My early experiences with Marketing in a professional setting surprisingly had little to do with technology or with pure B2B, but were actually forged in the Business to Consumer arena. In the mid nineties, I was posted to Kazakhstan, Central Asia to pioneer the market entry for Cadburys Confectionery and Soft Drinks. After successful market penetration and growth there I found myself living and working in Moscow, Russia, heading up a very similar proposition for Mattel Toys. The roles were challenging in that I not only had to quickly assimilate new cultural differences  but also learn a new way of how to conduct business in markets that were only just opening their doors to the West.

This international exposure had a profound impact on me and really helped me and provide the impetus to develop further and apply myself more to marketing in highly competitive settings . I was not only excited by the prospect of international marketing but also a type of marketing that could demonstrate tangible positive performance to a business as it strives to achieve its underlying objectives. This is really important when you are dealing with physical consumer goods as opposed to services, because they are  perishable items and  if you misunderstand your market or your plans are not rigorous in nature you can very quickly see the impact of your miscalculations against planned progress.

After returning back to UK and completing my MBA, I realized I could readily apply some of my existing and new found skills to the technology arena. I had always been passionate about the problems that technology based solutions could solve and have been fortunate enough to apply my skills towards several opportunities in the technology space, covering sectors across e-Procurement, Enterprise Content Management, CRM and even on-demand Sales Effectiveness - with traditional software and with newer SaaS delivery models.

Across all these domains, it’s been really surprising to note more similarities than differences in the business challenges facing organisations, whatever sector of technology they may choose to play - such as the misalignment of sales and marketing, the continued need to differentiate oneself from convergent competitors, the increased drive to move more towards engaging with an audience and talking to the value of the offering rather than it's features and the continued debate on how to improve and demonstrate the performance of marketing and of course the desire and the business imperative for technology companies to grow beyond just their domestic markets.

It is for this very reason I established this site and why my personal tag line/strap line is: ‘Creating Customer and Shareholder Value Through Connected Marketing’. It might sound like a mouthful but that is intentional since I elected more for substance here than style because the sentence has deep rooted meaning and aligns to what I believe in, which you can find about here.