Mariam Lochoshvili, Global Marketing Communications Manager at Sensata Technologies, joins Mike Maynard for the next episode of our leading B2B marketing professionals series.

Mariam shares how following job opportunities around Europe led her to her role at Sensata, explains the importance of localising campaigns for maximum success, and shares her thoughts on why maintaining a strong company tone of voice might offer an advantage as AI increasingly saturates content across the industry.

Listen to the podcast now via the links below:

About Sensata

Sensata is a global industrial technology company striving to create a cleaner, more efficient, electrified and connected world.

Time Stamps

[00:49.02] –Mariam discusses her career journey.

[12.39.08] – Mariam shares why authenticity and emotion is important when marketing B2B tech.

[13:49.09] – Why is localising so important? – Mariam and Mike discuss.

[18:09.0} – Mariam discusses the campaigns she is most proud of.

{23:29.01] – Mariam talks about AI and career prospects.

Quotes

“Talking about emotions is a new trend in B2B… when you connect to people on that emotional level, only then are you actually generating true interest.” Mariam Lochoshvili, Global Marketing Communications Manager at Sensata Technologies

Follow Mariam:

Mariam Lochoshvili on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariam-lochoshvili/

Sensata website: https://www.sensata.com/

Sensata on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sensata-technologies/

Follow Mike:

Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

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Transcript: Interview with Mariam Lochoshvili – Sensata Technologies

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Mariam Lochoshvili

Mike: Thanks for listening to marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to marketing B2B technology, the podcast from Napier. Today I’m joined by Miriam Lochoshvili. Miriam is the Global Marketing Communications Manager for Sensata technologies. Welcome to the podcast. Miriam.

Mariam: Thanks for having me, Mike. My pleasure.

Mike: It’s great to have you on the podcast. I’m really interested, we always like to start off by finding out how people get to where they are in their career, and you’ve had geographically quite an interesting career. So Jordan, tell me a little bit about your career journey and what you’ve done.

Mariam: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m originally from Georgia, the country, not the state. And my international journey really began with an unforgettable Erasmus year in Latvia in Riga. I did that during my Bachelor studies. And to this day, I think this experience is like really special from me. And from there, I was off to France for my masters. This is actually where my first experience in the world of B2B marketing happened as well. They no one was off to Germany for work. And now I call London my home. And, you know, it’s really funny how curiosity can lead you to unexpected places, I never imagined living in London. And, you know, I often wonder where it will take me next. And yeah, it’s been really interesting.

Mike: And I’m really interested, because, you know, for someone in the UK, where we don’t typically see people who are particularly mobile with careers. I mean, were you picking countries you wanted to be in? Or were you picking opportunities, and not really worrying where they’re located and just following the opportunities? I

Mariam: was definitely following the opportunities, not the countries. Now,

Mike: that’s awesome. And other than a little bit of jealousy, because obviously now the UK can’t participate in the Erasmus programme, which I know was an amazing and still is an amazing programme in the EU. But it’s great to see that you’ve moved around. How’re you finding London?

Mariam: I absolutely love it here. I do. But I never imagined myself living in London, but I actually really liked it here. So

Mike: it’s great. And you’re in London to work for since arta. So if people listening don’t know, since after, can you give us a brief overview about what the company does?

Mariam: Yeah, absolutely. So since Allah is this huge global industrial technology company, what we are doing is that we’re really striving to create a cleaner, more efficient, electrified and connected world, we’ve got this huge range of sensors or an electrical protection components, and also some data rich solutions as well, that really help our customers and partners solve very complex engineering challenges. And we are also not really limited into one field. We make sensors and solutions for everything really from like your everyday gadgets to high tech, complex automotive or aerospace applications.

Mike: That’s interesting. And I mean by background, you’re not super technical, are you? So how do you find working with such technical products?

