The fourth episode in our Reinventing B2B podcast series is an insightful discussion with top 100 global CMO, Ashish Babu around:
- Staying agile in a rapidly evolving market
- Building customer loyalty
- Proving your worth to internal stakeholders
- How to harness AI and even predict what’s coming
Listen in, or read the transcript below.
Podcast length: 46 minutes
Transcript reading time: 15 minutes
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James: Hi everybody, welcome to the latest episode of Reinventing B2B, a Just Global production, your friendly neighborhood global B2B agency of the year. My name is James O’Flaherty, I’m the EVP of Growth, and today we’re really excited to talk about a topic that dominates the thinking for a lot of B2B marketers: future-proofing your B2B. It’s plain to see the huge scale of change in the market right now, with so many different things to consider in what’s enabling business performance through marketing.
And who better to talk to today about this than the recent winner of the Top 100 CMO Awards, a true B2B leader. I’m very happy to introduce Ashish Babu, CMO of Europe and UK at TCS. Thank you so much for joining us today, Ashish.
Ashish, TCS: Thank you, James. Lovely to be here.
James: Excellent. I want to get straight into it because obviously there’s a big event going on at the moment, the Olympics. I just wondered if there’s anything that you’ve noticed so far, any favorite sport that you’ve been watching, or anything that you’ve just noticed about the coverage?
Ashish, TCS: I think the Olympics obviously gets everyone excited. In our house, my kids love watching every bit on TikTok, so I’m getting one set of content about what’s happening in the Olympic Village—food, what the athletes love, their favorite parts. For me, as someone who’s grown up watching the Olympics, I love swimming—I think it’s one of the most interesting sports. I also love the athletics because that’s pure theater. The men’s 100m, 200m, women’s events—all of that is exciting. And I really like the addition of rugby sevens, which is nice to see. It’s great to have a fest of different sports to look forward to.
James: Awesome. I’ve been enjoying the rugby myself—well, was enjoying it until the point when I was hoping Fiji would win, but France played brilliantly in the final.
Ashish, TCS: Yeah, that was brilliant. Home support really brings the best out of you.
Meet Ashish - CMO of Global Markets at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
Ashish Babu
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Global Markets at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
James: Before we launch into the market and the future, I’d love to ask a little bit about your history. Can you tell us a little bit about where you started from, and how your career has evolved to this point?
Ashish, TCS: I predominantly spent my life living in India. My father was in the Air Force, so I moved from one airbase to another every three years. I was always the new kid in the classroom. My dad used to tell me that I’d make new friends, adapt to different languages and habits, and pick up new sports. This ability to understand humans, engage with them, and make better friends has been my foundation. Since then, I’ve lived in various cities—Bombay, Bangalore, Delhi, London—and now I live in Amsterdam. Connecting with people through food, culture, and sports has been a key part of my life.
In my career, I work in a company dominated by engineers, but I’m a history graduate, so I’m a bit of an outlier. But history helps me bring emotion, sentiment, and a way to understand patterns, which is crucial when working with engineers who think in black and white. I enjoy what I do.
James: That’s cool. When we’re talking about patterns, obviously we’re talking about future-proofing a little bit later. I wonder if there are patterns we can apply from previous big changes in the industry, but we can get to that a little bit later. One thing I’d love to find out about as well—I know you started your new role not that long ago, so first of all, congratulations. What’s been your kind of 90-day plan for starting this role?
Ashish, TCS: Thank you. When you take on a new role, you think about what you’re going to do differently. Moving from a European role to a global role, the first thing I needed to do was understand the different needs of various regions—Europe, Latin America, North America, Australia. I spent my first 30-40 days speaking with the teams, learning what’s working and what can be improved. It’s important to understand each customer’s behavior and the different technology cycles in each market.
My focus has been on getting to know the team better, working with business stakeholders, and understanding our clients’ needs. My plan is about learning, speaking with business leaders, and spending time with clients. I don’t have the luxury of working on a static plan; I need to be agile and adapt to what’s already in motion while also implementing changes that will help us pivot towards the future.
