Inside CMO+: Marketing, Comms, and a $10B Acquisition

   

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time, welcome, and if you're a regular listener, welcome back. You're about to listen to a bonus huddle where experts share their insights into the topics of critical importance to our flocking awesome community. CMO Huddles. In this episode, Amy Messano of Thomson Reuters shares what CMO Plus—that's our idea when you're more than a CMO, you also handle some other area—what it looks like when you lead both, in this case, marketing and communications. Drawing on her experience at Altair, she talks about uniting brand and comms inside a technical engineering-led culture, turning employees into ambassadors, and guiding the business through rapid growth and a multi-billion dollar acquisition. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser

Drew: Hello, Huddles, welcome to this special bonus huddle. Now I have a confession and a celebration of one of the most underappreciated skills in marketing: nimbleness. You see, like a colony of penguins with a sudden shift in ice conditions, we've had to adapt quickly around here. Originally, our scheduled guest had a last-minute conflict. But here's the beautiful thing about the CMO Huddles community: we're resilient, we're connected, and we can pivot faster than a penguin sliding into the ocean. Which brings me to our actual guest today, Amy Messano, CMO and Chief Communications Officer of Altair, who exemplifies precisely the kind of agility and leadership we're celebrating. Amy's been with Altair, a global engineering and technology company, for more than six years, and she's living proof that the evolution from CMO to CMO Plus takes many forms. With that, Amy, let's just jump into this thing. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Amy: Oh, it's nice to see you. I am outside of Detroit in Michigan, enjoying a beautiful, finally not super, super hot day, although I haven't been outside yet from my desk, but it looks nice.

Drew: Yeah, I know we're not going outside here in New York City. It is blazing hot.

Amy: Yes, it's been super hot.

Drew: So you're now wearing these two hats, CMO and Chief Communications Officer. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, you've been there six and a half, almost seven years. When did that happen, and how did that dual role come about?

Amy: Yeah, so it has been that way since day one. And actually, in my previous role before that, I also did both marketing and communications. I very much believe that they should be integrated. I think that integrated marketing and comms is—I understand all companies, and especially the massive-size ones, where they're separated—they should be, you know, completely sympatico if they're not in the same function. I think that the earned, owned, paid three-legged stool—I've been saying that for 20 years—should be, you know, connected. So when I first got to, specifically to your question about Altair, there really wasn't a communications function. It was a very decentralized team and company, and it was a very product-driven company and geographically decentralized. So I was recruited to help build a brand, create a centralized marketing team, stand up a corporate comms function, and to go from kind of a house of brands to a branded house. And part of that is communications. I really believe truly in the power of the integrated campaign and holistic view.

Drew: It's so interesting because we've had in one of our CMO Huddle Studios shows, we had the CMO and the Chief Comms Officer. And no matter what, in this scenario, they're supposed to dance together, but they seem to step on each other's toes. And I know specifically of one circumstance where it's kind of getting ugly. So I think those two naturally—putting them together makes so much sense. And I'm assuming within that, you also have internal comms?

Amy: Yes, correct, which is so important. It's so important. Your employees are your best ambassadors, and in the world of, you know, all these conversations, everything from DEI and ESG, and should we speak out as a company, or should we not? And all the political hot-button issues. I've sort of taken the belief that speaking within your company is more important because your employees are everything, especially in software. We are a pure software company, so they are the best ambassadors that you have. They can speak on your behalf instead of—sometimes you don't always have to carry that big stick. So I think your employees are absolutely critical, and especially in a growth, any kind of growth phase, change, being agile. If everyone doesn't understand—your CEO says, "Everyone get in the boat, row. Make sure you're rowing in the same direction"—and without strong internal comms, that's very hard to do.

Drew: Yeah, it really is. Now you've been on a journey, and you and I have talked about this. It wasn't always—there wasn't really a single brand, as you said earlier. There was a lot of localization and messaging. Talk a little bit about the steps that you went through, and how long it took to sort of get folks on the same page, internally and externally, and then the power of that.

