybe a month ago. I sat down and had tea with the Duchess of York, Fergie.

Barrie Seppings (40:48):

Sarah Ferguson. Wow.

Kimberley Marlay (40:50):

Yeah, I know. It was so random.

Barrie Seppings (40:54):

That is random.

Kimberley Marlay (40:54):

It is random.

Barrie Seppings (40:55):

How come?

Kimberley Marlay (40:55):

She is really quite fabulous, actually. She calls herself the granny that kicks shins. I’ve made really good friends with the editor-in-chief of Forbes through our partnership, and she knew I was really interested in sustainability. And this particular breakfast was around sustainability, and she got pulled in last minute and she had a plus one. She’s like, “Do you want to come?” “Yeah, I’ll come to a breakfast with Fergie.” But man, it was not just a breakfast with Fergie because it was these students, they won a competition to be at the breakfast and it was with this other company called Orbispace that do great work with helping young girls in STEM.

(41:36):

And Fergie turned to them and they’re like 12 and 14 and she’s like, “Okay, well stand up and give us your pitch.” And I was like, “Uh, that is so mean. She can’t do that.” And we were a group and I think our table was 12. These kids just had to get up and do their pitch. And I’m like, “That is so mean.” But holy shit, they blew my mind, what they were working on and the problems that they were solving and the fact that they could just get up and execute and-

Kimberley Marlay (42:03):

… the problems that they were solving and the fact that they could just get up and execute and deliver, I was just like, “Oh, well done. That is incredible.” Except for then she turned to myself and someone else. She’s like, “Okay, your turn.” And I’m like, “What?” She’s like, “Yeah.”

Barrie Seppings (42:18):

What now?

Kimberley Marlay (42:18):

“Stand up, where do you work for and what are you doing to help with climate change?” And I was like, “Oh, bloody hell. This is not what I signed up for.”

Barrie Seppings (42:27):

It’s like, “Well, I tried to pack my reusable straw on a regular basis and I-

Kimberley Marlay (42:32):

Oh, god.

Barrie Seppings (42:33):

Wow, what are you going to do? What did you do?

Kimberley Marlay (42:35):

I was super fortunate that I had been in India the week before, and we took a customer there and we were building out the agenda for what we had done in the, and stuff that was really impactful from a social perspective. And the India team, and I credit them completely ’cause I was not a part of this and I said so in the thing, but I think she gave me credit when it was not much my credit to take. But the India team have built, they basically democratized loan lending.

(43:06):

So they got together with the government ’cause it was Modi’s agenda to do this. So they were kind of the instrumental orchestrator. So they got together with the government, the big four banks, and what used to take, I think it was like six weeks to get a loan application through. They got it down to six minutes by automating all their systems, pulling it down onto one platform and doing across all the big banks, so was all underwritten, which in what that then did once they got to that platform is all of these smaller fintechs could then tap into that platform and then create products around it.

(43:41):

So the next label down the Kyndryl team have worked with this smaller fin or a couple of the smaller fintechs that then go into rural communities for women. And you know how if you give $1 to a woman because of the fact that she’s working for the family, it’ll get $7 in return. So they’re basically focused on just opening up all of these micro loans for these women. And the ripple effect of that has been huge. And there was an incredible customer story and video that they created, and I sat with the team and I knew that story quite well from being in India the week before.

Barrie Seppings (44:16):

Question 18, home alone. What was the pandemic or the lockdown experience for you? Kimberley, you, I assume you were in Sydney for that, lived through that, which was not as strict say as Melbourne, but had its moments. What was it like for you and then what have been the things that you’ve kept from it or things that have been a lasting change?

Kimberley Marlay (44:38):

We were very fortunate that we had access to true natural habitats to keep us sane. I was one of those people that had to pull the … turn on the red alarm. Everyone had to get home. We had to leave the house really quickly ’cause all the Christmas presents were in a different part of the city. I’m like, “We’ve got to leave. We’re leaving now. Everyone come back to the house now, otherwise Christmas is canceled.”

(45:03):

So we mobilized very quickly to leave through the big lockdown, but we were very fortunate ’cause then we got to spend all that time with my mum and dad in Tamworth over the Christmas break and all my sisters were there. So that bit, all of that stuff was real positive opportunities that you never got in when you’re kind of in the rat race, as they say.

(45:26):

Then there was all the opportunities of spending real time with your friends ’cause you would be doing all of the crazy trivia nights and drinking games virtually. And it was proper catch-ups, not like in loud pubs where you’d only speak to the person next to you. It was real engagement. It was very challenging with the kids. Oliver was in school. So trying to get all of that organized and do the right thing to make sure that they could read. And all of those pieces were challenging.

(45:55):

And the real, I kind of alluded to it before, but the real negative was the crossing over of the boundary. I was always the fun mum. I’m very good at leaving work at the door. If I’m on holidays, if I’m on the weekend, I don’t touch my phone, I don’t do any emails, I don’t do anything. I’m completely off.

(46:19):

But from working from home and after Covid, they’ve seen the other side of me where I’m in that focus in and I can and I’m very good at … And my husband says I go into the vortex. Tom’s like, he actually, he walks into the room and he’s like, “Wong, wong,” and I’m like, “Shut up.” He’s like, “I can tell you’re in the vortex.” And they see me in that stage and I’ll just get out and I just lose who I am. I’m like, “You’re interrupting. I’m in this thing,” and I can push them out without being who I want to be as a mom.