James: Have you found, just in the course of that first month and talking to the teams, that anything came up that maybe you weren’t expecting and had to find solutions for?
Ashish, TCS: A lot of things, actually. Marketing to humans means dealing with different behaviors in different markets. For example, the media landscape is very different in the US and UK compared to Australia, where there are just two major publications to sell ideas to. So, I had to think about where to drive more advertorial content versus PR content, and what kind of messaging would be effective.
One challenge was convincing people to be open to new ideas. In regional roles, people often believe they know their markets best, which they do, but it’s also important to learn from others. I had to approach this by asking how I could help them do their job better and bring the best examples and ideas from other regions. As marketers, we sometimes hold on to our work, but it’s crucial to inspire them to think beyond what’s worked in the past and focus on what’s next.
Getting agility right in global marketing teams
James: I get it. I suppose that’s the flexibility element in how you work, which takes us into another important topic—agility. Being agile in our industry is sometimes easier said than done. It might be easier for smaller clients or organizations, but trickier for huge enterprises like TCS. How has TCS embraced agility as a concept?
Ashish, TCS: I mean, again, I put it back in the same way we sell to our clients, which is run and change. “Run” is your legacy; “change” is your new deck. And for any change, you’ve got to bring agility. So every time we’re looking to execute a new idea, it has to have a quick timeline and a shelf life. It can’t be forever. So that means it needs to have agility in thinking. One thing I’ve found is if you put everybody in agile mode, teams get extremely tired.
Teams end up doing rather than thinking. So you’ve got to think about a plan where you have a long-distance idea that needs to come to life. Anything new you’re launching, like new campaigns or our sports marketing activities such as marathons and Formula E, they all work in agile mode because we have delivery every month on a new activity. So that’s the way. And I also think you need skills.
Not everyone is geared up for agility. You’ve got to bring in teams that have the ability to swiftly jump from one project to another because they thrive on that. And there are teams who love the long distance, who are the thinkers. You want to give them time because once they think right, we get the direction right, and we’ll have a bigger impact. So that’s how I think about the way we operate: new ideas need agility, and the ideas that are settled need to have longevity.
James: How well placed do you think marketing specifically is in terms of adopting that kind of agility that you need today?
How do you assess where marketing as a function is in a business in terms of agility compared to, say, the sales or product organizations?
Ashish, TCS: I think marketing is front and center. A lot of data is sitting with us—customer satisfaction information, quality, and quantitative data. Data sits with everyone, but data is like potatoes: if you don’t use them, they’re just sitting in a sack. You’ve got to build insights and make it actionable. The smarter marketers are those who take that data, not just to report the output, but to talk about the impact it’s going to create.
If you can get into that habit, like asking what three things our clients are saying that we need to pivot for the future, and then bring that conversation to the business and focus your messaging on it, you make a huge leap. So smarter marketers are the ones who look at the data and make it insightful and actionable. Otherwise, it’s just tons of data. And I think that’s an opportunity for us to be a bit like Nostradamus—seeing what is coming and how we pivot to that. Also, learning from peers and competition and finding our flight space is key.
Working well with internal stakeholders
James: And how about in terms of the agility that you need from the business as well? Like, is there a prescription for how you approach the need for more flexibility, legally, procurement-wise, or other aspects that contribute? Sorry, I mentioned things I shouldn’t have.
Are there ways you’ve approached trying to influence that agility across the business to make it easier for marketing to deploy all that good stuff you were talking about?
Ashish, TCS: I think nothing happens in isolation. As marketers, you’re going to wear the medals. Your consistency and effort give you permission to try new things. Once you have that rhythm, it becomes easier to convince the business because they see the merit and trust you. I think that’s crucial. And any campaign you want to launch should be grounded in customer insight.
Don’t just say, “This is what we need to do.” Engage with customers better, understand what they think, and back it up with data. That’s the conversation you need to get into—not just putting together a marketing plan and asking for permission to spend X amount of money. It has to be about market conditions, customer insight, and what your strategy is. Another important aspect you mentioned—legal, finance, etc.—is that for every key marketing effort we make, we go back and create an impact report for the legal and finance teams, showing the impact we created together, not just the output. You also have to think that marketing, legal, and finance are all doing 20 other things.
