A Brilliant Stroke of Luck: Katharyn White on Building an Executive Advisory Network in a Virtual World

In this “quick hit” podcast, Katharyn White, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer at T-Systems, shares how her team quickly shifted an executive advisory board into an advisory network during the early stages of the pandemic and how the quick pivot actually turned into an advantage with deeper and more relevant engagement through the rest of the year.

Even before the pandemic, T-Systems was working to shift its engagement with executives from event-centric interactions to more content-focused conversations. The Covid-19 shutdown actually offered the opportunity to accelerate that vision. With the forced move from in-person events to virtual, Katharyn and her team selectively pivoted away from the activities that tended to distract from the content and shifted to a more agile approach based on the immediate issues and questions that dominated the agendas of the senior executives that mattered most to T-Systems.

The shift has led Katharyn to redefine her executive advisory board to a more fluid advisory network that supports more ongoing engagement with clients, brings in different decision makers, and supports faster action and reaction to client and market changes.

This clip is a brief segment from our Marketing Vision 2020 conference held in October, where I hosted a panel session on Innovating Executive Engagement: Next Steps for C-Suite Marketing with Katharyn, Polly Kruse, VP, Executive Engagement and Programs at Citrix, and Erin Rogers, Head of Marketing, Commercial Banking at HSBC Canada. If you’re interested in T-System’s overall approach to executive engagement in today’s environment, you may want to go back and listen to my full interview with Katherine on our C-Suite Marketing podcast.

Listen to the podcast clip now.

ITSMA Talks · C-Suite Marketing Quick Hit: Katharyn White on Advisory Networks at T-Systems