Veronica Martin caught up with Levin Merl Director Field Marketing EMEA at Aruba and Markus Mayrl, Portfolio Marketing Manager EMEA at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, to discuss GITEX 2022 and the company’s plans for the region.
In the new age of digital, how is it impacting your marketing strategy?
We’ve seen the physical age; we have seen the digital age and how it accelerated due to the pandemic and now we have entered into a hybrid era where physical and digital have come together. As a marketing organisation, we went from fully physical, very classic, to very digital through the pandemic. Now we have found a middle way and built a seamless experience for our customers.
What are the big marketing campaigns that we can expect to launch in the next 6 months?
One of the things that we have started in the past and that we will continue to do is the move to network as a service, meaning that we really take care of our customers in a way that, if they want to consume network in a different way, in the way of network as a service, we are ready for that. Our aim is to help them understand the benefits of that, so this is a part of what we are doing, and you will see a lot of that in the near future as well. It will be an ongoing thing because we don’t consider network as a service or destination, but a journey.
How is Aruba marketing enabling the sales team to drive more opportunities?
The big topic for us this year will be account based marketing flying a little bit around in the market space, where we have a very targeted look for customers and create, as much as possible, a unique experience for each customer. We try our best to create that one on one, one on three marketing experience, which is a combination of digital and physical.
For many companies GITEX is a landmark event, what’s your perspective and how has GITEX been for you this year?
You can tell how much excitement there is here and the growing number of visitors. GITEX is a really big event, and we believe this local presence is really important for us. The event has given us the possibility to meet with our customers, discuss our future and present the right solutions to the right customers.
How does it feel to return to a real café in Dubai after your presence in the virtual café in South Africa?
We are both happy that it is possible to meet in reality again. There are limitations to the virtual experience, and you can only consume coffee in real life. We are happy to be back in the real world.
