In this episode of B2B Marketing Methods, host Terri Hoffman, CEO of Marketing Refresh, interviews Hunter Holtshopple, the Marcom Manager for the Evaluation Business Line at SLB. They discuss his varied career path from a mechanical engineer to a marketing and communications leader, as well as the strategies SLB employs for effective B2B marketing. Topics include the evolution of SLB’s brand, the importance of combining technical expertise with traditional marketing skills, leveraging AI, and the value of trial and error in marketing. Hunter also shares insights about his podcast ‘Beyond the Reservoir’, and how SLB’s marketing efforts are adaptable to meet both technical and customer needs.
Topics Discussed:
- Hunter’s Career Journey and Role at SLB
- The Importance of Technical and Marketing Synergy
- Learning and Adapting in Marketing
- The Birth and Impact of the Podcast
- Engaging at Trade Shows and Conferences
- Leveraging AI in Marketing
- Accountability and Communication in Marcom
To learn more about Hunter Holtshopple, connect with him on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunter-holtshopple/
To connect with Marketing Refresh, visit: MarketingRefresh.com
Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Terri Hoffman: Welcome to B2B Marketing Methods. I’m your host, Terri Hoffman, and I’m the CEO of Marketing Refresh. Let’s face it, embracing digital marketing is daunting. This podcast was created to make it more approachable. Join me as we talk to CEOs, sales leaders, and revenue growth experts who will share lessons learned and tips from their own journeys.
[00:00:24] Terri Hoffman: Hi, and welcome to B2B Marketing Methods. We’re excited today to have a guest with us named Hunter Holtshopple. Hunter is the Marcomm Manager for the Evaluation Business Line at SLB. As we get into the conversation, I’m going to let him explain his responsibilities and what that job title, like what the overall responsibilities of his job are, and certainly talk about how that fits into the overall global brand that is SLB.
[00:00:52] Terri Hoffman: Some of the things that we’re going to cover today are, definitely want to talk about Hunter’s podcast that he hosts. And talk about some of the vision that he’s got for that, how that helps him show the value proposition of the products that he’s responsible for marketing. We’re going to be talking about some of the challenges and, obstacles that he has either overcome or currently deals with in his role.
[00:01:16] Terri Hoffman: SLB is a very large and significant global brand. Being in a marketing role at a company like that, immediately comes with its own challenges, but we’ll dive into that more today. I think there’s a lot that our listeners can learn from Hunter.
[00:01:30] Terri Hoffman: So Hunter, welcome. Thank you for joining me on the show today.
[00:01:32] Hunter Holtshopple: Thank you. Thank you, Terri. I’m excited to be on this side of a podcast for once.
[00:01:38] Terri Hoffman: Right. It’s, it’s fun. You just get to show up and answer questions. Maybe we can just start with, with having you, talk about your current role. And then from there, I’m going to step back and kind of talk about how you got into that role. So tell us about your day to day responsibilities now.
[00:01:53] Hunter Holtshopple: Okay. Yeah, certainly so I’m, as you mentioned, Marcomm Manager for our Evaluation Business Line.
[00:01:58] Hunter Holtshopple: So, looking after, well, I guess me, before I get into what I look after, I’ll step back and talk about the company structure as a whole. So SLB, as you mentioned, is a global energy service company. Well, I should say technology company, traditionally in oil field and now into broader energy and we have different business or different divisions.
[00:02:18] Hunter Holtshopple: So we have our core divisions, which is primarily oil and gas, new energy and digital. And then within the division, one of which is Reservoir Performance, it’s a business lines. And I look over the evaluation business line. So, yeah, lots of marketing people and groups. And I, work with the Reservoir Performance one within marketing and communications.
[00:02:38] Hunter Holtshopple: So I look after the global evaluation communication. So product launches, somewhat involved in our strategy, at least on the external messaging. I try to interject myself when and where I can though, because it’s kind of exciting to get that global look, especially as traditionally I’ve been focused on the US.
[00:02:58] Hunter Holtshopple: And then, working on trade shows and pretty much anytime there’s any external communication also very tied with sales giving them the, the, collateral they need. And then our internal communications. Funny enough, we, we, in the past had a hard time communicating to our internal– well I shouldn’t say in the past, we still do– a hard time communicating to our internal sales team and our internal teams before we go external. So we’re working on, making that more seamless and, and cohesive. So, yeah, I think maybe I covered it all, or at least touched on some of it, but mostly in general, looking after the external communications of our products and services for evaluation.
[00:03:37] Terri Hoffman: Okay, so something that I think is really interesting about your job history, is that, and I think this is true for a lot of people in digital marketing roles or Marcomm roles, is they don’t have like a traditional path to arriving at that role. So let’s turn the clock back a little bit and kind of talk about where your career started and how it evolved into the role and kind of how you landed, where you are now.
[00:04:00] Hunter Holtshopple: Certainly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a bit, unconventional, for marketing, I’d say. So I’m a mechanical engineer by schooling, and,
[00:04:09] Terri Hoffman: Go Badgers, by the way, I’m a cheese head.
[00:04:11] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah. I went to UW Madison and graduated, well, right before graduating was walking around the career fair and saw this booth for a company Schlumberger.
[00:04:20] Hunter Holtshopple: I go, what’s that? I had no idea. I’d never heard of the company before and they’re like, “Hey; we can, you know, you can join the company and travel the world and do all this stuff.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s really cool and exciting,” so I joined as a field engineer and basically you’re given a crew and some tools and said, “Hey, go evaluate oil wells.”
[00:04:39] Hunter Holtshopple: I was doing wireline, which is a means of evaluating, oil and gas wells. So I did that for about five years, went to all over the world, India, Canada, a lot of places in the US it was fun, exciting, challenging, many sleepless nights, many continuous days in the field offshore for months at a time, extreme temperatures in the desert, frozen tundra nights.
