In this episode, Duray sits down with Richard Spears, Marketing Manager at PP Control & Automation, a strategic outsourcing partner to UK machine builders and OEMs delivering engineering and production capability across module, assembly, part and full machine build.

Richard spent years agency-side and client-side in industrial manufacturing before putting himself through the Marketing Week Mini MBA with Mark Ritson, and that strategic discipline runs through everything he does at PP. The conversation covers why their biggest competitor isn't another supplier, the 95/5 split between out-of-market and in-market buyers, why PP walked away from trade shows entirely and the creative campaigns built around album covers that customers still talk about a year later.

In this episode, Duray sits down with James Crossland, Head of Marketing at FormusPro, a Microsoft Dynamics, Power Platform and AI partner working with nonprofits, universities and membership organisations across the UK.

James spent ten years as a commercial underwriter and three years selling cruises before he ever did a marketing job, and that route in shapes everything about how he thinks.
The conversation covers where sales and marketing actually meet (and where most teams get the line wrong), what AI is genuinely good for in B2B marketing versus what people are pretending it's good for, the power of storytelling when your buyers will never click a Google ad, and the realities of marketing for a Microsoft partner in a market full of them.

Vanity metrics get killed. Middle-funnel strategy gets unpacked. LLMO and SEO get the treatment they deserve. Honest, sharp, openly anti-fluff.

The Wise Build Bridges - S3E13: Martin Ives