Everybody comes and says this campaign needs to go out, or it’s life and death. It’s the same with every contract that goes to legal—it’s life and death. You’ve got to be smart about it. You can’t push everything down their throat, expecting them to just accept it. You need to pace yourself and say, “This is the most important thing. I’m not going to trouble you for the rest of the time, but this is important.” Education is vital, and you’ve got to explain why you’re prioritizing. Otherwise, you just push things down the road, and that leads to a lot of hard work.
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Prioritization to enable growth
James: I hear you. That kind of brings me to something else I wanted to ask about: prioritization and ensuring you’ve got the right things happening in the business to enable growth. We’re in the business of convincing. How can we win over hearts and minds? What’s more important? You’ve touched on the data and also talked about appealing to emotions. How do you judge which is more important, or is it always about balance?
Ashish, TCS: I think it’s a balance of both. Ultimately, we’re selling to humans, and especially in B2B, when someone’s making a decision on a deal worth 100 million, 200 million, or a billion, it has to be both. People care about three things: Can I trust you? Will you be there if things go wrong? And will you help me scale that idea? It’s about a consistent track record. Customers today—or clients—already know what they want. They bring you in because they trust you and you have a track record. From there on, you have to ensure you help them and their organization make that decision.
That decision isn’t just made by a CIO. It goes through a process. While the CIO buys into the whole technology idea that will help them change or pivot to the new business, ultimately, you’re working with technology, which means people skills, human resources, finance, legal, and the board. You have to ensure you run a process where they feel comfortable that they are working with a partner who is rational but also cares about what is important to them.
That’s fundamental. Deals are not just won on numbers. They’re won with emotions and the ability to trust. That’s the number one factor.
Is B2B getting better at emotional marketing?
James: Do you think B2B as an industry is getting better at that emotional side? I ask because I noticed that when you watch TV, like during the Olympics we mentioned earlier, there are a lot more B2B brands showing up in a consumer-facing way.
Ashish, TCS: Yes, definitely. Some data even says the biggest sponsorships for sports are actually from B2B brands. If I give you an example, the London Marathon is one of the most iconic marathons in the world. It’s a privilege and honor for us to be part of that. The event enables 50,000 runners to run in one day—each with their own dreams, hard work, and hustle. When someone finishes that race, it’s an emotional experience. Our technology not only provides runners with the best experience but also connects them digitally with their families through our app. So, we’re not just taking one individual on a journey, but engaging an entire ecosystem of support.
When someone finishes, we want to make them the hero. Running is often seen as a solitary sport in a crowd, but no one sees the effort behind it. By enabling our customers to share their stories, they become great content aggregators for us, sharing their experiences on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. This turns us into a platform that enables storytelling. Even though I’m not a marathon runner, I know from others that the day after the race, everything hurts, but it’s a sweet pain that makes you think, “What’s next?”
The emotional connection we create is crucial. When we make customers feel welcome, along with their families, they’re going to trust us longer. That memory stays with them.
James: As a retired marathon runner, I can confirm that it is an emotional experience.
How to measure effectiveness
James: You mentioned the importance of sharing stories—how do you measure the effectiveness of campaigns aimed at winning hearts and minds rather than traditional demand generation programs? How do you justify the value of these initiatives to the board for the next sponsorship?
Ashish, TCS: If I speak from a London Marathon perspective, one key metric is viewership—London Marathon gets almost 16 million viewers through BBC. That’s our brand visibility. Additionally, about 50,000 runners wear our brand in the streets of London. Our app is also a significant metric—close to 700,000 people download it, meaning we’re engaging not just runners but their families too.
Our hospitality focuses on the entire experience, not just finishing the race. We provide a Formula One paddock-like environment, where participants and their families can relax, eat, and engage with their peers. Social media is another vital metric. We activate our campaigns three months before the marathon, sharing stories, nutrition tips, and more, making our customers the experts. When customers share our content on LinkedIn, it engages their entire business ecosystem, giving us insights into what kinds of personas and designations are engaging with our content. This data helps us scale our efforts and dominate platforms like LinkedIn.
