Being the “Voice of” and “Voice to” the Market
Learn from Kimberly Storin, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Zayo Group, about creating a holistic, end-to-end marketing organization.
Zayo is the leading global communications infrastructure provider, delivering a range of solutions, including fiber & transport, packet, and managed edge services. Zayo owns and operates a Tier 1 IP backbone spanning 134,000 miles across North America and Europe. By providing this mission-critical bandwidth to its category-leading customers across the wireless, hyperscale, media, tech, and finance industries, Zayo is fueling the innovations that are transforming society.
Guest Bio
Kimberly Storin is a three-time CMO with three large-scale turnarounds and 25 acquisitions under her belt. She is currently CMO at Zayo, a $2 billion communications infrastructure business, where she leads global marketing, brand, communications, and customer experience as part of the company’s privatization and turnaround. Previously, as Chief Market Officer at RapidDeploy, Kimberly helped secure a $29 million Series B funding round by increasing brand awareness to 35%, contributing to over 100% year-over-year revenue growth, and building a partner ecosystem including AT&T, Google, Apple, OnStar, and ADT. As CMO for IBM Cognitive Systems ($3 billion business), she built a channel-first demand engine that delivered over 100% of revenue targets, contributing to seven consecutive quarters of growth for a previously stagnant business.
As AMD’s Global Brand Director, she laid the groundwork for a new customer-brand relationship that ultimately brought the company from the brink of bankruptcy to over 1,000% stock growth. Before moving into marketing roles, Kimberly was an M&A leader in the tech industry at Dell and held a role as a management consultant at Deloitte.
Guest Bio
Kimberly Storin is a three-time CMO with three large-scale turnarounds and 25 acquisitions under her belt. She is currently CMO at Zayo, a $2 billion communications infrastructure business, where she leads global marketing, brand, communications, and customer experience as part of the company’s privatization and turnaround. Previously, as Chief Market Officer at RapidDeploy, Kimberly helped secure a $29 million Series B funding round by increasing brand awareness to 35%, contributing to over 100% year-over-year revenue growth, and building a partner ecosystem including AT&T, Google, Apple, OnStar, and ADT. As CMO for IBM Cognitive Systems ($3 billion business), she built a channel-first demand engine that delivered over 100% of revenue targets, contributing to seven consecutive quarters of growth for a previously stagnant business.
As AMD’s Global Brand Director, she laid the groundwork for a new customer-brand relationship that ultimately brought the company from the brink of bankruptcy to over 1,000% stock growth. Before moving into marketing roles, Kimberly was an M&A leader in the tech industry at Dell and held a role as a management consultant at Deloitte.
Episode Summary
This episode features an interview with Kimberly Storin, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Zayo Group, a leading telecommunications company with a network that stretches over 16.8 million fiber miles and spans 141,000 route miles across North America and Europe.
In this episode, Kimberly shares with us how she built an end-to-end marketing organization within Zayo and demonstrated the value of the marketing function, diving into expanding their buying committee and creating a “Shark Tank'' mindset where people share their best ideas.
Key Takeaways
- Marketing can be undervalued as a function and collaborating with C-suite peers is essential to a CMO’s ability to demonstrate their impact on revenue for the organization.
- At the end of the day, marketing needs to be the “voice of” and the “voice to” the market, and needs to avoid short-term, quarter-by-quarter thinking.
- There is value in shifting to a “Shark Tank mindset” and having people bring their ideas, then funding great ideas.
Quotes
“At the end of the day, we really just need to be the voice of and the voice to the market. If we're thinking about in-quarter revenue, we're not doing our job. Our job is to be thinking about the next quarter, next year, next five years, and how do we position the brand for the maximum growth efficiency. And yet so often I talk to CMOs who are stuck in this, well, what did you do for me this quarter? And if that's where marketing is focused, then marketing will never be successful.” ––Kimberly Storin, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Zayo
Episode Highlights
*(03:43 ) - The Trust Tree: Expanding your buying committee
*(15:19) - The Playbook: Investing in the top of the funnel
*(35:37) - The Dust-Up: Learning to have constructive conflict
*(39:01) - Quick Hits: Kim’s Quick Hits
Episodes Transcript
- Marketing can be undervalued as a function and collaborating with C-suite peers is essential to a CMO’s ability to demonstrate their impact on revenue for the organization.
- At the end of the day, marketing needs to be the “voice of” and the “voice to” the market, and needs to avoid short-term, quarter-by-quarter thinking.
- There is value in shifting to a “Shark Tank mindset” and having people bring their ideas, then funding great ideas.
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