Amy: Yeah, so it's a great question, and it was a very good learning experience for me. I think one thing to keep in mind is it's emotional. It's more emotional than people think it is, because especially through acquisitions, right? It's people's blood, sweat, and tears, and they want you to understand that and respect that. And when I got to Altair, it's an amazing culture. It's one of the reasons I joined. You have to be respectful of that. Just because you've come in from somewhere else and done this successfully and you have a playbook, it doesn't mean that that playbook can just be shoved down their throats. You have to take the time to listen, to understand, and align to the business. Now we talk about horizons a lot—one, two, and three—and that's another reason why I think that comms and marketing are so important, because comms often can talk about horizon three, and marketing is sort of "What am I selling right now?" So that also bridges those horizons. But basically what we did—when we first got there, all of the countries were sort of run by themselves and by products, and the marketing teams were also separated that way, and the brand looked different because they were really focused on selling products. So a lot of it was internal education and awareness and sort of explaining, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats. If you have a brand, it will help you sell. And there was resistance, don't get me wrong. A lot of people were like, "Go pound sand. We've been doing it this way just wonderfully without you. A brand is, you know, putting your business card and putting your name on a notebook." But we took the time. We talked to every single employee. We did deep dives on the brand architecture. We talked to customers, we talked to partners, we hired a vendor. It was a very thoughtful, thorough process so that we could be respectful of the past. But through our acquisitions, we have three big product portfolios. The one with the biggest growth is AI. We are a machine learning, data science, AI company. So we knew that we couldn't keep selling the same way, which was historically—the base was engineering, real deep technical engineering software, and then high-performance computing, and then machine learning, data science, AI. So taking those and being respectful and looking toward the future—but it's a different sales cycle. It's a different sales-type person. It's a different persona. It's a different part of the business. One was bottom-up, the other is top-down. So completely different, even the makeup of the salespeople and the sales approach. So understanding all of that and how those can come together without knocking each other over, we took about a year to really do all the hard work and listening and being thoughtful about it, getting key stakeholder alignment, all the things that, you know, you think you would do. And then we came to roll it out right before COVID. So all of our big plans kind of went—we had to do it all virtually, but it worked great. And we had—the one, I would say, key takeaway is we were really nervous. My CEO was like, "Don't hype it up," because it was so, you know, it was the beating heart of the company. And so we came up with this—we thought it was just going to be like a little tagline, a mantra called "Only Forward." That was just kind of the embodiment of our DNA, that we always look forward, we make mistakes, we keep going forward. And it has become a rallying cry for the company. We still—people still, in emails, conference calls, sentences when they speak, people say "only forward" still, you know, five years later. So it has stuck, and it was super successful. And now it's going to go away. That's okay. It did what it was supposed to do.

Drew: Well, let's—I want to talk about that, but just let's explain why it's going away.

Amy: So we were acquired by Siemens, which was very exciting, mixed emotions for a lot of people. One of the reasons, again, that I was brought over was to grow the brand, set up the corporate comms, and really help them scale. So in six years, when I joined, it was about $325 million-ish in revenue. The stock was about $22, $23-ish. We doubled in five years, and we just sold—we closed in March for $10.6 billion, $113 a share. So quite a success story. It's the biggest acquisition Siemens has ever done. We're in the software division. It's called Digital Industry Software. So super exciting for all of us to have been a part of—my team, and I say to my team, our team, our marketing communications team: no matter what happens, you guys built a $10 billion brand in five years. And that's an incredible story, and it's because you worked together so well as a team, and it's a great story for them. No matter where they go, what happens, if they stay, if they don't, they built a $10 billion brand in five years. It's pretty impressive.

Drew: It is impressive. I want to—one of the things that, you know, folks hope when they do something like that is—did you feel like the brand was part of the asset and enabled? Talk about that.

Amy: When I first got there, they had just IPO'd, and so I wasn't right there for the IPO. And it's a very interesting sort of situation where our CEO and founder, who was also the largest shareholder, super visionary, super obviously brilliant, big supporter of marketing, but was just getting into the need for understanding, you know, investors, right? Institutional investors. And when I first joined, I wasn't part of, like, setting it up. And I went to that first IR day that they had. One of the investors said to me, "You've got the orange job at this place right now," because they were just of engineers, for engineers, by engineers, and were super successful. And then they knew—my CEO was smart enough to say, "Okay, I need a functional expert. I have all engineers." I was the first female officer, the first non-engineer officer, and the first person who didn't grow up there. They all grew up together. So it was, you know, them taking a leap. They said, "Okay, if we—I have to have the courage to say I need to change internally if I need to get to these big goals." So all of that said, they did that. And so it was an exercise in building a brand that was recognized and that customers could recognize, investors could recognize. You know, when I first started, the show—it didn't matter where I would go around the world—and the shows looked different. The offices looked different. So it didn't even seem like the same company. And we sort of dropped the engineering, and we went to Altair because we were just a software—but different types of software. All those things, it was, you know, there were very thoughtful, data-driven decisions about how we should go to market, how we should present ourselves. You know, I think—I believe that it was because when we closed acquisitions, a lot of the people internally who were the biggest resistors said, "Thank you so much. You know, when—before you got here—we didn't really know what that meant." And it helps us hire people. It's helped us close business. It's helped us open doors that we wouldn't have had. And the employee satisfaction on the team—a couple folks said to me, the internal reputation of the team went from order takers to strategic partners. And that just meant the world to me because it was a lot of the same people, but just getting them within the blueprint of a functioning, supportive team really helped scale.

