What’s harder—building a global marketing strategy from scratch, or educating your organization on why it matters in the first place?
Today’s guest has done both—twice.
Sangeeta Prasad is the Chief Marketing Officer of Slalom, a global business and technology consulting firm with $3 billion in revenue and a presence in over 40 markets. With three decades of marketing experience—across brands like Procter & Gamble, American Express, and Chase—Sangeeta has spent her career not just building campaigns, but building belief in the power of marketing.
About Sangeeta Prasad
Sangeeta is the Chief Marketing Officer at Slalom. She joined Slalom as its very first chief marketing officer in 2020 and now leads a global team of 160 marketers in seven countries. Leveraging Slalom’s strong industry reputation as a consulting company that helps thousands of clients, Sangeeta is building a friendly, engaging brand that reflects the success of the company’s 13,000+ employees worldwide. Her goal is to make the Slalom brand as big as its business, which is experiencing record growth. To do this, she’s transformed a company that relied on traditional marketing into one that thrives on human-based marketing.
This is the second time she’s joined a company as its first CMO – also at Russell Reynolds – bringing a strong portfolio of consumer and B2B experience from P&G, Chase and American Express. She lives with a global mindset having started her career in Australia and worked and lived across Asia for years. Sangeeta is known for her courageous yet adaptable leadership style and ability to build consensus across many cultures. Most of all, her leadership style and work are anchored in Slalom’s differentiated “fiercely human” approach to client and partner relationships.
Sangeeta’s sophisticated marketing expertise pivoted Slalom’s volume-based tactics into human-based marketing, which combines customer insights with a scalable, consistent methodology to promote relationships. She helped prioritize full-journey marketing and what specific clients care about, including an approach to surround Slalom’s customers around the world with personalized messaging.
Resources
Slalom: https://www.slalom.com
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Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com
Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom (00:00)
What’s harder building a global marketing strategy from scratch or educating your organization on why it matters in the first place? Today’s guest has done both twice. Sangita Prasad is the chief marketing officer of Slalom, a global business and technology consulting firm with $3 billion in yearly revenue and a presence in 53 offices in 12 countries. With three decades of marketing experience across brands like Procter & Gamble, American Express and Chase,
Sangita has spent her career not just building campaigns, but building belief in the power of marketing. Sangita, welcome to the show.
Sangeeta Prasad (00:33)
Great, thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure.
Greg Kihlstrom (00:36)
Yeah,
looking forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in though, why don’t we start with you? I know I gave a little background there, but you know, give a little more background on yourself and your current role at Solemn.
Sangeeta Prasad (00:46)
Thank you for having me and I have spent 30 years plus in marketing across big and small companies, B2C, B2B, global, US. And I have learned through that I’m really a marketing evangelist. That’s what I think of myself as being, not just a marketer, but a marketing evangelist. And I say that because I believe that great marketing doesn’t just tell stories, it creates believers. And my job as a marketer is to turn skeptics into champions and to show the real measurable impact that marketing has. And so, you know, as you grow up in a marketing organization, it really feels like you’re doing a lot of work that is day to day.
And then as you become a CMO, you realize a lot of what you do is converting people from where they are today to where you need them to be.
Greg Kihlstrom (01:37)
That’s a great segue to, you the first thing I want to talk about is, you’ve been the first chief marketing officer at two different organizations. know, so speaking of evangelism, you know, a new role to the organization and playing that twice. What’s the, you know, from your experience, what’s the biggest misconception that people have about what marketing can or should do when you step into a brand new role like that?
Sangeeta Prasad (02:00)
It’s a really good question, Greg, because being a first CMO twice is maybe being a glutton for punishment, but I just love the challenge. And let me talk about maybe three misconceptions. The first one is that once you’ve hired a marketing team, your investment is done. I think what companies don’t realize who don’t have CMOs is that marketing is not like sales or finance where the people are the investment.
In marketing, people are less than half of the investment. The rest comes in the campaigns and the work you do. And that has been quite an education evolution for companies that I’ve been at. Maybe the second misconception is bring marketing in at the end, tell them what to do and make them execute. think that’s how people think of marketing. And what my team and I are on a path to doing is explaining that we are partners from strategy to execution and the results will be better if you don’t tell us what to do, but tell us what your problem is and let us help solve it. And maybe the third one, which I’ve experienced over and over again, which is that once you build the website, people will come. No, no, you have to bring people to the website. The website is the foundational element for marketing. is not the.
Greg Kihlstrom (03:04)
Yeah.
