The Kula Ring

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

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

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

Lauren Scott of Acuity Brands and host of The Resilience Report is on the show this week giving us some significant insights into how the landscape of sustainability is evolving. We cover the new regulations and guidelines that are coming into effect as well as the need to ditch greenwashing and get into the real impact that our sustainable practices are having. Plus, Lauren sneaks in a nod to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the episode, not an easy feat! Lauren is immensely knowledgeable in this field, you are going to want a pen and paper close by for this one.

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

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

Over the Holiday season, The Kula Ring is bringing you a few conversations between Jeff and Carman, the hosts of The Kula Ring and founders at Kula Partners. Agile Project Management is not something that typically comes to mind when discussing marketing. But, when clients discover that is how we manage marketing work at Kula Partners, Jeff and Carman often find themselves answering curious questions about it. In this episode of The Kula Ring, we discuss what Agile is and share how our experience can help manufacturing marketers weigh the benefits and barriers of implementing the project management style. Please enjoy and Happy Holidays!

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

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

Adam Fray, the Senior Director of Global Marketing at Packsize, is on the show this week. We had a chat about challenging the status quo. Packsize offers a new way to think about sustainable packaging and packaging efficiencies. That offering means they are combatting the ‘this is how we have always done it’ mentality. Furthermore, Packsize has recently changed how the marketing department exists within the organization. These two ways of challenging ‘the way it is’ mentality, combine to make an enlightening conversation about change. Plus, Carman becomes a therapist for a minute. What more could you ask for?