Since joining Konica Minolta this past September, I’ve been settling into my new role and learning a lot from the exceptionally talented teams with whom I’m honored to be working. I’m also recognizing the multitude of opportunities we have in front of us to set our brand apart in the printing, business technology and workplace solutions markets. I’m so excited to be here and confident we’ll be creating a new chapter in Konica Minolta’s growth through collective effort and game-changing marketing.
Previously, I was at Verizon, leading marketing teams to drive growth for both the B2B and B2C business. Before that I spent time at various global advertising agencies (a true “Mad Man”), building brands across finance, technology, big energy, sports and entertainment and more. Over the years I’ve witnessed how digital transformation has largely reinvented the way businesses work, how customers interact with businesses – especially in the B2B space – and how buyer engagement has changed through decisions that are driven by data.
But all this incredible transformation hasn’t changed my core beliefs and marketing ethos: creativity and marketing must go hand in hand, in any business and in any industry. The purpose of marketing is to drive growth, and creativity is the oxygen for that growth.
Solving business challenges with creative ideas that resonate with your target audience and drive business growth is immensely satisfying, and the surprising thing is, you never know where those ideas will come from, or when inspiration will strike. Everyone has their own methodology for coming up with creative solutions.
So I firmly believe that leveraging creativity is the way to differentiate and elevate our brand and our industry, with new approaches that deliver new ways to see us, interact with us and work with us as partners on their own paths to growth. Ideally, this becomes symbiotic – when our customers and dealers succeed with Konica Minolta’s products and services, we see our business grow too.
Data-driven marketing is the key to this growth
Before the age of clicks and algorithms, strategic planning, creative and account service people would sit around a conference table to brainstorm and come up with the next “big idea” for a client. The team may have had access to focus group results, “voice of the customer” surveys and some basic ROI numbers from previous campaigns. They also had input about the product or service along with the specific problem to solve, at least as it was perceived by the client. But the result presented as a solution (or just as often, what the client approved) was built on what had been done before, even though it was combined with the imagination and intuitive insights that always drive great creative people.
We’re still charged with coming up with those big ideas by collaborating together and blending what’s familiar with ways to provoke and inspire. Creating an emotional connection that compels buyers to purchase is how marketing campaigns become memorable. But now, data and analytics are in the toolbox of every marketer. Using analytics to become knowledgeable about customer engagement at every stage of the buyer’s journey is king. In addition, AI is quickly becoming a major player in this area, with its capability to sort and sift through massive amounts of data that can provide additional and sometimes unexpected insights. According to Survey Monkey, 40 percent of marketers in 2025 are using AI to conduct research.
Of course, this information gathering is highly dependent on the quantity and quality of the data, the business problem you’re trying to solve and whether the data was acquired through online channels or other methods. So it’s no wonder some people still believe that data kills creativity. To fully leverage buyer engagement intelligence requires data that’s accurate, accessible and current. Using real-time data and advanced analytics is no longer just a competitive advantage – it’s now the minimum standard for today’s manufacturers, distributors and dealers who rely on the insights data provides to do everything from manage inventory, streamline orders, reduce errors, forecast and deliver business results, and support customers with user-friendly self-service tools.
And it’s not just companies leveraging these new tools to gain marketing advantages. As explained in Konica Minolta’s “Modern B2B Buyers and Buyer Journeys” blog from April 2024, more than 70 percent of B2B decision-makers prefer digital self-service or remote human interactions, and Forrester found (way back in 2015!) that 74 percent of business buyers do more than half of their research online before they make an offline purchase. That percentage has only increased over the last ten years and is a testament to B2B buyers, who do extensive research on a purchase decision before they reach out to a vendor’s sales team. Buyers’ extensive research includes a wide range of channels, from YouTube videos and social websites to talking with peers and attending events. Fortunately, buyers still also consult sales reps, who need to stay on top of all the activity out there, inside the company and out in the competitive marketplace.
A sea of sameness
What I’ve noticed about the printing industry is that there is little or no disruption out there. From a marketing perspective, it’s a sea of sameness on each manufacturer’s website, in their advertising, at tradeshows, throughout their content – pretty much every aspect of their marketing mix. We are mostly competing on price, which is simply a race to the bottom if we continue what we’re doing. So how do we change this trajectory?
It’s through the power of creative storytelling that we can create an emotional connection with potential buyers, thereby elevating the brand and bringing the company and customer together.