[00:05:01] Hunter Holtshopple: I mean, it was crazy. But really rewarding. And I feel like I learned a lot as probably most people who start in the field in Schlumberger at the time. And, in the field, we have a fixed step training program. So I went through the fixed steps, and kind of graduated out of the field and became a new position, in maintenance. So it’s kind of looking over all of the maintenance and tool objects and all of that in the entire West Texas basin, which is pretty exciting cause I got to kind of help shape the role into what I thought it should be, for better or worse. And then from there, I went to my first kind of foray into marketing, a different side though, into market analysts.
[00:05:40] Hunter Holtshopple: So I was market analyst for the entire US land, Canada land, and looking at all services. So not just wireline. So I kind of got to step back and see what the entire company does in North America land. And then from there I worked with our sales manager for wireline. So, I, through talking with him, we, we, I guess went back to wireline, but in a new position of sales and I was working in Midland and I did that for about three years. And in that role, I noticed that for some services that I had a fondness for, we were lacking marketing material. So I just started making my own.
[00:06:16] Hunter Holtshopple: It was during kind of like lockdown and, and, isolated to my house. So I was just making marketing material. And then that kind of graduated into starting a LinkedIn page and then working with a marketing company. And then, eventually, either I got the good attention or bad attention, attention from the Marcomm team and they pulled me into Marcomm.
[00:06:39] Hunter Holtshopple: So I do it officially through them. So that’s where I got this role about two and a half years ago and I’ve been doing Marcomm since then. So yeah, a lot of, paths and winding path to get to Marcomm at SLB.
[00:06:50] Terri Hoffman: Well, I find it super interesting because they’re, especially when you’re putting together like B2B marketing strategies or marketing communication strategies for a company that has a technical offering, that connection and the thread between engineering, the market itself and what their needs are, and then the way the sales and marketing team work together to go to market with that. That’s critical, right? It’s, it has to all work together and you’ve been able to experience really each one of those, those operational areas which is pretty unique.
[00:07:24] Terri Hoffman: Do you think that gives you kind of an advantage in the role having that history?
[00:07:29] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, I’d say it’s so our team. So we have like our divisions and then we have our central communications function and team.
[00:07:38] Hunter Holtshopple: And that function is really traditionally like marketing designers, writers, and that’s kind of like, I would say maybe traditional marketing team, communications team. And we have a gentleman there, Josh, who’s come in rather recently, the last three years, and it really kind of professionalizing that organization, and then on the other side, we have on the division There’s a lot of people kind of more like me who’ve come up through the company, through the field and have that technical background.
[00:08:04] Hunter Holtshopple: But then on our team, we also have one of my colleagues who’s traditional marketing background and been in Marcomm for her whole career. And I think the balance is nice because she brings the fundamentals of marketing and then me and my other colleague who are more engineering background, can bring the kind of technical knowledge.
[00:08:20] Hunter Holtshopple: And when we bring those together, it’s, I think, unstoppable. Like you said, having both sides and being able to see kind of what the sales team needs and wants and how to communicate with customers and then bringing the communication experts and relying on that side of the team to help foster like, you know, cohesive marketing plan and doing things correctly, because if left to my own devices, I would do things probably very wrong.
[00:08:44] Terri Hoffman: Well, I would have to imagine that there could be some gaps if it was purely driven by a traditional marketing person as well. So it’s really that blending of the strengths and different perspectives that I think are really important. I mean, that’s for our agency, that is one of the challenges we run into is: how do we make the content technical enough so that it holds enough credibility for that brand or that product line, but it’s not so heavy on the technical side that it’s too hard to read or just takes way too many brain cells to read. Even though the person reading it is very intelligent and can understand it, they may not want to spend that much brain power on that particular task.
[00:09:22] Hunter Holtshopple: That’s probably distilling a very technical case study that’s 10 pages into a one page flyer or someone’s speech that should take five minutes and it’s taken 30 minutes and how to bring the message down and make it nice and tight and digestible. Because if someone is interested or doesn’t know, and you hook them, then, you know, that’s half the battle and then you can dig deeper once they’re already hooked. I think, you know, we have a very strong technical community.
[00:09:48] Hunter Holtshopple: They are brilliant people and like so smart, but having to communicate to someone who isn’t at their level can be a challenge and kind of helping decipher that message has been really fun. And I feel like I’ve found it very enjoyable. And I think, you know, to your point, the background of being in the field and having some of that engineering knowledge from working through the company the last 10 years or 13 years, I guess. Wow. That’s crazy. 13 years, has helped me navigate that. So yeah, definitely. a blessing to have that background, and getting to express it creatively.
[00:10:20] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, I bet. I mean, so how do you guys have, you know, and I don’t want to dig in too much to things that might be proprietary or things that you don’t want to discuss, but maybe just generally speaking, would you say that you have regular touch points internally and then also with maybe some of the other subject matter experts to ensure that you’re kind of striking that right balance and working on the next steps of the content strategy.
[00:10:43] Terri Hoffman: Is that something you guys make time for and prioritize as a group?
[00:10:47] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, so there’s kind of two parallel paths, I would say, like there’s the central calm strategy and really the strategy of the company, which is, you know, the SLB brand and our vision led by our CEO. And then the divisions and the business lines have their own strategy and everything kind of rolls up.
[00:11:04] Hunter Holtshopple: So we make sure everything is cohesive. I would say my touch points are more with the technical people. So running things by them and then once it’s kind of distilled to where I think it’s good, I pass it to our communications group, our Marcomm group, and they package it up and probably distill it even more and check for poor grammar and things like that and make it beautiful and then we come up with a plan to distribute. And so, yeah, I would say, like, really, my role is probably a bridge between the core comms and the technical headquarters team for Reservoir Performance. So we’re navigating that, sitting in and try to leading the go to market strategies, or the positioning workshops, stuff like that.
[00:11:49] Hunter Holtshopple: So, we’re right in the mix of it. and yeah, I would say for sure, regular touch points with the technical teams.
[00:11:57] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons I dug into that is because I think that just knowing that a role like yours, that sits in between those two groups and acts as a facilitator and somewhat of a translator is really important.
[00:12:08] Terri Hoffman: Like, not every company has that, whether they’re small or at a global scale, like SLB It’s important to have that person who’s really facilitating those conversations and obviously adding value to them because of your own knowledge and just working history of the brand. You can definitely take maybe some ideas and take them further because of the experience you have as well.