Drew: There's so many things I want to dive into. I want to first just sort of ask—it sounds like you went into the ultimate boys club, and I just want to talk about navigating that. If you are a woman executive walking into that thing, what were some of the things that you did to sort of build credibility with this team when you were, you know, the ultimate outsider?

Amy: Yeah. So I think in my career, I have usually—and many, many times, sadly—it's probably the other ladies on the phone—been the only woman in the room. So it was a scenario I was very used to, unfortunately. So that part wasn't as intimidating to me, but it was the non-engineer part that was much more intimidating to me because I am not an engineer. I understand—I say, I joke that I have an engineering pocket translator. I know, for many years of working with them, that they just think and speak differently, but I have learned over the years to realize that. And I really believe people are smart in different ways, and everyone has a different thing to bring to the table. And I felt like they had a culture that appreciated that, but it definitely took some time to prove myself, and it was more from the engineering perspective than my gender. That's what I got more—like, "You don't understand how your computational fluid dynamics work?" I said, "No, I don't, and I never will. I'm six miles wide. I don't have to. I have to understand what problems it solves." You know, we don't—we gotta—that's—we kind of shifted from product features and functionalities and bits and bytes to "What problems does it solve?" More of a solution-selling, "Does it go to market?" approach. So that, to me, was more intimidating, you know. In the past, like my past role in Delphi and Aptiv, which is automotive, but went to mobility technology—one funny story: I was—that we were doing in the early days of autonomous driving—it was all robotic, pre-mapped program routes. That's just kind of how it worked when they were getting ready for a big test run. And the car—there was a huge pothole in front of it in the track, and it was so big that the car thought it was an object and would continue to go around it. So I'm sitting in a dark room, all engineers, and they were just freaking out about how they were going to rewrite the code in time for this big customer visit. Then I had this internal debate: "Do I say something? Do I not? They're going to think you're stupid." And so I kind of sheepishly put my hand up and I said, "Or you can just fill in the pothole." And they filled in the pothole. I mean, it's a silly, silly example, but, you know, it's a different way. I think we all just come at things differently. So I had enough of a thick skin by that point where I wasn't as nervous about that. But you can be very intimidated when you're surrounded with PhDs and brilliant, brilliant people in an area that your brain just does not function as—I'm not a mathematician or an engineer, and I will not understand, I will never understand it, but I know enough of the questions to ask to explain.

Drew: Yeah, it's funny because I, having worked on clients over the years that were, you know, all either developers and engineers, and there's this assumption: "Well, it's all rational all the time." And the truth is, no, it's not always all rational. I mean, if you can get these folks out there in the things that they love, you can—engineers are people too, I guess, is the summary on that. Now, one of the things that we've talked about in the past, and that really came home to me as you were talking about the brand journey—we have a lot of folks in our community who can't even use the word "brand," and part of it is they don't have the time to be able to do the work in the right way to understand the culture as you did, but they don't have the time frame. So what I want to understand—Horizon 1, 2, 3—I've actually never heard that language. What does that mean? Yeah, how were you able to sort of get the time and earn the right? Some folks believe that you have to earn the right to buy the time that you need to really do a brand transformation.

