The Optus Wholesale senior marketing communications manager explains why trust, emotion and curiosity matter just as much as data and demand.
As a B2B juror at The Drum Awards Festival, Seray Korchagin sees trust and relevance as the real drivers behind effective B2B growth. With more than 15 years’ experience across telecommunications, IT, technology and manufacturing, she has held senior marketing and communications roles at companies including Vertiv, Pentair and Tyco, alongside her current role as senior marketing communications manager at Optus Wholesale. She also consults across the IT and data centre sectors, helping technology brands strengthen their voice and build connections that last beyond the first touchpoint.
That breadth of experience shapes how Korchagin thinks about the balance between brand building and demand generation. The answer, she says, depends on where a business sits in its lifecycle, but one thing is non-negotiable. “Without the foundations of long-term brand building, a short-term-only demand gen focus can fall flat.” Trust, familiarity and emotional connection still matter, even in highly technical categories. “People want to understand what a brand stands for and feel a connection to it,” she adds, pointing to thought leadership, storytelling and a consistent voice as the work that builds credibility over time and makes short-term efforts more effective.
Rather than seeing brand and demand as competing priorities, Korchagin views them as mutually reinforcing. “That long-term impact actually fuels the short-term goals too,” she says, suggesting a 50/50 split as a sensible starting point for many B2B organizations, with room to adjust as needs evolve.
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The same thinking underpins her advice to marketers working in categories dominated by rational messaging and functional selling. “At the end of the day, we’re all human, even in B2B,” she says. The buyer of a complex technical product is the same person booking holidays, shopping online and managing everyday pressures. Logic matters, but emotion still shapes decisions. “If we understand what’s keeping them up at night, whether that’s fear, reputation, recognition or time saved, we can speak to them in a way that builds confidence and trust.”
That human lens is also why she continues to see case studies as one of the most effective B2B tools. They allow brands to tell real stories while still proving outcomes, KPIs and impact, bridging emotion and evidence rather than forcing a choice between the two.
When it comes to channels, Korchagin is pragmatic. LinkedIn, she says, remains unavoidable for B2B in 2025 because of the sheer concentration of decision-makers across procurement, leadership and industry communities. “It’s basically the Facebook of the B2B world,” she notes. For brands of any size, it offers reach, engagement and a way to test demand while shaping brand voice.
For those already fluent in LinkedIn, she sees room to explore elsewhere. TikTok, in particular, offers an opportunity for tech and manufacturing brands willing to educate or share behind-the-scenes perspectives. “That’s where the next generation of decision makers live,” she says.
Internally, however, many organizations are still making life harder than it needs to be. Korchagin points to misaligned KPIs across sales, product and marketing, which can pull teams in different directions rather than toward a shared customer outcome. “If we looked at it through a single customer journey lens and built more collaborative KPIs, we’d be a lot more customer-centric.”
Compounding that issue are fragmented tech stacks that create data silos. “Collecting data is the easy part,” she adds. “It’s making sense of it that’s hard.” Turning numbers into insight requires storytelling and an understanding of the why behind performance, resources many businesses still lack.
Looking ahead, she believes successful B2B marketers will need to combine technical fluency with emotional intelligence. AI will play a growing role in segmentation, analysis and workflow design, particularly as it increasingly becomes part of the search audience itself. At the same time, the fundamentals have not changed. Understanding customer behaviour, motivation and experience design will continue to separate strong brands from forgettable ones.
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That belief carries into her own day-to-day work. One of her biggest challenges, both in-house and as a consultant, is protecting space for creative thinking amid the grind of deadlines, BAU and internal process. “It’s easy to slip into autopilot,” she says, particularly in B2B environments that reward safe, functional output.
Staying curious and creatively sharp, however, is not optional. “Effective B2B work isn’t just about ticking boxes,” she adds. “It’s about pushing for work that connects, feels human and cuts through.” For Korchagin, staying close to the industry, saying yes to new opportunities and spending time in face-to-face forums all help keep that perspective intact.
The Drum Awards Festival celebrates the people and ideas shaping the future of B2B marketing. Follow jurors like Seray Korchagin as they spotlight work that connects, challenges convention and earns trust where it matters most.
Optus
Singtel Optus Pty Limited is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of SingTel since 2001.