Mariam: Yeah, I’m definitely not. I think the key is there, I honestly owe a lot to my colleagues, that really helped me navigate the technical aspects of our products. I work with engineering teams on a daily basis. And I think for marketers, sometimes that can feel quite overwhelming, because engineers are known for their very direct, precise communication, they are exceptionally smart, and it can feel overwhelming sometimes. And when it does, I like to remind myself that they are the creators of the products. They know everything about it. And I actually feel really honoured to be able to work by their sides. And I try to approach each project with a sense of humility, and also really be proactive. You know, while I may not know, or have the same technical background as they do, I’m really committed to ask the questions. And I’m also very open to doing my independent research to fill the gaps from time to time and that’s how it happens. I think it’s in the end all about collaboration because we bring different things to the table. I

Mike: definitely agree with that. I mean, one of the things that the intro As Mason salts has, obviously got a very broad range of products, I mean, do you approach things from a product point of view learning about the products? Or, you know, when you’re trying to understand the technology, you’re approaching it from the application point of view, looking at the industries that use the products and why they need them? I

Mariam: think it’s a combination of both. To be honest, it really depends on the product and solution, I’ve done both. There are certain products that are the same across the industry. So in that case, the product approach works, but there are others where you have to start from the application and go backwards. So it really depends. We’ve done both. Awesome. I

Mike: think, you know, one of the interesting things about B2B is B2B is different from a lot of consumer marketing because of the the depth of product knowledge and information you need. A is that something you see is is that you know, one of the differences and is that one of the reasons you’d like B2B.

Mariam: I definitely see that. I don’t think that was the reason why I ended up in B2B. I’ll be very honest, I didn’t have any like this grand master plan to start my career in B2B, I would say, opportunity came up. And I just went for AIX. I started actually in b2c, when I was very green in marketing. And I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed that experience, to be honest. But as I’ve always been very open to try new things. when the chance came up. And it was actually in Paris, I had a chance to do my internship to write my master thesis in a B2B tech company. I was like, Yeah, sure, why not? That’s a great opportunity. And then I just went for it. And I stayed, so which means that it’s still quite interesting and really challenging. So I love it. And

Mike: that was great. I mean, can you dig a bit deeper as to what particularly is exciting about Cinsault? Or what, what gets you really excited about marketing products there rather than maybe another company? Yeah,

Mariam: that’s, I love that question. Actually, I think there are many things that are exciting about marketing for Cinzano. But I think the part I love the most or I find most fulfilling is knowing the impact that we are actually making on the world. And I think for me, the ethical dimension of marketing is very important. And I realised that early on in my career, I need to really believe in the product I’m promoting. And x insider, I have that assurance and that luxury, that I know, our products are genuinely making a good difference. So I think that’s probably the most important for me.

Mike: That’s fascinating. I mean, it sounds like you’re saying authenticity is really, really important in marketing and B2B now. Is that your view? Do you have to be honest about the products? Or do you think it’s much more about whether or not you enjoy the role that’s really driven by you know, how much benefit the products deliver?

Mariam: I do think that honesty is really important. And I think in general, and that might be my very personal opinion. But I think in general, for a marketer, there are a lot of distractions, to be honest. And there are a lot of ways you can sometimes lose that path, you know, but I honestly think that it’s really important as a marketer to really maintain the authenticity and honesty in your communications, because I think the trust that you’re building with your audience is the key to successful campaigns. And it’s also a value that will serve you throughout your career, not just in that particular company. So I would look at that, even from a broader perspective than from like one company’s angle. That’s

Mike: really interesting. I mean, you talk about trust, you’ve got to build trust with a lot of different audiences with sensor data. So I’m interested to know how you manage marketing communications that build that trust with, you know, a whole range of different people, both in different industries and also different roles that are involved in buying your products. Yeah,

Mariam: absolutely. So I think the important thing is instance data. We have long and short cycle businesses, right. And if you think about our business cycles, your short cycle businesses would be using very similar to like b2c marketing practices and our long cycle businesses would be those traditional B2B practices. But I think you know, what’s funny, there is one common ground between all the audiences that we really serve, and it’s the fact that you’re talking to people and people have their emotions. And I think our job is really making sure that people that are out there looking for solutions, we can connect with them on that emotional level, while delivering the information about our products and solutions, and really let them know how we can help. And then think that’s the universal truth that doesn’t matter which industry you are in which products, you’re marketing, you need to think about people. And your audience is always made up of real people that have very real emotions, and you need to find ways to connect with them. On that emotional level. Yeah, no, I,