Amy: A couple things. One is the Horizon 1, 2, 3 is from my CEO. That's the way he speaks, and it's escaping me now—someone on the phone might know—but it's in some book. So the Horizon 3 is the far-out, visionary future where technology is going, right? And so you have to be able to paint that picture, sometimes in an emotional and intellectual way, but so that customers know that they're betting their pennies on a customer—or a company, a vendor, a partner, whatever you want to say—that will help them get into the future, right? They have the technology roadmap that is going far into the future, and they can see where the road is going. They're making the advanced bets on technology. The Horizon 2 is, you know, sort of three to five years out. Where is it going to be? How do I get from Horizon 1? Horizon 1 is, "This is what I have to sell today." Your salespeople—it's the quota. "I have to sell this right now," which you can never forget about, right? This is—we're all here to sell software, or we should go home. I have to help people sell. Horizon 2 is, "Okay, how do I get that to the next—to the Horizon 3?" So it's a continual journey of taking people for that ride along with you, right? So one is I have to help people sell today. But two is I have to help convince people that you are doing business with really, really smart people who can understand that technology roadmap. So it's being able to articulate those three. And there are three different, in my opinion, different tactics, right? One is much more tactical, and the other is maybe more emotional. I think being able—that with all AI and everything that's changing, one thing that I don't think computers or bots will be able to replace is that human intuition and emotional intelligence and crafting, you know, stories, and being able to do that. So I think that can be applied to all three horizons, but I think for sure, the Horizon 3 is that real goose-bumpy, getting-you-excited-for-the-future sort of storytelling.

Drew: Yeah, it's funny. If I were to look at that for PE firms, I feel like the horizon is 0.5. Yeah, and that's it. That's all you get. Yeah, like next three months. "What's the pipeline look like?" Exactly. And what's so interesting—I want to go to the end game here, where you describe the result and impact of this as employee satisfaction was higher, which means, typically, that translates into more productivity, longevity, easier to recruit, lower recruiting costs. You also talked about the impact on customers in terms of, you know, just staying with you and being able to see it, so in your ability to close deals. And one of the things that we talk about, at least here, but not necessarily—doesn't get talked about in Silicon Valley a lot—is brand equals pricing power. Ultimately, brand equaled acquisition power for you.

Amy: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, a story that—so we go to CES, like most other technology companies, and ironically, a person that I used to—I was at Microsoft for 10 years, and one of my folks, friends I used to work with at Microsoft, I saw, who was my equivalent job at a huge competitor of ours. Ironically, we just kind of got into the same field, kind of. And his is way bigger. And he said, "You know, we never even used to think about you guys as competition, until you came. And now that we see the results of what you're doing," he's like, "and now we talk about you." And he said, "I know it's your stuff, not—I mean, I know our company, Altair stuff, without even—even if your name's not attached, you've done such a good job about creating the feeling and the emotion and the consistency, but I know it's yours before I even know it's yours." So that, to me, is just—that when your competition starts talking about you, that helps. You know, that helps the—right there—is helping that price driving. So we have a different model, though. Ours is a units model, which is sort of like enterprise software, Netflix kind of—you buy tokens, so it's not per-seat license. So it's a little bit different, but the fact that you can—that makes they have to lower, right? They have to lower, and you could raise because now you're competing more effectively. And in that little anecdote, it's directly—you know, because they didn't change much else, of course, over the time they have—but in that little scenario, it's a good articulation that a brand can at least get you on the radar and off to—of your competition where they feel like they have to react.

Drew: Well, all of this must be incredibly gratifying.

Amy: Yeah, it's been really fun. It's definitely been one of the most proud sort of overall accomplishments, I would say. And the emotional gratitude is—just great people. It's been great fun. It's a great culture. Yeah, I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done as a team.

Drew: So I want to talk a little bit about the acquisitions, and then we'll sort of get to the implications of the Siemens one, but so 20-plus acquisitions that you've gone through over the last six and a half years. Talk a little bit about how—having done, you know, because I bet you did some acquisitions before you had the brand work, and then you did some acquisitions afterwards—how did that, having that brand sort of well-defined and beginning to sort of get traction, help as you acquired the new companies? Or did it?