[00:12:29] Terri Hoffman: But yeah, it’s huge.
[00:12:31] Hunter Holtshopple: I think it helps to be able to talk both languages because sometimes you get someone who’s like more creative and, and, you know, really good at that side of things and maybe has a harder time understanding the technical and the technical person vice versa. And like having those two people talk can be like, you know, they both walk away like that person’s crazy, you know, and being able to talk both languages helps to really facilitate. And I think it’s really helped us, especially in the last couple of years with our division in business line to accelerate the output and the content and make it more digestible. We maybe went a little too far when I first started to really fun, very digestible, and not very technical. And now we’re kind of going leaning back towards the technical. So we’re, you know, we’re learning as, as we go, but yeah, being able to act as the middleman is really been very helpful.
[00:13:18] Terri Hoffman: Are there certain data points or metrics or feedback that you’re, that you’re hearing that you’re kind of using as a tool to learn how to make adjustments?
[00:13:27] Hunter Holtshopple: Certainly, we’re, you know, we like, as, my manager says, we like to make data driven decisions. With being such a big company our website, I think has like, 5, 000 plus pages or something.
[00:13:37] Hunter Holtshopple: So trying to get data from that, and the way our sales cycle is. It’s a little bit hard to get, you know, we’re not just selling a product and you can see marketing. Oh, click this and buy this product. The sales cycle can be one to five years sometimes. I mean, it’s very long. But we do have the conventional metrics like time on page, clicks, views, all those.
[00:13:57] Hunter Holtshopple: So when we were making content, we use the metrics that we have available and try to push our content in the right way and we’ve seen actually sometimes what we thought is not going to perform well, or this piece of content is going to perform better. And like the other one does, they’re like, okay, well, let’s make more of this type of content.
[00:14:12] Hunter Holtshopple: And that’s for the content generation, but yes, we’re trying to use data to drive our decision making and the way we go. And that’s kind of one part of the learning. And then we also interview our sales team and ask them, you know, what are you hearing from the customers?
[00:14:29] Hunter Holtshopple: What do they like? And what’s their reception to this? Because we have such a strong sales community and we know all of our customers, so it’s kind of nice in that sense. And then one other thing I say is, which is kind of unique to the company. I mean, because we have this diverse career path and no one at the company, well, not no one, I’m sure there’s some people have duplicate career paths, but typically they’re pretty unique, is there a lot of on the job training and people are very open to helping and guiding and sharing their learnings, because when it’s time to move, it’s like, “Hey, it’s time to move. And you got a week or two weeks. And then the next person comes.” Now, you know, the higher you go, maybe the more of a handover, but, sometimes like, “Hey, you’re in this new position now and you got to jump headfirst in and figure out what to do.” So we do rely on kind of people’s guidance in that central, strong central team to help point us in the right direction. And in the last two and a half years I’ve learned tremendously on like what marketing is and how to market and, you know, coming in as like a total newbie, I’ve learned a ton and I’m really excited to take it to the next stage of my career, whether it’s in marketing further or in sales or whatever the case may be, I think, it’s a very good perspective to have on the business cycle for sure.
[00:15:41] Terri Hoffman: What are some of the avenues you’ve taken or the places, whether it’s people, online training tools, classes, like what’s helped you the most in terms of learning what the whole Marcomm world is about? What’s been helpful for you?
[00:15:55] Hunter Holtshopple: Honestly, my favorite learning channel’s YouTube, and a lot of market research, but just watching what I like and trying to replicate that has been fun.
[00:16:02] Hunter Holtshopple: Like, Oh, this series is really done really well. It’s let’s do something like that. Or just thinking like what I like cause I am in a way, my customer, I engineer, I’m selling, we’re selling to engineers. What would I like to watch and then testing it out and seeing if it works.
[00:16:16] Hunter Holtshopple: So just try a little bit of trial and error is one learning method. We have a pretty strong education kind of path for like our sales team and so because it doesn’t really exist too much for marketing right now, SLB is offered to let us take online courses. So I did some courses at the Berkeley online. Berkeley extension, I think is what it’s called. And I have a couple of books, and then, just listening to other professionals in the industry. And then recently we have an agency that the central comms team has started working with and they’ve been helping us be a little bit more professional and guiding us a little bit more, so leaning on them and taking what we’ve learned from them and incorporating it into the next iteration of what we do. So, a little bit of everything. I would say the biggest learning though is trial and error for me.
[00:17:02] Terri Hoffman: I’m glad you said that. I mean, something that I’ve learned when we hire people with a marketing degree out of college is there’s a great foundation of information, right?
[00:17:09] Terri Hoffman: Like you’ve got to learn what is a brand, what is marketing communications, what is market research, and how do those things tie together? But I’ve always believed marketing is more of like an apprenticeship type profession and getting coached and mentored by someone and then seeing what works and seeing what doesn’t work is really where the rubber meets the road. Like that’s, that’s the true learning place, but you only can do that if you’re evaluating the data like you guys are doing pretty actively. So yeah.
[00:17:37] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah. And it’s interesting, I think sometimes from an outsider’s perspective or initially, you know, marketing is just what you see, like, you know, the Coca-Cola ad or, you know, the commercial you see on TV, but it’s so much more. We have a very strong marketing function, like under our division, we have a marketing director. We’ve got the market intelligence manager. We’ve got a big, strong organization under there that’s really helping guide the strategy and really kind of setting the direction for the division and helping with the executive team.
[00:18:07] Hunter Holtshopple: So, it’s interesting to see and be involved in some of that, that’s more than just the communication side or the commercials or the ads but really, seeing how our messaging and what we do is, really helping, the company has been very cool and getting to learn that through people who’ve been in the company for a long time and very well respected has been good in learning from them has been tremendous. I mean, I feel like in this position, I’ve gotten opportunities to see sides of the business I would have never seen as just a field engineer, so it’s been cool.