Mike: I love that sort of talk about, you know, firing emotions in your audience, your prospects and customers? I mean, can you just dig a little bit deeper into that and give maybe some examples about how you try and generate an emotional response rather than a purely logical response, which I think often some people think is how engineers process data? Yeah, that’s,

Mariam: that’s a great question. And before I get to that, I think I also really want to mention that talking about emotions is a new trend in B2B, right, because the B2B industry is quite well known for the technical part of it. But I think what we often forget, and I think that’s becoming increasingly apparent in today’s world where people are and customer behaviour is changing so rapidly, engineers are people as well. And they react to emotional responses. So I think when we try to plan campaigns, our first layer of communications is really trying to connect to those people on the emotional level, and then deliver the technical parts, because only when you connect to people on that emotional level, only, then you’re actually generating true interest. Because people nowadays have a very short attention span, you have this tiny window. And I think without bringing emotions in place, it’s really hard to stand out from competitors. Because everyone can put tech specs out there. I think not many companies can actually try to turn this text backs into something that connects to a person on an emotional level. And that’s a real challenge. And I don’t think we always do that, but at least we make our best effort to try to do it. And that’s already, you know, that’s already great.

Mike: I think that’s really interesting, Marian, because you know, you’ve got a global role. So do you think you need to do different things to spark emotion in people in different regions around the world? Or is this something you can run one campaign it generates the same emotion wherever you’re living?

Mariam: Our 100% And we are definitely committed to localising our campaigns, where required not in all cases, but in most cases. And then when that happens, we really work very closely with the regional teams to make sure the strategy really aligns with the market needs and requirements. And I think one example, I can share with that, that just comes to my mind, because it was very recent, we’ve been trying to break into mexican market with one of our product lines that were previously launched in the US. And the first thought was, you know what, we’ll just translate all of our US communication, entire materials, and then that will do the thing. And luckily, we went through this discovery phase and did some digging. And we found actually really valuable insights, that, fortunately, I may just completely rethink our game plan. In fact, we had to redo all of our marketing materials, significantly adjust the messaging, and completely rethink the channels. And I think my key takeaway from Greece was, you really need to build strong connections with your local experts, but also really try to get some fresh perspectives outside of your usual company bubble. You know, I would really recommend, you know, observing what other companies doing that country, connecting with thought leaders, industry leaders, looking at your competitors. But as you do that, I think it’s important to remember that just because something worked for your competitor doesn’t mean that it will work for you. And I think it’s always important also to keep an open mind that you don’t know from the start, and you need to continue to test to adapt to tweak. And that’s about it. I think they building that strong connection to the market in the exploration phase is really important and keeping an open mind as well.

Mike: I think that’s very true. You know, you need to really understand what’s going to generate the same response from the market and I’m typically translate Seeing words from one language to another is not the way to generate the same response. It might, it might appear to be the same message, but it’s not received in the same way. Absolutely.

Mariam: I can talk about difficulties of translations whole day. But yeah, translation doesn’t work word by word. It doesn’t, it really does.

Mike: I think that’s interesting, because a lot of companies now are looking more and more to AI for translation. And obviously, AI, generally, is a very literal translation. And I think that’s going to bring some problems in the future, as companies realise that the translations they’ve done don’t actually communicate the same message and the same feelings, even if the words have literally been, you know, switch from one language to another. Yeah,

Mariam: absolutely. And even in every language, you have multiple ways of saying the same thing, right? It’s like the same sentence, you can express yourself in different ways. So literal translation never helps. You all always need to look for the emotional background behind the actual sentence. And I think that can only be done, unfortunately, by humans. And that’s why you need to work with your local teams, or if you don’t have a local team, build a strong local team that will help you with that. Definitely.

Mike: And we’ve talked about an awful lot. And one of the things that’s occurring to me is you’ve got this global role, you’re covering a wide range of products, a wide range of industries. I mean, how do you in your role, prioritise and decide what you’re going to focus on?

Mariam: If you look at my desktop, you probably think that it has definitely seen better days. You know, I definitely have my version of an organised chaos. And I do love my chaos. But seriously, if I have to answer the question seriously, I would say, I really rely on project plans heavily. So every time I started a project, I make sure that I create a comprehensive project plan first. And the plan really helps me navigate and adapt as well. And I think also, my personal nature comes in play as well. Just because I’m very adaptable. As a person, I think I can really quickly shift gears in the work environment as well, which allows me to prioritise and then reprioritize quickly and effectively. So I think personality definitely plays a role. But outside of personality, I think really keeping your ducks in a row by organising your projects, plants is important. And you know, whether that’s an organised chaos, or very meticulously organised the project plan, that’s completely up to you.