Amy: Yeah, absolutely it did. Because some of those 21—two that we've done in the past six years—some were smaller tuck-ins. Some are material, you know, publicly traded companies. Some were so excited that they couldn't wait to embrace everything that was Altair. And some were like, "I don't want to change my brand. I don't want to change, you know, anything." So there was—there's a spectrum, right, of the willingness to embrace it. Then one of the, I think, most important things—there's a couple—what is culture? Maintaining your culture as you are embracing all these new companies and being, you know, aware that they can bring something to the table, right? They don't have to just shut down who they are. They're additive, right? And a lot of founder-led companies—and most of the founders stayed on. The harder ones were sort of a little bit different in the data world, I would say, just because it was such a different philosophy, different go-to-market, different sales tactics, different sales, who they're selling to. Those were a little bit more challenging because it was sort of just right down to every DNA code different. But we adapted a lot of their processes. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think people want to feel heard, and I think they want to feel valued and appreciated for what they have brought to the table, and they obviously did something right to be purchased, right? So it's keeping in mind how they are additive to sales, how you can—because you can also buy a company and just kill it and have, you know, millions of dollars revenue. If you do something wrong, you get nothing. You kill it. So I'm sure all of our experiences there—there's acquisitions that have been bad and some that have been wonderful, and you keep learning and trying to change. So we have the formula, like a playbook, of all the things that you know you have to change. And even when it comes to headcount, you know you can't always keep everybody, and that means also an internal reflection of looking at your team. If you have two people, you have to say your person might not be as strong. This person coming from the outside might be stronger, and you have to make those kind of hard decisions too. So it's a combination. But from the brand perspective, almost—we have a very clear brand platform architecture that Altair is always the brand, no matter what. But the one exception that we made—we changed one of our platform names. We bought a company called RapidMiner, which is a deep data science that has a million users and a really strong brand in this world. So we kept—we changed—they became the name of a platform of all of our AI tools. So it didn't become—we gave it its due without overtaking our own brand. Does that make sense? It's not always the same.

Drew: Right. You have a master brand, and you still—but you can have product brands that represent the acquisition.

Amy: Right. We have our brand, and we have three platforms, and then the products fall underneath the platforms. Because we have 120 products, there's too many, and that was kind of the problem—is that they were cannibalizing each other at the beginning. So now it's very neatly tucked in. And we're—we have to be pretty consistent and pretty strong about enforcing that. Otherwise, you just will get lost in alphabet soup.

Drew: Yeah, and I've seen that in some websites you go to, and you can tell this is a company that's had multiple acquisitions because they list 150 company products, and nobody can sort of figure that out. So you really do have to simplify that as you get through it. And, you know, it does mean a lot of re-architecting of, you know, things when you do it, at least on a customer-facing level.

Ad Break: This show is brought to you by CMO Huddles, the only marketing community dedicated to B2B greatness and that donates 1% of revenue to the Global Penguin Society. Why? Well, it turns out that B2B CMOs and penguins have a lot in common. Both are highly curious and remarkable problem solvers. Both prevail in harsh environments by working together with peers, and both are remarkably mediagenic. And just as a group of penguins is called a huddle, our community of over 300 B2B marketing leaders huddle together to gain confidence, colleagues, and coverage. If you're a B2B CMO, why not dive into CMO Huddles by registering for our free starter program on cmohuddles.com? Hope to see you in a huddle soon.

Drew: I want to get back to CMO-plus for a second. And just—I've met a lot of comms people, and this is a gross exaggeration of the function, but it feels like they are risk-averse. Like, the first thing they think of is what could go wrong here, you know, what's impossible, crazy. And then marketing CMO is the person to say, "What will go right?" Yeah, right. And they're sort of—and I'm wondering how you juggle those two things. You're good cop, bad cop, kind of both shoulders.

Amy: Well, and because I have had straight PR and media relations and crisis comms roles, so I completely understand. And the main difference, I would say, and the reason for it is, if you're in a corporate comms role and you have set someone up for an interview—a CEO or someone like that—you better make sure it's the right person they're doing the interview with, and you better make sure that, you know, they're prepared to answer. Or if you, at least, you're aware enough of your CEO and their propensities, proclivities, who you're setting them up with—because if you make a mistake, the whole world reads it or sees it immediately. There is nowhere to hide. So that's where the backlash comes from. That's where, you know, it's immediate, and they give a lot of black eyes. So it is well-established and smart to be—I don't want to say the word conservative—but thoughtful, very, very thoughtful about how you are positioning, because it is dissected and picked apart and wordsmithed and everything else until you die, right? And it's that person's reputation. You're also putting that person—you know, your thought leaders—on the line, and you want to establish them as a thought leader because that helps you sell. People want to buy from smart people. Marketing is—as I say, it's definitely emotional. But if there is a mistake, or if they try to do something gimmicky, fun, and out there, it's gimmicky and fun and out there, right? Unless you're offending someone or doing something that was just silly or deeply offensive, that's bad and that's a fireable offense. But it's—I would say they have the greater, longer leash. You have a bigger trampoline, a bounce on your trampoline, where the corporate comms people—it's not so much. So that's why the two together, I think, on the horizon, makes such a nice—it's a nice complement to each other. And when you have integrated campaigns with the advent of AI, right—that sounds sort of old to say at this point—but reporters don't write the same. Reporters are using AI. They're having AI start their story. So unless you're out there getting scraped by the AI tools to feed the reporter, or even for inquiries, you're not even showing up anymore. So that means you have to up your paid game, and that means you have to make sure that you're writing regenerative content and generative AI. It's not the same game it used to be where they can be separate. So if you're just putting up a web page or a landing page with no regard for SEO, and if you're writing a news release that has no regard for SEO, and the two don't talk to each other, or you're just competing against each other for words, right—and so the game has changed so much that the idea that they can be completely separate, to me, is silly. I don't think that makes sense.

