The future is physical

Q&A with Michael Papish

Following a remarkable progression of professional achievements from start-up founder and product strategist to marketing leader in both B2C and B2B technology environments, Michael Papish joins IfThen as SVP and the newest addition to its executive leadership team.

As a marketing executive, you’ve built brands, launched new products, and navigated complex corporate transactions including an IPO. What inspired you to shift gears and join IfThen?

Over the past 20 years, I have learned a ton about how to tell simple stories to non-engineering people explaining complex HW+SW technology platforms. As I was working in-house over the past year at a deep tech VC firm meeting young scientists and engineers founding companies, I became even more convinced that the next wave of technology to change our world isn’t going to come from Silicon Valley apps and SW startups. Instead, I believe the next 30 years of innovation will be driven by applying everything we have learned about the digital domain (including AI) to the physical world. Additive manufacturing/3D printing is just a leading edge start. The companies that are going to dominate our physical landscape in 30 years will do so by producing abundant clean energy, operating next gen factories that recreate our supply chains for resiliency and sustainability, and by creating the advanced materials we need as humans to go further and faster. And these companies are being founded TODAY. 

I have joined IfThen because I think this is the best way I can help the next wave of startups become successful. Changing the underpinnings of industry and society will be disruptive to our everyday lives. Deep tech companies need help to explain what they are doing, why it will be better for humans, and how they will deliver tangible value to paying customers. Now as a fractional CMO I can partner with founders and CEOs across multiple companies and bring real stories to life with my favorite group of creative friends. I am joining IfThen because together we can make an impact on the future of our world.

Over the past few decades, one wave after another of digital innovation has redefined the practice of marketing. How would you describe where we find ourselves today, and what excites you most about the future of marketing?

While the specifics are often in flux, the practice of marketing can always be reduced to the most basic act of delivering ‘the right message to the right person at the right time.’ Over the past 20 years, the internet has blown open the doors on the ability to find and target ‘the right person.’ Combined with real-time data feedback loops, marketers now have the ability to target very specific audiences at costs carefully tuned to generate Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Digital technology can also help deliver messages at the ‘right time’ – assuming the right time is the exact moment someone is searching on Google. But, when it comes to the ‘right message’ – we are largely left to a blunt A/B testing approach that usually selects for a lowest common denominator ‘clickbait’-style message. With the rise of AI, I think we will see marketers attempt to create ads that look and feel fully personalized and 1-to-1. Some have theorized that the future of marketing will be ‘white glove service for all.’ While the future of marketing will certainly involve automated/AI components, I believe that it will require a man+machine approach. 

Relevancy requires the ability to understand culture and impact requires the ability to shape culture. Only by keeping a culturally attuned human in the loop can this be achieved.

While you’ve developed deep marketing expertise throughout your career, you did not necessarily set out to become a marketer. How has your path shaped what it means to be an effective marketing leader?

Yes, my career has mostly been about following what I think is interesting instead of a planned career or discipline. Starting from a childhood of taking apart (and only sometimes putting back together) electronics in my New Jersey basement, I have always been curious about how systems work. Looking back now, I can see how in my career I have been drawn to breaking down complex systems and then helping to explain in ways non-technical people can understand why we need to build them back differently. It turns out that when it comes to technology companies, this is what we call marketing. I have used the power of making the complex into simple stories to derive a few principles on what it takes to be an effective marketing leader:

• Being able to deeply bond with founders and engineers to earn trust. Effective technology marketing requires the ability to reach across the entire organization – deeply into the product and engineering org to understand how core technology works and what it can be capable of in the future, and all the way out beyond the walls to the customers and their needs. I believe marketing leadership comes from a strategic centerline of Product Marketing.
• Before you can inspire the world, you need to inspire the people inside of your company. I believe the best kind of marketing inspires optimism about the future – no fear tactics here! Inspiration can create empowered teams who will figure out on their own without top-down pressure what to do and how best to do it. But, before you can inspire the world, you must inspire the people who are working on this future vision every day – why are we doing this? What will the future look like when we succeed?
• Having fun. The best kind of work feels like play. A great marketing leader knows how to turn business challenges into creative puzzles that can be solved by teams across your company. Engineers and designers gain energy from solving these challenges instead of feeling micromanaged by distant leadership. A great example is the annual wrestling themed TensileMania event we created at Markforged to encourage cross-functional teams across the company to compete to see who can make the strongest industrial part. Whatcha gonna build, brother!

