T-Mobile Marketing President Shares Career Journey, 2024 Strategy

Advertising and marketing 5G, the most recent technology of cell wi-fi know-how, is not straightforward, partly as a result of its extra futuristic purposes haven’t but materialized.

“I believe folks had excessive expectations that inside the first few years of 5G, we would not must drive our personal vehicles anymore,” Katz stated. “That is simply not a factor but.”

However Katz’s job is to create advertising and marketing moments that get folks speaking — and produce the shoppers. It is working.

A spectacle such because the Las Vegas Grand Prix is a playground for 5G-performance storytelling. With tons of of hundreds of attendees, a observe spanning 6.2 kilometers alongside metropolis streets, and a fast-growing US fan base that is extremely energetic on social media, community pace and reliability can be examined to their limits.

“The Las Vegas Grand Prix is a superb alternative for US wi-fi carriers to point out off their 5G capabilities,” the telecom-market analyst Opensignal stated on the time, including that T-Cell was in “pole place” — i.e., one of the best spot — going into the occasion.

T-Cell’s primacy in 5G availability is as recognizable as its electrical pink livery. In its January 2024 Cell Community Expertise Report, Opensignal named T-Cell the chief in total expertise, availability, and consistency. Verizon, it is subsequent closest rival, topped the charts in video expertise and add pace.

Fourth-quarter and full-year earnings aren’t set to be reported till January 25, however T-Cell’s third-quarter financials have been strong. In 2022, T-Cell’s whole income was successfully flat at $79.5 billion. Third-quarter earnings confirmed 1.2 million internet pay as you go buyer additions and $5.3 billion in internet money, an enchancment of 21% 12 months over 12 months.

Not all of the information was constructive final 12 months, although. The corporate’s 7% employees discount in September was, in line with a letter from CEO Mike Sievert to staff, pushed by a necessity for higher efficiencies as successful clients had change into costlier and troublesome.

“It’s clear that doing all the things we’re doing and simply doing it quicker just isn’t sufficient to ship on these altering buyer expectations going ahead,” Sievert wrote.

The layoffs catalyzed a advertising and marketing retool, Katz stated, to “rethink our working mannequin inside our staff, to get much more centered on what the large, large priorities are.”

Katz’s 2024 plan entails different important adjustments. Final week, T-Cell introduced it had chosen Dentsu Artistic as its lead inventive company, ending a long-standing relationship with Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi. T-Cell’s whole promoting price range in 2022 was $2.3 billion.

With the 2020 Dash merger within the rearview and its Mint Cell acquisition up forward, Katz is conscious that progress — in each business-to-business and business-to-consumer — will rely upon leveraging new expertise and alternatives not all presently inside his staff’s wheelhouse.

“We’ve to have the ability to go searching corners. We’ve to maintain forward of the innovation curve,” Katz stated. “And we have to ensure that now we have the capabilities — figuring out that success in future intervals goes to take various things.”

It is a second he is been coaching for his complete profession.

From gross sales to technique

Katz’s twenty fifth anniversary on the firm was one month earlier than the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

He did not begin within the company workplace however as a university pupil promoting cellphone companies at retailers like Circuit Metropolis and Sears. Again then, T-Cell was nonetheless a regional participant known as VoiceStream Wi-fi, and Katz was finding out sociology at Colorado State College, a number of hours away from his hometown of Carbondale, Colorado.

Final 12 months, Katz was his alma mater’s graduation speaker, the place he flexed his attribute self-deprecation: “I am positive a lot of you’re asking your self some fairly robust questions. The primary, and perhaps most vital, query you’re asking your self at present is, ‘Who the hell is that this man?'”

We’ve to have the ability to go searching corners. We’ve to maintain forward of the innovation curve.
Mike Katz

“He is so humble,” stated Callie Area, the president of the T-Cell enterprise group, who herself has been on the firm for 20 years. “He is depraved good, however you by no means hear him taking part in that function, like, ‘I am the neatest particular person within the room’ — not one time. And but the scale of offers he places collectively and what he is doing with our model is fairly extraordinary.”

After commencement, Katz took a full-time gross sales place in Chicago at VoiceStream (which turned T-Cell in 2002 following its earlier buy by Deutsche Telekom). For seven years, he grew by means of the gross sales group, working instantly with clients and constructing out territories.

In 2007, he took a brand new job, and a brand new path, at T-Cell headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, engaged on a small corporate-strategy staff that reported into the CEO.

“It was the primary time I might been in a job the place I sat outdoors a operate and will see how the corporate labored left to proper,” Katz stated. “I acquired a deep understanding of our enterprise mannequin, might perceive how worth acquired created right here, had the chance to do tasks with all of our main features.”

Katz took on progressively senior advertising and marketing roles till he was finally made vice chairman of promoting for the prepaid-phone enterprise. His remit went past model work.