James: How has that sponsorship impacted visibility and engagement with the brand?
Ashish, TCS: Currently, we’re well-engaged with clients and customers who want to run marathons. We’ve recently announced a new partnership with the Sydney Marathon. As a company, we aim to dominate marathons as a platform. When you talk to any C-level executive or runner, they think of TCS first because we provide access to the most iconic marathons.
We’ve also created a “Run Club,” an exclusive C-level network of runners. This fosters a community where participants not only run together but also bring new peers into the fold. This trial-and-error approach has allowed us to scale successful initiatives. For instance, we launched a mini-marathon in London three years ago, starting with 5,000 runners. Today, we have almost 19,000 participants, many of whom are children—the future runners of the London Marathon.
It’s about community building. Even those who don’t run come to cheer on the kids, creating emotional bonds. Every time they look at that medal, they think of TCS and the experience we facilitated.
James: That’s amazing. You mentioned pushing the limits of what’s possible, and it’s clear that your brand sentiment aligns with that.
Ashish, TCS: For us, it’s about the long run. Nothing is achieved in one day. Even a marathon, though completed in one day, represents a body of work leading up to it. The same applies to digital transformation and AI—there’s always a new wave of technology, but humans remain constant. We need to help reskill humans to navigate these changes, just as marathon preparation parallels overcoming challenges.
James: When you first developed the strategy to engage with marathons, were there other B2B brands you looked to emulate?
Ashish, TCS: IBM’s work with Wimbledon on data storytelling was inspiring. It made us think about how to provide data to marathon runners’ friends and families, helping them track the race, find the best spots to cheer, and overall, enhance their experience. Marathon running can be a lonely sport, so we wanted to make it more inclusive. We’ve created teams where our colleagues partner with organizations to run together and raise funds for charity. It’s about building a tribe where no one runs alone, and everyone has fun along the way.
James: Finally, how do you measure the ROI of these activities?
Ashish, TCS: We look at several factors. For example, the economic benefit to the city and race organizers, as marathons draw in not just runners but their friends and families. Social and digital activations are key, but for us, the impact on business is critical. How many customers and prospects participate? How do they feel about TCS afterward? It’s hard to capture emotion, but when someone says they want to run the next marathon, we know we’ve succeeded. Ultimately, our metrics focus on brand impact, business growth, and community engagement.
Building customer loyalty
James: Okay, so that’s one kind of partnership that we’re talking about, certainly in terms of the marathon and where you’ve done that globally. Another type of partnership that I’d be really interested to get a little bit more insight around—can you tell me a bit more about the TCS Summit? How does this set you and your clients and partners up for success?
Ashish, TCS: TCS Summit is one of my favorite events and experiences. We’ve been on a journey. We started with a humble beginning, I think the first one in Brussels. The idea was to get our customers to come and share some of their best work, to celebrate that work, and also inspire each one of them. Since then, we’ve done almost 15 editions. What we found is that the evolution of the Summit has paralleled the evolution of technology.
Ten years ago, technology was often considered the backend of the business. Typically, a CIO would be reporting to a CFO. Then the concept of digital transformation came in, with companies like Amazon pushing everyone to think differently—how do we respond faster, better, sooner? This shift meant delivering everything through a mobile interface, where the complexity had to fold into a seamless experience for the end-user.
Around five or six years ago, the focus on digital transformation led to every company, whether in aerospace, retail, or banking, wanting to become a digital or tech company. We needed to pivot at the Summit to bring in inspirational speakers who could help attendees understand this journey. The customer journey evolved from a CIO focusing on routine operations to leading change, engaging with the CEO, the board, and regulators. We started focusing on helping our customers become better C-level executives, capable of speaking the board’s language, and understanding technology from a business outcome perspective.
Since then, the Summit has grown from just having a CIO panel to hosting heads of state who discuss global issues, top athletes who talk about teamwork, endurance, and mental fitness, and futurists who present ideas about how the world is changing. The goal is to help our customers become better executives, more adept at engaging with the board and CEO.
