Keysight Technologies - Marketing Executive of the Year

Company: Keysight Technologies, Santa Rosa, CA
Entry Submitted By:Lumina Communications
Company Description: At Keysight, we believe every breakthrough idea starts with a vision. We work with the visionaries who imagine what’s next for a more connected and safer world, exploring the edges of test and measurement science to enable these innovators to create the technologies that define our future.
Nomination Category: Marketing Organization / Professional Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Executive of the Year

Nomination Title: Marie Hattar – Marketer of the Year

Marie Hattar, Keysight's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), is responsible for Keysight's brand and global marketing efforts. She drives Keysight's corporate positioning, messaging, and communications to both internal and external audiences. Marie brings passion, high-energy, creativity, a continuous improvement mindset, and a focus on return on investment to everything she does. These attributes have driven an impressive career spanning more than 20 years of measurable results in the high technology space.

More broadly, Marie led a dramatic transformation during her first few years at Keysight, which established a powerful marketing infrastructure that continues to be a critical element of the company's business success today. Marie began with a vision of creating a world-class marketing engine focused on driving sales growth through marketing leads, elevating the brand, and promoting the company’s products and solutions. She then built an integrated global marketing organization with skills to increase awareness, build thought leadership, generate demand, and showcase the differentiation of the company’s extensive portfolio of products, solutions, and services. To have strong analytics to assess the team’s impact and make ROI-based decisions, Marie upgraded and modernized the marketing technology stack with leading-edge infrastructure, tools, and processes while also establishing rigorous metrics.

During the past year, Marie demonstrated her ability to adapt Keysight’s marketing efforts to meet the specific set of challenges posed by the COVID-19 disruption. Under Marie’s leadership, Keysight Global Marketing quickly pivoted to adapt to the realities of the coronavirus pandemic by shifting primarily towards digital marketing tactics.

As many customers started working from home, Marie played a vital role in launching the company’s “Innovate Anywhere” program that offered extended trials of software solutions and resources to keep customers productive. Marie’s team also launched Keysight University, an interactive online learning platform for engineers to learn test and measurement fundamentals. The team published 15 Keysight University courses, resulting in over 25K registrations from 164 countries across the company’s top customers.

Overnight, Marie and the marketing team were tasked with transforming both Keysight-driven and industry-led events to operate digitally. With events like Keysight World and Mobile World Congress, the team needed to modify business tactics to develop new ways to engage with customers virtually. As Marie saw competitors pull back, she viewed it as an opportunity to lean in to support customers and accelerate the marketing transformation that was already underway.

Marie is one of the most strategic, creative, curious, and engaged marketing leaders in her field. She continually strives to achieve more and deliver greater results. She is already developing innovative marketing ideas for 2021 and beyond to show the world how a team of innovative design and test developers is helping shape the industries of today and tomorrow.

Marie has shown Keysight the power of a world-class marketing team and the impact it can have on the company’s overall performance. Since Marie joined Keysight, the company has delivered exceptional financial results with +10% revenue growth and 46% earnings per share (EPS) growth in fiscal 2019 after 20% revenue growth and 28% EPS growth in fiscal 2018. Despite the challenges of Covid-19, orders grew 2% in fiscal 2020, revenue decline 2%, and EPS increased 3%. A big milestone was achieved in late 2018 when Keysight became part of the S&P 500 in recognition of the company’s performance and strengthened brand. These results could not have been achieved without Marie’s vision and leadership.

In addition to her role as CMO, Marie is also a big advocate of mentoring future leaders. She actively supports the success of individuals growing professionally and achieving their goals.To Marie, it is important to be a continual learner, to constantly try new techniques, and to never stop being inquisitive.

Additional marketing results achieved since the conclusion of Keysight’s 2020 fiscal year include:
#1 in unaided brand awareness versus competitors – 6X increase during Marie's tenure
#1 in worldwide media mentions versus competitors for three consecutive years
#1 in Electrical Engineering student and faculty awareness amongst competitors
Strong growth in marketing qualified leads over Marie’s tenure; the team is now focusing on lead quality and conversion
10X increase in tradeshow leads by maximizing engagement
2,000 MQLs across 10 virtual events
>5,000 new customers

TESTIMONIALS:

"Marie’s fresh, innovative approach to marketing has been critical to Keysight’s success over the last three years. As Keysight’s first CMO ever, Marie has built a world-class marketing engine that continually strengthens our brand and drives growth. We have transformed Keysight for growth and it is important that customers understand our broadened value – and our marketing function is a critical part of this strategy. The work Marie and the marketing team are doing is translating to results." - Ron Nersesian, chairman and chief executive officer, Keysight

“Marie brings a powerful combination of creativity and analytics to Keysight’s overall marketing strategy. She constantly measures the effectiveness of campaigns and refines tactics to drive continuous improvement, which keeps Keysight top-of-mind for our customers and partners through rapidly changing market and industry conditions. It’s been a pleasure to work with Marie for many years at different companies. At Keysight, I am proud to be part of the world-class marketing engine that Marie created as we continue to work to drive sales growth through innovative marketing campaigns, elevate the brand, and promote our market-leading products and solutions.” - Jeff Harris, vice president of corporate and portfolio marketing, Keysight