(46:53):

And I think that bit is very challenging ’cause that line has gone blurred and blurred and blurred, more blurred. They see it more often. And I was just so conscious of cutting. As soon as I left the office, that person was set aside and I was this other person. Now I don’t even know where I start and where I begin anymore. I’m kind of let it kind of go way too wobbly.

(47:19):

So I would love to get that back, that really definitive, this is or not … You don’t see that person. You don’t need to see that person.

Barrie Seppings (47:28):

Question 19. I never buy anything fake no matter what. All of me. So lots of businesses say they want their staff to bring their whole self to work, like bring your authentic self. Is that true A) in Kyndryl, and B) is it true for you? Do you allow yourself for, as you alluded to there, are there two Kimberleys, a work Kimberley and home Kimberley?

Kimberley Marlay (47:50):

Yeah. And I don’t know would be the short answer to that. I don’t have a different side of me. I’m a terrible actor. I wouldn’t do very well for that. And yes, I think Kyndryl does allow you to bring your whole self to the organization. I would never … Well, it’s a hard one, isn’t it? Because when you are someone that would never let something fly, it’s really easy to say, of course, of course you can stand up and say whatever you want because that’s who I am, and I would do it anyway. So it’s hard to go, “Would everyone else feel the same way?” I could emphatically go, yes, my team knows that they could to me and to anyone else, I would absolutely back them if they think something is wrong or they feel like they’re being mistreated.

(48:39):

But it’s hard, especially sitting on the SLT to wholeheartedly go, “Do I know every team feels that way?” I would absolutely do everything in my power to make sure that they would feel that way if I came across it. But it’s hard when you’ve got such a big organization to know it to be true. If you’re being really frank with yourself, how do you know?

(49:01):

We had a terrible example where someone said that they hadn’t spoken to their manager or hadn’t had a one-on-one. I don’t know what they said for six months. And I’m like, “What? How has that happened?” Even just talking about standard management systems, you have a one-on-one with your team at least. Well, if you can’t do it once a week, at least once every fortnight or at least once a month if your team is huge, but you’ve got to have those touch points. So I think things do fall through the cracks. And you’d be very naive to say everyone’s having the same experience as you.

(49:38):

But I know our intent is for everyone to have an experience where they feel like they can bring their whole selves. And every time we show up as a group individually, if I saw someone not acting in that way, and we call it the Kyndryl way, if I saw someone acting in that way, I would call it out without hesitation.

Barrie Seppings (49:58):

Question 20, secret weapon. Do you have a secret weapon in your career or have you had one? And if you do, will you tell me what it is?

Kimberley Marlay (50:05):

It is something that my dad said to me that I always, I think I’ve done it just as a notion of the way that I’ve been brought up, but the more and more I think of it as a philosophy or the way I work, I know it to be true from a success factor perspective. And that’s the idea of you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And it sounds like a terrible, why do you want to catch flies? But the intent is, if you are nice to people, you are generally going to get a lot further than if you’re a dickhead basically. If you’re going to be an asshole, people don’t want to work with you. And you need to create an environment where people don’t feel like they need to be assholes to get something done is one, and you need to not be an asshole is the next thing to make that true.

(51:02):

So I think I’m naturally a quite joyful person, so it’s not difficult for me to show up in that way. Sometimes it is difficult for other people. It’s not … Naturally some people are quite melancholy and they don’t want to be always on, or they don’t naturally want to be the person of high spirits. But it’s my, I guess to your question, it’s my secret weapon, something that I find quite easy to do, and I never come across a situation where it has put me in a negative situation to be. So I think it definitely holds true as a philosophy and a way of life, and it’s something that I find it’s not a draining thing for me where it might be for others.

Barrie Seppings (51:55):

That was 20 questions, the interview game we play with all of our guests here on Plugged In, Switched On podcast. And today’s answers came from Kimberley Marlay, who is the Head of Alliances and Strategic Partnerships for Kyndryl Australia/New Zealand. Before I let Kimberley go though, I asked her about her favorite all-time movie.

Kimberley Marlay (52:18):

I love Love Story. I love … I love Love. I love The Underdog. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m going to say it, The Notebook.

Barrie Seppings (52:26):

Now, before we unplug for this episode, just a quick recap. Plugged In, Switched On is brought to you by the Splendid Group, which is a pure play B2B tech marketing agency where I am the executive creative director.

We didn’t make this episode in our offices because, spoiler alert, we have no offices, never have had offices. And yet we are a global leading tech marketing agency, 100% remote, and we bring in the best senior talent from around the world and let them do their thing from wherever they like to work, and the results are pretty fantastic.

If you are interested in doing some of your best work from wherever you’d like to work, please hit us up at splendidgroup.com, take a little look around and get in touch. We are hiring at the moment off the back of some recent wins.

I have been Barrie Seppings. I was talking with Kimberley Marlay of Kyndryl Australia/New Zealand, in what has been a 20 questions episode of Plugged In, Switched On, a podcast about the conversations that matter in B2B tech marketing.

Hit Subscribe in your pod delivery platform of choice, and you’ll hear us again automatically next month. We are back every month. Thank you for having us in your ears.

Plugged In and Switched On is generated by Splendid Group. Thanks to our executive producers Ruth Holt and Anna Isabelle Canta. Thanks also to our CEO, Tim Sands.