Mike: I love that, you know, pick, pick how you want to get there, but make sure you get to the right place. I’m interested now, I mean, you know, from this organised chaos, and also some great project plans, you know, you’ve obviously produced some really good campaigns, are there campaigns you’re particularly proud of, or campaigns you think, have worked particularly well in your career?

Mariam: That’s a very difficult question, because I genuinely love all the campaigns that we deliver. And I worked on delivering, because I genuinely think that while there is always room for improvement, I know from my own perspective, like at that point in time, I’ve done the best I could, given the resources, right. But I think if I have to choose probably, to a recent campaigns come to my mind, and I’ll tell you why I like them. I think the first one was the public service initiative, we’ve launched actually, this summer. And what made it really special for me was that it was a collaboration between five competitors, that really got together to tackle a service related challenge for the industry. And I think it was for the first time that we had to witness this competitors, like really set aside their individual interests, you know, and really come together for a common cause. And that was really inspiring, because there is a huge potential in collaboration. And the campaign results definitely are a testament to that. But it was a really good example of how collaboration can make really the significant impact then each of us would make separately it was way more significant than that, and really, like elevate the entire industry and I think that’s beautiful. I really liked that part of it. The second one, as part of our commitment to sustainability. We’ve actually taken some steps to adjust our internal process and like really revamp our internal flows on like how we approach trade shows, marketing, collateral consumables, anything that we print, so We made a lot of adjustments to that. And I really liked that personally, because again, it shows our dedication to the responsible marketing. And it’s really close to my heart. So I’m very excited for that. Yeah.

Mike: And as an engineer, I love the thought of people focusing on process and how you do things rather than necessarily just looking at the result, because clearly, a lot of randomness happens. And some some events are great. Some events are not so good. And it’s not necessarily something you can control. I love that process focus. Yeah,

Mariam: absolutely. And I think sustainability is a tricky one as well, right? Because there’s so much fuss around it right now. And, yeah, sometimes you can make way bigger impact by redefining the process than actually by changing one component or material.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sustainability is really interesting. You talked earlier on about trust and authenticity. There’s a lot of sustainability campaigns that maybe have questionable basis. I mean, how do you feel about the way that everyone is jumping on the sustainability bandwagon and tried to appear sustainable, whether or not they’re actually changing the way their business works to be more sustainable?

Mariam: Yeah, I mean, there, that’s a real problem out there, right, like greenwashing is everywhere we go. And I think as a marketer, as well, there is so much fuss around it, like you actually need to make a very educated effort to understand what’s trying to jumping, and whatnot. And I think outside of the marketing aspect of it, I think everything starts within the company. And I think in today’s world where information is everywhere, and you can’t really control that, I think everyone should be really conscious of communicating something that is not 100% accurate. People have more information about sustainable efforts that this information is very accessible, more accessible than it was before. So my feeling is that we all really need to be conscious when talking about sustainability topics. Often it’s not so much of a marketing message for external audience. But really, the first layer is actually getting every single person in your company excited about it, then redefining the their everyday work to make sure that they are thinking about sustainability. And in our case, it’s very much into our DNA, because the products that we produce, are actually helping the world be greener place. So obviously, the manufacturing process itself, these being adjusted, like as well, every other company would put we do make our efforts in that direction. And I’m really proud of that. But again, we try not to make too much fuss about it externally, and keep the right balance there. I love that. I

Mike: mean, I think it’s interesting that, you know, you’re not overselling something, even though you’ve got a genuine reason to talk about sustainability, because the product inherently helps your customers be more sustainable. Absolutely. Moving on. I think we have to talk about AI at the moment. I think it’s it’s one of the requirements of any podcast about marketing. I’m really interested to know what’s been your experience of AI and marketing at the moment? And whether you’re using AI extensively?