[00:18:35] Hunter Holtshopple: One other point on the learning and trial and error, is I think as an engineer, we want everything, not me personally, I’m maybe a bad engineer this way. that’s why I didn’t go into actual engineering. But technical people want everything to be perfect down to the decimal point and sometimes with marketing, it’s got to be good. It’s got to look nice. You know, I don’t want to put sloppy workout, but it, it, you know, Sometimes you have to like fail quickly, or succeed quickly, hopefully. But when you put something out, you’re not going to know if it’s going to be good or bad until someone reviews it.
[00:19:05] Hunter Holtshopple: And you could have them in your mind and the committee and the group and everyone’s like, this is perfect. And you publish it and like, it falls flat. And you’re like, Oh, we just spent all this time making it perfect and putting everything here and it doesn’t perform like it should. So I think, you know, part of that trial and error is just putting out content, quality content, but putting stuff out there to be like, to learn from.
[00:19:26] Hunter Holtshopple: So you’re not going to learn just thinking on it and sitting on it and That’s one of my learnings is just kind of like micro-content or getting content out, testing it, testing the concept and if it does well, okay, doubling down and if it does bad, okay, cut our losses and don’t, don’t do that again. So that’s one thing I think, that, we as a company struggle with because we’ve been very technical– we are still very technical, but, as we kind of professionalize the communications function and get more like publicizing the brand and, and being more out there, we’re learning that, you know, we need to put, Put content out and sometimes it’s not going to do good, but then we learn and do something else.
[00:20:01] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. I bet your podcast gives you a great ability to do that. Talk to us about the podcast, like how did you come up with that idea? What prompted you to want to move forward with that show?
[00:20:11] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, so that one, kind of funny story, I guess. Well, I’m going to get backtrack again a little bit here, because I think some context, when we were Schlumberger, it’s like the biggest company you’ve never heard of, we were very out of the public light.
[00:20:27] Hunter Holtshopple: We weren’t out there, you know, we didn’t have ads, we had a YouTube channel, but it was like, we weren’t like pumping out like SLB or Schlumberger content. It was very technical in nature and I think we are the senior leadership identified that right now in today’s market, that’s not the right strategy and now we’re, SLB, a technology company. Almost overnight, our CEOs on the news and we were on the New York stock exchange and, we’re putting our brand out there and our name out there and, you know, we, “Hey, we’re part of this solution.”
[00:20:57] Hunter Holtshopple: I think, that change allowed some of this kind of out there marketing is a podcast because prior to prior to that, you know, the podcast would have never existed. I guess the reason I bring that up is because we have all these amazing people in the division, in the company really, but in the division, and I met a lot of them. I was like, “Man, this person should be a celebrity. They should be well known in Energy, oil and gas.”
[00:21:18] Hunter Holtshopple: So I felt the need was there to promote these you know, celebrities, should be celebrities. So I started the podcast to show a couple of things. One, that there’s diverse career paths in the company, that you can kind of create your own destiny, and then showcase the awesomeness, if you will, of these people.
[00:21:38] Hunter Holtshopple: There was no protocol for it so I just kind of did it and then ,asked for permission and they said yes and, uh, I still don’t know if like, it’s uh, beneficial. No, it’s, it’s okay. But, uh, we. Yeah, we just kind of going with it.
[00:21:54] Hunter Holtshopple: And, and, uh, well,
[00:21:55] Terri Hoffman: otherwise I was going to have to edit out like the last five minutes of our conversation.
[00:21:58] Hunter Holtshopple: No, yeah, no, no, no, no, we just kind of promoting the, these people and, and really it started off as an internal thing and I was speaking with kind of like our career team and, they said, yeah, let’s go for it.
[00:22:08] Hunter Holtshopple: And I think, you know, people have liked it and there’s people who’ve even reached out, “Hey, can I be on the podcast?” and I don’t know if it’s cause they really want to be on or like, cause their buddies was on and they want to like, you know, don’t want to be left out, but it’s, it’s been fun to get to know some of these, you know, leaders in the company, leaders in the organization and promote their story.
[00:22:25] Hunter Holtshopple: And, I think, the people seem to like it and I walk around or not. Okay. That sounds wrong. I’ve gone, to like, Certain places as part of the job and they’re like, “Oh, you’re the podcast guy”. I was like, “Oh yeah.” So people are listening and they like it and they enjoy it, and I think that’s good because it is nice to see that people are listening and they like the content and getting something out of it. So I keep doing it, but yeah, I mean, there’s no like profound reason. I just kind of tried it and people seem to like it.
[00:22:50] Hunter Holtshopple: And that’s kind of been the story of my career, I would say, and probably marketing as well I see maybe sometimes gaps and it’s like, “Why aren’t we doing that?” And it’s just like, “Well, we don’t do it. You know, that’s just not the way it’s done.” And I was like, “well, why not?” And no one really has an answer.
[00:23:05] Hunter Holtshopple: And if there isn’t like a specific reason why not, and it’s not like going to be detrimental or negative and like, let’s try it.
[00:23:11] Terri Hoffman: Yeah.
[00:23:11] Hunter Holtshopple: I feel like I maybe do that a lot and, it’s worked out pretty well so far.
[00:23:17] Terri Hoffman: Well, I think what’s interesting about it is there’s so much data showing that B2B buyers want easy access to research and information even before they talk to someone, right? So you know your customers, you have your sales, people have great relationships with them. But even still people want to be able to access things online. They want access to that thought leadership and the technical experts without having to go through a conduit or without having to fly to a trade show.
[00:23:44] Terri Hoffman: And that’s just kind of a reflection of how buyer needs, like how those trends have changed. So it seems like you’ve been able to create a platform with the podcast to just make that information more accessible and the people who are the experts in your company more accessible.
[00:23:58] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, certainly the podcast is a little bit kind of like a side project, because I’ve been careful not to make it like salesy, it’s meant to showcase to your point, showcase that make the person accessible and show twofold that, you know, who these people are and like, you know, they’re so awesome and cool. And the other side of that is, show the internal employees, the SLB employees, and just people in general, that these people are people too, like they have hobbies and have families and have this and that.
