Why Marketing Still Feels “New” In Manufacturing (And What Emily Ting Is Doing About It)

Emily Ting from CCS America joins Jim to talk about what culture actually feels like at work, how it shapes the day to day, and why marketing in industrial manufacturing is still years behind other B2B sectors. She walks through her journey from Japanese speaking intern to “do everything” marketer, three years working inside a Japanese headquarters, and the reality of being the bridge between leadership, engineers, sales and the outside world. Emily shares how she translates deeply technical machine vision concepts into something humans can understand, why AI has not killed the need for good lighting, and how a short book about penguins on a melting iceberg helped CCS rethink its culture and distributor program.

What you’ll hear

How Emily defines culture as “what you feel in the air” when you walk into work, and why it can either energize you or quietly drain you.

The story of how Japanese fluency opened the door at CCS, sent her to headquarters in Japan, and what she learned from that office culture.

Practical tips for doing business and filming content in Japan, from privacy expectations to simple etiquette that changes how you show up.

What it is really like to be the person who turns hardcore machine vision physics and jargon into useful stories and content.

Why leadership asking for ROI without clear goals is such a common pattern, and how she tries to navigate that tension.

How CCS Americas had to reset expectations after the Covid boom and get sales, marketing and engineering genuinely aligned again.

Why industrial marketing is still behind B2B SaaS, and what manufacturers can borrow without repeating old mistakes.

How the book “Our Iceberg Is Melting” turned into required reading and gave everyone a way to see themselves in the change story.

Topics covered

Culture as lived experience versus official “values”

Working in Japan, unspoken rules and privacy around filming

Translating technical machine vision and lighting concepts

AI hype in inspection and why fundamentals still matter

Getting leadership, engineers and marketing on the same page

Remote and hybrid culture in a small, spread out team

Designing a distributor program as a culture project, not just a sales program

The messy reality of modern industrial marketing

Key quotes

“Culture is what you feel in the air when you walk into work. Do you feel ready to do what you set out to do, or like there’s a pressure sitting on your mind all day”

“Marketing is much messier than people want. You rarely get a perfect straight line between what you did and the deal that closed.”

“Sometimes the decision is no decision. Staying in the status quo feels safer than making a move that might go wrong.”

“AI did not make lighting irrelevant. If bad lighting did not matter, those AI companies would not keep coming back to us for help.”

“You do not always get the insight you want by asking the question directly. Sometimes you have to go the long way round to reach the part of the customer that actually decides.”