Product Marketing is the art and science of collaboratively defining and delivering a company’s total value to its audience and customers.

Product Marketers are systems-based, technology-driven storytellers with broad experience and a diverse skill set.

You’ve spent the past few years steeped within the world of industrial technology. How has this experience changed how you approach the work you do? What are some of the unique challenges associated with marketing industrial tech?

Interestingly enough, I think the first principles remain the same. Engineers are humans too! But there are several unique challenges to solve when marketing industrial tech:

• Understand your audience. While true in all marketing contexts, it’s very important to make sure you can really understand and empathize with your audience. This can take more work than in the consumer context. B2B industrial companies are often selling into manufacturing professionals who work inside of factories, not offices, every day. The better you understand what makes them tick and how they work, the better you will be able to describe why your product matters to them.
• Engineers are skeptical – and mechanical engineers are especially so! Sometimes I feel like my career has been mostly about learning the different subcultures of engineers. Software engineers are often quite open to trying new ways of solving problems – worst case, you can just revert and go back to what you had before. Whereas, I have found that mechanical engineers have a much higher bar for evaluating new technology. Having to return to first principles to solve a problem vs. doing it the way it has been done for 20+ years is risky, and risk in the physical world can lead to real problems.
• How to set expectations. Optimism and inspiration are still pivotal tools for industrial B2B marketing. However, they must be moderated with a dose of realism and a focus on the x-axis of time. When we market, we need to set clear expectations of what will be possible, and by when. If we overhype, we lose trust with our customers.

Technology companies often introduce new solutions to long-standing problems well before people understand how these innovations will transform and improve their lives. This requires a thoughtful communication strategy about what is possible today and what will become a reality tomorrow. What are your thoughts on how to navigate such a challenge?

Marketing the future is exciting – but it must be done responsibly. Instead of falling into the trap of promising utopia tomorrow, we must learn how to bring people along with us while setting realistic expectations for what to expect and when to expect it. I recommend gaining deep alignment between your future-looking technology roadmap and your messaging and communications strategy. Understanding the dimensions across which your technology and product will scale over time can make it much easier to design a communications system that can show stakeholders how you will get from here to there, while managing expectations for when to expect certain capabilities and features. This is one of the reasons I love marketing HW+SW platforms. 

The power of a platform means the hardware can continue to improve with software updates over time. This allows for super exciting storytelling – but you must always manage the expectations anchored to the x-axis of time.



The world around us shapes our communication style, our actions, and more generally, how we live our lives. What are some of the more memorable experiences, relationships, or influences that have shaped how you approach work and life?

Great question! I strongly believe we must bring our full selves to work and become better at our jobs when we learn from all aspects of life.

While I’m definitely an introvert and enjoy my time alone, I have always had an optimism about other people. I try to never be fearful about what could happen – even to the point of being called naive when younger. Ten years ago I had an opportunity to prove this theory with experience as I set out on my bicycle alone to travel from Berlin, Germany to St. Petersburg, Russia – a 5,000km+ trek that took 6 months with much exploring along the way. I traveled with a tent and camped outdoors many nights – never planning more than a few days ahead to allow for spontaneity and adventure. I met so many different people on my journey – and they all were friendly, helpful and kind (well, maybe not the Moscow truck drivers – but I’m from Massachusetts and understand well that humans can’t help but transform into devils when behind the wheel). Everyone wanted to stop and chat with the hairy foreigner on the bike full of gear. People would cook me food (and provide plentiful vodka in Ukraine and Russia!), give me a place to sleep and follow-up to make sure I was doing OK on the trip. While the Russian literature I was reading along the way plumbed the depths of the human psyche, the actual people I ran into ultimately proved to me that humans are fundamentally good and we shouldn’t approach the unknown with fear but instead wonder and openness. 

