Mastering B2B Marketing: Power of Differentiation with Alex Wood at Avnet

Alex Wood, Global Marketing Director at Avnet and Tria, joins the podcast to talk about his journey into tech marketing and why he has stayed at Avnet for eight years through acquisitions, restructures, and multiple rebrands. Wood explains that Tria designs and manufactures customizable compute modules for OEMs across many industries, helping customers start from standard modules and tailor specs such as ports, heat resilience, and vibration resistance, supported by in-house design and manufacturing in Germany and partnerships with Intel, NXP, and Qualcomm. He describes why Avnet moved from MSC to an independent Tria brand to avoid being perceived as a transactional distributor, and how distinctive pink branding drove awareness and clearer positioning. Wood shares approaches to marketing engineers with bold attention plus useful specs, warns against low-value AI content, and emphasizes lead quality and meaningful customer conversations as key success metrics.   About Avnet Avnet Inc. is a global Fortune 250 tech company that supplies electronics components and solutions to OEMs all over the world. Avnet was founded in 1921 on Radio Row in New York, and today is a multi-faceted corporation comprising a range of well-known electronics and technology businesses worldwide, including Tria. Tria Technologies is an Avnet company that designs and manufactures embedded computing for OEMs and other businesses that need industrial, high-performance computing integrated into their products. From standard off-the-shelf compute modules to full-custom systems and even touchscreens and HMIs, Tria’s innovations have been used in everything from coffee machines to farming equipment.   About Alex Wood Alex is a Marketing Director at Avnet, running marketing and communications globally for Avnet’s Embedded Solutions business unit, which includes the market-leading embedded computing brand Tria. Alex started his marketing journey under the sea, literally, working for a scuba diving brand. Today he specialises in highly targeted technology marketing as well as business strategy for rapid, international growth. In his spare time Alex is a photographer, hiker and outdoorsman, enjoying climbing mountains or finding himself back under the sea where he started.   Time Stamps 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 02:32 What Tria Actually Does 03:53 Tria Differentiators 06:06 Why B2B Tech Marketing 07:29 Rebrand to Tria Story 11:31 Bold Pink Brand Identity 14:48 Did the Rebrand Work 16:58 Marketing to Engineers 21:45 Partner Marketing Balance 25:17 Measuring Campaign Success 27:39 Advice and Wrap Up   Quotes “If you’ve got someone’s attention, you need to give them something valuable as quickly as possible and make them want more instead of just bombarding them with content.” Alex Wood, Marketing Director at Avnet. “Would you buy this? It seems overly simplistic, but a lot of the time marketers fall into this trap of selling a product to the customer in a way that they would never listen to themselves.” Alex Wood, Marketing Director at Avnet. “The pink logo is superliminal marketing. It is a ‘you cannot ignore us.’ Alex Wood, Marketing Director at Avnet.   Follow Alex: Alex Wood on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingforthewin/ Avnet website: https://www.avnet.com/americas/ Avnet LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avnet/ Tria website: https://www.tria-technologies.com/ Tria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/triatechnologies/   Follow Mike: Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/ Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/ Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/   If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We'd also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast - The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547