CMO Chats with Sameer Thakkar, VP of Marketing Emerging EMEA and Asia Pacific at SAS

Could you please introduce yourself and your role at SAS?

I’m Sameer Thakkar, the Vice President of Marketing for emerging EMEA and Asia Pacific at SAS Institute. I’m based in Singapore and oversee a very diverse team across dozens of countries.

SAS has been one of the leaders in data and AI for the last five decades, and our entire idea is about making data more accessible and useful for organisations around the world, helping them make decisions faster. I’ve been with SAS for a little over three years now.

 

What is your main marketing focus at the moment?

For B2B enterprises, marketing generally focuses on three areas: building the brand, generating demand, and engaging existing customers.

At SAS, we follow this, but with AI transforming all three of these pillars.

1. Brand: We are strengthening SAS’s reputation as a global leader in data and AI, ensuring every interaction reinforces trust and credibility. AI is changing how brands are even discovered, moving from traditional search to generative AI.
2. Demand: We run innovative, targeted campaigns to generate measurable business opportunities and accelerate the adoption of SAS solutions.
3. Engagement: We focus on deep, ongoing connections with our customers. Our solutions are large, long-term investments, so we must ensure they see lasting value. AI is playing a critical role here in helping our customers improve their own productivity and ROI.

 

How do you define success in marketing, and what are the key metrics you use?

We align our metrics with our three focus areas. For brand, we look at long-term brand recall, awareness, and our perceived innovation leadership. For demand, we track lead generation, pipeline creation, conversion to revenue, and customer stickiness, including renewals and upsell motions. For engagement, we regularly measure customer satisfaction scores.

However, I look at success through a broader framework built on three pivots:

1. People: Success starts with having the best-in-class marketers. This means developing talent, providing clear growth roadmaps, and empowering them with the right skills and tools, especially AI.
2. Programs: This is about delivering campaigns that drive measurable business outcomes, using the right data and insights for execution.
3. Process: This is the foundation. A well-defined process, supported by data, is critical to ensure we execute efficiently and that our outcomes are measured and reported correctly.

 

What are the biggest challenges marketers are facing today?

I see three main challenges.

1. The Evolving B2B Buying Cycle: We’ve moved from a few decision-makers to large, complex buying groups. The sales cycle is long—sometimes years—so we must adapt our thinking from simple MQLs to mapping and engaging this entire group.
2. Data and AI Leadership: Our customers are increasingly using data and AI to drive their own productivity. Our marketing must reflect this, showing how we can help them become more efficient and achieve their ROIs.
3. Cutting Through the Noise: The amount of content and the number of channels have exploded. Our biggest challenge is getting customer attention. This requires pushing boundaries on creativity, innovation, and using granular insights to make our messaging truly resonate.

 

Do you think B2B marketing is adopting more B2C strategies, especially given that buyer research now happens long before they contact sales?

Definitely, yes. The lines are blurring. While we call it B2B, we are still selling to human beings—a CEO, a CTO, or a large buying group. Their decision-making is influenced by the same tools and channels as their consumer lives.

Content consumption on social media and discovery on generative AI engines are converging. We must remove the traditional barriers between B2B and B2C and adapt to how these human buyers are actually discovering information and making decisions today, which is often long before they ever contact us.

 

Could you share an example of a successful event or engagement piece you’ve hosted and why it worked?

We’ve had great success with our SAS Innovate on Tour series. This is our global flagship event, which we take to local regions. At a recent event in Sydney, it rained for an entire week, yet we still had over 350 customers show up and spend six to eight hours with us. This demonstrates they are seeing real value.

Another example is GITEX in the Middle East, one of the largest IT gatherings in the world. It’s a massive investment for us, but it’s a critical platform to showcase our leadership in data and AI to a huge audience.

 

What’s the secret weapon for making these events successful? Surely the free lunch isn’t the main draw.

The secret ingredient is also the most boring one: consistency and true customer-centricity. Customers will only continue to invest their valuable time with us if they genuinely see value.

A key part of this is engaging with smaller, more targeted audiences on the specific topics that are relevant to them. This is where bringing the right peer group to the same table to discuss shared challenges and find solutions collectively becomes a critical and valuable part of our event strategy.

 

How do you prioritise innovation in your team?

Innovation has to be a way of life and a mindset, not just a one-off program. We’ve launched an “EPIC Innovation Hub” (Emerging EMEA & Asia Pacific Programs and Innovation Centre) to encourage our teams to push boundaries.

A real example is a customer success story series we’re working on. The innovation is that we’re not just interviewing our customer, like a bank. We are interviewing the bank’s end-customer to show the real-world impact of our solutions—how we help protect a person’s hard-earned savings by reducing fraud, or how we help a government process claims faster. The innovation is looking at the value chain through multiple lenses.

 

What career advice would you give to someone starting in the marketing industry today?

I would focus on three areas.

First, on the people side, it is critical to connect with your customers and stakeholders. Get out and meet them to understand their pain points. That level of empathy is a non-negotiable skill.

Second, on the program side, the way campaigns are planned has completely changed. You must learn how data and technology allow you to communicate with customers in real-time.

Third, on the process side, you must invest in upskilling and reskilling yourself constantly. The skills you have today will not be enough for the next decade.

 

What’s a piece of traditional leadership advice that you believe doesn’t apply to modern marketing leaders?

The leadership advice that has stood the test of time remains the most important. This includes being authentic, empowering your teams, and, critically, giving them the freedom to fail. As long as we are learning from those failures, it’s an essential part of innovation. It’s less about enforcing a rigid structure and more about enabling agility and supporting your people.

 

What does the future of marketing look like?

I see three key things. First, agility. The speed at which we make decisions is no longer in months or days; it’s becoming real-time, powered by AI and data.

Second, it’s about balancing technology with human creativity. The combination of AI and human imagination is an unstoppable force.

Finally, it will remain human-centric. It’s not just about a digital-only perspective. As long as we are able to combine all these areas while keeping the customer and the “human in the loop” at the centre, that will be the future.

 

How would you describe the role of a VP of Marketing in one word?

Force multiplier.

A CMO or marketer can be a force multiplier for their business, their teams, and themselves, especially if they are leveraging the data, AI, and creative opportunities we’ve discussed in the right way.