The Challenge
In 2020, COVID removed the one thing that B2B enterprise technology sales run on: the room. Events, roundtables, face-to-face briefings — gone. For Dassault Systèmes, whose conversations with manufacturing and infrastructure leaders depended on presence and relationship, this was a real problem.
The marketing that existed was product-led. Good for explaining features. Not good for building the kind of credibility that gets you in the room with a head of operations or a chief digital officer. Sales teams needed warmer entry points. The brand needed a voice that could carry without a conference behind it.
Webinars, product demos, digital ads: the existing playbook was not going to cut it.
What I Did
Deciding not to do a webinar
The first decision was the most important one: this was not going to be a webinar.
Webinars are passive. Audiences tolerate them. I wanted to build something people would choose to watch and come back for.
We conceived Industry Insider with Dassault Systèmes as a TV-style editorial series: a hosted, 30-minute programme with a professional look, structured segments, and industry-first conversations. No product pitches. No sales slides. Just credible, expert dialogue on the issues manufacturing, transport, and infrastructure leaders were dealing with.
The format was designed to position Dassault Systèmes as a peer in the industry conversation.
Building the production system
Thinking of the format was one thing. Making it repeatable was another.
I ran the full production: budget, agency management, visual identity, tone, pre-production logistics, speaker sourcing, briefings, run-of-show, rehearsals, and all stakeholder approvals.
Each episode took eight weeks from brief to broadcast. Over two years, we delivered 8 episodes, each one requiring a full promotional cycle, coordinated across markets and internal teams.
Taking it to market
Every episode was supported by a full multi-channel campaign:
- LinkedIn Live broadcast as the primary platform
- Paid social on LinkedIn and Google Ads complemented a consistent organic social programme across LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube
- Email marketing and reminder sequences
- Internal sales enablement assets, so the sales team could use the content in their own conversations
- Follow-up content: one-pagers, key insights, clips
The goal was to extend the content beyond the live event and into the sales cycle. A prospect watching an episode is useful. A sales rep sharing a key insight from that episode in a follow-up email is where the value compounds.
Keeping sales in the loop
Sales teams across SEA and ANZ were involved from the start and helped shape the programme. They identified topics, flagged which conversations were most relevant to their pipeline, and received assets they could use directly in their outreach.
This closed the gap between marketing and sales. Most content programmes don't manage it.
The Results
- 2,100+ registrants across 8 episodes.
- 63,000+ minutes watched.
- 500,000+ social impressions.
- Consistent audience engagement across Southeast Asia and ANZ over two years.
- Inbound requests from external experts to participate as guests.
- Growth in qualified contacts and audience database.
- Dassault Systèmes became recognised as a credible thought leader in manufacturing conversations.
The Lesson
Most B2B content is forgettable because there's nothing to return to. A series changes that.
The difference between Industry Insider and a standard webinar series was the decision to lead with the audience's interests, not the brand's agenda. Industry-first conversations. No sales slides. No product demos dressed up as thought leadership.
When you build something that manufacturing leaders want to watch, the brand benefit follows. Credibility, pipeline warmth, relationships: these are the outputs of doing the editorial work right.
One TV show beat a hundred product webinars.