Out to lunch with IBM’s Mary Garrett

Mary Garrett, vice-president of marketing and communications for IBM’s global sales and distribution business, knows how to make the most of a tight schedule.

In Hong Kong for the first time for less than 24 hours en route to Beijing, Garrett has managed to fit in a conference call (ironically back to her home state of New York), grab breakfast with a client, meet IBM Hong Kong’s marketing team, have lunch with yours truly before heading to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where IBM helps run a course on data and analytics for MBA students.

But it’s a schedule I get the feeling she is more than capable of handling.

Garrett has a huge job. Her role encompasses a massive 170 markets worldwide where she leads the development and execution of marketing and communication strategies for the Smarter Planet agenda, business analytics, cloud computing and other growth plays in support of IBM clients across both mature and emerging markets.

We meet for lunch at the iconic members bar at Butterfield’s in TaiKoo Place where Garrett picks tandoori chicken and I settle on Hainan chicken with rice.

“It’s a really fascinating time to be in marketing,” she says. “The reach of marketing is so much broader than it has ever been.”

She sits at the centre of where much of this change behind marketing is taking place, which is largely data and analytics – two foundational drivers of change for how brands will operate in the future.

When the conversation shifts to these two areas, she is optimistic about how good these two core areas will be for brands, but says there is so much learning ahead.

“It’s how we’ll understand buyer behaviour, how we’ll be more relevant and how we’ll really deliver a more personalised and relevant client experience,” she says.

“The more we know the better that experience will get. The better experience we deliver, the more information we’ll get – a positive vortex.”

But these changes, creeping up on the world at a rate only a select few foresaw, are big cultural shifts that companies will have to face.

“We no longer need to rely on our experience and history as much as we once did,” she says. “Data and analytics is a cultural shift that doesn’t require history or experience. You need to have a culture of data and analytics."

These areas of marketing seem a natural fit for Garrett, whose resume is nothing short of impressive.

She joined IBM as an electrical engineer, designing advanced prototypes for leading-edge speech recognition technologies for which she earned a patent. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering from Boston University and a Master of Science in biomedical engineering from Brown University.

So where does she see the major shift taking place in coming years?

“The shift is people, process and technology. If you don’t get these three right you will fail. Not considering the human aspect in the change is a fatal flaw.”

For now though it’s back to the grindstone for Garrett, who following lunch, headed to Beijing for IBM’s 30th anniversary in China with an event for some 400 clients – nothing she can’t handle.

Lunch box
Guest: Mary Garrett, vice-president of marketing and communications, IBM global sales and distribution.
Venue: Butterfield’s.
Main course: Tandoori chicken and Hainan chicken with rice.
Service: Quick and courteous.