[00:24:26] Hunter Holtshopple: And like, “Oh, I can relate to that person.” And, “Oh, they were a field engineer too and they did the same thing that I did?” And like, “Oh, and that’s how they got there.” So it’s a way to kind of, yeah, humanize them and make them accessible because sometimes I think we put leaders on pedestals, which, you know, sometimes we should, but at the end of the day, there’s still people and they got there the same way that other people get there and through hard work and being at the right place in the right time, but kind of hearing their story helps the average employee think, “Oh, you know, I can do this or do that” and grow their careers as well.
[00:24:55] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, it’s gotta be great for like just building the company culture. I mean, your company culture, you talked a little bit about how the brand has evolved, but I would have to imagine that the company culture has like evolved right along with the brand change. I mean, they’re so connected. You can’t really separate a brand from a company culture.
[00:25:14] Terri Hoffman: So I would have to imagine that’s helping with that shift as well.
[00:25:18] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to, take too much credit or say that, you know, we’re getting like millions of downloads and views but for sure, to your point, the company culture was kind of ready to evolve. And I remember, as the Marcomm, we kind of got a little sneak peek, but it was crazy. No one knew what the brand was going to be or the color scheme or the logo until the day it went public.
[00:25:41] Hunter Holtshopple: I mean, it was pretty amazing. And I remember when they did that and like in the hype and the, in the, you know, our, our logo change on the website and everything just kind of flipped the switch. It just changed. And it’s like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool and exciting. And I think there was a lot of buzz in the company and we were ready for it. And, I think the company’s evolved along with the brand for sure. and, I think our people reflect that, definitely. And really focusing on our people has been, has been awesome.
[00:26:08] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, that’s really cool. You have some responsibility at in person events like conferences and events as well in your role.
[00:26:15] Terri Hoffman: Is that right?
[00:26:16] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, any kind of external marketing and communication. So we typically from our group send one person to each trade show, major trade shows, because there’s like way too many to count. Even the ones that we focus on there’s a lot.
[00:26:29] Terri Hoffman: Exactly. So what I wanted to ask you about is, have you had an opportunity to connect the podcast together with any of the in person events? Has that opportunity presented itself to you yet? And what has that been like if it has?
[00:26:43] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, so that’s like the why I started because I was going to these events and meeting these people that I would have never had the opportunity to meet otherwise, whether it’s geography constraints, or just because I didn’t have the time.
[00:26:55] Hunter Holtshopple: And, so that was really the impetus of, the podcast to highlight these people that I’ve been meeting. And I’ve interviewed while there, like, cause if I’m going to Singapore and there’s someone in Singapore that would be good to talk to, but with the advent of like Riverside or zoom online, I’ve been able to connect with people all over the world.
[00:27:11] Hunter Holtshopple: But oftentimes it’s from meeting them at a conference first. So again, it’s, it’s all internal employees and all in Reservoir Performance, probably 98 percent of it. So, yeah, I use trade shows as kind of like, maybe informal interview process like getting to know, “Oh, that, that person’s really interesting” or, “Hey, I haven’t met that person before.” And their stories, you know, pretty cool. It’s let’s set up an interview. I haven’t really done many at the trade shows, just because trade shows are nuts to begin with, but we had another podcast, with World Oil and we were recording some at the trade shows and conferences.
[00:27:45] Hunter Holtshopple: So that was, pretty cool there. That one was very much technology specific and solution specific.
[00:27:50] Terri Hoffman: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the reasons I was asking about that is because I think it’s very challenging to create engagement at a conference or an event. So, I mean, that would even be like a follow up question is: as you’re going out and kind of thinking about the conference schedule or the event schedule, what are your goals in terms of, like, engaging with your audience and what are some things that you do to make sure that that’s happening?
[00:28:16] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, so I would say this kind of evolved as well. So we have a trade show team, thankfully, and they kind of manage the booth and the pretty much everything, and we are responsible for our content and the messaging and again, aligning with the central team’s messaging. So everything’s cohesive.
[00:28:31] Hunter Holtshopple: Also working with our, you know, what experts are going to come for that show and what the objectives are. So our responsibility is kind of, again, bridging the gap between the central team is putting the trade show on and then our division and saying, you know, these people need to come and then, and, and we don’t dictate what’s going to be talked about, you know, it’s between the central team, and the, you know, the marketing function and then the geography of the division. So they say, “Oh, you know, these customers are going to be coming and they want to know about this.” And so then we help put those pieces together and then we go onsite and make the content.
[00:29:02] Hunter Holtshopple: But where we have some flexibility and freedom is the models like 3d printed tool models or kind of interactive pieces. So I made at one point this, we call it a video game. It’s just kind of an interactive screen to show our full solution. So instead of just kind of like a boring PowerPoint, and now some of our PowerPoints are really awesome, but instead of just going through a PowerPoint I worked with our 3-D team to build this like interactive TV, touchscreen thing that you can kind of walk through all of our solutions in this world instead of having, looking at each one individually, you kind of look at it holistically and say, “Oh, okay. Like these all connect here.”
[00:29:35] Hunter Holtshopple: So that was fun. And then coming up, we have a big conference in Monaco, in September called the the digital forum. It’s every two years. It’s big big show that we put on it’s hosted by us and for our part in it, we’re showcasing our Digital solutions that are really helping enhance our conventional services and to highlight that we’re making this totally immersive experience with a cool company.
[00:30:01] Hunter Holtshopple: So we’re making big screens and 3-D models and interactive. Should be really cool. So, that part we have input on and that’s kind of like the fun side of it. And then, you know, going to a trade show it’s all hands on deck. Getting the content there, helping, you know, getting registrations.
[00:30:15] Hunter Holtshopple: it’s kind of nuts. and then after the trade show, it’s like, ah, okay, that was good. So yeah.
[00:30:20] Terri Hoffman: Trade shows are exhausting. there are a lot of time and effort put in, but it’s kind of interesting hearing how you describe your responsibility in a really large organization, because it’s actually very tangible and relatable, even for a smaller or even a midsize corporation you’ve got to be thinking about what’s the overall brand presentation?
[00:30:40] Terri Hoffman: What’s the content I’m bringing and what is actually needed in that region, from the customers and technically? A lot of times one person is having to figure that all out, but other times it’s like, you just need to think about who’s responsibility, who’s accountable for each one of those areas.