Drew: Interesting. And I'm going to throw out one other sort of cliché. With the chief comms officer, they're often the speechwriter for the CEO. And as a result of that, they're always making the CEO look good, and they have a kind of funky special relationship with them that's different than the marketer. So I'm wondering how you manage that. And maybe you could talk about sort of how your org is structured.

Amy: Yeah. So I think—so to the first part of the question, I think it really depends on the CEO. So at Altair, I was blessed with a CEO who believed in marketing 100%, and, you know, there wasn't a corporate comms division, but we stood it up as he understood more about how—and especially things like analyst relations, you know, media relations, social media—there has to be a proper function to make it go well, instead of just throwing stuff out when you feel like it. So I think it depends on the CEO. And all CEOs have egos. I mean that respectfully. Some are—they just come across in different ways, but they didn't get to where they were unless they were super confident in their abilities. At the end of the day, they all want to be in Financial Times and Wall Street Journal and everywhere else you can. So how do you have that? But you're not going to get there unless you have a story or a strong marketing engine that has built out enough demand to make you sell enough to make this reporter want to talk to you. You have to have an opinion on a trend. You have to have an interesting—how are you standing apart from everyone else? So all of that said, the balance is very true. So I think—but it's not an easy one to answer because it's different in every single company, and every single CEO is different. Some—I worked in some companies that have zero—you can guess which one has zero appetite for failure, for even talking to the media. And then you're like, "Well, so why are we here?" right? So they want to be just marketing. They don't, because when there is a financial aspect—not just industry analysts, but financial analysts—that's where they're getting their opinion, you know, one of the places they're getting their opinion, and they're basing their—so that can directly affect how people view your company from a financial aspect. So when you're a publicly traded company, that's a whole different lens. If you're a PE-backed company, that's a different lens. So it is very clear. I mean, you have to do the homework to understand who are you trying to talk to, what is the message that you're trying to get across? And you can't do that alone. You have to do that in lockstep with your CEO and the rest of the C-suite and the board. The stakes are super-duper high.

Drew: Yeah. Well, you know, you bring up a lot of interesting points. I'm going to go macro on you. You mentioned AI first. It feels like this is a moment where, as a marketer, we know that a lot of folks relied on organic, if you will, and paid search to drive traffic to their website. We know that's falling off the cliff because there's just fewer and fewer clicks. And the converse, potentially, is PR has never been more important—investor relations, analyst relations—because those are the influencers that are, for the most part, going to help drive discovery on the LLMs, in addition to whatever you as a brand can do. But let's face it, the third-party credibility sites, even a Reddit, has more influence than your website does. And so are you seeing—and do you feel like this is, you know, suddenly that the value in the role of also having comms is more important? Or do you anticipate that?

Amy: You know, it's a great question. I think it's a fascinating conversation in that—and I've been engaged in these types of conversations quite a bit because I'm so fascinated by it. I don't know that it's more or less important. I think the integration is more important because it's who has the megaphone at the moment, right? Who's able to—but the agentic AI, the generative AI, all of the LLMs, everything is changing the game. It's already started. In the next year or two, it's going to be transformed. And so I think that no one has the direct—I wish we had—I wish I had a crystal ball. But I think you have to experiment. I think you have to use it and play around with it. And I think that if you're afraid of it, you're going to be in big, deep trouble. But I think this—you know, having robots do your work for you so you can free up your brain capacity to do something else. What are you going to do with it, right? I think that's kind of the answer. So putting the lens on that for marketing and comms, it comes down to emotional intelligence, understanding your employees, understanding your key stakeholders, and talking to them in a relevant way. But it's just going to get so much more grounded and so much more loud and so much more noisy. And all these people who just got laid off now—they know that you can go start your own company in 35 seconds because there's no barrier to entry. If you have an idea, you can start a company. So these foundational AI-driven companies with one person can disrupt all of us. So it's going to get—a lot in the next couple of years, I think the landscape is going to be completely changed. Except, of course, the big giant guys are never going to go anywhere. But I think it's going to be fascinating.