James: That’s cool. So how have you been able to see the impacts down the line? Do you have a way of seeing direct benefits from running the Summit?
Ashish, TCS: Yes, it’s multifold. One central aspect is that every time a customer attends, they often return with two senior leaders, emphasizing the importance of the Summit. For every CIO or CDO, if they can show the business the potential of technology through the Summit, they return with a stronger team that believes in that idea. We’ve seen greater participation of C-level executives.
We noticed that while external speakers like sports personalities, futurists, or policymakers are usually great orators, technology presentations often lacked energy. So, we partnered with TEDx Amsterdam to learn storytelling techniques—how to convince someone in eight minutes that this idea will change the world. We even offered TEDx coaching to our clients. Initially, some were hesitant, but those who accepted the coaching created simple, impactful presentations with visuals and personal stories. This change was significant, turning our customers into compelling storytellers. Some have even gone on to become CIO of the year in their respective countries by shifting the narrative from technology to business outcomes.
Managing data overload
James: That’s awesome. From that, it makes me think of something else—from career advancement through technology to technological advancements. You talked about keeping the intensity up. I saw a statistic the other day: global data volume is quickly approaching 175 zettabytes, which is equivalent to creating a stack of Blu-ray discs that can reach the moon 23 times. So, in this data overload era, what are you seeing in the industry in terms of managing, curating, and getting value from that data?
Ashish, TCS: Data is valuable only if you use it. Otherwise, it’s just piling up. There’s no point in retaining data without deriving insights from it. We found something interesting when we looked at 10 years of Summit data. We identified 20 loyal customers who kept returning. We spent time with them and discovered some incredible stories. For example, three of our customers met for the first time at the Summit in Cannes and have remained friends for over 15 years. They now bring new customers along, and this community has become loyal to TCS. They even help us decide where to host the next Summit and who the speakers should be. Treating customers like family, making them feel good, and turning them into heroes—this is how we use data to create actionable insights. Otherwise, it’s just data sitting unused.
How to harness AI
James: That’s really cool. We’ve managed to get this far into the conversation about future-proofing B2B without really touching on AI. How should we take advantage of AI? What are the responsibilities here? How does this actually work for business so that they’re using AI ethically?
Ashish, TCS: As a leader, you can’t just outsource AI to your colleagues. You need to embrace AI yourself—use the apps, try new things. Otherwise, you’ll be too far removed from where the magic happens. I’m excited about AI because it allows B2B to think about Hollywood-type production. We’re producing content every day, targeting our customers on LinkedIn. AI helps us create content that evokes emotion and engagement.
I also love how AI can generate personas quickly, helping us understand our target audience faster. However, you need to keep trying, failing, and scaling what works. But don’t delegate everything to AI—otherwise, your team might lose their intellectual edge and become mere executors. Human and machine need to work together, not just the machine taking over.
James: Is there a particular example of how you use AI?
Ashish, TCS: Yes, many. For example, most of our social media content is now automated. This has freed up time for our team to focus on creativity. But after a month, we noticed that the content started looking repetitive because AI writes in a certain way—it has a predictable, flowery language. We realized we were relying too much on AI and needed a good human writer to maintain quality. AI can assist, but it shouldn’t be the editor.
Another example is voice translation. It’s becoming common, but every voice translation sounds the same. You can spot an AI voice or graphic because it has a certain uniformity. We need to strike the right balance; otherwise, it’s a rabbit hole.
James: I feel like we started talking about agility and we’re ending with what technology can provide us—the means to be more agile. I think that’s the key benefit we’re all finding from technology.
Ashish, TCS: Yes, agility, but also creativity. Today, we have the ability to not only think fast but also think creatively. If we use that responsibility wisely, it will work for us. But if we become lazy about it, it will impact us because that body of work is out there.
James: Completely. Ashish, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. It’s really interesting talking to you, hearing about how you’re approaching future-proofing and evolving as a business. Thank you for your time. Really appreciate it.
If you want to hear more ways to reinvent your B2B marketing, we are running our next episode, which will be about building community in the workplace. Look forward to seeing you then. Thank you very much.
Ashish, TCS: Thank you, James. This was great.
