Maria Bartolome Winans, former IBM Americas CMO, was the second employee of its 2021 managed infrastructure services spinoff, creating something new on the legacy company’s foundation
Kyndryl CMO Maria Bartolome Winans.
Kyndryl
In late 2021, IBM’s managed infrastructure services business spun off into Kyndryl, an independent company with the goal of helping build the services companies rely on daily. Aside from the internal and transactional business of performing a spinoff, the new company had to create its own brand and voice—both for the former IBM employees who were part of a new company, as well as the thousands of customers who had previously relied on IBM’s managed infrastructure services.
Maria Bartolome Winans, a 29-year IBM veteran and the CMO of IBM Americas, became Kyndryl employee No. 2 (after CEO Martin Schroeter), and took on the challenge of building the Kyndryl brand. I talked to her about how she did it and where Kyndryl—which had revenues of $16.1 billion in FY 24 and is currently worth more than $8 billion—is going now. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. It was excerpted in the Forbes CMO newsletter.
You had been with IBM for a long time before Kyndryl. Tell me about going through the spinoff, bringing the things from IBM’s brand that you had been cultivating for years and moving them to a new brand.
Winans: I was 29 years at IBM. Great career, great foundation. I got to do a lot of really cool things, new businesses, sales, marketing strategy in a market, in headquarters, et cetera.
I remember when I first got the call from Martin [Schroeter, Kyndryl CEO]. It was: Do you want to be part of this story, an opportunity to do something that is going to cast a new opportunity for this business—a revitalization of this business—but to really think ambitiously, completely different? After 30 minutes of a conversation—which was not only about the opportunity of doubling our total addressable market because we are now part of a bigger ecosystem, but also the whole foundation of building a brand and how do we transform this company on culture because we wanted our teams to think differently—I said to Martin, “You got me on Hello.”
[He responded]: Let’s build the services company from a technology company that focused on people. So our culture and platform became super important. Second, I need you, Maria, to come up with a brand that really gives us that opportunity to think of where we are today, but what we need to do is build for tomorrow. Most importantly, how do we carry our customers with us on this journey? And then, how do we ensure that every single one of our employees gets motivated?
Most of my career at IBM was in marketing. What marketer doesn’t want to do that?
How did you build a new culture at Kyndryl through marketing it to existing employees?
For me, day one, when I became employee No. 2 of Kyndryl, I had two major things I had to do. I had to, one: Build a brand and cast something that really set us in the space where we wanted to compete and be. And two: motivate, at that time, almost 90,000 employees to get excited?
As you can imagine, being part of this business in “OldCo,” as we would say, people had a lot of questions. Many of our teams had been with IBM for a long time and the work that they did was integral to the customers they supported. One thing that I noticed from the very beginning: the passion. They lived in the customer’s business, they were the heart of the customer’s business. Now, all of a sudden, you’re not going to be part of that company. You’re going to be something new.
When we did the spin, every single employee was cast as a founder. I love to talk about this. I said: How do I make you feel like you are a founder of this business, and it’s not just a spin. One of the things that we did is plant a tree in the honor of every single one of our employees, to let them know that they’re the root of the company. That signaled the notion of: You are the founding members of Kyndryl.
The other thing that we did is, on the day that we spun, we did a big thank you on social. We put everyone’s name in this big reel that said thank you: Thank you for joining us, thank you for being part of this historic moment. We didn’t list full names, but it was 90,000 names in the social post that really allowed us to say thank you for joining us in this historic moment.
From the New York Stock Exchange, when we actually did the physical ringing of the bell, we said: We want every employee to be able to dial in if they choose to, even though they physically can’t be here, to be able to virtually participate. I remember the New York Stock Exchange saying: We’ve never done this before. You guys are trying to connect 90,000 people. You’re going to break the system. I said: Let’s figure it out, because it is super important that everybody participates in this moment.
We really worked really hard to say we want everyone to be and feel from the very beginning that this is about them and what they do. We were coming from a technology company that sold things. Now it was our people. It was the voice of our people, expertise of our people.
Tell me about the Kyndryl Way.
We started with this platform that we now call the Kyndryl Way. What was the previous IBM Way of doing things and what is the Kyndryl Way? What are the behaviors that we needed to instill? We really leaned in. We interviewed employees, we interviewed customers. We were like: What are you seeing when you think about this spin? What are the most important attributes? What is your sentiment? So we did a lot of that casting to inform us in our brand, but to inform us on what we needed to instill from a cultural platform as well.
There were three things that we said was going to be core to the Kyndryl Way. One was this notion of being restless. I remember bringing this word to Martin. I said: I’m going to bring you a word that’s very different in our vocabulary. Why would that be pertinent to us? This notion of being restless is all about anticipating and being ahead. We come from a world where we were always reacting: reacting to inquiries, reacting to requests from our customers. How do we get this motion of wanting to be restless and anticipate, and be our customer strategic partner, always having our pulse on the what next. Understanding what we do today and doing it really well, but restless for tomorrow. That became one of our big leadership platforms.