Drew: No, I completely agree with you, and I'm actually excited because I do think there's sort of—we're watching this—that a completely new rulebook for marketing is about to emerge. I think there are fundamentals that will carry through, as they have and survived almost every transition, like the power of a brand will continue. The question is, how is that power built? The part, right? And in the role that LLMs play in the role, we call it GEO instead of SEO. But I also do think that it's going to—if we think about brand and trust—it's just going to be harder, and so it's going to take more creativity, more integration. And I think it does speak to the importance of this notion of a CMO Plus, and at least the integration of marketing and comms at minimum. But I'd love to see some other aspects in this. From a CMO standpoint, I do want to get back to sort of—it's a lot. Some CMOs will say, "Look, I got enough on my plate. I don't need comms. Let some other person deal with that. It's all about risk management. Let them do it." How are you able to manage all the zillions of different tasks that you know that you're responsible for?

Amy: Teamwork. I mean, you know, the old adage: you're only as good as your team, and we have a fantastic team. I forgot to answer—you had asked how we're structured? Yes. So right now, before we totally integrate, we have about 106-ish people around the globe, and I think 37 countries—like, we're everywhere. And our revenue is split evenly between APAC, EMEA, and the Americas. But we have basically three teams. One is the solutions team, which they're the closest to the developers and the product team. They're the ones who take the products and put them into solutions and campaigns. They are in those three platform groups. And then we have verticals. They can talk about better than probably anyone in the company about how the products actually work. They have to have that deep level of understanding. So they are very much ingrained with the product team. But we've built in a sort of loop that now we also have the feedback from the customers, so it can be informed about what customers like, don't like, what they're using. So they basically create the campaign. This is kind of a high-level way to describe it. Then we have integrated marketing—we call it the IMC team, the Integrated Marketing Communications team. So they have the brand, the website, internal comms, social media, media relations, analyst relations, and graphics. We have an in-house model, so graphic artists. And then we have the field team, and there's a global events team in there, and then a partner team, because we also have three different partner channels. We have the technology partners, which are the hyperscalers of the world, all those big guys that they're also customers and partners. And then we have channel partners, and then we have some—it's called the Altair Partner Alliance, which is basically bolt-on software that we actually resell because if you use our stuff, you get to use their stuff. So high level, but it's basically three buckets. And we made it a very important—like, we were very considerate. It doesn't matter where you live in the world for the corporate team, and part of ours was trying to make sure that if you're in the field, you had a ladder up. You weren't just, you know, relegated to wherever you lived, which is what it was historically. So that we have people all over the world who are doing different corporate—you know, we're trying not to be "us versus them," but in those buckets of—this, you know, it doesn't matter where you live. So it gives IT employees a better ladder up to see that they can have career growth. So that's kind of how, at a high level, how we're organized.

Drew: And how many direct reports do you have?

Amy: Just four.

Drew: Okay, yeah, love it. That makes it a lot easier. Okay, so now—you were acquired in March, and you get to see it from the other side. You know, the baby that you built is now, at best, a sub-brand.

Amy: Yeah, yeah. So, and I have been through acquisitions on the other side, but a long time ago. So on one hand, like, I could not be any prouder because I really feel like our team helped us to reach that level of an acquisition. But on the other hand, I put on my mother hat, right? I am—I have three kids, and you know, anytime in order to justify almost $11 billion, there has to be synergies, right? And those are people and programs spend. So how do I—a lot of—so we have, you know, they call them workstreams. Germans love workstreams. So there's lots of workstreams that talk about every different area of the business and how they're integrated. And I will say the Siemens team has been wonderful, welcoming, and kind, and professional, and they, you know, have been fantastic with whom to work. But I really look at how do I make sure that as many of my people, the team, the marketing team from the Altair side, can integrate into the larger Siemens structure? So that's what I spend a lot of time on. But the workstreams are very intensive, and that takes up quite a lot of my time.

Drew: And how do they approach this? You know, I mean, you've watched how Altair acquired these firms, done an assessment, figured out where they—you know, are they a product? Are they just a service? And how do we make sure we don't lose the business value? How are they from a speed—I mean, obviously they've done a number of acquisitions. This is not their first year. The largest—as the largest, that means that they could, you know, they could screw it up or not. So from your observation, you're watching this happen. What is their method for integration?