“It was my first alternative to run a sub-brand and relaunch and reposition a model,” he stated, “and actually take into consideration buyer segmentation, wants of consumers, and the way clients work together and make their buy choices on a product like pay as you go.”

Uncertainty, and the beginning of the ‘Un-carrier’

Whereas Katz was studying the ropes of the pay as you go world in 2011, T-Cell was poised to make an enormous transfer with AT&T’s $39 billion acquisition bid.

However the Federal Communications Fee and the US Justice Division moved to dam the deal on antitrust grounds in 2011, and the bid was deserted.

“The deal’s finish leaves T-Cell, the weakest of the 4 nationwide operators, with an unsure future,” The New York Occasions reported on the time.

“When the AT&T deal failed, we have been like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do with this firm?'” Katz advised Enterprise Insider.

It was at this dire second that John Legere, a former CEO of World Crossing and veteran telecom government, turned T-Cell’s CEO. Legere employed Sievert — who would change into CEO in 2020 — as chief advertising and marketing officer.

Katz was a part of a small staff within the advertising and marketing group working to forge a brand new technique.

“We have been clearly an organization that was struggling,” he stated. “We have been dropping clients. We had gone from a extremely highly effective worth model into an inexpensive model with the ‘much less for much less’ place.”

The staff introduced the management a brand new concept: “It was known as Ache-Free Wi-fi, the concept that all people loves their telephones however hates the businesses they do enterprise with,” Katz stated. “John and Mike rebranded it to ‘Un-carrier.'”

We noticed a possibility to do one thing that was unprecedented on the time: listening to clients and disrupting the established order 
Mike Sievert, CEO, T-Cell

The client-centric messaging, with its cheeky jabbing at larger opponents, caught. “Un-carrier” has been T-Cell’s positioning ever since 2013, celebrating its tenth anniversary final 12 months.

“We noticed a possibility to do one thing that was unprecedented on the time: listening to clients and disrupting the established order created by the ‘carriers’ to unravel their ache factors,” Sievert advised BI through electronic mail. “The journey has been unbelievable for our firm.”

Detours and new instructions

Using the wave of Un-carrier momentum, Katz was pumped.

“I used to be operating this client model that was going by means of this marvelous turnaround,” Katz stated. “It was incredible, tremendous thrilling.”

He was in for a shock. Sievert, who in 2016 was chief working officer, requested him to steer T-Cell for Enterprise.

“I used to be like, is Mike making an attempt to fireplace me?” Katz advised BI. “To place it in an understated manner, B2B was not a spotlight space for T-Cell. It had form of been a spot the place we despatched executives to die.”

Finally, Katz stated, he is glad he made the leap.

“I am a much better marketer as a result of I ran B2B,” he stated. “It taught me quite a bit in regards to the nuances in numerous enterprise buyer teams, how they analysis and make choices in a class like ours.”

Additionally, the B2B enterprise construction was built-in, so Katz was not solely overseeing advertising and marketing, but additionally gross sales and product. His management chops have been additionally examined as some staff members early-on balked at new concepts.

“There have been folks that have been initially very resistant and have been like, ‘You are the fifth chief that is are available in right here and talked about B2B being a precedence. We’re simply going to attend a few months so that you can be fired.'”

5 years later, Katz was nonetheless operating the enterprise group. Within the meantime, T-Cell merged with Dash in April 2020, catapulting the corporate into a brand new aggressive panorama, and Sievert turned CEO.

Sievert appointed Katz chief advertising and marketing officer in March 2022, and just some months later, his function was expanded to president of promoting, technique, and merchandise.

The CEO advised BI through electronic mail that Katz was the best particular person to steer advertising and marketing at a crucial time, when T-Cell’s 5G management messaging wanted to be fastidiously married to its long-standing place as the worth alternative.

“Manufacturers are highly effective, however they’re additionally cussed,” Sievert wrote. “Convincing the general public that one model could be a higher deal, whereas additionally providing a greater product, is not straightforward. It seems like a contradiction. We weren’t but recognized for community management and had lots of wooden to cut. So it was time to place Mike in cost.”

The job of leaders: Innovate quick

Now lower than two years into the lead advertising and marketing function, Katz is synthesizing his vast number of T-Cell expertise right into a progress plan.

And he has to maneuver rapidly: “The burden of management is to hurry up innovation,” Sievert wrote.

Residence broadband has been one of many large proving grounds.

“A technique Mike’s doing that’s by main our staff, which did not compete in any respect in residence broadband simply over two years in the past, to change into one of many largest nationwide ISPs — and, by far, the fastest-growing — in an extremely brief time,” Sievert wrote. “They make that look straightforward, nevertheless it is not.”