Mariam: Yes, some Yes. Still, ner is definitely getting a lot of attention. And of course, I’ve been experimenting with it myself. In fact, beginning of this year, I really made this very conscious effort to play with different tools like Chai, GPT, Google barred me journey and few others really. And what really blows my mind daily is how fast AI is progressing, and how quickly it changes. And I know that there is a lot of scepticism out there in the marketing community. But I would say I definitely think AI is here to stay and definitely give it a shot. Try it. While I think all of us should be very responsible. Using Gen AI, I think it’s really important that we become familiar with it, and we’ll learn how to use it to our advantage. And really like how I personally look at Gen AI is it’s just another tool in my creative toolbox really. And it has opened some exciting possibilities, but so did other developments, right. So I think it’s definitely important to try but also remember that responsibility aspect of it as well. And to answer like the second question, I think the content creation is becoming so much easier and faster than it was ever before. Jenny I allow As opposed to like, generate content in second. But I think what’s going to be really important is ensuring that the content that you’re actually generating is the right one. It’s not just quick, but it’s also engaging, it provides the right information, and it creates value for your audience. While you can create so much more content right now, it will not guarantee that the content will always hit this box. So I think for marketers, it’s going to be extremely big challenge to make sure that in this environment where content generation is so easy, we try to generate the right content, and it’s gonna become a really challenging job. And I think that’s why we see new jobs, like prompt engineers becoming really important that are trying to track all the ways you can prompt the AI, right. But at the end of the day, I think marketers should keep that in mind. And the other important thing that I always think, is the tone and the voice of your company, like if everyone is using AI generated content, I think those of us who will make an effort to stand out and keep the voice and the tone of the company will actually be on the winning side of the game. Because all content will solve some start sounding the same. And I think it’s increasingly important to try to maintain the tone and voice of your company. And stay true to that, which can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. Yeah, I

Mike: think that’s a really good point people don’t think about is one of the goals of marketing is obviously to differentiate. And if you sound like everybody else, it’s very hard for people to see you as being different. So I love that it was great insight. So we have a couple of questions we like to ask our guests. And the first one is very simple. What’s the best bit of marketing advice you’ve ever been given? Miriam?

Mariam: Good one, I think the best piece is really three things, right? learn, relearn, and unlearn. And I think in today’s fast paced world, and no one can claim to be an expert in everything. And sometimes it’s meeting and really embracing that. continuous learning is really key. And I also would advise people to concentrate on what you can control, really. And you can always control your attitude, your activity and the level of your efforts. So I think the combination of the two was the best marketing advice I’ve personally received. And I hope that will help someone else as well. That’s great. I

Mike: love that. The next question is, what would you say if somebody was thinking about entering marketing as a career, somebody young? Do you think it’s a career that’s going to have a lot of prospects in the future? Or would you recommend they look elsewhere? Oh,

Mariam:  I definitely think there are a lot of exciting prospects out there, in general, for every person that is at the very start of their career journey doesn’t matter if it’s marketing or anything else, I would really recommend getting as much real world experience as possible. Like any internship, you can get any hands on opportunities you can get, do that. Because that would really help you align your expectations. And we all have expectations as we enter the workforce, with the reality of the field, the reality of the job. And I say that really from the personal experience. You know, I wanted to be a stockbroker, once before, I found by way, marketing, two completely different fields so and what helped me is really going for those internships and getting the real world experience, and it made me see what I was more passionate about. So I think that’s really important. I think I mentioned earlier as well. Another important piece that I would specifically give to the marketing people is, again, try to be honest and authentic in your communications. And really think about trust as you build your career. The trust you build as a marketer in your environment, but you also built through your company communications as well. I

 Mike: love it. That’s that’s a great way to end the interview. Thank you very much. I mean, we’ve talked about so much if people have questions for you, Miriam, what’s the best way for them to get ahold of you?

Mariam: Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me. I absolutely enjoy the questions. And yeah, I would really invite everyone to connect with me on LinkedIn. I guess that’s the easiest way. Feel free to reach out if you have any question So in store if you’d like to continue the conversation, I’m always welcoming feedback or an inquiry. So we’ll be happy to connect. Thank you so much

Mike: for being on podcast man has been a great conversation and I hope you you know, continue making the world a better place and, you know, using some sort of products that make people more sustainable thanks so much for listening to marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes, or on your favourite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at Napier B2B dot com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

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