Amy: Oh, yeah. And when I say largest, I mean financial, so I'm not sure about the employee number. But I will say I give them credit for learning from other acquisitions that they have done in the past, and I feel like they do take all that feedback very seriously and try to incorporate it so they do better every time. And they have almost over-indexed. I mean, they've been so wonderful about appreciating us and thanking us and learning from us. I think that they have been surprised by the sophistication and talent of a smaller company like ours because we are so agile and scrappy, and we have to be super resourceful. And that has snapped in super well to their culture, and they have been very open to—I've been surprised by that. I thought it would kind of be like, "This is their playbook. You fit or you don't fit. Move on." They've been much more open about, "That's a great idea. We should try to adapt that into our process as well." So they have been just great to work with. And I think they have learned from acquisitions as they keep doing them, and they keep learning and getting better as they go. But it's very much keeping the eye on the people and, of course, the financial picture and the product portfolio. I'm glad I'm not—that's a complicated process to integrate all the products. I think that's—I'm glad I'm not on that team. And then the licensing team—I'm glad I'm not on either one of those teams.

Drew: Yeah, I mean, as you were talking, I was just thinking of all the companies that I know that were acquired by IBM, and how they actually have this group that was, you know, known as "blue washers," and they had, "This is the culture," and it was very, you know, big company driven. All right, so for folks thinking about trying to add something to become the CMO Plus—and part of our, the, you know, you were very fortunate in that all of these things sort of aligned in a way that allowed you to do what you needed to do. But what advice do you have for CMOs who are looking to expand their portfolio within the company? How, sort of, how do you earn it? What are your thoughts for them?

Amy: I think, first of all, you have to do an honest assessment about your skill set. I've had sort of a zigzagging career where I have had both, right—pure one and pure the other, and then combined them both. So I have those core skills that were hard-earned in the battlefield. If you don't have those, I think you should learn. If you—you have a corporate comms function and there's no marketing function, that's usually not the case. Join groups like this. Go to school. And if it's—it's usually in marketing, and maybe no comms. So read, learn. There's lots of different great organizations like this where you can learn from your peers. I think people are—I'm always overjoyed by the openness of your peers to share what they have learned and to be so giving with their knowledge they've learned. I think that is core. So you have to have a real assessment of what your skill set is. And then if you have a gap in your own skill set, go learn it. Talk to people, read, do whatever you can. And then what exists within your infrastructure, your organization—is there an existing, you know, whichever one you're trying to learn more about? Go make friends and start talking with them. They're facing the same thing that you are: not enough hours in the day, you know, big goals, probably not enough budget. And everyone's up against this AI monster that I think a lot of people are terrified of. Hire somebody if you have a headcount and you hire somebody with those skills. But I think making friends with people on the other side of the fence is really, really smart, and the smartest that you can be about the business and have that business acumen for the alignment with sales and product and whatever your company is trying to do. That's the foundational acumen that you need to be able to have those intelligent conversations, and that matching that up with the tools and trade, the tech. But, you know, having that relationships, educational, institutional knowledge—

Drew: Amazing. Well, first of all, thank you so much for jumping in and your flexibility today. Amy, it's great to talk to you. I have a lot of takeaways on this, and really, number one is the critical importance of marketing and comms being in lockstep, if not—I never quite understood why those were broken out. I really appreciate the story that you told that brings them together and the power when you can do these things. And my guess is it's more important now. And I do, I do strongly believe that in an LLM-driven world, that the comms world is actually going to grow in importance. You talk a little bit about having a great team and, you know, strong number twos, and obviously that's essential because you just can't do all this stuff alone. I love when, as you describe this global org, you didn't necessarily say everybody in a region is a regional person. You talked about an integrated team, which makes a lot of sense, and tapping into expertise. So final thought is, the question isn't whether you should expand your influence, but how thoughtfully you can integrate the functions that you have that amplify your impact. Be a business person first. So Amy, again, thank you so much for joining us. And for everybody else, until next time, keep on sharing, caring, and daring each other to greatness. Oh, and stay nimble, my friends. Stay nimble.

 

If you're a B2B CMO and you want to hear more conversations like this one, find out if you qualify to join our community of sharing, caring, and daring CMOs at cmohuddles.com.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!