We need to excite our prospects and customers. We need to evangelize our brand with stories that go way beyond speeds and feeds – stories that create a unique point of differentiation. We need these to connect on an emotional level and compel customers not only to purchase, but to want to become part of our brand story and invite our brand into their world. Ultimately, we do not want brand advocates, but brand zealots, not just based on product performance, but also based on what we stand for. Those who buy also help to drive advocacy for our brand.
At the same time, we can use marketing to spark more excitement among our dealers, who can help us differentiate our brand from our competitors and sell more Konica Minolta products and services.
It all comes back to creativity. Marketing’s mission is to drive growth, and creativity is the oxygen for growth. It is a brand imperative for our industry to thrive.
Brand-building fuels awareness, trust and lead generation
At Konica Minolta, our marketing team is charged with driving the growth of our business, our brand, our people and our organization. To accomplish this, we need to partner across the company to tell the right stories that will catalyze growth. It is an important collaboration where data analytics play a significant role. Analytics are extremely useful in making decisions about who we should target, which media channels to use and how effective each tactic becomes. Marketing metrics matter when it comes to evaluating creative content.
Our digital marketing group takes a creative approach with their outputs as well, ensuring the message we are trying to deliver is not just getting in front of the right audience, but the right audience at the right time. Creating integrated campaigns using the right mix of channels with message continuity is what produces measurable outcomes.
Brand-building drives our messaging, which is central to the content that appears across our various channels. It helps create awareness and over time, trust among prospects and customers. And from there, leads follow.
Our customer-centric approach drives long-term advocates
Konica Minolta has built an excellent reputation among customers, not just for our products, but among our people, who drive the kind of customer loyalty that few manufacturers achieve today.
Just this past February, the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index® (CLEI) pronounced Konica Minolta first in Brand Loyalty among all brands competing in the “MFP Office Copier” category – our 18th consecutive year for this recognition. Brand Keys’ 2025 research and results delivered some very relevant data on the connection between loyalty and brand profitability. As one example, a 5 percent increase in loyalty can increase a brand’s lifetime profits per customer by as much as 86 percent. And it now costs 15 to 22 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one – which is up 20 percent from 1997. While ecommerce factors into the stats from more than 25 years ago, Konica Minolta’s focus on solutions that meet customers’ needs now while we innovate and deliver on solutions that anticipate and meet future needs shows we’re truly supporting their business growth through digital transformation.
Additionally, in January, Keypoint Intelligence, the world’s leading and independent evaluator of document imaging hardware, software and services, announced Konica Minolta had won five Buyers Lab (BLI) Awards. These included four of BLI’s Pick Awards that went to the Konica Minolta bizhub C451i, bizhub C551i, bizhub C651i and bizhub C751i, as well as the prestigious BLI 2025 A3 Line of the Year Award. Konica Minolta’s multifunctional print devices continue to win awards and customer loyalty, with the A3 range highlighted for its “consistent excellence in performance innovation,” per Keypoint Intelligence.
Another exciting accolade was our inclusion on Forbes’ America’s Best Large Employers 2025 list. This prestigious recognition is a testament to the vibrant culture we have cultivated at Konica Minolta. Our employees feel empowered and inspired to bring their authentic selves to work every day. They thrive in our welcoming and collaborative environment, which fosters creativity and innovation. By embracing diverse perspectives, we transform challenges into opportunities, consistently producing outstanding work and always supporting one another.
Setting new benchmarks in marketing and business growth
Because I’ve joined Konica Minolta from outside the industry, I hope I can bring a fresh perspective to our marketing efforts as we look toward our future success. Showcasing customer stories and being disruptive in good ways with our marketing will raise Konica Minolta’s profile in the marketplace, helping to drive revenue growth and brand elevation. This will also serve as sales support to generate leads and reach new levels of excellence. I truly believe in our ability to inspire, to move people and to make a real difference in the world. These are the things that excited me when I first decided as a teenager that I wanted to get into marketing, and they are still the things that excite me today.
If you’d like to learn more about my background and connect with me, please join me on LinkedIn. I also started a newsletter called Musings of a (ex) Mad Man (yep, I was a huge fan of the show), which will give you more of my thoughts about the power of marketing, why I love it so much, and what I’m learning about it, because it’s a very dynamic business. It’s been a while since I’ve added a new edition to the newsletter because, well, I’ve been pretty busy lately! But you may get a kick out of it, especially if you have an agency background like I do. And stay tuned – you’ll be seeing some cool new marketing from Konica Minolta in the coming months.
