Transforming a 160YR Old Brand

About the Guest

Devon Watson is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Diebold Nixdorf, a Fortune 1,000 and top 10 financial technology (FinTech) company. Besides his role as CMO, he is currently the interim head of sales for their global banking business, head of global facilities, and executive sponsor for their ERP transformation. Devon has a varied professional background: as a start-up founder/operator, and venture capital investor, and has held various product management, innovation, and strategy roles at Diebold Nixdorf. 

Connect with Devon Watson

Key Takeaways

• Staying relevant for so long requires constantly updating the product portfolio and keeping up with the times.
• When presented the opportunity, take the chance to transform the brand.
• Do not underestimate the act of changing how you talk about your solutions.
• Unclear marketing messages and buzzwords do not resonate with the audience. Make sure that the story resonates and makes sense to the target.
• Take advantage of the opportunities for digital presence to maintain and become more agile.

Quote

“The brand has to stay current, it has to stay on trend, and it has to stay relevant so that your target audience looks at it in a fresh way that meets that evolving focus of your company.” – Devon Watson

Highlights from the Episode

How do you stay relevant & compete for mindshare for over 160yrs?

It’s quite a trick to be a modern financial technology company for 160 years plus. Innovation and change have been part of our journey from the get-go. To stay relevant for that long, you must constantly update your product portfolio. The brand has to encompass the promise of your product. As the market changes, your product solution portfolio will also change over time. The brand has to stay current, it has to stay on trend, and it has to stay relevant so that your target audience looks at it in a fresh way that meets that evolving focus of your company.

What are some of the challenges one could face during their transformation journey?

There may be the need to change everything. For us, we had to change the logo and the visual voice and adopted a sound palette. We changed every single piece of marketing material across the company to be solution centric to lead with the business problem and not just talk about the product in the mechatronic innovation or the software innovation. We wanted to start with the customer in mind and the business problem they were trying to solve. 

Can you tell us a bit about Diebold’s digital overhaul?  

 It’s been a real success story to upgrade a lot of our digital toolsets so that we can be as personalized as possible across all of our different communication channels, being very agile in the way that we get new campaigns out to market in a highly targeted way. The holistic change is the first key to this. The second is to embrace and revamp your digital capabilities so that you’re maximizing your access to your target audience. And third, make sure that the story resonates and makes sense to the target.

Is there a book, blog, newsletter, website, or video that you would recommend to our listeners?

• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• All-In Podcast
• Mo Amer: Mohammed in Texas

Shout-outs

• Brian Beale – Director, Solution Architects, WWSO Compute at AWS