[00:30:55] Terri Hoffman: So I really appreciate the way you described that because I think. Whether a listener is working for a big global brand like SLB or they’re working in a small business, those three hats or things to be mindful of are completely universal.
[00:31:09] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah.
[00:31:10] Hunter Holtshopple: I think part of our, you know, we are very big and there’s a lot, we have a huge service delivery organization. Our marketing team or Marcomm team is pretty big probably could be bigger.
[00:31:22] Hunter Holtshopple: I think, you know, we all have to kind of rely on each other and it’s kind of a beautiful thing when you think about it. There’s all these different functions who have different reporting structures that don’t intersect for a long time in the company. Somehow we all get stuff out there and get it done. So it’s, pretty amazing. And, you know, I think there’s a tendency for people to get kind of hyper focused in what they, what they do and, and their kind of swim lane, I guess you can call it, and stepping back and saying like, “I am not a marketing expert. I am coming in here as a total newbie” and being open to people who have done it before, and listening to them and understanding what to do has been, I think, the way forward and seeing so many people do that within the organization is pretty amazing.
[00:32:09] Hunter Holtshopple: So I think that’s one good thing that our company does by moving around so much as you, like by default, you have to be that way, otherwise you won’t survive, and seeing so many people who are in this together and, you know, when the trade shows come together or a marketing strategy comes together or campaign comes together, it’s just like, oh, beautiful.
[00:32:28] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, I bet. What would you say is something that in your current role, like what’s something you’ve worked on that you’re just like, “I’m really proud of that. that was hard to pull together, it made a big impact.” Whatever the criteria is in your own mind, like what’s something you’ve done that you’re just like, I’m pretty proud of that.
[00:32:44] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah. So there’s, Probably two big things I’d say that, that come to mind. One is our science Rob, video series. So last year, CCS carbon capture and sequestration was a big, is a big campaign, still is. And the main thing that came up from that when our initial positioning was that we need to educate because it’s still so new and we’re so good and known for our subsurface characterization for oil and gas.
[00:33:10] Hunter Holtshopple: But CCS is new and we need to educate. So what came to mind is Bill Nye the science guy. And so kind of being able to like go from, Hey, I want to make something like Bill Nye, the science guy to a video and publishing a series was super fun. From writing the scripts in my kitchen, testing the experiments to then, publishing the series, it was really fun.
[00:33:32] Hunter Holtshopple: And I felt very proud of that entire process. And then the other thing is kind of, you know, along the lines of the podcast and just doing something new that I think we had a gap. So at trade shows, we used to launch services and, you know, we have these big launch events, but I noticed like, Oh, you go to a trade show and like, there’d be a hundred people gathered around and like a hundred people, but that’s only a hundred, you know, a hundred people when you’re trying to launch a service, it’s not that many and when you start looking like, “Oh, maybe like 20 percent or 50 percent is SLB employees.” I don’t know what the number, the breakdown was, but like a hundred people’s not enough, especially when you consider like thousands of people are at a conference. And they’re really coming to the conference for the technical programs.
[00:34:12] Terri Hoffman: Or the consumer electronic show or something like that.
[00:34:14] Hunter Holtshopple: Where it’s like the showcase is the showcase for it. People are going to like the technical conferences and they wind up in the exhibition for like free goodies.
[00:34:21] Hunter Holtshopple: So I thought, you know, what, what if we launch online kind of like Apple does where they’re worldwide developer club. And then we planned two launches last year that we did online and we utilized all of our business systems, like email, social media, internal email, external email, everything.
[00:34:40] Hunter Holtshopple: And I don’t know how many offhand numbers we got out, but it was like, we started seeing the registration is like, “Oh my goodness, that is like way more than we’ve even do with like external people who put on tech talks for us.” So we were super happy with that. And then we did the launch, and I got to host it, which is pretty fun in Sugarland, the product champion or product owner was in Paris and we put on this whole show and just being able to do that, for the first time, without really any instruction and kind of writing it as we go, I was pretty proud of that. And we did it twice last year and, now other people are doing it, this year, so kind of like get to see the legacy.
[00:35:20]
[00:35:20] Terri Hoffman: Really? That’s very cool. How are you guys thinking about how AI tools are fitting into the Marcomm program? I mean, it’s pretty challenging I think right now. I, and it’s something I think pretty heavily about in our agency and like the delivery of our services, because I’m always really a little bit tentative about the quality of the information that we might get.
[00:35:46] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah,
[00:35:47] Terri Hoffman: from an AI tool, but there’s so many ways to apply AI, I’m just curious if that’s something you’re thinking about strategically or have started to embrace yet in the organization.
[00:35:56] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah. So, we have a pretty strong kind of, I don’t know if partnership, I think there are partnerships with Microsoft, but, we’re dealing with huge Data, a lot of reservoir and oil and gas and energy, a lot of data.
[00:36:08] Hunter Holtshopple: I think we have some partnership with Microsoft and that side, but like our business tools, we use Microsoft, Microsoft teams, all the Microsoft suite. And I know some people are getting test rollouts of co pilot, I believe and Copilot is, the Microsoft AI thing.
[00:36:22] Hunter Holtshopple: So people are using it in their average day to day business. Now we have so much, concerns over data– there’s a lot of IT concerns anyways. We’ve got like a little tool in the bottom. “Hey, your system is healthy.” I mean, there’s like a lot of it governance, that’s what I’m trying to say. If you go to chat GPT, it says ” be careful, don’t put in any proprietary data.” Our company is very much monitoring it and they have training and all that on AI. That said we certainly do use it, and we can use it, but to your point, nothing’s like, “Hey, put it in AI, take it out and publish it.”
[00:36:59] Hunter Holtshopple: No, we still have a full writing team. We have like a big communications guidebook. We’ve got brand guidelines. So everything that goes out has kind of gone through that process, AI just helps. For instance, like a chat GPT can help distill, a big document and put it into digestible pieces and then we could proofread it. And really, you know, that’s kind of a parallel to what we’re doing as a company overall, with digital. It’s like digital and our digital enhancements and AI and all this, isn’t like replacing people’s jobs is just making it easier to do the thing that the person is there to do.
