The Kula Ring PodcastThe Kula Ring Podcast

Benjamin Toomey didn’t come to additive manufacturing from engineering — he came from fireworks and craft beer. That outsider’s vantage turns out to be the point. In this episode, Ben tells Jeff White and Carman Pirie how he went from feeling like an alien at his first trade show to becoming a “messenger” who can connect large-format 3D printing to a stranger’s field of interest. Along the way he makes the case that marketing complex technology isn’t about being the smartest person in the room or hiding what you don’t know — it’s about building a common language, grounding claims in data, and keeping the divergent outside interests that let a marketer connect dots the engineers can’t.

For Impack, a Quebec maker of folder-gluer packaging equipment, video does something a spec sheet can’t: it sells machines prospects often won’t see in person until late in the deal. Brand Creative Lead Dmytro Zhurov explains how a well-produced video becomes proof of a six-figure machine’s quality—when the production matches the price tag, buyers trust that the product does too. He digs into using video to explain complex, sometimes competitor-less machines, why his team flies crews to client sites for documentary-grade footage, and how he prioritizes production around the deals already in flight. The throughline: quality video doesn’t just inform the sale, it justifies it.

As a solo marketer in a 30-person engineering firm, Reshmee Bissundyal has built something most industrial companies struggle to achieve: a LinkedIn presence that actually drives inbound leads. In this episode, Reshmee walks us through how she dramatically grew Mechanical Solutions’ LinkedIn following.

Reshmee shares her approach to content planning and why she often leads with emotion rather than promotions. And how she has navigated the tricky task of getting engineers to participate in marketing.

Helene Tessier didn’t plan a career in marketing. She started at the French consulate in China and taught English abroad. When COVID brought her home, she stumbled into TPAC as an interpreter. Soon after, leadership asked her to run marketing.

In this conversation with Jeff and Carman, she explains why TPAC’s PhD-heavy, flat organizational culture wanted someone willing to learn. She also shares how she rebuilt the company’s go-to-market strategy. Her approach centered on trade shows, application-driven web content, and a bold brand presence at the World Conference on NDT (non-destructive testing) that the industry still talks about.

Helene also digs into why technical, engineering-led firms struggle with brand rollout. She explains how regulatory and certification changes act as buying triggers in NDT, and what a five-person buying committee means for content strategy. To close, she offers a refreshingly grounded take on AI for marketers entering the field today.

Teikoku USA makes the canned motor pumps that the chemical, hydrocarbon, and nuclear industries reach for when leaking is not an option. For years, growing public awareness of dangerous chemicals quietly expanded the company’s addressable market for them. Then, leadership asked the sales and marketing team to grow faster anyway. Chaitanya Sakhalkar joins The Kula Ring to share what came next: modularizing a product that had always been engineer-to-order, building decision trees so the sales team and channel partners could tell the right story to the right buyer.

Brandon Clark, VP of Marketing at Q-Pac, joins Jeff and Carman to unpack what it really means to create a new product category within a deeply traditional industry. Q-Pac makes multimotor plenum fans, a commercial HVAC product that looks like a fan array on the surface but operates as a fundamentally different technology. Brandon explains how the company defined the category and why they invested $1M to build the world’s largest airflow test tunnel based on the AMCA 270 standard to silence skeptics. He also shares some advice for any marketer who finds themselves selling something that genuinely doesn’t fit an existing bucket. He also reflects on making the leap from grocery retail into manufacturing marketing.