Ethan Meurlin
Vice President of Marketing, U.S. Federal Market, IBM
Ethan Meurlin is especially proud of the cohesion of the former Octo marketing team and its success since becoming part of IBM in January.
“Integrations, by definition, are full of change and not everyone wants to work through them,” Meurlin said. “Those that do often become overwhelmed by the task. Realizing this fact, I worked with my team to create a vision for the future and the role we would now play in a much larger and more specialized team.
“I repeated that vision often and broke our integration plan and future vision down into bite sized goals we could execute within a quarter. In what has been a transformational, foundation-building first year as IBM employees, my team remained focused on their roles and committed to each other and our value proposition. The result (was) near-immediate positive impact on IBM’s federal marketing team and value-added support to IBM’s client delivery and growth teams.”
Why Watch
In 2024 and into 2025, Meurlin’s team is focused on boosting IBM’s brand recognition and mindshare in the U.S. federal market. They aim to craft targeted messages for federal agencies, showcasing IBM’s technology capabilities in collaboration with IBM’s federal CTO organization and oLabs. The team will also promote responsible generative AI deployment as the key to helping agencies achieve their missions, drive innovation and enhance citizen services.
“Ethan quickly integrated with my senior leadership team and IBM’s marketing organization and had rapid and positive impact on both,” said Susan Wedge, IBM’s managing partner for the U.S. federal market. “He challenges all of us to think differently about what marketing in the federal market can be. He sees the big picture and weaves together seemingly disparate concepts and capabilities to create compelling campaigns and business process enhancements that more clearly highlight IBM’s value to federal agencies. The result is some exciting new things you’ll see from IBM in late 2024 and throughout 2025.”
Fun fact: Meurlin is an avid photographer. His main passion is photographing wildlife and landscapes, but he also shoots urban landscapes and other things.