Sangeeta Prasad (03:21)
outcome of marketing. is just what you build in order to do campaigns and have somewhere to land. So maybe those are the three biggest ones.
Greg Kihlstrom (03:29)
Yeah, and I mean, it sounds like, you know, obviously there’s a high degree of trust in the individual, you you got put in the CMO role, but there’s maybe lack of understanding and lack of trust in the process of marketing, just probably just due to lack of experience with it, right? Is that?
Sangeeta Prasad (03:47)
100%. I think first of all, everyone thinks they’re a marketer, right? You run an event and you’re a marketer. And so you come into an organization where everyone thinks they know what you should be doing. The technical and the science part of marketing is so hidden, I think.
from everyone and what they do that they have no idea that there’s actually some stuff that goes on behind the scenes. And so you’re absolutely right. It is a challenge to get people to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it a certain way.
Greg Kihlstrom (04:18)
Yeah. And then, you know, so in a company like Slalom, you know, a global organization that’s it’s grown organically and intentionally, you know, how do you align marketing around such a broad, you know, global footprint without losing some of that local context that got it where it, you know, where it
Sangeeta Prasad (04:36)
Yeah, you know, we think of it as enhancing the local context as we expand our global reach. At Swalwell, we believe we work at the intersection of business technology and humanity. And humanity is a really important aspect of that because when we work with customers and clients, we work at a one-on-one level. And our company has been built on the premise that our consultants work in the locations where they live. And so they’re really part of the community.
So we never lose that aspect of being very connected to both the local customers and the local community. At the same time, as we grow globally, we bring in expertise and enhancement that you wouldn’t otherwise have. But at the center of it all are the humans. And we call ourselves fiercely human. And we do that because we really bring our head and heart into everything we do. And we, I think we’ve done a good job of keeping that local specialness with the global reach. And even when we have global campaigns for marketing, we always customize it, personalize it at a local level.
Greg Kihlstrom (05:43)
Yeah. And then so from the internal perspective, you so that’s that’s kind of the external view of keeping it local and yet, you know, adhering to the brand and everything. How do you maintain that internal, you know, team feeling when again, you’re also you’re in 53 offices in 12 countries and how do you how do you balance that part as well?
Sangeeta Prasad (06:03)
I think that’s probably the biggest challenge any CMO has in a distributed model. we, when I first joined, there were marketers in each office doing exactly what they wanted with no connection. And that has been great for our local, we call ourselves local soul and global reach. So it’s been great for our local soul, but it’s not been great for marketing, which is all about cohesion. And the impact of investment is much greater when you do it in a connected way.
And so it’s been like four years of me working with my stakeholders to help them understand and to show them results. When we do things together, look at how much greater the impact is. The good news is that the marketers in the local markets all want to work together because they realize how much more we can do if we work together. So we’re in the process of, would say, connecting more and more, bringing everyone together and
I think I would say now we are probably at the close to being as connected as we’re going to be.
Greg Kihlstrom (07:02)
Yeah. And I mean, that’s really just, it’s a product of organic growth or even through acquisition. mean, this stuff, that’s how it happens. You do what you need to do in your local market and then you kind of grow and expand and all that stuff. So it’s part of that organic process, but it sounds like the CMO role has really helped solidify kind of that more cohesive approach. that safe to say?
Sangeeta Prasad (07:27)
Yes, yes, I think that is safe to say. It’s also safe to say that my first year I was not successful doing that because you have to build trust, show some short-term results, show the quality of your work before the local leaders say, okay, I think this is going to be good for me. And so it has been a little bit of a, it’s building of trust, building of relationships and showing results. The combination has really helped us bring everything together.
And I think the things that I really believe in keep it connected are communicate, educate and connect. Right? So communication, you can never over communicate. I always think, I’ve communicated this so many times and people have still no idea what I’m saying. So communicate, communicate, educate marketing is changing so much. It’s probably the function that’s changed most over the year. So we have to continually educate our leaders and our marketers on what to do. And then they all need to feel part of a whole cohesive.
group and I think that’s what we’re working on doing right
Greg Kihlstrom (08:26)
Yeah, and if you could talk a little bit more because I know there’s a lot of organizations that kind of struggle with that internal education. There’s so much time is spent trying to educate the market to hire the company and buy products and services and all that and yet educating internal stakeholders. I would say in my experience, B2B is unique in that way as well because there’s such a sales culture in so many organizations as well.
When sales and marketing work together well, it’s amazing, kind of understanding, kind of getting up to speed with that can take a bit of education. What kind of activities are, how do you approach education in that way about getting everybody on the same page?