The second one was around this notion of listening. We launched Kyndryl in the midst of Covid, so a lot of the work around branding and building our cultural platform was done during Covid times. This whole notion of empathy: empathy in the way that we listen, the way that we understand each other, the way that we collaborate, the way that we bring our whole selves to work every day. We pride ourselves in how we show up in the experience with each other as employees, but the experience and how we show up in front of our customers.
The third attribute that we wanted to instill was this whole notion of devotion: Devoted to our customers’ success, devoted to building a company that was going to be leader. It’s not committed. I’m committed to doing what I do and showing up, but devoted comes from the heart. When you’re devoted to something, you feel it: The passion that you bring is in your whole self. So our leadership, as part of the Kyndryl Way: We’re restless, empathetic and devoted.
This became foundational to our cultural platform and what became known as the Kyndryl Way. We published books that all of our leaders carry in their pocket. I have it here in my bag.
Our first meeting that we held when we brought the leadership team together, coming from Covid, when we first saw each other face-to-face, we spent two days together. A day and a half was spent on culture. That said a lot to our teams [about] how important this foundation of the Kyndryl Way. Our culture transformation needed to be core if we’re ever going to really recast and lead in the way that we want to.
You’ve talked a lot about building the brand internally. How did you build it with customers, especially the existing customers that you had been working with, but now with a new company, new name, new focus, new mission, new everything.
This was one of my favorite memories from the very beginning: Casting a name of a company. What was our brand idea? What was our purpose, and how do we create it big enough for the ambition, but focused enough that told our customers: the work that you’ve always trusted us to do, we’re here.
We interviewed every customer, committing what we do for them, and then ensuring this continuity after the spin would continue. There was two things they said to us. They said: Bring your expert. I don’t care what happens in this journey, where the spin is headed, but I trust your experts. They are the heart of my business. They are the ones that keep my business running because the work that we do is mission-critical work. It is not managing an application. We’re running big data centers, we’re doing reservation systems, we’re managing workloads that run companies.
The second one was: Make it easier to do business, be agile. Bring me ideas. I want to depend more on you on doing more for me, but you’ve always been in this box, you’ve been in only this. I want you to do more for me, but make it easier.
That informed a lot. When we do a brand and we build a brand, we look at different territories and we look at: What is it that the brand needs to do? We needed to humanize—technology company to people company. And we needed to find our space that said: What is the territory? What is the area? What does this brand need to represent? When you’re trying to humanize what you do, and you know that the people are at the core and our customers are asking us to do more, it became this territory of human partnership and co-creation. Our customers wanted us to show up and have conversations about the what next—not just what you do today, but help me understand the what next.
Tell me about the name Kyndryl and your visual branding.
The brand needed to represent partnership and growing together. And it needed to establish this forward, bold-thinking idea. It needed to also acknowledge where we were. Getting a word and building out the word, it’s extremely difficult. We explored 200,000 names with our team and with our agencies, then we started to narrow, narrow, narrow. And then when it became obvious we had to make up a word, we had to come up with something that was unique. In that brand development process, it was exciting. When you’re building something, it’s not a word that you’re going to take and relate to. You’re going to create. It needed to have meaning, and it needed to [be something that] when people saw it, they [would think], “Hmm, that’s interesting.” It needed to represent something.
We started to explore territories and then we came up with the word of kinship. Kin are people that you trust, people that are family. Your next-of-kin are people that you want to talk to, they’re close to you. And then this notion of tendrils: This plant that continues to grow grabs onto something and it grows. The more that you water it, the more that it sees the light, it grows. We put it together and it became Kyndryl. We played with the I’s and the Y’s. At the end of the day, it’s the notion of kin—our customers trust us, love us—the partnership, and growing together. amily. Your next-of-kin are people that you want to talk to, they’re close to you. And then this notion of tendrils: This plant that continues to grow grabs onto something and it grows. The more that you water it, the more that it sees the light, it grows. We put it together and it became Kyndryl. We played with the I’s and the Y’s. At the end of the day, it’s the notion of kin—our customers trust us, love us—the partnership, and growing together.
In creative expressions of the brand, our tagline, our purpose or our brand idea, led us to “The heart of progress.” Remember what our customer said: You are the hearts and lungs of my business. Your heart runs my business. So we knew we had to bring that into our brand idea: the notion of heart. Then this notion of always progressing forward, this dynamic motion, this agility motion, this motion of we’re always building together. So that’s our brand idea: It is this notion of the heart of progress, because the heart’s always beating and we’re always progressing together.
The brand representation needed to not [be] coming from a world of acronyms, not coming from a world of capital letters. Generally when you write a text and you write caps, you’re declaring or you’re screaming. It needed to be inviting, so we knew we had to go into lowercase. We knew it had to be something that welcomed.
We looked at the representation. When you’re the heart, when we’re trying to instill growth—the notion of the greens, the subtle, the browns, the ground, the sand, the roots, and then the heart. This notion of a not a red, red, red, not an orange, but this notion of a heartbeat that is warm. That became the Kyndryl red. We use that as our accent color, for really signaling the notion of a heart beating warmth and then the notion of growth.
Our advertising always has people—again, humanizing. We’re a technology company, but at the heart, we’re a people company and we’re the hearts of our customers’ business.