Within the third quarter of 2023, T-Cell reported it had added 557,000 high-speed-internet clients, for a complete of 4.2 million, in contrast with Verizon, its closest class competitor, at 2.7 million.

Sievert stated that Katz pushed the corporate to innovate, “whereas retaining buyer love as our North Star.”

“That is one of many issues a great marketer can do — assist rally a complete group across the buyer,” he added.

“Mike and I’ve been shut coworkers for over a decade, so in some ways, we have been on this transformative journey collectively,” he stated. “I’ve had a front-row seat to his advertising and marketing prowess and his genuine love for what we do, which is serve clients day by day — as a result of their pleased is our pleased.”

The Las Vegas Grand Prix was greater than a platform for displaying off T-Cell’s 5G capabilities — it was a second to please each B2B and B2C clients, and Katz delivered for each units of stakeholders.

“Mike is ready to take the followers’ love of the game, take his relationship with the F1 staff, his understanding of the know-how, deliver all of that collectively, and create one thing actually compelling,” Area, T-Cell’s business-group president, stated. “That is what Katz actually brings to this function.”

T-Cell hosted greater than 50 enterprise CIO and CTO clients on the Las Vegas Grand Prix who had the chance to mingle with know-how heads from System 1, the PGA, and the MLB.

“All of them talked with our clients about all of the issues that T-Cell was capable of do,” Area stated. “So whereas it was an unbelievable sports activities and leisure expertise, I had 50 CIOs that have been like, ‘I see how I might clear up all types of ache factors with this know-how in my hospital or my manufacturing line.'”

The regular-fan expertise, notably those that occurred to be T-Cell clients, was simply as vital.

“There have been 315,000 folks at this occasion, and we all know lots of them are going to be T-Cell clients,” Katz stated. “We need to ensure that T-Cell clients really feel one thing particular for being T-Cell clients once they go to an occasion like that.”

Activations included “Membership Magenta” for T-Cell clients solely, which gave entry to live shows and an elevated seating space to see the racetrack.

“I simply thought that was so cool and such a particular contact to make our clients really feel like VIPs,” Katz stated.

Extra alternatives are coming. In November, Katz and T-Cell struck a cope with the PGA of America to be its wireless-innovation accomplice, with T-Cell’s 5G powering real-time analytics for gamers and immersive digital experiences for followers.

We need to ensure that T-Cell clients really feel one thing particular for being T-Cell clients.
Mike Katz

Efficiency, and perspective

T-Cell’s pending acquisition of Mint Cell, which is fronted and partly owned by the actor Ryan Reynolds, struck some business observers as a marketing-centric transfer to leverage differentiation and star energy.

However Katz stated Mint’s efficiency advertising and marketing is the actual star, and he goals to deliver its experience to his personal advertising and marketing group.

“Mint is much and away essentially the most profitable digital direct-to-consumer wi-fi model in America ever, interval,” he stated. “They have been capable of crack one thing that none of us have been capable of do.”

Katz plans to modernize T-Cell’s advertising and marketing method in 2024, broaden it from a TV-centric mindset, and construct extra expertise in efficiency and information advertising and marketing, leveraging synthetic intelligence and different capabilities.

“It isn’t ok anymore so that you can come right into a retailer or go onto our web site or name a customer-care agent and have it really feel prefer it’s the primary time you’ve got ever interacted with us,” Katz stated. “We have to make the expertise extremely curated for you, knowledgeable by your earlier interactions with us and your expertise with our product.”

Along with specializing in coaching for the staff, Katz has added expertise to construct up new capabilities, together with Vinayak Hegde, previously of Airbnb and Groupon, as client chief advertising and marketing officer, and Stefan Bewley, previously at consulting agency Altman Solon, as chief technique officer.

With a lot on the road, Katz acknowledged that he struggled to modify off from work. Household ski journeys and wet soccer video games together with his spouse and 4 kids maintain him within the second.

He tries to maintain the day by day challenges in perspective.

“My youngsters have all the time actually helped me,” he stated. “I will go residence and speak about one thing that I am wired about and get a bunch of side-eye and, like, ‘Critically, Dad, that is what you are wired about?’ So after I stroll by means of the door of my home, I actually attempt to be current.”

He takes somewhat a part of the job in all places he goes, although. Katz did not put on T-Cell-branded clothes only for this text’s picture shoot; it is just about a day by day behavior.

“I’ve acquired an entire T-Cell part of my closet,” he stated, including that a lot of his colleagues have been equally badged.

“There are a lot of years the place you would not have seen anyone caught useless with this model on them,” Katz stated. “However I might say over the previous 10 years, this model — we hope it is beloved to clients — however I can inform you it’s beloved to the folks that work right here.”

The model makes the distinction, Katz stated.

“With out our model, we run the danger of primarily being the electrical firm,” he stated. “The utility you do not take into consideration except one thing goes fallacious.”