[00:37:34] Hunter Holtshopple: So like, if you’re going to process something in it, you normally the process alone takes 24 hours and you have to do that for 24 hours and then you can do your interpretation, like what you’re getting paid for, but the part that you’re actually meant to do, if you can eliminate that 24 hours or make that 24 hour period condensed into 30 minutes, that’s like 23 and a half hours of free time now, or getting your answers earlier
[00:37:58] Hunter Holtshopple: So AI is just a tool to make people more productive. Some use it, some don’t. I am not afraid to say that I use it, but it’s just a tool and then it gets gut checked and triple checked and double checked because, a lot of times what comes out of it, you’re like, “yeah, this is crazy.”
[00:38:14] Hunter Holtshopple: I feel like AI, especially chat GPT, and some of these other GPTs have their, like, you can tell, ” Hey, that’s a GPT.” Like, it’s very over the top sometimes.
[00:38:23] Terri Hoffman: No, I agree. I’ve seen a lot of that too. Those are kind of the same reasons that we’re really cautious about having it be a deliverable.
[00:38:29] Terri Hoffman: Like you can’t use that tool to create a deliverable, but you may be able to use it to process through a hundred options for something and determine like how to distill that down. Like you said, or gosh, you can take whole YouTube video series and put it into a transcript and get the high points from it.
[00:38:47] Terri Hoffman: So now I don’t have to watch the whole thing, but if I liked the gist of it or the summary of it, maybe I do want to invest my time watching the whole thing.
[00:38:55] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, and, and yeah, like to your point, I mean, it’s, it’s it’s a tool. I have seen people just get like, when we had a external company helping us and like, “Hey, I think this, I think you’re using chat GPT, you need to proofread this.”
[00:39:07] Hunter Holtshopple: So I think people can tell if I can tell that I think other people can tell. So, I mean, like I said, it’s just a tool, and oftentimes we’ll use it to distill something down and then rewrite it into like real words. But what actually, one that is really cool is Midjourney. I don’t know if you’ve ever messed around with that, but it’s image generator. It’s like Dall-E, but Midjourney. It makes some amazing, amazing images. And we often use that. There’s a gentleman on the team, John Lou, and he uses it to make like mood boards for production shoots. So to kind of give people a sense of what we’re going to do or what images we want.
[00:39:39] Hunter Holtshopple: And then you take the Midjourney one and you go out and take a real photo in the field. It’s pretty cool.
[00:39:43] Terri Hoffman: Wow. That is really cool. I wrote that down. I’m always looking for ideas there. What about, I guess kind of the last topic that I was going to ask you about is accountability.
[00:39:52] Terri Hoffman: Like how do you hold yourself in a Marcomm role accountable to your objectives? And then like how that fits in overall in the company, because I, I think accountability and marketing is a must have, but it can often be difficult, even in the digital marketing space, because most of the time the accountability people expect is like, you did this and it gave us this much revenue, right?
[00:40:17] Terri Hoffman: And there’s often not a straight line you can draw between those two things. So how do you view accountability in your role?
[00:40:26] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, that’s a good one. We have many stakeholders, we have the comms function, as I mentioned, and then our division function, and we report into the marketing group of the division, but our customer really is the business line director.
[00:40:40] Hunter Holtshopple: So, we early on identify like we need to sit with them, and I think this is something that hadn’t necessarily been done before. Cause I think a lot of times like groups and functions can operate kind of autonomously and forget who’s working for who in a way. As an example, marketing thinks they’re like leading the charge and sales thinks they’re, you know, and then there’s not communication and then I think you can get in an unaccountable manner where like, you’re just doing whatever you want.
[00:41:06] Hunter Holtshopple: So, we set with the business line director and the marketing manager and come up with, uh marketing director and come up with a plan for the year. And then we set objectives and we have a system that has been around since I’ve been in, you know, started as an employee, that, that puts in our objectives so you can put in tangible objectives and of course, some are like, “You, Increase revenue.”
[00:41:27] Hunter Holtshopple: Okay. That is a little bit of a stretch, but it’s like, then there’s others like “execute on this campaign and do these things.” And maybe it’s not, you know, getting an X number of clicks or X number of whatever, but there are hard metrics that we can accomplish because for every technology or solution that we’re launching, we do need certain things to equip our sales team, like product sheet, animation, images. So we agree upon a campaign strategy and then we deliver on that, hopefully, and then there’s stuff that fills in. So, I like to, put a lot and fill in a lot. And I think, you know, the accountability is: deliver on the things that you’re expected to deliver on and then over deliver.
[00:42:09] Hunter Holtshopple: I think the biggest thing is making sure, and we have regular checkpoints with both the marketing manager, marketing director, and our business line directors to make sure we’re going in the right direction, keeping them happy.
[00:42:22] Hunter Holtshopple: And then he has his own organization and product managers and, having regular meetings with them. You know, having those clear objectives set in the beginning of the year, and then working towards them, and then adapting if needed, is kind of how we do it.
[00:42:34] Hunter Holtshopple: But, you know, I definitely don’t operate on the road, not very often. Sometimes you have to take a chance, and do something, I think, when you’re pushing the envelope a little bit, which is the fun part of marketing, but then the other times, you know, as long as you’re delivering and if you can deliver on the things that we agreed upon, I think that’s the best way to stay accountable.
[00:42:51] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like you’re prioritizing communication too, which I think is really important. It is very easy to just kind of everybody stays in their own lane, you know, even if you’re checking off the boxes of the stuff that you promise to deliver. You have to make sure it’s working and you can’t really figure that out unless you’re communicating with each other and being open and you’re willing to hear the feedback and adjust according to the feedback.