I have always been curious about new technology and how things work. When I discovered Kip Thorne’s book on Black Holes as a 13 year-old, I thought I would go to school and train to be a cosmologist and get a PhD. But, an experience I had the year before college taught me that the role I naturally play on a team solving a technical challenge is actually translator/storyteller not science investigator. I was lucky to be invited to be a scholar at the New Jersey Governor’s School in the Sciences and got to spend the summer of 1997 with 50 other science nerds on a college campus taking advanced courses and playing a lot of ping pong. For our final group project, we created a prototype navigational mapping program that used a natural language front-end (MapQuest had just come out!). While I was intrigued by the underlying coding, I found myself organically being the glue that explained ‘why’ we were doing the project and how it could impact the world. When we got on stage to present our work on the final day, I was group MC and organizer helping each team member explain their work. While it wasn’t until many years later that I realized I was doing the role of ‘marketing’, I knew after this experience that I was more interested in communicating outwardly than spending my time going deeper and deeper into research paths.

In 2019, I became a father. Being a dad has been a great learning experience all around. It turns out that living with an inquisitive 5 year-old is excellent product marketing practice. Explaining something complex like turbulent flows or war in the Middle East in a way that a 5 year-old can understand really tests your powers of communication and understanding. I recommend it to all marketers!

At IfThen, we often share recommendations about books that in some way, inspire the work we do. What have you read lately that you have found particularly impactful or enjoyable? 

When working on a specific problem, I love reading and researching in orthogonal directions to uncover different ways of thinking. Here’s a smattering of recent books I’ve been into: 

The Darkest White: A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche That Took Him by Eric Blehm
I am a telemark skier who loves to explore the winter backcountry. This book is a new biography of snowboard pioneer Craig Kelly and his evolution from racer to backcountry guide and chronicles in detail the events which led up to the avalanche that unfortunately killed him in the Selkirks mountains of British Columbia (a winter wonderland I’ve had the privilege to explore). Example of the complex intersection of sport, culture and landscape. 

Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne
A beautiful book that chronicles manufacturing in America today from heritage to advanced aerospace and semiconductors. I believe the marketing of industrial B2B technology is inherently visual and Chris does an amazing job telling the story of how stuff is made through crisp, detailed and vibrant photos.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey
A slim novella that captures the feeling of orbiting earth. A descriptive reminder of what perspective means and the planet we call home.

 

“Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters.”

—Samantha Harvey

My First Book by Honor Levy
Gen Z on Gen Z but really a first-hand account of what it feels like to live in the world as a young person. 



“Quirky reached its peak when I was in seventh grade. Everything I thought was cool could be found at the same store, and if it wasn't there this week it would be the next. Manufacturing speeds accelerated and matched the growing and emergence of trends. But millennials fought back. Individuality felt like their God-given consolation prize, the post-soccer-game orange slice time, a part of life that could not be erased, but it was. There was New Girl and Moonrise Kingdom and pop-punk. Trends went viral. Nothing belonged to anyone. Individuality was stripped of its rite of passage status. The only forms of revolt were a complete rejection of quirk, normcore – "an anti-aspirational attitude, a capitalization of the possibility of misinterpretation" – or an embrace of trends, signifiers, and clothing that were too controversial or aesthetically unappealing to be mass-produced. Eventually these forms of revolt became quirks themselves and the quirks ended up at Urban Outfitters, near the Ramones T-shirts and the ripped sweaters.”

—Honor Levy

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages by Carlota Perez
Application of Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts to explain period of technological revolution and long-term business cycles. Good grounding to understand the cusp we are standing on for the next wave of startup innovation.

Based on your extensive experience hiring and collaborating with design agencies, what in your judgment are a few key considerations when evaluating agency fit and effectiveness? How do you get the most out of an agency relationship?

My main advice to get the most out of an agency project (or really any creative project) is to focus on framing the problem you are trying to solve and the specific types of solution outputs you seek. Don’t try to prescribe the solution. Instead, illuminate the problem and why it matters to you. This opens up territory for your creative partner to explore. The best will bring back a solution that nails the problem but in an unexpected way that pays dividends through its elegance and creative reach.