In creative expressions of the brand, our tagline, our purpose or our brand idea, led us to “The heart of progress.” Remember what our customer said: You are the hearts and lungs of my business. Your heart runs my business. So we knew we had to bring that into our brand idea: the notion of heart. Then this notion of always progressing forward, this dynamic motion, this agility motion, this motion of we’re always building together. So that’s our brand idea: It is this notion of the heart of progress, because the heart’s always beating and we’re always progressing together.
The brand representation needed to not [be] coming from a world of acronyms, not coming from a world of capital letters. Generally when you write a text and you write caps, you’re declaring or you’re screaming. It needed to be inviting, so we knew we had to go into lowercase. We knew it had to be something that welcomed.
We looked at the representation. When you’re the heart, when we’re trying to instill growth—the notion of the greens, the subtle, the browns, the ground, the sand, the roots, and then the heart. This notion of a not a red, red, red, not an orange, but this notion of a heartbeat that is warm. That became the Kyndryl red. We use that as our accent color, for really signaling the notion of a heart beating warmth and then the notion of growth.
Our advertising always has people—again, humanizing. We’re a technology company, but at the heart, we’re a people company and we’re the hearts of our customers’ business.
In the years since Kyndryl has been established, how has the brand grown and changed?
Brand building is a journey. It takes years. We had to cast Kyndryl, we had to explain it, we had to give it the brand idea. We had to really showcase our people. Our first programmatic was “Meet the Kyndryls.” Meet our people, meet our experts. Not just what they do or patents they hold, but really a 360 of a person. We had to humanize. Year one was about who we are.
Year two became how we are showing up with our customers, and this notion of how we deliver progress. We had to show the market that our customers are still with us, our customers were still doing the work that they’ve always entrusted us to do, and we’re driving progress together.
Year three is this notion of our outcomes and differentiation. The first two years were about stabilizing, about running the company better, driving profitability, fixing things that needed to be redefined or reestablished. This year is about growth. How do we deliver outcomes for our customers? How are we building new relationships with our customers? How are we expanding with new logos and new brands to really drive growth?
Right now, we are building and expanding our consult business. The brand needs to show up as an employer that [makes people say], “I want to be part of that company, not only on the culture platform, but the work that they’re doing and what they’re doing for customers.”
We’ve built an employee brand that’s an extension of our brand, about this notion of progress with purpose. Every single one of our employees needs to feel like that the work they’re doing is valued and driving progress. We just launched this whole notion so that we can go recruit new talent.
Then this notion of we’ve got to elevate our brand permission to more of the line of business: our IT, CIOs. This is the work that we’ve done. They know us, they trust us. Through that trust, we need to build brand permission more to the line of business.
What advice would you give to other CMOs working through a rebrand or building something new on top of a foundation that’s already there?
This notion of really brand development is hard. You’re trying to get excited about the opportunity to do something new today, but you have to really understand and listen to what was great about the world that you’re coming from. This is the opportunity to cast something new and be bold. Like I said to my marketing team from the very beginning, what have you always wanted to do that you couldn’t do before? How can we be bolder? How can we not be afraid to take risks and do amazing new things, but also not lose sight of what’s made you strong?
The trust that we carried with us was huge. The expertise. Our customers loved us. Don’t take that for granted.
For us, we’re at the beginning. I always say there’s a canvas in front of us that we’re going to paint. I want us to be thinking in the new.
Tell me about what’s new from Kyndryl.
We just did a new campaign that we call “Double Your Impact.” It was different than anything we’ve ever done before. One of the things that CIOs—a very important target audience for us—keep telling us is: Help me balance what I am trying to do today. I’m trying to run the business today, manage all my technology estates, understand where my data resides so it can fuel what we’re doing around gen AI, but I need to be a transformative CIO for tomorrow. The board is always after me. My CEO is after me to come up with innovative ideas, but I’m barely getting by today. I’m trying to balance the run and the transform: Help me run my business today as I innovate and transform for tomorrow.
We said, what could be a witty way that we target the CIO, and we show up as a company that can be a partner for them both today and tomorrow. We had this notion: A CIO feels like they need another them. They need a twin, they need something. We played on that thought because a couple of CEOs said, that’s how I feel every day. We did this notion: Sometimes you feel like you need another you, but you don’t need another you when you have a partner in Kyndryl that understands you, and can help you operate the today as you innovate for the tomorrow.
To us, that’s a huge opportunity because the world that we live in understands the mission critical, the tough part. We have our pulses on what’s next, the emerging technology. It was a very witty ad. It was very different. We got real twins that we put on the advertising, not generated AI twins. At the National Retail Federation Show in New York City, we had the twins as part of our booth, the actual ones that were in the ad.
Of all the campaigns we’ve done, and I’ve done many in my career, this one has performed the best because it’s relatable, it’s human. This notion of: You get me, you’re being empathetic to me and you understand my world. That’s that human connection, connecting on that emotional connection with a very important persona for us. It’s very exciting to always be pushing the edge.
This story was updated to add supplemental financial data for Kyndryl. It was first published on forbes.com
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