[00:43:13] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah. A hundred percent. We have learned that that’s like essential because I don’t know how it worked before I came, obviously, cause I wasn’t here, but I know that us having these meetings is a little bit newer. I don’t know how they communicated in the past, but we, my manager really, I give him most of the credit, but he set up these channels of communication and, there was a recent meeting. I got the opportunity to go to Paris, two or three weeks ago, again, so that was the second trip this year. So that is a benefit of the job is, you know, we get to go to, our headquarters are in Paris. But anyways, I got the opportunity to go for a workshop and a couple of people were like, “well, why are you here? You’re marketing.” And it was like, well, because we need to know we need to be aligned. And by the end of the workshop, they’re like, ” I’m glad you’re here because now, you know, what we’re planning to do the next one, two, three, four, five years.” And, having the opportunity to go being invited and getting to be, part of that group, I think was just tremendous.
[00:44:09] Hunter Holtshopple: And I think people see the value. So yeah, having that communication has been really good. And I think it helps with accountability because then, you know, your stakeholders, they know you. Same thing with the podcast, you know, so it’s all kind of comes together.
[00:44:20] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. It sounds like it. Well, thanks for sharing everything that you shared. know, you’re talking about things that like a global and large scale, but I’ve tried to pick out moments in the conversation where there’s like a clear parallel that I think are just very universal challenges that you’ve run into universal solutions that you’ve been able to put together. Thank you for being so open and really sharing some of what you’ve learned in your role. I really appreciate it. I think it’ll help our listeners a lot.
[00:44:46] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think if anyone, is curious about marketing, I think they should definitely give it a try, but like, don’t come in and think, you know, everything definitely listened to people, because like most of the time, the challenges we have, someone else has had them.. Like if you ever had like a, I’m sure you’ve, you know, have an issue and like type it in on Google or Reddit, and you’re like, no, one’s going to ever have that.
[00:45:07] Hunter Holtshopple: And like 20 people have the same thing. You’re like, “Oh, I guess I’m not that unique.”
[00:45:12] Terri Hoffman: No, you’re right though, that it’s really common in the marketing space where you run into somebody. That’s why having that community. I mean, I know that we originally got connected through. A marketing community event, right?
[00:45:24] Terri Hoffman: And so both of us, my company and you personally find that to be really super valuable. The more marketers you can know, the more you can learn.
[00:45:31] Hunter Holtshopple: Definitely. For sure.
[00:45:32] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. Well, I have some fun rapid fire questions to ask at the end if you’re open to these. This is how I build my lists of places to visit, music to listen to, et cetera.
[00:45:42] Terri Hoffman: So here they go. They have nothing to do with work. They’re fun.
[00:45:46] Hunter Holtshopple: Okay, cool.
[00:45:47] Terri Hoffman: So the first question is, what is your favorite trip that you’ve ever taken?
[00:45:53] Hunter Holtshopple: Too many. I don’t know. I would say probably the most recent one. We just got back last week and we went to Costa Rica. so it was awesome. And like super convenient from Houston at three hour direct flight and we were on the beach an hour later. So yeah, I’d say Costa Rica for anyone who hasn’t been.
[00:46:08] Terri Hoffman: That is definitely a place I’d like to go. it sounds like you’re fresh on the heels of that one too. So you’re probably like still maybe a little in Costa Rica in your mind.
[00:46:15] Hunter Holtshopple: Yeah. Yeah. Like a week, a week old.
[00:46:18] Terri Hoffman: Musically, if you had to name a group or an artist that, they can be dead or alive that you wish you could see in concert, who would that be?
[00:46:27] Hunter Holtshopple: Recently I’ve been on a little bit of a Sublime kick because the son has like taken over as the lead singer. So they’re like back out and touring.
[00:46:34] Hunter Holtshopple: I think, Sublime, especially growing up in Southern California. I think Sublime.
[00:46:39] Terri Hoffman: Okay. You came up with that one quickly, so that must be, that must be real. Have you read a book or do you have a book that you constantly find yourself recommending to people that has been helpful to you?
[00:46:50] Hunter Holtshopple: That’s a tough one. One that I can recommend, and I got on a bit of this kick a few years ago, is by a guy named Peter Attia.
[00:46:58] Hunter Holtshopple: So it’s about health and longevity. It’s his, nonfiction. I actually haven’t read the whole thing, but I listened to his podcast like pretty religiously every Monday and it’s called outlive and it’s all about longevity. It talks about the health, the nutrition, and then the mental health part.
[00:47:11] Hunter Holtshopple: But then, you know, if you don’t want to listen to his audio book, his podcast is free and, Spotify or Apple, I’m sure, and it’s pretty good. I actually joined the private track, so I get all the extra stuff.
[00:47:22] Hunter Holtshopple: He’s a pretty practical guy on like, longevity. It’s not like, “hey, take this pill and, you know, you’re going to live to 500 years old”. No, he’s like, “no, do this. And you like, might have a better, like the last 10 years of your life.” So it’s, it’s like pretty realistic.
[00:47:35] Terri Hoffman: And then the last question is what is the best job you’ve ever had?
[00:47:40] Hunter Holtshopple: Well, company wise this one, it’s the only, well, I guess I had like a, I’ve made ice cream when I was in college, Coldstone. But this, you know, company wise. SLB, Schlumberger has been, been the only company.
[00:47:52] Hunter Holtshopple: I’m great, very grateful for that. And I would, I’d probably say this, this one Marcomm, is, has been tremendous. I mean, getting to see the global outlook, meet all these people, make videos. I mean, I, I, I found a passion for photography, for videography, all because of this role. So, I think, I think this one it’s really been, been fun and like the community and the marketing teams and just, it’s been awesome.
[00:48:17] Terri Hoffman: Wow. Very cool. Well, Hunter, thanks again for joining me today. tons of great information and, just thank you. Thank you so much for the generosity and sharing everything.
[00:48:27] Hunter Holtshopple: Thank you. I’d be remiss if I don’t say to the listeners, if they’re still listening, be sure to tune into Beyond The Reservoir, and hear about some of our awesome people at SLB.
[00:48:35] Terri Hoffman: Okay. Take care.
[00:48:37] Hunter Holtshopple: Thank you.
[00:48:39] Terri Hoffman: Thank you for listening to B2B marketing methods. Please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast channel and leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you and connect. You can find me on LinkedIn or visit our company website at marketingrefresh.com.
