The company I was hired for had nothing to do with Schlumberger. It had a very long name - LHS Sema Priority Call - and a flagship product - ORYX. ORYX communication software enabled a variety of telecom services, such as unified messages, prepaid wireless and calling cards. I was hired as a Marcomm Manager to ensure that ORYX brand survived did not lose its edge in multiple acquisitions. Having talked to most of the ORYX customers - global telecom carriers - our team has found out that key positive association of the ORYX brands were with the people behind - responsive sales force, caring customer services and smart engineers. Thus came to life "It's the People Campaign", which involved print ads, revamped sales collateral and a brand new site. I was particular proud of the site, for which our company has won the Golden Web award. The average time spent on the site has increased by 150%, and the traffic grew by a 100%.
And then came the Schlumberger Era - the last and the biggest in the seemingly endless rows of acquisitions. Schlumberger is a 60 billion dollar company My 2,5 years with Schlumberger taught me what no other company had - the art of corporate survival. Shortly after the acquisition I became a Product Marketing Manager for INService- an Intelligent networking prepaid solution suite born out of 29 products in the Schlumberger portfolio. My major challenge there was marketing a product that now belonged to the company that was not keen on marketing, and whose sturdy corporate culture was a far cry from the startup environment of Priory Call. Relying on my ability to motivate and interest both peers and superiors, I secured a budget for the global product launch, which included analyst tours, press, trade shows and user conferences. Another effort was educating Schlumberger's internal salesforce. To do so, I pioneered the on-line education project, which later became a company-wide initiative, educating the entire sales force in a record-short time.
The combined effort resulted in eight new RFPs with 24 million dollar revenue potential. However, the decision was made at the Board level to sell off all acquired products and concentrate on consulting services. Most of the group was laid off and I got a position of Senior Project Manager in the enhanced services division of Schlumberger. There I led a team of people to deliver responses to Requests for Proposals from major telecom carriers. I have restructured the bid management process, which resulted in dramatic increase in "shortlistings". I also became a key marketing lead in our biggest account. [top]
So great the momentum generated by the Axis-enabled campaign, that the storage division of Axis Communications became the acquisition target of several companies. Eventually it became ApplianceWare - a company that specialized in network attached data storage, headquartered in San Jose . Building on Axis brand equity I introduced "ApplianceWare - the new vision in information networking" campaign into the channel. We had some fun time at ApplianceWare, including Friday nights at downtown San Jose at the hight of the dot com boom - too bad the NASDAQ crashed the day the new company was created (a bad omen?) The company closed, not getting the funding. Off to a new adventure! [top]
The job at Axis Communications, a Swedish-based manufacturer of networked peripheral devices, such as internet cameras, print servers, and data storage servers, was my first foray into the exciting world of high tech. All Axis servers ran on a proprietary "thin server" technology and were widely considered as "best in class" by industry experts. However, Axis brand was not so strong among the key target audiences, particularly in the data storage segment. I was hired to rectify that.
Axis was a fun place that hosted a diverse group of people, from ex-bus drivers to Wharton's business school graduates. It also was a "battlefield" for two cultures - that of America , which made Axis's largest market, and Sweden , the home countries. The engineers were form Sweden , the sales and marketing folks - from the US . You get the picture.
The business model in data storage looked as following: Axis servers, "the brain", needed to be put into the "body" - a CD-ROM tower. Axis was not in the business of assembling towers. Instead, it relied on TSPs - total solution providers - that assembled the end product using Axis StorPoint server. The TSPs were a diverse crowd - from a three-people "garage" shop to multi-million dollar corporations. They bought "the brains" from several different suppliers, including Axis. The market was sort of evenly divided between Axis and key Competitor, each enjoying around 40% of the market, and the remainder was split between the smaller suppliers. My task was to position Axis as the key supplier of storage servers. To do that, we needed to build brand awareness for Axis solutions among the target audience.
To achieve these goals, I separated the task into two parts. My first goal was to win the integrator channel. Once the channel loyalty was established through joint events, direct mail campaigns, training and educational programs, there came the turn of creating end - user pull - the "Axis Enabled" campaign. The goal was to educate end-users about the benefits of having Axis "brains" inside a storage tower. In parallel, an educational campaign about the benefits of CD-ROM networking was launched. A classical integrated marketing campaign was created, with the help of Leo Burnett Technology group. The result - Axis displaced its key competitor in the storage space and achieved 60% market share. [top]
My MBA project led to a full time employment at Amacom International, an integrated marketing services agency in London . The agency acted as a catalyst between multinational marketers and local forces in the emerging markets. The agency's approach was to create the desired brand character and stimulate consumer offtake based on the aggregate impact of various marketing activities, all tightly linked together with one focal strategy and message, and easily identifiable within the local culture and lifestyle. Amacom handled several renowned accounts, such as Clorox, Weetabix, Kellogg's, Tampax and Johnnie Walker.
I was hired as an account executive and in about half a year was promoted to account supervisor, following successful campaign contribution on Manitoba and Kellogg's accounts. I became responsible for all agency's accounts in Russia and split my time between London and Moscow , while also completing my MBA degree. During my tenure at Amacom the agency's billing has increased by 30%, with 20% of the increase coming from the Russian market. There I finessed my business development skills, as I was successfully pitching agency's services all around Moscow and St. Petersburg , and client management skills. However, the most enjoyable part of my job at Amacom remained my close collaboration with the creative - I got a kick from adapting "western" copy into the messages that the local crowd can identify with. Late nights photo shots in Soho were definitely the high points of my time at Amacom! [top]
A wholly-owned subsidiary of Stappa Shoes, an exclusive supplier of military and snowboard boots for the Austrian Army, HMS Handels was one of the multitudes of companies that sought to make a fortune in the country dubbed "enigma wrapped in a mystery". And millions it did. The business model was simple: raw hides were bought at newly privatized meat processing plants in Russia ; they were then transported to the Rotterdam Raw Materials Exchange and sold at a profit that was just too good to be true. The money was then reinvested into product of shoes that were sold in Eastern Europe .
I joined HMS as German-Russian interpreter during my senior year of college. My bosses quickly realized that no matter how good my German is, I can add more value in a business developing capacity. And so tasked me to build up business in the South of Russia. In about a year I have lined up 7 meat processing plants that supplied raw hides exclusively to HMS, contributing to 1 million dollars in revenues. During the next two years I strengthened relationships with our existing customers by broadening the range of goods and services they could get for the raw materials, and recruited two more plants that brought another million dollars, making HMS-South a 2 million dollar enterprise. During my last year at HMS I focused on new businesses for the company and set up distribution channels for shoes and apparel.
I also acted as a consultant on shoe design for Russia . It took me a while to convince my colleagues in Austria that selling Birkenstock-type sandals priced at 80 dollars was not too great an idea in a country where average monthly income was 40 dollars. Surprisingly, what my Austrian peers considered their "ugliest shoe ever made" - high boots with fur padding and thick sole - became a star model across the whole country. Lesson learnt - it is tough to sell expensive summer shoes in Russia . After all, how many times are you going to wear them before the snow falls??? [top]