Sangeeta Prasad (09:04)
That’s a really good question, Greg, because that is probably the single biggest challenge that all marketers have. the approach we’re taking is show as much data as you can. So everything we’re doing, we’re showing ROI or measuring ROI behind that. And now we actually have campaigns we can show the marketing lift of sales motions. So when marketing is involved, you get X percent more than when marketing is not involved.
You know, sales just wants to win and win more. And so if we can show we’re helping them win, I we’re going in the right direction. I wouldn’t say we are there at Swalwell yet, but I think we’re coming closer and closer. The other thing we’ve done is we’ve actually stepped into where sales has gaps for the short term or the medium term. say building sales enablement materials. Sometimes our sales folks don’t have the resources to build those materials.
And so we’re raising our hands saying, we can help you here, even though we know it’s not part of what marketing typically does. And I think doing all of these things builds trust, builds relationships, shows results. And that’s the only way I think you can get really close partnership with sales.
Greg Kihlstrom (10:14)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And so how do you then and your marketing teams make sure that you are keeping up to, know, there’s a lot of moving pieces there, right? So, you know, you’re educating internally, externally, but you’ve also got to educate yourselves as marketing teams. So what do you do and what do your teams do to make sure that they’re, you know, up on the latest and greatest?
Sangeeta Prasad (10:37)
Yeah, another good question because marketing keeps changing. think the first thing is, and this is one of Solem’s core values, is keep a learner mindset. And so we all in our marketing team and across Solem believe that we can learn more every day. And so we stay curious and keep a learner’s mindset. The other thing I have learned is hire really good people, better than me in their specific area. So I have a very strong leadership team.
passionate about their specific areas of marketing and they are keeping up on all the evolution that’s happening around gen AI and ABM and everything else that’s going on and I think that’s really important and then and then have a few marketing evangelists in your organization who go and share it outside what I’ve noticed it’s kind of contradictory but marketers are not great at marketing themselves, right
And so how do we create this motion where we naturally can speak, where we can actually speak to our stakeholders in their language, not marketing speak, so they understand what we’re doing and how we’re impacting what we’re doing.
Greg Kihlstrom (11:42)
Yeah, yeah. What impact is, you you mentioned generative AI and, you know, some other things, you know, what impact has that had, you know, on your, how you approach marketing?
Sangeeta Prasad (11:53)
I think everyone is dealing with what is GenAI and what impact does it have? And I think one of the things that I’ve been telling my team is that GenAI is not the solution. It’s the tool to get to the solution. So what is our strategy? What is our outcome? And how can GenAI help us get X percent better, Y percent faster, more efficient? And we’re still learning. I don’t think I could say that we have an answer, but I will say in some areas where
doing more than others. I think everyone will say this is content is an area where GenAI can really help do the first draft work through different drafts, et cetera. Creative is another area. So we’re exploring how GenAI can help us, but more importantly, how our humans can work more impactfully with GenAI. And it’s really, I think,
Adapting an organization to use AI is much more difficult than just bringing AI in. And there so many people who just are not comfortable using it. And I believe that the next big challenge for companies is getting their organizations educated and trained to use the tools that we’re giving.
Greg Kihlstrom (13:02)
Yeah. And I mean, it sounds, you know, it’s, about integrating it in a meaningful way, not just kind of, you know, add some AI to it or whatever. And, and, and, it sounds like that, you know, being thoughtful, in other words, about how it’s integrated with the teams is, is, is how you’re approaching it. Is that, is that.
Sangeeta Prasad (13:19)
Yes, would say integrated and train. We’re doing apprenticeship models, we’re doing training, we’re doing sit around and put in different words and phrases and ask into GenAI. I see the results, the prompts make a big difference. I think what we’ve seen is just integrating AI is a good ask, training people and removing the fear is really the big, big win for anyone using AI.
Greg Kihlstrom (13:44)
Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, Sangita, thanks so much for joining today. Really appreciate all your ideas and insights here. One last question before we wrap up. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Sangeeta Prasad (13:57)
How do I say agile in my role? yeah, to me, agile doesn’t mean faster. Agile means the ability to pivot quickly while keeping true to your strategy and focus. And I think what I try to do is learn from the best. It’s back to that learner mindset. I attend conferences, I read, listen to podcasts and learn from my team. I talk to lots of people, do lots of CMOs and it’s just the desire to sort of.
The thirst to learn more, the desire to learn more and keep on top of things. And as you know, there are hundreds and hundreds of marketing tools available out there to learn more, to listen more. And I try to be diverse in my ability to take advantage of all of them. And I find little nuggets in different places.
